Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?

Concise and Abridged Edition

Do we really have the right to say the ‘wrong’ thing?

‘I strongly recommend this book. Hume is right that the current proliferation of trigger warnings is absurd’ Guardian

In a fierce defence of free speech – in all its forms – Mick Hume’s blistering polemic exposes the new threats facing us today in the historic fight for freedom of expression. In 2015, the cold-blooded attacks in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists united the free-thinking world in proclaiming ‘Je suis Charlie’. But it wasn’t long before many were arguing that the massacres showed the need to restrict the right to be offensive. Meanwhile sensitive students are sheltered from potentially offensive material and Twitter vigilantes police those expressing the ‘wrong’ opinion. But the basic right being suppressed – to be offensive, despite the problems it creates – is not only acceptable but vital to society. Without a total freedom of expression, other liberties will not be possible.

Mick Hume is a journalist and author. He is editor-at-large of Spiked and writes regularly on free-speech issues. He had a weekly column in ‘The Times’ for 10 years, and was described as ‘Britain’s only libertarian Marxist newspaper columnist’. More recently he has written in defence of freedom of speech and a free press in ‘The Times’, the ‘Sunday Times’, the ‘Independent’ and the ‘Sun’.