Say what you want, but I support the right to freedom of speech

Fergus Finlay asks is it possible to be profound about free speech when we take it for granted.

I WANTED to say something profound about freedom of speech, because of the events last week in France. But how is it possible to be profound about something we take for granted?

It’s like the water that flows from our taps. We argue and fight about having to pay for it now, but we know it will always be there. Imagine if, every time we turned on the tap, nothing happened?

That’s freedom of expression for you. You take it for granted, because it’s your right, just as much as you do the air you breathe or the water you drink.

Last week’s atrocity told us was that you never miss these things until they’re gone.

The editor of this newspaper has never told me what to write. He reminded me that he had once warned me never to send in a column about how hard it is to write a column.

But, apart from that, I’ve had the luxury of writing whatever occurs to me, week after week. Early on, if my column caused people to write letters of complaint into the newspaper, I lived in fear that that would be the end of me. And, occasionally, one political party or another, or its adherents, has taken a strong objection to something I’ve written. I’ve been called a hack, accused of carrying baggage and pursuing an agenda, and other stuff in a similar vein.

More recently, my columns have appeared on Twitter and Facebook. People who write angry letters to the newspaper, I’ve discovered, can become far more abusive on social media, where you can be anonymous. Social media gives more freedom to say whatever you like. So people who might use words like ‘hack’ when they’re writing to the paper use language on social media that’s much stronger, and sometimes hurtful.

But they’re the lumps that go with being a columnist who sometimes writes about controversial issues. When people are murdered for doing the same thing, it brings home with immense force what a huge privilege it is to be able to write whatever you like, especially in a newspaper that will protect that freedom, while never interfering with it.

A year or so ago, I was surprised and honoured to be presented by the French ambassador with a human rights award. It wasn’t me who was being honoured, but the work of Baranrdos (though I accepted with alacrity!). The certificate I was given has as a watermark a representation of the famous painting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It’s hanging in my hallway at home, and it encouraged me to read the whole declaration.

It’s a spare document, which dates from 1789 and has informed French culture ever since. Article 11 is direct and simple. It says: “The free communication of ideas and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man. Any citizen may therefore speak, write and publish freely, except what is tantamount to the abuse of this liberty in the cases determined by law.”

The notion that free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man has itself become one of France’s great gifts to the world. The millions of people marching throughout France over the weekend, in defence of that right, did, indeed, make Paris the capital of the world for a day.

And, yet, it’s more complex than that. In several ways. First of all, none of us can claim a monopoly, or that we alone reflect that fundamental principle. There were leaders marching in Paris on Sunday whose regimes are deeply intolerant of free speech.

Even in our own country, the recent experience of whistleblowers demonstrates that we’re prepared to take freedom of ideas only so far. The reluctance of successive governments in Ireland to live with unfettered freedom-of-information legislation suggests that we sometimes fear freedom more than we value it.

Nowadays, America is often seen as the home of free speech. Would NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden agree?

Would all the media that looked the other way when Americans were being brought home in body bags, in secret, during the Gulf War, agree?

Secondly, it’s not an unfettered right. The language of the French Declaration points to the possibility of abuse and regulation. Our own Constitution explicitly declares the right of citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions. But it goes on to say that: “the education of public opinion being, however, a matter of such grave import to the common good, the State shall endeavour to ensure that organs of public opinion, such as the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government policy, shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the State.”

And, most controversially, it adds that the publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with the law.

In other words, a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammed, which is regarded as blasphemous by his followers, could well fall foul of Irish law, notwithstanding our commitment to freedom of expression. That may be one of the reasons why so many Irish newspapers have fought shy of publishing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons that caused such offence.

Another possible reason, however, is that many of them are simply disgusting. I’ve seen some of them, and they are genuinely repulsive — bigoted, sexist and racist. It’s impossible to look at them, I believe, without concluding that they go well beyond poking fun at religion, or satirising a point of view. They seem to be the manifestation of a pretty ugly ideology.

There are periodicals in Ireland that I choose not to read because I know the malice that goes into the writing of them — often to an extent that distorts rather than amplifies truth.

But that’s the real dilemma. In support of the principle of free expression, we have to show solidarity with people who have been murdered for expressing views with which we strongly disagree. That’s fundamental, and it goes back to the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller (they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — and then they came for me, and there was no-one left to speak).

In the end, nothing is more fundamental to freedom than the right to think, to speak, and to express ideas.

I don’t want to say “Je suis Charlie”, because I thoroughly dislike some of what they have published.

But I must say it, and say it loud, because if they are not allowed the freedom to speak without being slaughtered, we are all less free. And just like the air we breathe, the moment we stop valuing and defending basic freedoms is the moment we begin to die.