Flick 🇬🇧 on Nostr: https://open.substack.com/pub/newsfromuncibal/p/voices-of-division-and-anger The ...
https://open.substack.com/pub/newsfromuncibal/p/voices-of-division-and-anger
The basic framing of the [UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Management] Plan’s approach to free speech is as follows. First, it tells us, we face a problem: ‘people cannot meaningfully participate in public affairs because they are prevented from accessing information from independent sources or cannot meet in participatory spaces that are enabling, inclusive, and safe.’ And it follows that creating ‘participatory spaces’ that are ‘enabling, inclusive and safe’, and facilitating access to information from independent sources, must be prioritised if ‘meaningful participation in public affairs’ is to be our goal.
Sounds lovely so far. But, of course, the devil is in the detail, and the creation of ‘participatory spaces’ that are ‘enabling, inclusive and safe’ is not quite the same thing as securing freedom of expression for reasons which I suppose will be obvious. What if people want to freely express themselves in such a way as to undermine enablement, inclusivity and safety? What, indeed, if they want to engage in ‘anti-rights narratives’ or ‘anti-gender narratives’ (I think this means trans-exclusionary feminism), to use the Plan’s language? And, similarly, access to information from independent sources is all very well, but what if those independent sources are purveying ‘disinformation’ or ‘hate speech’? What then?
The answer, of course, is that those types of speech have to be ‘countered’ in ‘innovative ways’ - one presumes this means, with digital tools - and thereby suppressed. In order to secure participation, you see, it is important that some people be prohibited from participating. In order that an environment be made ‘enabling, inclusive and safe’ for participants, some people must be disenabled, excluded, and problematised. It is necessary to suppress free speech, that is, in order to facilitate it. It is necessary to destroy participation, you might say, in order to save it.
The basic framing of the [UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Management] Plan’s approach to free speech is as follows. First, it tells us, we face a problem: ‘people cannot meaningfully participate in public affairs because they are prevented from accessing information from independent sources or cannot meet in participatory spaces that are enabling, inclusive, and safe.’ And it follows that creating ‘participatory spaces’ that are ‘enabling, inclusive and safe’, and facilitating access to information from independent sources, must be prioritised if ‘meaningful participation in public affairs’ is to be our goal.
Sounds lovely so far. But, of course, the devil is in the detail, and the creation of ‘participatory spaces’ that are ‘enabling, inclusive and safe’ is not quite the same thing as securing freedom of expression for reasons which I suppose will be obvious. What if people want to freely express themselves in such a way as to undermine enablement, inclusivity and safety? What, indeed, if they want to engage in ‘anti-rights narratives’ or ‘anti-gender narratives’ (I think this means trans-exclusionary feminism), to use the Plan’s language? And, similarly, access to information from independent sources is all very well, but what if those independent sources are purveying ‘disinformation’ or ‘hate speech’? What then?
The answer, of course, is that those types of speech have to be ‘countered’ in ‘innovative ways’ - one presumes this means, with digital tools - and thereby suppressed. In order to secure participation, you see, it is important that some people be prohibited from participating. In order that an environment be made ‘enabling, inclusive and safe’ for participants, some people must be disenabled, excluded, and problematised. It is necessary to suppress free speech, that is, in order to facilitate it. It is necessary to destroy participation, you might say, in order to save it.