Commitment to free speech is a fundamental precept of all liberal democracies. However, democracies can differ significantly when addressing the constitutionality of laws regulating certain kinds of speech. In the United States, for instance, the commitment to free speech under the First Amendment has been held by the Supreme Court to protect the public expression of the most noxious racist ideology and hence to render unconstitutional even narrow restrictions on hate speech. In contrast, governments have been accorded considerable leeway to restrict racist and other extreme expression in almost every other democracy, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. This book considers the legal responses of various liberal democracies towards hate speech and other forms of extreme expression, and examines the following questions:
What accounts for the marked differences in attitude towards the constitutionality of hate speech regulation?
Does hate speech regulation violate the core free speech principle constitutive of democracy?
Has the traditional US position on extreme expression justifiably not found favor elsewhere?
Do values such as the commitment to equality or dignity legitimately override the right to free speech in some circumstances?
With contributions from experts in a range of disciplines, this book offers an in-depth examination of the tensions that arise between democracy's promises.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the authorities in the German Democratic Republic always denied that they practised censorship. In this fascinating new study, Laura Bradley explores how the authorities' denial affected the language and experience of theatre censorship. She shows that it left theatre practitioners doubly exposed: they remained officially responsible for their productions, even if the productions had passed pre-performance controls. In the absence of a fixed set of criteria, cultural functionaries had to make difficult judgements about which plays and productions to allow, and where to draw the line between constructive criticism and subversion. Drawing on a wealth of new archive material, the study explores how theatre practitioners and functionaries negotiated these challenges between 1961 and 1989. The chapters in Part I explore theatre censorship in East Berlin, asking how the controls affected different genres, and how theatre practitioners responded to the construction of the Berlin Wall, the Prague Spring, and the expatriation of Wolf Biermann. Part II broadens the focus to the regions, investigating why theatre practitioners complained of strong regional variations in theatre censorship, and how they responded to Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika. By examining a range of case studies, from banned stagings to those that met with official approval, the book puts high-profile disputes back into context. It shows how censorship operated through human negotiation, illuminating the shifting patterns of cooperation and conflict that influenced the space available for theatrical experimentation.

W.B. Yeats, the Abbey Theatre, Censorship, and the Irish State: Adding the Half-pence to the Pence utilizes new source material to reconstruct the current understanding of the relationship between the productions of the Abbey Theatre and the politics of the Irish state. This study begins in 1916, at the start of the Irish Revolution and in the midst of the theatre's financial crisis, and it ends with the death of the Abbey Theatre's last surviving founder, W.B. Yeats. To date, histories of the Abbey Theatre have repeated Yeats's assertion that there was no censorship of the theatre in Ireland. However, this study incorporates financial records, government correspondence, Dail debates, and minutes from the Abbey's directors' meetings to produce surprising conclusions: censorship of the theatre did occur, but it occurred internally rather than by external means. Yeats and his fellow directors privately self-censored plays when there was potential for financial gain, such as in the Abbey's campaign for a state-sponsored reconstruction scheme - the details of which have never been explored prior to this study. Any attempts by the state to directly interfere in the theatre's programme were unsuccessful but were manipulated by the press-savvy Yeats in order to create profitable controversies. Despite Yeats's vocal campaign against censorship, his organisation of the Irish Academy of Letters, and his famous speeches from the Abbey stage decrying the censorship of the 'mob', he was willing to sacrifice the freedom of the artist when he foresaw an opportunity to ensure the longevity of his theatrical enterprise.

This collection investigates the sharpening conflict between the nation state and the internet through a multidisciplinary lens. It challenges the idea of an inherently global internet by examining its increasing territorial fragmentation and, conversely, the notion that for states online law and order is business as usual. Cyberborders based on national law are not just erected around China's online community. Cultural, political and economic forces, as reflected in national or regional norms, have also incentivised virtual borders in the West. The nation state is asserting itself. Yet, there are also signs of the receding role of the state in favour of corporations wielding influence through de-facto control over content and technology. This volume contributes to the online governance debate by joining ideas from law, politics and human geography to explore internet jurisdiction and its overlap with topics such as freedom of expression, free trade, democracy, identity and cartographic maps.

Free Expression and Democracy takes on the assumption that limits on free expression will lead to authoritarianism or at least a weakening of democracy. That hypothesis is tested by an examination of issues involving expression and their treatment in countries included on The Economist's list of fully functioning democracies. Generally speaking, other countries allow prohibitions on hate speech, limits on third-party spending on elections, and the protection of children from media influences seen as harmful. Many ban Holocaust denial and the desecration of national symbols. Yet, these other countries all remain democratic, and most of those considered rank more highly than the United States on the democracy index. This book argues that while there may be other cultural values that call for more expansive protection of expression, that protection need not reach the level present in the United States in order to protect the democratic nature of a country.

