It’s striking how in a democratic society, in the year 2021, there must be texts dedicated to freedom of speech. What has gone wrong and in our times we question freedom of speech in the society we have created?
Have you ever had difficulty expressing your opinion freely because of fear that the state apparatus will forbid it? Because in democracies, freedom of speech exists everywhere, except in squats and enclosures. And perhaps, here lies a cause that shows why we need to refer to freedom of speech today. Unfortunately in our country, even today we carry remnants of older dark parts of our history. We are afraid they might return. And maybe because of this fear we create new enclosures to feel safe. However, we are safe out there, away from enclosures, asylums and squatters.
“But if you express your opinion out there, they might eat you alive,” you may think. And here are the other two problems that may put us in the awkward position of having to analyze the obvious, and the conquests of decades. First of all, the freedom of speech “out there” has limits. And if it can not be understood that “freedom” has limits, then the problem is even bigger. My freedom of speech stops where their rights begin. So if I go out there and express myself freely by insulting someone, it is logical that this person has the right to defend themselves. I can not call someone a thief, when they are not, simply because I don’t like them. I can not express publicly, through a social network, for example, an invitation to anyone who wants to gather outside a place and vandalize it. In that case, freedom becomes impunity and hence the limits.
The second problem in the above phrase comes from social media. A recent example is what happened in America. We feel that having a profile on social media means that our voice has gained more power, it has become louder, it has found supporters to listen and spread our ideas together, so if Facebook or Twitter takes a post down, we are talking about censorship. At this point, I should note that freedom of speech is something different from press freedom, in case of confusion. Social media belongs to people and of course, it has rules. And even if it didn’t, nothing reprehensible could be said about censorship to someone who does not want certain things “in their space.” For example, if someone visits our profile photo and comments swear words, not descriptions addressed to us, just spamming bad words, then we can ban them and delete the comments, so Facebook itself has this ability. Is this censorship? Obviously not.
Now, if we are one of those people who associate freedom of speech with the fact that we are afraid to express ourselves because we don’t trust the institutions of the state we live in, let us view it as a problem that concerns us and as a problem that we can solve. Because we are the ones that shape the state, with the people we choose to represent us. If we choose the right ones, they will build institutions that we will trust and feel safe to live in.
Therefore, freedom of speech mustn’t be -and isn’t- questioned in democracies. On the contrary, it may not be found in specific audiences that can survive in them by questioning the very existence of the regime. So let’s think about the limits of freedom within the whole community and not just individually. Let’s establish the best rules for the expression of speech and cultivate our education and critical ability but also our empathy and conscience so that we can become better listeners and, of course, we should know the limits whenever we express ourselves.
- (101- one-oh-one- is used to indicate whatever concerns beginners and contains basic principles of the following topic)
Author: Athanasios Tataroglou
Photography by Polina Vasilikou
