Whatever Happened to Free Speech?

I have just finished reading Trigger Warning by Mick Hume which provides an eye opening account of how free speech is under attack not just from Islamic nutters but from all those people who say "I believe in free speech but ..." and "You can't say that".

To quote from the blurb:

The cold-blooded murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in January 2015 brought a deadly focus to the issue of free speech. Leaders of the free-thinking world united in condemning the killings, proclaiming ‘Je suis Charlie’. But it wasn’t long before many commentators were arguing that the massacre showed the need to apply limits to free speech and to restrict the right to be offensive.

It has become fashionable not only to declare yourself offended by what somebody else says, but to use the ‘offence card’ to demand that they be prevented from saying it. Social media websites such as Twitter have become the scene of ‘twitch hunts’ where online mobs hunt down trolls and other heretics who express the ‘wrong’ opinion. And Trigger Warnings and other measures to ‘protect’ sensitive students from potentially offensive material have spread from American universities across the Atlantic and the internet.

The section on the treatment of football fans makes interesting reading too.

Anyone else read it?

I haven't read it, but sounds interesting, and I shall read it

There should never be total free speech. Anyone who says otherwise is a twat.

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It's usually about 4 minutes after a religiously motivated muslim terror attack that we start to worry about the feelings of the terrorists.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:It's usually about 4 minutes after a religiously motivated muslim terror attack that we start to worry about the feelings of the terrorists.

It's usually about 4 minutes after a post on Bolton Nuts that Hipster has a go at religion.

Yes, the P(ompous) C(unts) have a lot to be thanked for.