A Gentle Reminder That Free Speech Doesn't Absolve You

Ricky Gervais has been pissing me off recently, which is disheartening, as I’ve always been a huge fan of the fruits of his now long-historic golden age. The Office is a near-masterpiece in my opinion, and Extras was, if a little mawkish, a self-aware and timely satire. This makes it even more perplexing that the very societal problems that Ricky Gervais mocked and used as the basis of Extras's morality seem to have rotted from his own memory. Remember how Andy Millman’s character was transformed by his sudden fame into a thoughtless, self-centred arsehole and the series closed with him rediscovering his humility? I wonder if the Ricky Gervais I bear witness to on Twitter nowadays, who spends most of his time reminding everyone how clearly enlightened and subversive he is, would be capable of reaching the same moment of clarity.

In 2018, Gervais has dissolved into the ichorous wave of reactionary discussion that roars across the internet like a masturbatory carnival of bullshit – the people who still believe that atheism alone is a radical position (e.g.), who see themselves as stoic ‘rationals’ while still nakedly motivated by fear and anger (e.g.), and who don’t understand the concept of societal privilege in the same way a fish doesn’t comprehend the existence of the water it swims in (e.g.). He’s no convert – if anything, it’s the world that’s changed around him while he obstinately refuses to adapt. But now that his brand’s risen back to surface to promote his new stand-up, my realisation that Ricky Gervais has gone from loveable arsehole (in my mind) to just a plain old arsehole triggered my brain into doing (apart for irrational worrying) what it does best – pondering about what’s going on in the world when I really should be doing something else. So I’m just gonna do it; I’m gonna talk about free speech.

I don't want to shit on Ricky Gervais too much, he's not a monster, just a prick, and he definitely understands free speech - he just has a tendency, like with atheism, of banging on about it a little too much, in a way that reveals his swollen ego. I want to use his current marketing presence as a jumping-off point to talk about how the phrase ‘free speech’ has been chewed like a refreshing stick of gum into a tasteless, blank wad of shapeless matter. Gervais is emblematic of this. To him, Free Speech is, at best, the right to make jokes on traditionally upsetting subject matter (nothing wrong with that), and at worst, the right to tell jokes at the expense of the discriminated and disenfranchised. Not just his right to do this without political consequence – but an excuse to say whatever he likes without having to take seriously any criticism, pushback, expressions of disgust, or that one word that the privileged shrug off like everything else that they’re protected from – offence.

I watched maybe about half of his new stand-up on Netflix the other day before being interrupted, and I laughed. I mean, Ricky Gervais is still naturally funny. I’m a sucker for his delivery. Sure, he maybe made a few too many ‘tongue-in-cheek’ jokes about how great he is which started to grate slightly, but that’s always been his thing. And, sure, beginning his show with a perplexing defence of a joke he made years ago was a little awkward and unnecessary, but I steeled myself to get over it. The only part (that I saw anyway) which dropped to unbearable levels was when he rolled out the excitingly original joke of ‘well, if we should take trans people seriously then surely I can claim to be a [humorous inert object], ha ha ha ha ha.’ This became a routine that went on for a punishing length of time and had the same toe-curling effect as having to hear your rural white uncle talk about ‘darkies’.

I didn’t like the chimp joke. Politically, as I need to reiterate before anyone thinks I want him sent to the gulag, he has every right to say it, but… it’s still wrong. It’s indicative of a lack of understanding, and worse than that, it’s punching down, not punching up. There’s something innately cruel about someone as rich and acclaimed and safe as Gervais reinforcing the idea that trans people, who I remind you aren’t well-known for their welcome and sympathetic existences in our society, deserve ridicule and further marginalisation on the basis of their identity alone. People who refuse to take responsibility for what they say like to defend themselves with the argument that a joke is only a joke, but this wasn’t only a joke – it was a man with influence, with popularity, using his platform to send the message that the already-maligned trans population don’t deserve your respect, or even your understanding. Nothing exists without context, and in my experience it’s always the privileged who feel the need to disregard context whenever it suits them.