Popular conceptions of Catholic censorship, symbolized above all by the Index of Forbidden Books, figure prominently in secular definitions of freedom. To be intellectually free is to enjoy access to knowledge unimpeded by any religious authority. But how would the history of freedom change if these conceptions were false? In this panoramic study of Catholic book culture in Germany from 1770-1914, Jeffrey T. Zalar exposes the myth of faith-based intellectual repression. Catholic readers disobeyed the book rules of their church in a vast apostasy that raised personal desire and conscience over communal responsibility and doctrine. This disobedience sparked a dramatic contest between lay readers and their priests over proper book behavior that played out in homes, schools, libraries, parish meeting halls, even church confessionals. The clergy lost this contest in a fundamental reordering of cultural power that helped usher in contemporary Catholicism.

Censorship has been a universal phenomenon through history. However, its rationale and implementation has varied, and public reaction to it has differed across societies and times. This book recovers, narrates, and interrogates the history of censorship of publications in India over three crucial decades - encompassing the Gandhian anti-colonial movement, the Second World War, Partition, and the early years of Independent India. In doing so, it examines state policy and practice, and also its subversion, in a tumultuous period of transition from colonial to self-rule in India. Populated with an array of powerful and powerless individuals, the story of Indians grappling with free speech and (in)tolerance is a fascinating one, and deserves to be widely known. It will help readers make sense of global present-day debates over free speech and hate speech, illustrate historical trends that change - and those that don't - and help them appreciate how the past inevitably informs the present.

The French Revolution of 1789 bequeathed an enduring rhetoric of human rights which made it conventional to declare oneself against censorship and in favour of freedom of expression. But as this book demonstrates, the apparent consensus on this issue in modern France and elsewhere rests on a shaky sense of that rhetoric's history. And while censors have continued to the present day to charge clumsily across delicate moral and political fields, opponents of literary censorship, in particular, have frequently displayed excessive respect for censored material, mistakenly assuming that the censor can be relied upon to identify material that is disturbing, subversive, or true. Circles of Censorship focuses on key episodes in the history of literary censorship in France. It examines the Madame Bovary trial of 1857, and the prosecution a century later of Pauvert, publisher of Sade's complete works. It analyses and criticizes the Freudian-influenced attempts by the Surrealist movement and by Barthes and the Tel Quel group to subvert and evade censorship. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and approaches including history, literary theory and feminism, Nicholas Harrison presents a provocative and timely critique of the ideas on censorship which resurfaced repeatedly in the discourse of human rights, psychoanalysis and literary culture.

In 2005, twelve cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammed appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, igniting a political firestorm over demands by some Muslims that the claims of their religious faith take precedence over freedom of expression. Given the explosive reaction from Middle Eastern governments, Muslim clerics, and some Danish politicians, the stage was set for a backlash against Muslims in Denmark. But no such backlash occurred. Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy shows how the majority of ordinary Danish citizens provided a solid wall of support for the rights of their country's growing Muslim minority, drawing a sharp distinction between Muslim immigrants and Islamic fundamentalists and supporting the civil rights of Muslim immigrants as fully as those of fellow Danes--for example, Christian fundamentalists. Building on randomized experiments conducted as part of large, nationally representative opinion surveys, Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy also demonstrates how the moral covenant underpinning the welfare state simultaneously promotes equal treatment for some Muslim immigrants and opens the door to discrimination against others. Revealing the strength of Denmark's commitment to democratic values, Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy underlines the challenges of inclusion but offers hope to those seeking to reconcile the secular values of liberal democracy and the religious faith of Muslim immigrants in Europe.

This book presents two systems of censorship and literary promotion, revealing how literature can be molded to support authoritarian regimes. The issue is complex in that at a descriptive level the strategies and methods new states use to control communication through the written word can be judged by how and when formal decrees were issued, and how publishing media, whether in the form of publishing companies or at the individual level, engaged with political overseers. But equally, literature was a means of resistance against an authoritarian regime, not only for writers but for readers as well. From the point of view of historical memory and intellectual history, stories of people without history and the production of their texts through the literary underground can be constructed from subsequent testimony: from books sold in secret, to the writings of women in jail, to books that were written but never published or distributed in any way, and to myriad compelling circumstances resulting from living under fascist authority. A parallel study on two fascist movements provides a unique viewpoint at literary, social and political levels. Comparative analysis of literary censorship/literary reward allows an understanding of the balance between dictatorship, official policy, and what literary acts were deemed acceptable. The regime need to control its population is revealed in the ways that a particular type of literature was encouraged; in the engagement of propoganda promotion; and in the setting up of institutions to gain international acceptance of the regime. The work is an important contribution to the history of twentieth-century authoritarianism and the development fascist ideas.

