Nigel Biggar, an Anglican minister, theologian, and ethicist, touched down in the colonies recently to lecture us on the wonders of free speech and colonisation.
In an interview with The Epoch Times, he was asked to pin down that slippery concept known as “hate speech.”
“Hate crime,” he explains, “Is not a legal concept. It’s a catch-all for anything certain minorities find distressing. The term ‘hate’ has been stretched to include dissent and criticism, in ways that common sense, if it still exists, finds baffling.”
He’s got a point. We seem to be in a world where feelings have morphed into facts, and hurt feelings can be construed as harm.
“If I say something to you,” Biggar continues, “And you, as a member of a previously marginalised group, find it distressing, I can now be accused of harming you. But common sense, again, tells us that’s nonsense.”
And so we find ourselves in this new era of ultra-sensitivity, where words once uttered freely are now shadowed by the looming threat of sanction.
Biggar laments the “loosening of concepts of hate and harm,” both in the UK and Australia. He reflects, “Speech that was entirely free a decade ago is now under threat.”
He sees some virtue in having an eSafety commissioner to educate the masses, particularly young people, about the risks of the digital world. But he’s quick to draw the line at giving Big Brother the power to decide what’s harmful.
“The danger,” he warned, “is that with this loose concept of harm, reasonable points of view could end up censored.”
Censorship is another term dragged into the fray, prodded along by that dynamic duo, of misinformation and disinformation.
Biggar concedes that misinformation has always been with us, spreading like a pub rumour, only now on steroids thanks to social media.
But he’s not buying into panic.
“The best disinfectant against misinformation is robust argument and the truth,” he says.
For him, the solution is simple. It is a strong voice for free speech, pushing back against state intrusion.
And Australia, it seems, is just beginning to find its feet with the recent formation of a free speech union.
Shifting the Spectrum
What’s fascinating here is how the enemies of free speech have shifted through the ages. According to Biggar, both left and right have had their turns at muzzling dissent.Today, however, it’s the far left that’s doing the heavy lifting, with its orthodoxy on transgender issues, systemic racism, and the apparently unforgivable sins of the British Empire.
Biggar, ever the moderate, or so he thought, now finds himself adrift.
“I regard myself as a moderate,” he muses, “But these views are so unacceptable to the hard left that I’m now seen as being on the right. The centre has been dragged leftward by the hard left, leaving many of us stranded.”
But don’t think Biggar is giving the political centre a free pass.
No, they’re complicit too.
“The soft centre,” he suggests, “Has allowed this to happen, leaving those of us in the centre who aren’t quite so soft, stranded on the right. I’m considered divisive simply because I disagree with the hard left. It’s absurd.”
In the end, what Biggar is describing is not just the erosion of free speech but the slow, insidious transformation of public discourse itself.
It’s a world where words have become weapons, where reasoned debate is stifled under the weight of ideological fervour, and where the centre, once the bastion of balance, has either gone soft or disappeared entirely.
The real threat isn’t just from the fringes, the hard left or the hard right. It’s from our collective retreat from robust, open dialogue.
Biggar’s concerns, while perhaps tinged with nostalgia for a more straightforward era, remind us of what’s at stake: the right to disagree, the right to question, and ultimately, the right to think. In a world where free speech is increasingly up for grabs, holding onto those rights may well be the most radical act of all.
