[Just as I've finished writing this news has came in that Boris Johnson is going to have to appear in court over the £350 million NHS bus claim. Quite timely considering the topic. What a huge waste of court time (as well as a terrible development for democracy in this country). The word shame once again comes to mind.]
Anecdote time. I went to school in a fairly rough-ish area, and I remember when I was around eight years old or so there was a big hubbub about children from my school making prank phone calls. This was in the days long before mobile phones, when there was a payphone on every street corner. Children would go to the payphone, call 999, which was free to call, and then get the police, fire service or ambulance service to come out for completely made-up reasons. As back then it was difficult to discover who was making these calls it meant that you only needed one or two children to find these pranks hilariously funny to have a bit of a problem.
Being deemed a serious issue I remember my entire school being called into a
serious assembly. We've all been in this situation. Sat in the school hall in deadly silence, listening to the headmaster very sternly explain a serious problem or incident. No songs or hymns in this assembly, just a very serious telling off. I distinctly remember my headmaster very purposefully explaining when you should and shouldn't phone the emergency services. What was and what wasn't a serious issue worthy of their time and attention
..and why it was so deeply immoral to waste their time with prank phone calls. Time that could be used helping people with serious problems or that are in life-threatening situations.
In fact, I remember him telling a story about a child, no different to ourselves, who had been out with his friends making prank phone calls. Thinking it was all very clever and funny. Only to return home to find a family member had died because an ambulance hadn't been able to reach their home in time. Specifically because it had been preoccupied with prank calls. Teachers probably wouldn't be able to tell children such a grim story now. It'd probably be a story about a dinosaur needing a sticking plaster or something. It made an impression though.
Looking back I now realise that the story was probably completely made up, but it worked, and it impressed upon me and all the other children that day the seriousness of wasting police or ambulance time. So much so that I still remember it now.
Anyway, fast forward to 2019 and we now have large parts of the media and the political class calling for police involvement in all manner of
un-serious things. Things that I as an eight year old, in part thanks to my headteacher, understood were not serious enough to waste police time with. Yet here we are now with Twitter spats being the focus of police time and money. With people being investigated and losing their jobs for things said in conversation on social media. All time, money and effort that could be being spent on rape and murder and all manner of other
serious issues. Where is the headmaster or adult in the room to spell this out these days? Where is the conscience that asks
"Is this a worthy use of police time and public money?".
Fortunately as a child I was too much of a coward to ever get in trouble making prank calls, however, I'm sure the children at my school that were making the calls felt a deep sense of
shame having sat through that assembly. I felt the seriousness of it and I hadn't even done anything wrong. So I would've hated to have been in their shoes. No one seems to feel that shame now though. Calling the police because of a Twitter spat. Fine. Getting someone fired from their job. Fine.
Now I'm not saying that nothing serious ever occurs on social media. There are of course circumstances where serious action, sometimes police involvement is necessary. I'm not downplaying
everything, but
most of what we see today is truly mad, and to be frank quite embarrassing. Now I'm sure there are people reading this right now saying "..but, but, but ..racism, harassment, etc". However, the point stands. Normally in decent society we only call the police for serious situations. We understand it's a big deal to pick up the phone and do this. Increasingly though the understanding of what is and what isn't serious seems to be getting lost. The understanding that something can be morally wrong, but not necessarily legally wrong seems absent in many people.
The police and the state are not there to police our morals. They are there to protect our rights.
Free Speech and Examples
The biggest question seems to be what does "free speech" allow for? Especially in regard the issues arising from the use of social media. Where is the line drawn?
Now personally I'm something of a free speech idealist. I think pretty much anything goes, including libel (I'll perhaps do a separate post about libel sometime in the future so as to not get too bogged down here). However, I'm happy to compromise when it comes to threats of violence. It's obviously reasonable that the police should investigate someone who appears to be making serious threats of physical harm.
