2024-09-21
The theme is of course the defence of "free speech" - the freedom to speak, including the freedom to be tasteless and possibly offensive, since offence can be taken even when not deliberately offered.
The UK law lords used to have a robust interpretation of this, expecting adult citizens to tolerate mere offence in the broader interest of open discussion of robustly held beliefs. Today any number of easily offended parties with the ready ear of Parliament seem to want to hamstring our right to free speech in growing numbers of frankly implausible ways - much like our Parliament in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum tried any number of implausible manoeuvres to keep the Kingdom under EU control whilst pretending to leave.
The result is a the tendency to shift the burden of responsibility for policing "offensive" speech onto the social media platforms, along with the introduction of deliberately and disgracefully ill-defined concepts along the lines of "legal but <fill in your favourite obfuscation word here>)".
It's a long video but shines a useful light on some some worthy champions, illustrating not only how they have been attacked for their trouble, but also how they have survived and moved on regardless.
They also have some pertinent remarks to make about journalists in the long-established press and media - let's hope that they don't cause too much "offence" in those quarters ...
(3 hrs 37 mins)
Like / Dislike this video here.