(TANGENT: This is all that went through my mind after seeing the marketing for the show:)

Netflix advertised the stand-up show with this cringeworthy tweet: ‘Easily offended: @rickygervais isn’t for you. Everyone else: Ricky Gervais’ Humanity is streaming tomorrow.’ This encapsulates exactly what I despise about the idea of ‘offence’ and how it’s been reframed by the privileged. Offensive jokes make people who aren’t the subject of these jokes feel better about themselves. They’re thick-skinned. They’re rational. They’re riding high on an intelligence that surpasses anyone who reacts emotionally to the things that entertain them. Bruce Lee should’ve just lightened up. The us-and-them mentality is one of mankind’s most powerful and regressive remnants of our survivalist past, and it works really well at selling comedy vehicles. After all, in a lot of ways comedy requires a ‘versus’ mentality – there needs to be something to laugh at. That’s why this is one of my favourite photographs, as it reminds us that laughter can have a sinister edge. Laughter can be a weapon.

What has this got to do with Free Speech? Ricky Gervais isn’t in prison. Even in the private sphere he seems completely untouched. But the thing is that in the stinking pit of modern discourse, the meaning of Free Speech has been refashioned not into a rule of civic protection, but a philosophy of irresponsible, shit-flinging hubris. The original purpose of freedom of speech is the right to express ideas and opinions without public censorship or violent reprisal. This was once an entirely political concept – that ideas, especially criticisms against authority, should be allowed to be freely articulated so that society benefits from communal discussion and a government which is answerable to the people’s appraisal. It is a part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and is fundamental to democracy, maybe even its very heart. That makes free speech pretty important, so you'd think people would take it fairly seriously. But of course, like all the innovations of classical Western liberalism, it has now been twisted into an excuse for people to act like rabidly self-centred cunts.

Free Speech exists to keep political discourse adaptable and to prevent those in power from controlling what can or can’t be said. It is not a moral salve that makes anything you say completely okay. Free Speech doesn’t even mean there can’t be legal reprisals for what you say or print, as libel, slander, trade secrets, perjury, false advertising and food labelling show us. In the UK, we’re a lot less lenient with freedom of speech than our American counterparts, and the law can come down on you if you’re clearly and openly being a racist cunt – which I approve of, for the most part, even though recently the boundaries of what does or doesn’t deserve to be considered a crime have been tested by the shameful case of a guy being sent down for videoing his dog doing a Nazi salute (which most people agree is a gigantic misstep). I don’t want Ricky Gervais to be charged with ‘inciting transphobic hatred’ or something, that’s stupid. But that isn’t really what I’m talking about here; I’m not talking about Free Speech as a legal right, but Free Speech as a moral philosophy, and how it’s turned from a jewel in the crown of progressive politics to a badge of the bigoted and the spiteful.

Just because you can do something without being arrested, it doesn’t mean that it’s an okay thing to do. Just because legally you can sleep with your girlfriend’s best friend behind her back and get her pregnant even though you and your girlfriend’s wedding is only a month away, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re totally morally absolved if you do so. Not every bad thing a person does needs to be acted upon by the law. But in the same way, a guy’s defence of the aforementioned indiscretion being ‘I had every legal right to do it!’ isn’t much of a defence; I doubt the fiancée would be convinced. What I’ve noticed recently, however, is that Free Speech has been co-opted as an excuse for a lot of irresponsibility, and reflexively spouted as justification for inconsiderate prickishness as well as old-fashioned malevolent hatemongering.

