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Jonathan Sumption: Free Speech Needs Saving From the Tyranny of Woke Minorities

by Will Jones
10 November 2023 3:04 PM

Free speech needs saving from the tyranny of woke minorities, Jonathan Sumption has said. Speaking to the New Zealand Free Speech Union, the former Supreme Court Justice said that no one is entitled to intellectual safety as he warned of the devastating impact of “online lynch mobs”. Here’s an excerpt of his talk, as published by UnHerd.

John Stuart Mill anticipated many things, but he did not anticipate the internet. Social media can conjure up instant online lynch mobs. They make a powerful amplifier available to the most intolerant strands of opinion. The algorithms which determine what material is placed under people’s noses expose them only to sentiments which they already agree with, thus intensifying their opinions and eliminating not only dissent but even nuance and moderation. Mill assumed that the pressure to conform would come from self-righteous majorities. But social media has conferred immense power on self-righteous minorities, often quite small minorities.

The most remarkable illustration of this is the vicious campaign currently being conducted to silence those who believe that gender is based on an immutable biological fact. Polling evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of people believe that gender is determined at birth and cannot be altered by medical or surgical intervention, let alone by simple choice. That view is consistent with the current scientific orthodoxy, which regards gender as binary. Yet pressure from a noisy minority has created a situation in which the public expression of the prevailing and probably correct view about gender can lead to dismissal from employment, the cancellation of speaking engagements and publication contracts, and an avalanche of public shaming and abuse.

John Stuart Mill taught that the only purpose for which power might properly be exercised against individuals against their will was to prevent harm to others. But what we are presently witnessing is a subtle redefinition of the whole concept of harm to include the harm said to be caused by having to endure contradiction. The argument is that words wound, especially when they relate to another person’s identity or status; a university or a workplace where a person is exposed to disagreement must therefore be regarded, in the standard catchphrase, as ‘unsafe’.

The difference between violence and words is obvious. Violence is coercive. Words, even if offensive, are not coercive except in those cases where they are calculated to provoke violence. Yet in North America, Britain and much of the Anglosphere, this notion of harm has captured institutions. Recent research in the United States suggests that 29% of university professors have been pressured by university authorities into avoiding controversial subjects; 16% have either been disciplined or threatened with discipline for their words, their teaching or their academic research, while another 7% say that they have been investigated. Those working on any subject involving ethnic or religious sensitivities are particularly vulnerable. More than 80% of students report that they self-censor their work for fear of stepping out of line.

Underlying much of this debate is a fundamental challenge to the objective notion of harm. When interest groups object to someone’s opinion, harm is whatever they perceive as harm. It depends on ‘lived experience’, as the phrase goes, particularly when the offended group is an ethnic, religious or sexual minority. The desire to accommodate minorities who feel themselves oppressed is understandable. It assists social inclusion. But carried to its logical extreme it gives them a right of veto, an entitlement to silence opinions. And it is being carried to its logical extreme. In many countries, including Britain, hate speech is in some circumstances a criminal offence or an aggravating factor when accompanied by some other criminal conduct. The British police and prosecution authorities have agreed upon a definition of their own devising, according to which a hate crime means any action which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice. In other words, they have adopted a subjective definition dependent on the feelings of the victim rather than an objective assessment of the words used.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: Cancel CultureCensorshipFree SpeechFSULord Jonathan SumptionNew ZealandWokeWoke Gobbledegook

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21 Comments
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RW
RW
1 year ago

Gibt man jemand den kleinen Finger, dann will er die ganze Hand.

German proverb, If you give a finger to someone he’ll want your hand next. The old non-white men at the UN want Net Zero to be pulled forward by ten years because all their past predictions were wrong. Should the government commit to that, they’ll want 2030 next and then, 2025. And that’s all just code language for We want more money!, a demand which can inherently never be met.

91
-1
NeilParkin
NeilParkin
1 year ago

I think, as awareness grows that there isn’t an emergency, clinging to that line makes them more and more ridiculous. We know it, they know it. All they can do is to try and move faster and faster to complete the plan before we cross the line of critical mass of cognisance in the citizens. Its a race to the line, but we’re winning…

120
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stewart
stewart
1 year ago

I have a question.

Who is this toff? Why is he a peer? What exactly has this guy accomplished in his life, what makes him so special, that he should have a lifetime position making laws that affect me?

I have just lost all respect for our system.

It was.ok when we were left.alone and could lead our lives as we wished. It didn’t really matter who these people were. The problem is that these people now think they have a right to lord it over us.

Here’s an idea, Zac, whoever the hell you are. Piss off, live your life how you want and let us do the same.

