Lately, I’ve been in conversations about platforms like Patreon or Locals, and how they differ from traditional blogging. I will try one of them, but I’m drawn more to Locals because it feels more independent. Patreon, like YouTube, has the power to shut you down if your work offends the wrong people. That bothers me. The issue of free speech fascinates me. The more I think about it, the more radical it seems. Free speech is not simply the right to say agreeable things it is the right to say something offensive and not be jailed for words alone. History shows how fragile this principle is. Pussy Riot have been sentenced to years in prison because Putin was offended. Russian courts convicted them for saying Russia was at fault for the war, for saying the state has blood on its hands. Their liberty removed because of lyrics. Further back: Galileo under house arrest for saying the Earth revolves around the sun. At the time, that was a statement judged intolerable.

The argument in favour of censorship rests on a belief that government (or the church, in earlier centuries) knows best, and that limiting words protects the public. The reasoning is that hateful speech must be outlawed because it can inspire hateful action. But how do we police that? Who decides which “nutty words” give oxygen to which “nutty people”? The line is never stable. It shifts with power, fashion, and fear. For a long time I didn’t understand the so-called absolutists on free speech but I’m seeing their reasoning. My friends often frame these debates in terms of structures of power, quoting Derrida, Foucault, or Marx. That perspective is valuable, but I’m struck by their comfort with gatekeepers even gatekeepers who could put you in prison for using the wrong words. When I speak in favour of free speech absolutism, I’m often dismissed as naïve or misguided. But my conviction comes not from defending the powerful but from defending the powerless, always first to be silenced.

I wrote a song years ago about Douglas Christie, the lawyer who defended white supremacists and neo-Nazis, I was using the same freedom of speech he defended to ridicule him. That is what free speech makes possible: to answer words with words, satire with satire. It’s what I love about Twitter. Sarcasm can deflate a moron more effectively than banning him. Hitler was devastated by Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Art ridiculed him more powerfully than silence ever could. Free speech will always be risky, messy, and uncomfortable. But it’s a better tool against those who would prefer silence.