‘Mass destruction doesn’t start with concentration camps or gas chambers. It doesn’t start putting marks on neighbours’ doors just because they are ‘different’ – or imposing laws for minorities to carry particular signs or wear certain clothes. Discrimination always starts with words. It starts with language’.

– Elif Shafak^[1]

We are, once again, at a critical moment regarding freedom of expression – the right to ‘seek, receive and impart information and ideas’^[2]. On an international level, arrests of writers and journalists are increasing, and the PEN case list continues to grow. Digital technology and social media have transformed the ways in which we interact, leading, at once, to a huge growth in the number and variety of voices being heard, and to new and novel ways of harassing, monitoring and oppressing. Long-term structural inequalities continue to be a major block to freedom of expression for many, whilst we simultaneously hear warnings that ‘cancel culture’ and ‘no-platforming’ are the gravest risks to freedom of expression. The result is that the term ‘free speech’ is being used often, with many different interpretations, to many different ends. In this piece, I want to explore how the phrase is being weaponised to try to legitimise hate speech and violence, to reflect on what the risks to free expression are as a result, and to consider what a potential response could be. In short, I aim to explore how PEN can continue to respond to Karl Popper’s provocation from nearly 75 years ago: that ‘in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance’^[3].

I am the Director of English PEN, but this essay should not be taken as representative of the stance of English PEN, or indeed of the wider PEN movement. All PEN centres are guided by the PEN Charter, ratified in 1948^[4]. This Charter lays out the PEN stance on Freedom of Expression, and it is up to us as PEN members and PEN centres to interpret this charter as we see fit. Across the 153 PEN centres, though, there is a shared interest in the questions surrounding free expression and it’s limitations – of how we can ensure we are protecting freedom of expression, whilst not supporting the undermining of other human rights.

There will be some who call for an unbounded approach to freedom of expression, who believe that ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’, and who maintain that the only way to defeat a bad idea is to present a countering good idea. But the efficacy of a ‘free marketplace of ideas’ – where truth will rise to the surface and defeat falsehoods – is being questioned in our current moment, in which the free marketplace is hugely skewed in terms of platform size, financial clout, and confirmation bias amongst individuals^[5]. For instance, a marketplace-of-ideas response to racist speech that focuses solely on supporting anti-racist speech ignores the underlying power structures of white supremacy^[6]. And, as we are seeing very frequently, the marketplace-of-ideas approach has not provided a response to mass produced disinformation, an ongoing and serious issue that undermines democracy, human rights and community healthcare^[7]. This is particularly stark in the era of social media. Perhaps Jonathan Swift’s point from his 1710 essay ‘Political Lying’ still holds true: ‘Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after’^[8].

This is in no way a new debate. PEN’s focus on freedom of expression in part emerged as a direct response to threats from the far right. PEN Centres from across the world meet on an annual basis at the PEN Congress. Whilst the core elements of the Charter had been laid down in the 1920s, it was at the Dubrovnik Congress in 1933 that the issue of freedom of expression came to the fore, in response to the rise of fascism. As HG Wells said at the time: ‘We are living in times of change and stress, and today it is the fate of all things to be changed and adapted to the new conditions’… ‘the time has some for the PEN Club to revise very carefully what it is and what it stands for’… ‘the time has come for our federation of societies to choose definitively between making the world commonwealth the guiding conception of its organisation or relapsing into a mere meeting-ground for the mutual compliments of narrow and repressive cults’^[9].

The Dubrovnik conference led to the expulsion of German PEN. This was an explicitly anti-Nazi action. We need to remember this history as we decide which cases to support, and which to determine as outside our mandate. Whilst we cannot draw a direct parallel between 1930s Europe and today, we can certainly be said to be living in ‘times of change and stress’. The guiding principles of the PEN Charter that deal with freedom of expression were ratified in 1948, and are as valid today as they were then. So is the need to ensure these principles reflect what we stand for – are not abstract, but represent an ethos of mutual respect and good understanding.

Freedom of expression must include the right to offend, to shock, to discomfort, but need not support the right to undermine or degrade others’ human rights. It must also include the right to respond, and to criticise. As individuals and organisations that care passionately about the right to express oneself, we need to work to reclaim the terminology, and therein to reaffirm the need for the right to free expression. We need to recognise that criticism is not censorship, and that it is possible to support criticism of written work whilst not supporting threats made against the writers of this work.

Free expression is under assault right now, with issues ranging from increased attacks and imprisonment of writers, to structural inequalities leading to voices being marginalised. But increased criticism is not part of the problem. If we don’t work on making this distinction, there is a serious risk of this right being undermined – the risk of a claim to the infringement of an individual’s ‘free speech’ being increasingly understood as a dog-whistle for legitimisation of prejudice, including racism, sexism, misogyny, classism, homophobia and transphobia. If we are to uphold and advance freedom of expression, we must challenge the co-option of it by which it might be cut down.

This story is not about looking for any increase in legislation to restrict speech. Freedom of expression is vital. We are facing a moment whereby the terminology around freedom of expression risks being defined by those who work to undermine it, when much of the world’s dialogue takes place on social media, and parties that include elements which some would describe as ‘far right’ are in the ascendency in multiple countries across the world. We have a duty and a responsibility to spell out what PEN means by freedom of expression, reflecting on the ethical framework that underpins the PEN charter and how it is enacted – to advance the full exercise of the right to freedom of expression for all.