Chomsky's fundamental concern with silencing speech is the consequences of developing a collective reliance on it as a means of addressing destructive ideologies as opposed to prioritising education and reform, and he sees said reliance as counter intuitive towards the pursuit of social growth. Much in the same way that communal health, education, a general wellbeing cannot be addressed without providing equity to all people within a civilisation, the growth of ideas and understanding cannot be achieved through restriction. It does not permit those ideas to be addressed and contested, and in turn does not nurture collective growth. Ideas that remain uncontested will eternally simmer in the social psyche as permissible, just legally forbidden, which attracts intrigue and hysteria. Or, in short; to eradicate destructive ideologies you must address the ideology and its flaws, drawing upon intellectual and educational enlightenment as opposed to progress through force.
It's obviously not black and white though. Hate speech laws are extremely important, particularly in spaces where people need to be protected. And there is a real danger to the status quo of entertainment platforming bigots, because people love drama, ignorant or deliberately apathetic towards the ramifications of giving those bigots a very public platform. We see that a lot these days, with entertainment networks giving bigots and hate speech a platform because they
know it results in traffic, and thus profit. And often these bigots go uncontested, even if the platform isn't inherently aligned with their speech, because they know the statement's they'll make are incendiary and thus attentive.
Chomsky also comes from an era where communication was different. I don't think we really have a grasp on just how unbelievably monumental the advent of digital communication and globalised networking is, in shaping communities, people, education, and access to information. It's the absolute best and worst thing for us. It's unvetted, unorganised, and uncontrollable in the traditional sense. It truly is the "marketplace of ideas" in all its horrors, and capitalistic infrastructure dominates it. It's largely unpoliced and unmonitored, fuelled by a weird mix of libertarian freedom of idea exchange and corporate interest. And this has created an absolute cesspit of shit, where ideas are freely exchanged in all their abhorrent forms, and enormous organisations are free to monopolise on whatever speech fuels their revenue.
I don't necessarily agree with Chomsky's approach in full, largely because of the above. But that is the root of the concern; apathy towards addressing dangerous ideals by silencing through force, which historically has done a terrible job of preventing those ideas from manifesting on the social psyche. His fundamental concern with silencing speech is that it allows that speech to permit unaddressed intellectually,
and gives power to political bodies to silence speech, which is only as good as it benefits the people who agree, and that can change dramatically depending on who is in power. And that, obviously, is a real concern.
But yeah. It's complicated. I firmly believe the blanket silencing approach to hostile speech is not the right path to social growth. I do not believe humans, as a species, and as a collective community, can truly grow without intellectually challenging our ideas. Ideas
must become consensus for it to be true growth. And that does not come through authoritarian force. But, of course, I also don't believe in freedom of platforming. I've no belief people have a right to be platformmed for their bullshit whenever, wherever they want. I also think the solution to speech is complicated; it's not just about giving people freedom to speech and that's that, it's also the importance of an education system that is richly ingrained in human society. Dangerous, hateful ideology can only be addressed through a network of complex social reforms. I do believe free speech is a part of that, in some form. And again, the modern digital world further complicates matters in pretty scary ways.
I also feel this is a very privileged position, from someone who never had to endure heat speech, simply for being of certain skin colour or gender or orientation. "Let it all work itself out in the free market of ideas, it will all work out".
He's a Jew. I'm sure he's endured and been exposed to a fair assortment of hate speech, given he was alive in America during WW2.
Are there really Chomsky fans?
Yes and for extremely good reasons.
