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1 results

  • Chapter 2 - Banning Evil

  • from Part I - The Advocatus Diaboli: Reflections on Free Thought and Free Speech
  • Michael Shermer, Chapman University, California
  • Book:
    Giving the Devil his Due
    Published online:
    28 February 2020
    Print publication:
    09 April 2020, pp 28-37

  • Summary

    This essay was penned in response to the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, that took the lives of fifty people, and the subsequent response to not only ban assault rifles but to ban speech as well – hate speech that is. Banning hate speech will not work, especially in the age of Internet access to virtually all of human knowledge, and in which almost anyone anywhere can set up a web page and publish their ideas, no matter how hateful. You can combat evil, as when police forces catch criminals and military services counter terrorists and challenge insurgents and threats. But the idea – and it is an idea that can only be heard in an environment of free speech – that one can simply ban bad, dangerous, or hateful ideas has a historical track record of failure to do so, while snagging it its net good, useful, and productive ideas and their human generators. As I conclude, following the old saying that the answer to the problems of democracy is more democracy, the solution to hate speech is more speech.