I have a long-standing interest in
freedom of speech, and in particular the way in which people will tend to
self-censor for fear of being accused of some form of bigotry. I'm particularly
concerned, for example, that the accusation of Islamophobia is being used
to try to shame and silence critics of Islam. I'm similarly concerned that the
accusation of antisemitism is being used to try to shame and silence
critics of Israel. Here is something I wrote on that subject.
I thought I would do a
not-very-scientific twitter poll to see whether people felt they were
self-censoring due to fear of being accused of bigotry. I asked the
following 'yes' 'no' questions:
1. Have you ever self-censored yr views
on Islam for fear of being accused of Islamophobia?
2. Have you ever self-censored your views
on LGBT issues for fear of being accused of bigotry?
3. Have you ever self-censored your views
on Israel for fear of being accused of antisemitism?
4. Have you ever self-censored your views
on race for fear of being accused of racism?
It occurred to me some might think
there should be a question on antisemitism that was more closely
analogous to questions 2 and 4. So I added:
5: Have you ever self-censored your views on on Jewish people for fear of being accused of antisemitism?
5: Have you ever self-censored your views on on Jewish people for fear of being accused of antisemitism?
Here's what I expected: that there
would be a significant number of people self-censoring on Israel and Islam for
fear of accusations of bigotry. I have certainly caught myself doing it in
the past, and I have seen many other defenders of free speech express concerns
about such self-censorship. That's why I thought it worth asking the question.
Here are the responses I got:
Fairly significant levels of self-censorship on both topics.
My expectation was that questions 1, 2
and 5, on the other hand, would produce very few positive responses. I
was surprised to discover that, actually, there was considerable self-reported
self-censorship going on there too:
And here is the result I got for question 5 before I pulled it:
Of course, when I asked all these questions, I wasn't assuming much about whether the people answering "yes" actually were or weren't bigoted. I thought some would be. I also supposed there would be some answering "yes" who did not consider what they thought bigoted, but self-censored anyway out of fear of being accused.
I'm not sure what conclusions can be
drawn from these results, other than that, obviously, among my twitterati
there are a good number who maintain they self-censor for fear of such
accusations being made against them.
Is it bad that we self-censor? Not
necessarily. It may be a good thing that a racist is shamed into not expressing
their racist views. Obviously there is on upside to that: we don't then have to
hear their awful racist views, and such views do not become normalised. But
there may be a downside to their self-censorship too: their racist resentment
may bubble away like a pressure cooker until it finally explodes in a much more
violent form, no doubt with much righteous indignation expressed that they had previously been
unfairly gagged by the "PC" brigade, etc.
On the other hand, I think it's a very
serious matter if, for example, people don't express perfectly legitimate
criticisms of Islam (the belief system) for fear of being accused of
Islamophobia,
It's similarly a serious problem if
people self-censor perfectly legitimate criticisms of Israel for fear of
being accused of antisemitism.
Ironically, I felt I had to self-censor
my poll on self-censorship
Question 5 started to get some very
hostile comments, and was being quoted on twitter in isolation from the others,
thereby creating a potentially very toxic impression. Here's one example:
Note the embedded original tweet is now unavailable because I then deleted it. Others suggested that by even asking question 5 I was exhibiting signs of antisemitism (and I don't deny 5 could be asked in such a way as to promote or defend racism). Yet others wondered suspiciously where I was 'going with it'. One person referred to me as "Stephen 'Nuremberg' Law".
None of my other four questions prompted
such accusations, suspicions, and insults. It seems that, for whatever reason
(I really don't know what), when it comes to this particular form of bigotry,
my twitterati are far more likely to start pointing fingers and raising
accusations or suspicions of bigotry than they are with respect to the other
forms.
Comments
Can you see why this might raise a few eyebrows? If so, then you've solved the mystery of why your "Jewish people" question did the same.
Actually, I'm fairly confident that the "black people" poll question would provoke a stronger reaction than your Jewish one. Do you want to test it? :-)
I would also have been interested on the results of questions along the lines of "Have you ever censored your views on feminism for fear of being accused of sexism?" and "Have you ever censored your views on non-LGB sexual minorities for fear of being accused of perversion?"
(This "I am not a robot" captcha ... I'm not entirely certain that I'm not a robot in some way... perhaps you are also a robot... I think the real objection is to fast robots. I am a slow robot.)