Censoring bigotry makes opponents complacent and shirks the work of countering it.
Evidence
The consequence of challenging bigotry through censorship also leads ‘anti-racists into a false comfort zone, where it feels like the basic arguments against prejudice no longer need to be put’, as the journalist Paul Mason (2014) has put it. It helps absolve us, in other words, of the responsibility of tackling such ideas openly and robustly. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 680
Categorization
- SEED: An essay angle: the argument that speech restrictions are not merely ineffective but actively self-undermining for progressives, because they replace the ongoing labor of persuasion with a one-off legal prohibition.
- XREF: connects to: Giving up the right to offend forfeits the power to challenge injustice. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 661; Bigoted speech should be countered morally and politically, not legally. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 671; Denying a bigotry’s existence enables it to spread unchecked (+3 more)
Related
- Legal censorship lets anti-racists abandon open argument against prejudice (similarity 0.91)
- Giving up the right to offend forfeits the power to challenge injustice. (similarity 0.85)
- Anti-racists’ expansion of ‘hatred’ legitimizes state censorship of minorities (similarity 0.83)
- Bigoted speech should be countered morally and politically, not legally. (similarity 0.82)
- Hateful criticism should be answered politically, not legally (similarity 0.80)
- Hate speech censorship contributes to the rise of anti-Muslim parties (similarity 0.80)
Broader Connections
- Legal censorship lets anti-racists abandon open argument against prejudice
#corroborates(0.88) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 675 - Denying a bigotry’s existence enables it to spread unchecked
#corroborates(0.80) - Anti-racists’ expansion of ‘hatred’ legitimizes state censorship of minorities
#corroborates(0.75) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 680 - Opponents argue Islamophobia labels are deployed politically to suppress legitimate criticism.
#complicates(0.72) — Nasar Meer, Tariq Modood, Refutations of Racism in the ‘Muslim…, 65