We can normally judge the intention of speech from its context. So we have to apply common sense. I have family members that say they
want to kill me all the time, but it doesn't mean they
actually want to do it. Even if they come downstairs to discover I've been making pasta and have left a huge pile of washing up for someone else to do, and they then state they want to "strangle me" in a momentary fit of rage. It still doesn't make that statement a serious threat or intention. It's often similar on social media. People will see a newspaper article and react much like they react to finding a huge pile of washing up. Mild infuriation, accompanied by expletives. Now that doesn't mean that it's wise or sensible to say such things on social media. Or indeed
morally acceptable. In fact, I think it's something that
should be criticised. However, it does mean that 99.99% of such instances are completely benign and simply not worthy of serious action.
To get to the point, I would argue that many of our problems arise because people confuse the words spoken with the actions that accompany them.
For example, let's take harassment. Let's say we have one person who doesn't like another person. I'll choose someone I actually admire so it's not too controversial. Jacob Rees-Mogg perhaps. Now if I don't like JRM and I sit at home every night writing essays about how much of an idiot I think he is, then that's not harassment. It would be a bit weird maybe, but it would be perfectly fine. At least in a legal sense anyway. It would simply be someone expressing their own opinion, in their own home, and not purposely intruding upon someone else's personal space or rights.
However, if I wrote essays every night calling JRM an idiot and then kept repeatedly posting them through his letter box then that
would be harassment. As I'd be repeatedly getting in his personal space against his wishes, and forcing him to deal with things and do things he doesn't want to do. Likewise if I repeatedly called his phone number or badgered him on his social media page.
So, it's not the speech itself, it's the
physical action of phoning someone, or posting something through their letter box, or stopping them in the street, etc, that's the issue. In fact, often it may be the case that harassment comes from people saying very nice things. For instance, an unrequited lover who repeatedly harasses the object of their desire. The fact that they're saying things like "you're beautiful, you're amazing, I love you" doesn't stop it from being harassment if the person receiving it objects to the constant intrusion.
People fail to see this distinction though, and erroneously deem the speech itself to be the problem. They then want to ban all similar speech. Someone harasses someone calling them an "idiot". They then want to ban everyone from ever calling anyone an idiot. Likewise if a man harasses a woman in a way that comments upon how attractive her appearance is, then people want to ban every man from ever stating a woman is attractive. It completely misses the point.
It's the same with social media. If you want to express an opinion about someone on your YouTube channel, even a negative opinion, that's fine. You're not forcing anyone to watch it. You're not intruding into another person's domain. In fact, if they come to
your YouTube channel to watch the video they're making the physical effort to come to you. You're not going to them. Unless the video is purposely directed towards that person it's not a problem.
Again, it's similar with controversial opinions. For example, you're perfectly entitled to think that women are less intelligent than men, and you're perfectly entitled to publicly express that belief if you so want. Even if you want to go so far as stating that all women are idiots. It might not be a very nice opinion, and others may disagree or judge you for it, but it is
just an opinion. It's not an infringement of someone else's rights ..and if someone stopped you from expressing it they would then be infringing upon
your rights.
On the other hand, if you approached an
individual woman and called her an idiot then that
would be an act of aggression, and potentially a legal wrong. Again, it's not the word idiot itself, or even the fact that you think she's an idiot. It would be the fact that you had physically walked up to this woman and shouted it in her face.
The physical act. Or similarly, if you had perhaps
repeatedly sent direct messages
to her on her social media account, calling her an idiot, when she had already asked you not to contact her. Again it's the
act of sending the direct message.
This is all pretty obvious stuff when you break it down, but in the complex web of what's socially acceptable and unacceptable these days it's always worth returning to basic examples.
Finally..
Finally, on a serious note. If you're reading this and you feel that you yourself are being threatened, harassed or bullied - online or offline - especially if you're a younger person, then do speak to someone about it. And don't hesitate to take action, including getting police involvement, if necessary. The above article is written primarily to critique all the online drama and political points scoring we see in the supposedly adult world of politics and social debate. It's not designed to deter genuine people from seeking help and support.
If you're worried about something it's always better to be on the safe side, and the fact that you're genuinely worried shows that
you feel it's serious. Therefore you wouldn't be taking such action lightly if you did decide to take it. Which is my main criticism of people in the above examples :)
