On Freedom of Speech and the Little Accident.

Today I felt that I should make a long post on the subject of freedom of speech. It came about as a result of reading that some young ‘influencer’ (God, how I hate that term) called Andrew Tate has had some of his social media accounts closed down because of the unacceptable nature of their content.

His opinions run along similar lines to those who objected to the suffragette movement in the 19^th century. He says things like ‘there is no such thing as an independent woman’, ‘women must take responsibility for sexual abuse’, and ‘if I’m to be responsible for a woman, I must have authority over her.’

Strong stuff, eh? And wholly unacceptable to somebody like me, but does he have a right to hold such opinions? Of course he does; we all have a right to our opinions. So, second question: does he have the right to express those opinions to the size of audience now available to him through social media?

My first instinct is to say that he does, because the right to express opinions is fundamental to our modern concept of democracy and our holding to more liberal mores regarding freedom of speech than those to which our ancestors subscribed. But it isn’t that simple because the problem here is the size of the audience.

Let’s go back a few decades and ask whether Hitler had the right to preach Nazi ideology, which included the opinion that Jews are the world’s pariah and should be physically attacked and ultimately annihilated. If you hold to that view, then you must stop blaming Hitler for the Holocaust and blame the German people instead. Hitler was expressing an opinion to a mass audience; it was the audience who went along with him. Not simple, is it?

Personally, I would like to see Mr Tate dropped into a deep, dark hole from which there is no escape and with only Donald Trump for company, but that’s just my opinion.

Other news:

I had a fall today. I was coming down a ladder, having just trimmed part of the tall hedge at the bottom of my garden, when the distorting effect of my eye protection goggles fooled me into thinking that the second step at the bottom was actually the first. I ended up flat on my back on the unremitting tarmac of the lane.

It was a little embarrassing. My first thought was that some vehicle might, just at that inopportune moment, be coming around the bend a little further up the lane. It might even have been the Lady B, and how terrible would that have been? Her Land Rover Discovery might have run over me and reduced me to a soggy mess (rather than the merely weak and ineffectual mess to which I readily admit.) And even if she’d managed to stop in time, it would still have given her a shock, poor thing, and she might have been forced to admit – maybe even orally, though I doubt it – that she would rather I didn’t die just yet.

No such catastrophe ensued, however, and the only injury I sustained was to my pride. I’m highly averse to being so clumsy as to be reduced to a supine position on a public road, you see. It’s indecorous to say the least.