London: Basic Books, 2022
528 pp. $23.40 (paperback)

In recent years, a growing chorus of voices has become increasingly hostile to free speech. Certain people, ideas, and narratives, we are told, must be suppressed in order to combat “hate speech,” stop misinformation, and “protect democracy.” As Jacob Mchangama explains in his book, Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media, these arguments are not new. The “justifications for limiting free speech in the twenty-first century,” he observes, “have more in common with those used many centuries past than perhaps we would like to admit” (2).

From ancient civilizations to the present, free speech has been the exception rather than the rule. Mchangama shows how governments have restricted speech and what motivated them to do so. He also shows the progress made in combatting those restrictions. Such progress, however, has not followed a linear, uninterrupted path but a tortuous one filled with countless missteps, setbacks, and regressions. One reason for this, Mchangama writes, is that “the introduction of free speech sets in motion a process of entropy. The leaders of any political system—no matter how enlightened—inevitably convince themselves that now freedom of speech has gone too far” (2).

Many political leaders resort to censorship because they won’t tolerate being questioned or criticized. This is why, “for much of human history, speaking truth to power was ill-advised and often dangerous” (9). Another common impetus for censorship is to quash various forms of religious dissent, such as heresy, infidelity, apostasy, and blasphemy. In the early Roman Empire, for example, “Christians faced periods of sometimes brutal persecution” (30). After Constantine became emperor, however, he established religious freedom in 313 with the Edict of Milan. But later, he and subsequent emperors favored Christianity, and this favoritism culminated in the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which declared Christianity the official state religion of the empire. This marked the end of religious freedom for heretics, pagans, and other non-Christians. As Mchangama points out, “The persecuted had become the persecutor” (31). For centuries in the West, Christian leaders enforced orthodoxy via book burning and bans, inquisitions, and executions.

Unfortunately, the persecuted turned persecutor has been a recurring historical theme. Many prominent figures, from Martin Luther to John Milton, have inconsistently defended free speech. Luther, the leader of the Reformation and founder of Protestantism, was persecuted by the Catholic Church. He appealed to freedom when facing such persecution, “only to persecute other dissenters once in a position of power and influence” (73).

Although pockets of free speech have existed throughout history, before the Enlightenment it mostly existed not because it was legally protected or because it had a principled defense but by default. This often happened due to the absence of a central religious or political authority to enforce orthodoxy, as was the case in the Islamic world during the Middle Ages.

During periods when speech was relatively free, it typically was free only for some groups; or specific categories of speech were free while others were restricted. In the Roman Republic, for example, senators had the right to speak their minds, but ordinary citizens did not. In the 16th century, Transylvania and Poland-Lithuania generally protected religious speech but not political speech. During the colonial era, Maryland and Pennsylvania protected religious freedom to some extent but punished blasphemy.

Free Speech is not only a political history, but an intellectual history as well. Mchangama profiles influential thinkers who have called for freer speech, from Demosthenes, Baruch Spinoza, and Voltaire to John Milton, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill. He also discusses lesser-known or forgotten figures, such as Dirck Coornhert, Thomas Helwys, and Elie Luzac. Not all of them were free speech absolutists, but the more consistent proponents include the 17th-century Levellers (such as Richard Overton, William Walwyn, and John Lilburne) and the 18th-century Radical Whigs (particularly John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon). “We find the Levellers explicitly arguing for the importance of being principled and defending the freedoms of both friend and foe,” Mchangama explains, “lest the temptation to use the law selectively end up ‘overwhelming your own liberties’” (110). Trenchard and Gordon authored Cato’s Letters, which had a significant influence in colonial America. “Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty,” Gordon wrote; “they prosper and die together” (124).

Although the United States has been the most speech-protecting nation ever, many Americans might be surprised to learn how much censorship our political leaders have gotten away with. In 1798, the Sedition Act outlawed criticism of the government. The motive for this act was conspicuously partisan; the Federalists were in power, and nearly everyone targeted by it was Republican. “The Sedition Act,” Mchangama writes, “paved the way for the prosecution and imprisonment of journalists, editors, and politicians, including a sitting congressman, engaging in political speech and satire” (196). During World War I, the Espionage and Sedition Acts banned antiwar speech. Both “had disastrous consequences for free speech, with approximately two thousand prosecutions and more than a thousand convictions resulting in many years of imprisonment” (244). Perhaps most surprising is that, before the 1930s, the First Amendment limited only the power of the federal government to censor speech but not the power of state and local governments to do so. As a result, during the 19th century, Southern states criminalized abolitionist literature—banning, for instance, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

A principled defense of free speech holds that those who favor censorship have the right to promote it. That is, they can exploit the right to speak in order to advocate violating that right. This raises a question: Is censoring the enemies of freedom ever justified?