A global history of free speech, from the ancient world to today. Hailed as the "first freedom," free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat. In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of this idea. Through captivating stories of free speech's many defenders - from the ancient Athenian orator Demosthenes and the ninth-century freethinker al-Razi, to Mary Wollstonecraft, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and modern-day digital activists - Mchangama demonstrates how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech is also a constant, and he explores how even its champions can be led down this path when the rise of new and contrarian voices challenge power and privilege of all kinds. Meticulously researched, deeply humane and provocative, Free Speech challenges us all to recognise how much we have gained from this principle - and how much we stand to lose without it.

Censorship pervades all aspects of political, social and cultural life in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Faced with strict state control of cultural output, Iranian authors and writers have had to adapt their work to avoid falling foul of the censors. In this pioneering study, Alireza Abiz offers an in-depth, interdisciplinary analysis of how censorship and the political order of Iran have influenced contemporary Persian literature, both in terms of content and tone. As censorship is unrecorded and not officially acknowledged in Iran, the author has examined newspaper records and conducted first-hand interviews with Iranian poets and writers. looking into the ways in which poets and writers attempt to subvert the codes of censorship by using symbolism and figurative language to hide their more controversial messages. A ground-breaking analysis, this book will be vital reading for anyone interested in contemporary cultural politics and literature in Iran.

This is the third volume in a new paperback edition of Steve Nicholson's comprehensive four-volume analysis of British theatre censorship from 1900-1968, based on previously undocumented material in the Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence Archives in the British Library and the Royal Archives at Windsor. Focusing on plays we know, plays we have forgotten, and plays which were silenced for ever, Censorship of British Drama demonstrates the extent to which censorship shaped the theatre voices of this decade. The book charts the early struggles with Royal Court writers such as John Osborne and with Joan Littlewood and Theatre Workshop; the stand-offs with Samuel Beckett and with leading American dramatists; the Lord Chamberlain's determination to keep homosexuality off the stage, which turned him into a laughing stock when he was unable to prevent a private theatre club in London's West End from staging a series of American plays he had banned, including Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge and Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; and the Lord Chamberlain's attempts to persuade the government to give him new powers and to rewrite the law. This new edition includes a contextualising timeline for those readers who are unfamiliar with the period, and a new preface. DOI: https://doi.org/10.47788/SEEA6021

Now updated with a new preface that examines the current conflict in Iraq, this brilliant work of investigative reporting reveals the government's assault on the constitutional freedoms of the American media during Operation Desert Storm. John R. MacArthur's engaging and provocative account is as essential and alarming today as when the first paperback edition was published ten years ago.

Iconoclasm, Identity Politics and the Erasure of History surveys the origins, uses and manifestations of iconoclasm in history, art and public culture. It examines the various causes and uses of image/property defacement as a tool of political, national, religious and artistic process. This is one of the first books to examine the outbreak of iconoclasm in Europe and North America in the summer of 2020 in the context of previous outbreaks, and it examines the implications of iconoclasm as a form of control, censorship and expression.

In recent years hundreds of high-profile 'free speech' incidents have rocked US college campuses. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and other right-wing speakers have faced considerable protest, with many being disinvited from speaking. These incidents are widely circulated as examples of the academy's intolerance towards conservative views. But this response is not the spontaneous outrage of the liberal colleges. There is a darker element manufacturing the crisis, funded by political operatives, and designed to achieve specific political outcomes. If you follow the money, at the heart of the issue lies the infamous and ultra-libertarian Koch donor network. Grooming extremist celebrities, funding media platforms that promote these controversies, developing legal organizations to sue universities and corrupting legislators, the influence of the Koch network runs deep. We need to abandon the 'campus free speech' narrative and instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous network from our universities.

Was Salman Rushdie right to have written The Satanic Verses ? Were the protestors right to have done so? What about the Danish cartoons? This book examines the moral questions raised by cultural controversies, and how intercultural dialogue might be generated within multicultural societies.

