Podcast #243: The Freedom to Blaspheme
Jonathan Kay speaks to fellow podcast host Kushal Mehra about the ‘eerie similarities’ between censorship campaigns in India and Canada.
Quillette
· 18 min read
Censorship
A collection of 37 posts
What My Soviet Life Taught Me About Censorship
Censorship obscures our view of reality and impedes our society’s ability to function.
Izabella Tabarovsky
· 13 min read
Stifling Free Speech Online: Australia’s Misinformation Bill
Every censorship regime in history has claimed to be protecting the public. But no regime can have prior knowledge of what is true or good. It can only know what the approved narratives are.
Toadworrier
· 12 min read
Queen of the Gender Crits
J.K. Rowling’s scathingly effective takedown of Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act has been a wonder to behold.
Joan Smith
· 16 min read
Australia's New Free Speech Union: Quillette Cetera Episode 29
A conversation with the director of Australia's new Free Speech Union.
Zoe Sankey, Dara Macdonald
· 2 min read
The Case Against Content Moderation
Aggressive content moderation is presented as a necessary response to hate speech and misinformation—but it's more like a moral panic.
Sam Kahn
· 15 min read
The Heckler’s Veto and the Right to Free Association
It's not just a matter of weighing up one group’s free speech against another group’s counter-speech. It’s also about one group’s freedom of association being impeded.
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 8 min read
Tolerating Intolerance: The Free Speech Paradox
Should society tolerate intolerance to protect freedom of expression? A deep dive into Karl Popper’s ideas and modern free speech debates.
Angel Eduardo
· 6 min read
In Canada, Asking for Evidence Now Counts as ‘Denialism’
Sensational 2021 claims that unmarked Indigenous child graves had been discovered in British Columbia now seem doubtful. But saying so may soon be a criminal offence
Jonathan Kay
· 10 min read
Roald Dahl and the Ethics of Art
The urge to censor is based on a misunderstanding of what makes literature valuable.
Iona Italia
· 11 min read
Poetic Justice
How an octogenarian artist defied curatorial bureaucracy.
Julia Friedman
· 9 min read
How Much Real-World Extremism Does Online Hate Actually Cause?
While calls to censor hate speech and violent extremist content on social media platforms are common, there’s little evidence that online incitement leads to real-world radicalization. Ironically, such calls may actually galvanize extremists, who interpret hostile media coverage, commentary, and censorship policies as confirmation of their victimhood narratives
Bill Ottman and Jesse Morton
· 7 min read
Academic Ideologues Are Corrupting STEM. The Silent Liberal Majority Must Fight Back
We need to break the spell of illiberal ideology, and come back to our collective senses—to stop self-censoring in fear of the mob and excusing nonsense in the name of political allyship, and to start defending the values of pluralism, humanism, and democracy.
Anna Krylov and Jay Tanzman
· 10 min read
The Artist and the Censor
An embrace of the art for art’s sake ideal is the greatest defense for artists against self-censorship. Those who defend art from moralizing or censure—who accept the reality of art’s autonomy—are those who see art for what it is.
Alice Gribbin
· 8 min read
How Radical Transparency Cures Web Censorship and Surveillance
The Legacy social networks have betrayed the trust of their users to such extent that their brands are essentially unsalvageable.
Bill Ottman
· 11 min read