The idea that this kind of censorship is necessary is what Mchangama calls the “Weimar fallacy.” If Germany had censored Hitler and the Nazis before they rose to power, some argue, the country would not have succumbed to totalitarianism. This line of thinking is wrong because Germany did take measures to censor the Nazis (and others), leading to several unintended consequences. In the late 1920s, most German states banned Hitler from speaking publicly. But this “provided fodder for fruitful propaganda. Ultimately, Hitler concluded that the ban had been a net benefit, boosting his fame and popularity” (276). Further, once in power, Hitler fully exploited the speech restrictions that his predecessors had enacted. His “attack on the press was merely an escalation of the draconian press policy that Weimar’s democratic politicians had set in motion” (279).

Another common argument for censorship is the need to protect marginalized groups from so-called hate speech. Mchangama shows that this argument, too, is wrong for several reasons. “Hate speech” is not objectively definable. Thus, because laws banning it necessarily leave room for selective interpretation, they have been used time and again to suppress religious and political critics. Such laws, moreover, don’t stop hate; they just push bigoted individuals and groups underground, making them less visible. This, according to Mchangama, “hinders targeted counterspeech, which some studies have shown to be effective in reducing hate speech” (372).

Further, governments have far more often used censorship to oppress marginalized groups than to protect them. The right to free speech is essential for such groups to protest, debate, and be heard. Mchangama quotes the late John Lewis: “Without freedom of speech and the right to dissent, the Civil Rights movement would have been a bird without wings” (299).

Despite its strengths, Free Speech has some minor flaws. Mchangama ably discusses the problems, challenges, and controversies associated with content moderation on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Moderation is necessary, he points out, as few people would want to use these platforms if “deluged with porn, spam, harassment, and abuse” (366). The issue, therefore, is not whether social media companies should moderate but how they do so.

In a few places, Mchangama mentions “corporate censorship.” It’s unclear, however, whether he’s referring to governments pressuring social media companies to suppress speech on their platforms (which, in fact, is government censorship), or whether he thinks corporations themselves are censoring people. If the latter, he is misusing the concept of censorship, which properly refers only to government suppression of speech.

He acknowledges that “free speech does not grant anyone the right to have an op-ed published in the New York Times” (391). That’s correct. But free speech doesn’t grant anyone the right to have a Twitter or Facebook account either. Just as the New York Times has the right—because it is privately owned—to decide what it will publish, social media companies have a right to decide what or who they will allow on their platforms. It’s certainly true that the content moderation practices of these companies have often been partisan, arbitrary, or inconsistent, as Mchangama shows. But to suggest that these practices—absent government interference—constitute censorship is false. And when the government is interfering (as the Twitter Files show), it is the censor, not the corporation.

Mchangama also laments that the users of social media platforms are subjected to “moderation without representation,” which implies that users should be represented. But what does representation mean in such a context? Social media platforms are not governments, and people use them voluntarily. So why should users be represented? Who should represent them? And at whose expense?

Finally, several dubious statements are sprinkled throughout the book, such as the claim that the impulse to censor “may well be hardwired into human nature” (61). But these statements are isolated and do not detract from the book’s main themes.

Among the most important of its themes is that legally codifying free speech is not enough by itself. Mchangama argues that it is just as important, if not more so, to foster a culture of free speech, as this provides the underpinnings for the laws that protect it. Without this, legal protections for free speech ultimately will not survive. “It is up to each of us,” Mchangama writes, “to defend a culture tolerant of heretical ideas . . . agree to disagree without resorting to harassment or hate, and treat free speech as a principle to be upheld universally rather than a prop to be selectively invoked for narrow tribalist point scoring” (392).

Amen.

Free Speech is a sweeping, essentialized history, rich with fascinating stories, details, and nuances. It’s clear. It’s engaging. And it’s superbly written. Given the increasing calls for censorship in our culture, the book could not have come at a better time.

Given the increasing calls for censorship in our culture, @JMchangama's new book, Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media, could not have come at a better time.
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