This essay, on the history of free speech and the lessons we are in danger of forgetting, was my Observer column this week. It was published 30 January 2022, under the headline “Freedom of speech was too hard won to be cavalier now about censorship”. If the great campaigners for free speech of the past, such as Baruch Spinoza or Mary Wollstonecraft or Frederick Douglass, were alive today, “they would surely declare the 21st century an unprecedented golden age”. So suggests Jacob […]

Categories: Free Speech, Culture & Books • Tags: the satanic verses, free speech, hate speech, charlie hebdo, nazism, censorship, jacob mchangama, social justice, eleanor roosevelt, weimar republic, antisemitism, der sturmer