If you defend free speech, you run into a lot of criticism. A big one goes something like this: “Free speech helps the powerful, not the weak. Powerful people like to claim the right to speak and hypocritically reject that same right for other people. By promoting free speech for the bad guys, you are just supporting the bad guys by legitimizing their already outsized voice.”
There is a straightforward response to this argument. If you successfully defend speech rights, you create a common resource for everyone. The ability to mobilize, to critique, and to challenge all rely on the basic human right of speech. The weak, by definition, have less ability to be heard but without a speech right, they might have no speech to use for social change.
In other words, unequal speech of the weak is still extremely important speech and the speech of the weak survives when there is a free speech norm that benefits the powerful. Reject that right and you invite your enemy to say, “if you insist free speech isn’t a right, then you don’t mind if I restrict what you can say.” And that is what actually legitimizes the powerful.
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