In and Out of View models an expansion in how censorship is discursively framed. Contributors from diverse backgrounds, including artists, art historians, museum specialists, and students, address controversial instances of art production and reception from the mid-20th century to the present in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Their essays, interviews, and statements invite consideration of the shifting contexts, values, and needs through which artwork moves in and out of view. At issue are governmental restrictions and discursive effects, including erasure and distortion resulting from institutional policies, canonical processes, and interpretive methods. Crucial considerations concerning death/violence, authoritarianism, (neo)colonialism, global capitalism, immigration, race, religion, sexuality, activism/social justice, disability, campus speech, and cultural destruction are highlighted. The anthology-a thought-provoking resource for students and scholars in art history, museum and cultural studies, and creative practices-represents a timely and significant contribution to the literature on censorship.

Why free speech is the lifeblood of colleges and universities Free speech is under attack at colleges and universities today, with critics on and off campus challenging the value of open inquiry and freewheeling intellectual debate. Too often speakers are shouted down, professors are threatened, and classes are disrupted. In Speak Freely, Keith Whittington argues that universities must protect and encourage free speech because vigorous free speech is the lifeblood of the university. Without free speech, a university cannot fulfill its most basic, fundamental, and essential purposes, including fostering freedom of thought, ideological diversity, and tolerance. Examining such hot-button issues as trigger warnings, safe spaces, hate speech, disruptive protests, speaker disinvitations, the use of social media by faculty, and academic politics, Speak Freely describes the dangers of empowering campus censors to limit speech and enforce orthodoxy. It explains why free speech and civil discourse are at the heart of the university's mission of creating and nurturing an open and diverse community dedicated to learning. It shows why universities must make space for voices from both the left and right. And it points out how better understanding why the university lives or dies by free speech can help guide everyone-including students, faculty, administrators, and alumni-when faced with difficult challenges such as unpopular, hateful, or dangerous speech. Timely and vitally important, Speak Freely demonstrates why universities can succeed only by fostering more free speech, more free thought-and a greater tolerance for both.

Examining a phenomenon that is sweeping the country, Cancel This Book shines the spotlight on the suppression of open and candid debate. The public shaming of individuals for actual or perceived offenses, often against emerging notions of proper racial and gender norms and relations, has become commonplace. In a number of cases, the shaming is accompanied by calls for the offending individuals to lose their jobs, positions, or other status. Frequently, those targeted for "cancellation" simply do not know the latest, ever-changing norms (often related to language) that they are accused of transgressing-or they have honest questions about issues that have been deemed off-limits for debate and discussion. Cancel This Book offers a unique perspective from Dan Kovalik, a progressive author who supports the ongoing movements for racial and gender equality and justice, but who is concerned about the prevalence of "cancelling" people, and especially of people who are well-intentioned and who are themselves allied with these movements. While many progressives believe that "cancelling" others is a form of activism and holding others accountable, Cancel This Book argues that "cancellation" is oftentimes counter-productive and destructive of the very values which the "cancellers" claim to support. And indeed, we now see instances in the workplace where employers are using this spirt of "cancellation" to pit employees against each other, to exert more control over the workforce and to undermine worker and labor solidarity. Kovalik observes that many progressives are quietly opposed to this "Cancel Culture" and to many instances of "cancellation" they witness, but they are afraid to air these concerns publicly lest they themselves be "cancelled." The result is the suppression of open debate about important issues involving racial and gender matters, and even issues related to how to best confront the current COVID-19 pandemic. While people speak in whispers about their true feelings about such issues, critical debate and discussion is avoided, resentments build, and the movement for justice and equality is ultimately disserved.

The 2010 release of US embassy diplomatic cables put WikiLeaks into the international spotlight. Revelations by the leaks sparked intense debate within international diplomacy, journalism and society. This book reflects on the implications of WikiLeaks across politics and media, and on the results of leak journalism and transparency activism.

The first comparative study of censorship in theatre and cinema during the last century, this book examines notable twentieth-century cases involving the Lord Chamberlain's theatre censorship and the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC). Anthony Aldgate and James C. Robertson have written extensively on the subject of stage and screen censorship, and here they utilise previously unpublished Lord Chamberlain's censorship sources as well as hitherto unexplored BBFC files. They show how the two censorship agencies operated, with some interaction between them, over such controversial matters as sex, foreign affairs, juvenile crime, single-sex relationships, the 'swinging' 1960s, horror, religion and other contentious material. This wide-ranging study concludes by explaining why theatre censorship was abolished in 1968 whereas the BBFC has survived until the present day. Censorship in Theatre and Cinema is a valuable contribution to media history with implications for the practice of censorship in Britain today. Features * The first comparative study of censorship in both theatre and cinema * Accessible to both specialist and general readers alike * Covers both American and British stage and screen properties * Includes detailed analysis of various case studies to illustrate censorship procedures in action.