This week, Financial Times journalist Edward Luce accused Elon Musk — and his social media platform X — of being a “menace to democracy.” He suggested that Musk’s words, and those of other X users, are responsible for the riots and civil unrest breaking out in the United Kingdom following the tragic murders of three girls in a knife attack in Southport. This free sharing of information is “intolerable,” said Luce.
Luce isn’t the first to level such an accusation at Musk: University of Cambridge professor Sander van der Linden suggested that Musk and X may “pose a danger to citizens.” His solution: the U.K. government might consider censoring or geo-restricting citizens’ access to Musk’s platform until the riots blow over. You know, keep the populace in the dark, unable to share information on social media in real-time — because Big Brother knows what’s best.
And then there was Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions for England and Wales. He took to social media to warn the populace against sharing news of the country’s riots online. Law enforcement is “scouring” the internet for harmful content, he said. (Perhaps these police officers would be better deployed to the front lines of the riots, no?) “People might think they’re not doing anything harmful. They are. And the consequences will be visited upon them,” said Parkinson.
Ah, but tsk tsk, say critics: Parkinson is merely talking about a specific, criminal type of speech. But is he? The invariable problem with censors is their proclivity for weasel words: in this case, it was Parkinson’s suggestion that only “insulting” or “abusive” speech would be targeted, or words “intended to or likely to stir up racial hatred.” Someone — in this case, a government censor — is going to have to define each of those highly subjective terms. Who can you trust?
Would you trust the cultural elite or the government to determine what information — what version of reality — is kosher for your own consumption? Or do you believe that you are capable of hearing what others are saying, of seeing what they are posting online — words or videos — and then governing yourself accordingly? Do you need someone to decipher and package “the truth” on your behalf?
A bank run isn’t caused by citizens’ knowledge of a bank run in real-time; it is caused, at its root, by economic mismanagement and citizens’ distrust of keeping their cash within an institution heading toward insolvency. It happens at a breaking point, when public trust in an institution erodes and culminates in a landslide. The bank — the institution — is responsible, and not the people on account of their awareness of the truth.
A similar corollary appears to be playing out in the U.K. right now: many people, it seems, have lost faith in their government’s ability to manage immigration policy or to quell racial tensions resulting from these policies. That’s no excuse for the ugly and dirty riots and racism we’ve witnessed in recent weeks, but make no mistake — it will be uglier if censorship is thrown into the mix. The unrest in the U.K. is unequivocally not a consequence of its citizens’ access to information — or even misinformation.
Yes, misinformation is a problem. After the Southport killings, misinformation circulated — including on X — suggesting that the 17-year-old killer was a Muslim immigrant. He isn’t. He isn’t Muslim and although he was born to immigrants, he is not one himself. Was this particular bit of misinformation the spark that lit a tinder box and set off the rioters? Hard to say. But even if it was, it doesn’t justify censorship. Nothing does.
Misinformation is a problem with a single solution: allowing unfettered access to more — and better — information. It is never solved by handing power to would-be censors. It is a lie of tyrants to blame bad things — in this case, riots — on free speech, rather than on the social rot that U.K. citizens have seen necrotizing their way of life for years.
Zero trust should be afforded to anyone desirous of withholding the truth from others for their “benefit.” That can only come from a place of moral superiority and tyranny. Therein lies the true threat to democracy: those Machiavellian actors who fervently believe that they should control others’ hearts and minds for the greater good. No. The people will decide.
Free speech is never a threat to democracy, and it is never the root cause of political violence.
National Post