A Russian atheist social networking page was blocked Monday on the back of a court ruling that it insulted the feelings of religious believers.
The group called “There is no God” on the VKontakte networking site – which had over 26,000 followers – went offline for users across the whole country.
A moderator’s message on the blocked webpage said that the move was due to a ruling by a court in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region of Chechnya in May 2015.
“The community has been blocked due to the possible violation of the site’s rules,” it said.
VKontakte, Russia’s largest social networking site, did not respond to a request for comment.
A scan of the court decision published by Russian media accused the page of publishing materials that can “insult the feelings of Orthodox Christians”, based on an inspection of the page by prosecutors on April 6. [DailyStar.com 7/13/15]
Notice the excuse given by the Russian government for censorship: “Insulting the feelings of [fill-in-the-blank-with-offended-group-here.]”
It’s not just in Russia. In America and elsewhere, the same argument is given in favor of restraining freedom of speech. It doesn’t matter whether your speech is of the “left,” “right,” or anything else — this faulty premise threatens your freedom.
The excuse for restraining speech used to be, “You can’t shout fire in a crowded theater.” That’s a ridiculous analogy, because the property rights of the theater owner, as well as the contractual relationship between paying theater-goers and the theater, protect against such blatant violations of property rights.
Today the excuse for restricting free speech is more sophisticated. “Hate speech fosters and stirs up hatred. It ultimately leads to terrorism and violence. Why not head off such illegal violence by having a national conversation about how to address hate speech?”
Under the law, what is to constitute “hate speech,” and who is to define it? There’s the rub. Offended parties of every possible political and social persuasion are lined up to devour the First Amendment on that rationalization.
While it’s true that in America, the First Amendment is an important check against censorship, it’s not powerful enough to combat wrong ideas.
Recently, when a group of anti-Islamic cartoonists had a meeting and contest in Garland, Texas, they were fired upon by pro-Islamic terrorists. In the aftermath of that event, both liberals (like Chris Cuomo of CNN) and conservatives (like Bill O’Reilly of Fox News) claimed that the cartoonists were in the wrong. Why? Because they insulted another’s religious belief. The implication? You have no right to insult another’s religious or other personal views, at least not past some invisible, unnamed and indefinable point.
We have to be clear on something. The right to freedom of speech is incompatible with any alleged “right” not to be insulted. If the government may block websites, or otherwise restrict freedom of speech, because some protected government group has been “offended,” then freedom of speech cannot last for long, not even in America.
American society may not be Russia, but American society is filled with hyper-sensitive victim groups who spend their time and money literally scanning the horizon for things to be angry, hurt, upset or offended about. Victimology is big business. In such a psychological and cultural atmosphere, the table is already set for censorship, once some judge or President comes along who finally says, “Enough is enough. You cannot be offending others and engaging in hate speech of this kind.”
An atmosphere of victimology arises from, among other things, false ideas. The basic false idea is that feelings are equivalent to, or even superior to, objective facts. The corresponding idea is that emotions (e.g. hurt or offended feelings) trump reason. Take the example of a religious believer. To a religious believer, atheism is a serious error. The religiously faithful person is presumably confident in his or her faith that there is a God, and that there will be an afterlife following death. If you believe this, the mere existence of an atheistic group or website should not threaten you. You can ignore the atheist, encourage your children not to listen to the atheist, or perhaps (depending on your beliefs) pray for that atheist’s soul. The point is: There is no rational (or even religiously based) reason to be offended, unless you’re being forced to pay for or endorse the views you oppose. And there’s no political basis whatsoever for shutting down another’s views, not on their own property, time or website space.
Naturally, you don’t like the views of the atheists, and you might even find some of their depictions about faith, God or religion personally offensive. But you don’t find their mere existence offensive. And that’s the key. Not just to the separation of church and state, but to freedom of speech itself. It’s particularly important in this new era of the Internet. Every conceivable view of every imaginable kind is out there, being disseminated and digested by somebody, somewhere at some time. You cannot permit the fact that this is going on to make you upset, disturbed or even crazy. And you cannot permit any resulting emotions of disturbance you have be a justification for proposing censorship, or even implying the need for it.
This is true whether we’re talking about the offensive nature of atheist websites to believers, or of religious websites to atheists. The fact that someone, somewhere at some point in time is thinking, believing or saying something you do not like is a fact that a grown up, mature and self-responsible adult must learn to accept. And feelings are not necessarily facts. Although you might feel that views of which you disapprove may be spreading, the actual fact is that people have believed these things you dislike all along, probably for centuries. If your ideas are the more reasonable ones, and your ideas are the ones more in conformity to reality, they will ultimately triumph, because they have to do so — provided you have freedom of speech, the very thing your emotions are urging you to curb.
Wherever the victim mentality prevails, we’re all in danger of censorship, First Amendment or no. American society is filled with people who feel like victims because there are others who disagree with them about personal matters. This is wrong. You are not a victim because there are others who disagree with you. You are only a victim if someone imposes him- or herself physically upon you, either via physical coercion or fraud.
One of the most horrible manifestations of imposing physical force on another is using the government to block websites and otherwise curtail free speech. That trumps anything that any atheist, religious fanatic, gay-hating Nazi or black-hating racist is saying somewhere, on some website or broadcast. As rational human beings, we all must learn to tune out the noise, for our own sakes most of all, instead of running to government to shield us from things we do not wish to hear.
It’s naive to think that the U.S. Constitution, powerful and important as it has been, can by itself save us from censorship in America. Victim mindsets and erroneous ideas about reason vs. emotion have set the stage for dictatorship. Ideas about socialism undermined the Constitution with regard to free markets and economics; there’s no reason at all to think the same cannot and will not happen with free speech.
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