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Glenn Greenwald joins UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers to explore the nuances of free speech in today’s digital world. They discuss the challenges of protecting minority voices while upholding free expression, the dangers of corporate censorship, and the importance of critical thinking in navigating today’s complex information landscape.
Watch the full interview above.
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SubscribeGlenn mentioned in this blog.
https://informedheart.substack.com/p/arc-legatum-and-fake-freedom-funds
“I was watching this excellent (1 hour) interview over the weekend called ‘Criminalising Dissent’ with Glenn Greenwald, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen. The context included the universal influence of the Omidyar Group on free speech and independent media. Re the evolution of Glenn Greenwald’s own long-running (if somewhat bemusing) fight against Omidyar’s First Look Media aka the Censorship Industrial Complex, there’s an interesting historical perspective expanded upon here, by Alison McDowell of A Wrench in the Gears.”
https://www.foxglove.org.uk/2024/05/13/foxglove-uk-cma-microsoft-amazon-ai-partnerships/
“We simply can’t afford for the Big Tech incumbents to lock down AI the way they’ve locked down the rest of our online world – but that’s where these AI roll-ups are leading.
That’s why Foxglove, along with our partners at the Open Markets Institute, Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Rebalance Now, Article 19, and Clean Up the Internet have urged the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to investigate—and potentially undo—the latest moves by tech giants Microsoft and Amazon to buy their way into a dominant position in AI.”
Doesn’t he realize that it’s exactly supporting the intimidation and blocking of just any individual that wants to walk onto campus ? That is a crime – restraint of movement in a public space is not tolerable. It is fanaticism combined with intimidation tactics.
The case is Brandenburg V Ohio. I’m glad to hear that he believes I can come out and say … or an entire neighborhood can come out and say …. “No mosques or Islamic centers in my neighborhood!”. Or CAN we ???
You had been better off supporting Enoch Powell , or if too young , the arguments he used about immigration .
Glenn ended his talk with condemning the “banning of groups for their political ideology” and some of the rationale he also condemned is “safetyism”. His argument is OK except when it comes to Islamic ideology. Let’s face it … there are indeed ideologies which are inconsistent and oppositional to our Constitution which must not be allowed to take hold. Islam and Communism are examples. These must be differentiated from other advocacies because they are fundamentally oppressive, in the case of Islam, to the non-Muslim and personal and political liberty principles of American democracy, and in the case of Communism, oppressive to the personal and political liberties and free market principles of American democracy.
The exact censorship which is being wrest upon “canceled” individuals such as Scott Adams, for example, for being publically sentenced as racist purely for his speech, are going to be used ultimately to promote Islam and Communism. Take Yusef Hamza’s very brief tenure as First Minister in Scotland as a case in point. He successfully pushed through a criminal hate speech law and then proceeded to lambast the Scottish public administration as white, white, white, white. And, oh darn, by coincidence, there are no white Arabs, Africans, or Asians Muslims ! This, in and of itself, should have been punished under the very law he proudly passed. J.K. Rowling, another would-be censored individual fought back successfully and rather single handedly proved the wrong-headedness of the law.
The whole debacle of this hate speech law was, clearly, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but only proven so by Hamza’s blatant takiyya to offer aid and comfort to his fellow Muslims, the REAL point of his censorial program.
The talking and thinking (hopefully) heads will dither about for a few more years to suss out the real evil in every social domain which must be choke-collared : the promotion of gender ideology on children, the aid and comfort given to Islamic ideology, the ghosts of the French and Russian Revolutions, and identity politics run amok. Some of this is transient, such as gender ideology, and will damage only a generation. Even our economic structures will survive as long as there are at least 2 parties to compete in the realm of ideas. However the failure to curb Islam will have dreadful and permanent effects. The religion of submission to Allah which is based on the subjugation of those who will not submit to Allah, will be fatal to human liberty all around. Nekuda!
Unless I misunderstood, Mr. Greenwald has noted his belief that as long as free speech does not result in violence, it is acceptable. There might be an argument to support this, if ‘violence’ is viewed across all of its dimensions. But if by ‘violence’ Mr. Greenwald refers only to its physical manifestations, then I suggest that his views are incomplete.
Free speech that results in mental torment should also be a ‘red line’ in this debate. Please note the number of teenage suicides resulting from verbal abuse, denigration and misinformation. Moreover, there is an implication in this discussion that we should all be rational actors as recipients of what is freely spoken. Fair enough, but is this a reasonable expectation to have when the audience can be young teens or other groups that are emotionaly vulnerable?
By all means speak your mind, but when speech is used to incite violence in any of its manifestations, or directly results in damaging the human experience, both physically and mentally, then it should not be tolerated.