118
0
godknowsimgood
godknowsimgood
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

“I have just lost all respect for our system.’

What took you so long?

43
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  godknowsimgood

Just = simply, not just now.

The day they locked us down I realised how wrong I was about many things and our system was not what I had assumed.

48
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Nearhorburian
Nearhorburian
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

You didn’t get suspicious when immigration quintupled after cottager Blair?

32
0
DomH75
DomH75
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

I think, for me, there was always a very Western presumption that there was a limit to how corrupt and stupid our politicians could be. Lockdowns smashed that presumption and made us realise that they are no better than any other banana republic dictatorship.

3
0
richardw53
richardw53
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

Isn’t he the man that lost the London Mayoral election to Sadiq Khan a few years ago? Thank goodness he did. He might well have been worse than Khan.

27
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Epi
Epi
1 year ago
Reply to  richardw53

“worse than Khan” – impossible.

20
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DomH75
DomH75
1 year ago
Reply to  Epi

I moved back to London at the tail end of Livingstone’s regime (lots of stabbings going on) was there for all of Al ‘Boris’ Johnson’s era and the beginning of Khan’s regime. It goes to show that most of Johnson’s era was a pretty good one in terms of the ‘feel’ of London. Johnson was a perfect Mayor of London, playing a buffoonish cartoonish character to promote the city around the world while appointing other people to administer the place.

When Khan arrived, it was all diktats, banning images of attractive women on advertising hoardings and playing up to activist organisations. By the time I left in 2019, I’d come to despise the place. I suspect Goldsmith would have been more activist too, probably in a different way, but I bet he would have sanctioned the ULEZ nonsense too.

2
0
DomH75
DomH75
1 year ago
Reply to  richardw53

Yes, he claimed to be ‘pan-sexual’ or some nonsense to pander to the hedonist left wing Islingtonite crowd.

0
0
Mark Nind
Mark Nind
1 year ago

Do I take it that he will still want to remain as a peer and continue to be paid (by us taxpayers) for just turning up to the House of Lords? What good is this guy doing?? What is he contributing to help a better society??? I suppose I could easily ask the same question for many of our ‘politicians’. I hope and pray that society continues to wake up to the fact that this is all about control and not the climate/Covid/Ukraine/Weapons of mass destruction/hate speech etc.

59
0
richardw53
richardw53
1 year ago

Utopians like Goldsmith cannot tolerate anything other than the utopia they seek. There is no compromise, understanding nor reason in their position.

40
0
Nearhorburian
Nearhorburian
1 year ago
Reply to  richardw53

He’s surely a dystopian who expects to benefit from the dystopia he wants to inflict on the white gentiles

22
0
Epi
Epi
1 year ago
Reply to  richardw53

I don’t understand how he can call himself a Conservative when he appears to be completely the opposite?

10
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago

Goldsmith is an oxygen thief.

30
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

He’s also a CO2 emitter!

🙂

Last edited 1 year ago by RW
21
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago

We are getting rid of petrol and diesel. We are getting rid of coal and want rid of gas. We want to take the best central heating system we ever had (gas) that keeps us warm in a very cold winter and we want to replace it with basically anything that isn’t gas, whether it is any good or not. Grant Schapps was asked 3 weeks ago if heat pumps are as good as gas central heating and he relplied “I don’t know”. —————-WHAT? Is he f…ing insane? How can he not know? Him and his silly eco socialist government masquerading as conservatives want to get rid of the best ever heating system and fob you off with a heat pump that might not be any good? And the people just sit back and take it. ——-We are building thousands of wind turbines, and solar panels right left and centre. We are spending 30 billion on smart meters etc etc etc. ——Yet the blithering idiot Goldsmith says we are not doing enough. We have entered into NET ZERO with not a single question of cost/benefit asked and government have no idea if it can be achieved or even if the technologies required can ever be invented and we are prepared to impoverish people and force millions into energy poverty but that “Isn’t Enough” ??????????????????????. Maybe he would prefer if we sat with sack cloth on our heads and ate turnips cooked by candle light.

Last edited 1 year ago by varmint
32
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Epi
Epi
1 year ago
Reply to  varmint

They won’t be happy until either we’re dead or back in the Middle Ages with us camping outside their castle walls freezing to death in our sack clothes whilst they Lord it up throwing chicken bones over their shoulders belching and farting as they go.

Last edited 1 year ago by Epi
22
0
Kornea112
Kornea112
1 year ago

There is no climate crisis. Global warming is a contested theory. The climate change people are a political movement led by elites seeking power a control.

17
0

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