Free Speech and Hypocrisy
Where Speech Is More Honoured in the Breach Than the Observance
The right to free speech is enshrined in many international conventions and treaties, including Article 19 of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which most countries are signatories to; also important are Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 1 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe resolution 1510. Signatories to these are thereby compelled to abide by them, usually via appropriate domestic constitutions and laws. The First Amendment of the US Constitution is perhaps the most famous example of a constitutional protection of free speech.
Most politicians, mainstream media, and indeed persons of influence in the UK and US purport to support free speech in line with these obligations but my argument is that very few do so in a principled manner. In fact, free speech is not supported by significant numbers on three broad areas: Muslims and Islam; transgender and non-binary persons; and Jews and Israel. It is generally the case that those on the left of the political spectrum are reticent, even hostile, about free speech concerning the first two areas while those on the right are the same about the third area. Of course, there are exceptions to this generalisation.
In the UK, the blasphemy law suppressed free speech concerning the Church of England—this was eventually repealed in England and Wales in 2008 and in Scotland in 2024. Though the law should, in fact, have been repealed when the UK ratified the UDHR, it was rarely invoked even though the lampooning and criticism of Christianity became common place from the 1960s onwards. Following mass immigration post-World War 2, a key focus of concern regarding free speech has been the religion and culture of ethnic minorities, particularly regarding Muslims and Islam.
Matters came to a head in 1988 in the “Satanic Verses Affair” when Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the author, Salman Rushdie. Many soi disant progressives refused to support Rushdie and free speech and so advocated censorship of the book on the grounds that it was deeply intolerant of Muslim sensibilities. A notorious intervention was by the left-wing black Labour MP Bernie Grant who, a day after the fatwa, stated in the House of Commons that “Burning books is not a big issue for blacks” and that “the whites wanted to impose their values on the world”—with the implication that free speech was a “white value” (cited in Rushdie, 2012, p. 187). We can aver that since then, a significant division of opinion has arisen among those who advocate censorship relating to Muslims and Islam and those who do not; the former argue that “Islamophobia”—a catch all censoring epithet that gained increasing prominence—must be avoided while the latter—on this issue—support the defence of lawful free speech.
It is fair to say that there has been much self-censorship on this issue over the past 35 years so as to avoid the wounding charge of being an “Islamophobe”—but a contributory factor has been the threat of violence. This was poignantly explained by former Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson, when he pointed out that “Without question, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms,’ is different from, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write’.” (The Telegraph, 2012). There have been numerous instances of the use of violence by Islamists to shut down free speech, most notably, the murder of ten staff members of Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015.
Leftists and liberals are renowned for protesting for or against a variety of causes but diligently refrain from doing so concerning actions that are deemed “Islamophobic” but instead advocate censorship. Their hypocrisy is exposed as they demand and assert the right to free speech on issues of interest to them.
Censorship surrounding the second broad area has come to prominence in the past decade or so and for similar reasons. Thus, trans and non-binary persons, like Muslims, are considered a small and persecuted minority who should be provided with solidarity and protection—ipso facto, they must not be slighted in any way. This has become the dominant position in political circles, the mainstream media, and academia; just as they wish to avoid being censured as “Islamophobic,” so too they wish to avoid being labelled “transphobic,” All manner of contortions are resorted to, to evade grappling with thorny questions such as the definition of a woman. Those such as “gender critical feminists” who argue that biological reality should take primacy over self-categorisation are harassed and censored for being transphobic.
Again, with the notable exception of gender critical feminists, it is generally those on the left and liberal spectrum who resort to such censorship yet assert their right of free speech against those they deem as transphobic thereby once more exposing their hypocrisy.
Importantly, however, many powerful forces reject the kow-towing to trans ideology and support free speech therein, the most important being US president Donald Trump who promised to end what he termed “transgender lunacy.” He duly signed an executive order that stipulated that “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” (The White House, 2025) Hence, trans and non-binary categories are delegitimised and excluded in all federal government and government-supported institutions. In Europe, many leading politicians including the prime ministers of Italy and Hungary (Georgia Meloni and Viktor Orban) hold similar views.
Whether this, and the UK Supreme Court ruling that sex refers to biological sex, significantly alters an attitudinal change among defenders of trans and non-binary categories is unlikely so that much censorship on this issue will, accordingly, remain.
We can make the case that censorship pertaining to Muslims/Islam and trans/non-binary issues and indeed of ethnic and sexual minorities generally has been the catalyst for the rising concern for protection of free speech in recent years. Attempts at curbing free speech include means such as “trigger warnings” and “no-platform” policies that encompass a “cancel culture”—indeed, a new term arose to describe sensibilities to minorities that warranted suppression of free speech, “woke.” Unease with, and even hostility to this development came most notably from the conservative end of the political spectrum who presented themselves as champions of free speech.
The previous Conservative government was on board with this thinking as attested by its requirement that universities in England had a duty to not only protect but promote free speech and academic freedom. My own university, University of Sussex, was last month given a record £585,000 fine by the Office for Students for breaching this requirement. Specifically, it concluded that “The University of Sussex’s Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement failed to uphold the freedom of speech and academic freedom” (OfS, 2025).
In the US, the push for greater free speech has come from conservatives—including by Donald Trump who was removed from Twitter and Facebook—on the basis that the mainstream media and the academy are dominated by liberals who have been censoring and suppressing conservative viewpoints. It is a view strongly promulgated by Elon Musk who, following his takeover of Twitter in 2022, removed moderators ostensibly to increase the platform’s commitment to free speech. Facebook then followed suit.