Let’s also make one thing clear: words have power. Words are weapons. Words move civilisations. They’re fundamental to what it means to be human. The argument of anyone that words are ‘just words’, in the pedantic sense that words are symbolic representations of ideas that have no material presence, is moronic. That’s why I hate the disdain people have for those who take offence to a joke or a statement. It seems that in their mind, someone who takes offence to their joke about disabled people or whatever have some kind of mental impropriety – after all, I never get offended, so how could anyone else? Unless they’re just a huge wimp! This isn’t the shrewdest approach, in my opinion. It’s true that if you’re in the public eye, you will offend someone, if by ‘offend’ you mean say/do something they don’t like, but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pause to evaluate why someone’s offended and, I dunno, maybe listen to them? Engage with them?

What does ‘taking offence’ mean, anyway? Right-wingers derisively call it 'having your feelings hurt', which isn’t exactly a lie. I see it more as hearing an opinion or worldview that goes beyond simple disagreement and is taken as an attack on your own personal being – a message that your identity deserves ridicule and shame, which is powerful stuff. Nonetheless people should be allowed to offend people as much as they like without violent repercussion, depending on the situation of course – I doubt anyone would share your sense of injustice if you get thrown out of a wake for loudly proclaiming the deceased was a rotten shit who deserved to die. But, like most of the people who ride the carousel of congratulatory status-quo-worship, they can dish it out but they can’t take it. I mean, I rarely see anyone take more offence than a white man confronted with societal change. Can people get too offended? People can become too anything. Humanity’s a volatile species. But the societally privileged have slowly sculpted this paradigm that the people who say vile things are champions of a valuable human right, while people who express their own disgust in response are betrayers of the supposed principle that Free Speech is to say whatever repulsive thing you like, and people should just get over it and meekly carry on.

This has become a telltale characteristic of the belligerently vocal figures of the internet who oppose social change. It’s often the people who proselytise about Free Speech in their tweets and profiles who are the ones that hold surprisingly narrow-minded and bigoted views. It’s especially telling if they talk about Free Speech more than they talk about social injustices, minority oppression, economic dysfunction, unfair power dynamics, global structures of cruelty (I’m mostly talking about right-wing attention vampires rather than comedians, although I’m sure you can get a few gags out of economic dysfunction). While the battle for what speech should or shouldn’t be policed rages on in the confused mess of British society, whether it’s over unpopular people speaking at universities (let them) or people jokingly making their dogs act like Nazis (let them), Free Speech has been adapted from a political utility to a psychological instrument. When people respond to criticism by pleading ‘Free Speech’, they’re not reminding us of a right that’s been expected of Western society for centuries, but believing that they deserve to say whatever they like and whatever they say is sacrosanct, to be inherently revered for even being spoken, without responsibility or consequence, which is a lesson the Charlottesville Nazis learned the hard way.

What I’m saying is that for all the worship that arseholes on the internet claim over freedom of speech, it’s nakedly clear for the most part that this reverence doesn’t stem from a principled consideration of a fair and just society, but is simply a means to justify their own shallow repugnance. In the case of the online mega-conservatives who adore Free Speech when it’s their speech which is protected, one can only wonder if they’d continue bearing its standard if their views were condoned by those in authority. And that’s not to mention the cases when people see 'freedom of speech' as the requirement of any platform to allow you to speak, even though private businesses have every right to censor whatever content they please, or when people believe 'freedom of speech' includes the right to harass, bully or do anything else that might get you excluded from certain platforms. In my own fallibly subjective experience, the people who shout the loudest about free speech are the people who use it the most irresponsibly.

Ultimately my point is this: freedom of speech is intended to keep public discourse democratic and fluid – it is not a free pass for being a bad person. While free speech exists to protect unpopular or controversial opinions, it does not require the need for speech that is objectively negative, and it would be nice if people were a little more thoughtful with their discourse, and even the messaging of their comedy, rather than using the basic fact that they're allowed to say these things as a defence of doing so. Basically, to improve on maybe-Voltaire's tired adage: I disapprove of what you say, and I will defend to the death your right to say it, but you don’t have to be a cunt about it.