Stop Censoring Censorship

When comedians mock their latest targets, artists unveil their convention-defying creations, right-wing rabble rousers demand acceptance from all speech platforms, hate mongers insist on their right to express themselves on social media, they all converge on an unreserved condemnation of censorship.

They invoke it as an unassailable principle – people must be allowed to say, show, express whatever they want, and any attempt to block them (whatever the reason) is deemed censorship, and must therefore be rejected.

If something is true and harmless, of course we should be ready to resist any move to prevent it from being put forward.  But it hardly follows that nothing can ever be legitimately deemed so harmful that its propagation should be halted.  This assumption that forbidding any expression is inherently and absolutely wrong must be questioned.

 

Suppose the following is about to happen:

 

·      Someone is going to distribute a leaflet on ‘20 ways to help your children’ to every household in the country, and the 20 ways listed are all widely recognised as harmful to children (e.g. hit them hard on the head when they disobey; make them drink bleach, etc.)

·      A town council has agreed to erect a public monument to celebrate Hitler’s murder of millions of people.

·      A photographer who managed to take pictures of the victims of a serial killer is going to hold an exhibition of those photographs to showcase the skills of the killer, despite the protest from the families of the victims.

·      Someone known for routinely lying about people from minority ethnic backgrounds is offered a regular television show to tell horror stories about minorities and why they should all be deported.

·      A group is organising a public march to name various people as responsible for the death of a child – without any evidence, and demand justice be obtained by any means.

 

Those who decry censorship may respond by either saying such expressions should be stopped but it is not censorship (in which case, they’re just playing with words); or affirming that nothing should be done to stop them (in which case, they’re playing with people’s lives).

 

Censorship should not be imposed lightly.  It needs justification, and it has to be proportionate.  But it cannot be dismissed as unjustifiable.  As individuals and as a society, we need to be protected from the vicious, the unscrupulous, and the deranged.  Undoubtedly there are cases where threats should be halted before serious harm is done.