The third broad category concerns Jews and Israel. Since the end of the Second World War and the Nazi Holocaust, there has been great reluctance to render criticisms of Jews across the political spectrum—Jewish comedians lampooning fellow Jews was the exception that proved the rule. The charge of antisemitism has always carried enormous weight akin to blasphemy, resulting in an almost blanket censorship in this regard.1
Similarly, following the creation of Israel in 1948, in both the US and UK, there has been widespread reluctance to criticise the country, particularly from the right of the political spectrum—and Israel and its supporters have successfully conflated criticism of Israel and its policies as being antisemitic, in other words, equated anti-Zionism with antisemitism so again, resulting in sweeping censorship.
The Gaza war has, however, exposed the rank hypocrisy of erstwhile proponents of free speech from the right by their rejection of it concerning Israel. Examples abound—we briefly focus on the UK and US governments. In the large demonstrations in London from October 2023 onwards, the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was deemed by the then Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, as antisemitic and the protests were considered unsafe for Jewish people. This was bogus as the chant is perfectly lawful and had been used for years, and the demonstrations were largely peaceful and included many Jews. What the Conservative government—a strong supporter of Israel—wanted was the end of support for Palestinians, an egregious attempt at suppressing free speech and freedom of assembly. Its hypocrisy on free speech was thereby laid bare.
The Labour government, like its predecessor, is also trying to muffle supporters of the Palestinian cause as evidenced by its proscribing the direct-action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. The prime minister Keir Starmer attempted to prevent the Northern Irish group Kneecap, who vociferously support the Palestinians, from appearing at Glastonbury and the government, echoed up by the media writ large, expressed outrage by the rapper Bob Vylan chanting “Death to the IDF” at Glastonbury; forgetting that it is Israel and the IDF that is being investigated for possibly committing genocide in Gaza by the International Court of Justice.
In the US, this hypocrisy has been even more pronounced, especially under the Trump administration. In February 2025, at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President JD Vance lectured Europeans about free speech stating:
In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat. And in the interest of comity, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation (RealClearPolitics, 2025).
There is much truth in this belief—indeed, both in the US and Europe Russian media outlets were shut down after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But the Trump administration has rent asunder the First Amendment by going after immigrants who took part in pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses by seeking to strip them of their legal status and deport them. In March 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US had revoked at least 300 foreign students’ visas as part of President Trump’s effort to clamp down on pro-Palestinian protesters on university campuses (BBC News, March 2025). Also threatened with deportation are US residents such as Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung—the latter is suing the US government for violating core protected speech (Anguiano, 2025).
Relatedly, Trump announced the cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students” (Marquez, 2025); and followed this up by freezing more than $2bn in federal funds and tax-exempt status for Harvard University. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that Trump wanted the university to apologise for what his administration says is continuing tolerance of antisemitism (BBC News, April 2025).
These are trumped-up allegations that egregiously violate the First Amendment. Furthermore, they ignore the fact that many Jewish staff and students at US university campuses also protested against Israel’s war in Gaza. What is worrying is that both in the US and UK, false charges of antisemitism by governments are being used to suppress free speech in support of Palestinians and against Israel’s destruction of Gaza. In other words, the aim is to prohibit any criticism of Israel and support for Palestinians. This is cancellation culture at its worst.
It is abundantly clear that very few, if any, in positions of power and, we might add, in the mainstream media have taken a principled stance on free speech that is protected by various conventions, treaties, constitutions, and laws. In fact, even supposed defenders of free speech such as Index on Censorship do not have a principled stance on the issue. I mention this because this article was originally written for Index on Censorship, but they declined to publish it because it covers “sensitive areas.”2
Without doubt, there is much hypocrisy concerning free speech and on the three issues highlighted, for far too many, it is more honoured in the breach than the observance.
Correction: the term “sensitive issues” was corrected to “sensitive areas”.
The backlash against Marlon Brando’s comments on Jews and Hollywood in 1996 is a famous case in point (The Independent, 1996)
The editor of Index on Censorship provided these reasons for not publishing the article: “It's indeed a very interesting exploration of hypocrisy and free speech but I feel it covers several complex topics—blasphemy, Islamophobia, trans / gender critical issues, Israel / Palestine—without going into enough depth on each of them. These are obviously sensitive areas and I think they each individually require more nuance / detail. I'd also ideally prefer a focus on the issue either in the US or the UK.”
References
Anguiano D (2025) The Guardian, March 24, Columbia student protester sues Trump administration for trying to deport her | Trump administration | The Guardian
BBC News (2025) April 14, Trump threatens Harvard's tax-exempt status after freezing $2bn funding - BBC News
Office for Students (2025) March 25, University of Sussex fined £585,000 for free speech and governance breaches - Office for Students
RealClear Politics (2025) February 14, Full Speech: Vice President JD Vance Tells Munich Security Conference "There's A New Sheriff In Town" | Video | RealClearPolitics
Rushdie S (2012) Joseph Anton: A Memoir, London: Jonathan Cape
The Independent (1996) April 8, “Jewish leaders rage at ‘anti-Semitic’ Brando”, Jewish leaders rage at `anti-Semitic' Brando | The Independent | The Independent
The Telegraph (2012) February 27, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9107689/Mark-Thompson-BBC-director-general-admits-Christianity-gets-tougher-treatment.html.
The White House (2025) Presidential Actions, January 20, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government—The White House
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