Speaker 1: Hilda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and This is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. The
Speaker 1: War on Wokeness may feel like a new phenomenon, but
Speaker 1: in fact it's been around for centuries. People have been
Speaker 1: canceled in one way or another since the beginning of time.
Speaker 1: It's human nature to form tribes, create in us and them,
Speaker 1: and serve as judge, jury, and sometimes literally executioner. But
Speaker 1: in recent years, the cultural wars have erupted between the
Speaker 1: left and the right, progressive and conservative, the woken anti
Speaker 1: woke over everything from gender and sexuality to race and
Speaker 1: equal rights discriminations. Making Peace in the Cultural Wars is
Speaker 1: the latest work by British philosopher ac Grayling, where he
Speaker 1: delves into some of the biggest issues of our time.
Speaker 1: He joins us to day on the Front Page to
Speaker 1: discuss wokeness, who decides who gets to be canceled and
Speaker 1: understanding mankind's inherent need to be right. So I want
Speaker 1: to start by getting your definition of two terms, wokeness
Speaker 1: and canceled right.
Speaker 2: Wokeness is a term that applies to a state of
Speaker 2: mind about fighting against discrimination, against racism, against sexism, against homophobia,
Speaker 2: against ageism, disabledism, you know, against transphobia, because it indicates
Speaker 2: a phase in this last eight to ten years. Maybe
Speaker 2: is exemplifies it a phase in a continuing effort which
Speaker 2: really got going after the Second World War. If you
Speaker 2: cast your mind back to the nineteen sixties and seventies
Speaker 2: with the civil rights movement in the US, second wave
Speaker 2: of feminism against all forms of rumination, because prior to
Speaker 2: that time, women, people of color, gays, and others didn't
Speaker 2: really really even have the right to assert their rights.
Speaker 2: So this current thing, wocism, when you go back to
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties, the PC, the political correctness thing, go
Speaker 2: back to the sixties civil rights feminism, they're all part
Speaker 2: of the same story. And it's a great story about
Speaker 2: getting a reckoning with history because before that time, so
Speaker 2: many marginalized groups, so many people were given second or
Speaker 2: third class status, didn't have a voice, many of them,
Speaker 2: and discrimination was just taken for granted. So workism is
Speaker 2: a great thing, a good thing. It's about getting people's rights,
Speaker 2: about making society a fair place. So that's what that
Speaker 2: word means. And by the way, people use the word
Speaker 2: woke as a kind of term of abuse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like derogatories and naughty, very disparaging and very contemptuous.
Speaker 2: But it has an honorable ancestry actually because it comes
Speaker 2: from the African American patois. You know, talking about the
Speaker 2: fact that although the very obvious forms of discrimination can't
Speaker 2: get more obvious than stavery, obviously, but there are also
Speaker 2: lots of hidden forms of racism. And so to be alert,
Speaker 2: to be awake, to be woke to the fact that
Speaker 2: you are going to be encountering all sorts of resistance
Speaker 2: to your chance just to be accepted and to have
Speaker 2: a fair place. That is something that they quite rightly
Speaker 2: said they needed to notice. And of course that's been
Speaker 2: picked up by gays, by women, by others who have
Speaker 2: said enough of discrimination. Anti workism, by the way, is
Speaker 2: about protecting interests, not about protecting rights, because if you're
Speaker 2: in a privileged position in society, you have a privileged
Speaker 2: access to all the top quality social goods of health, education,
Speaker 2: of opportunities in economics. You know, want other people getting
Speaker 2: into your club, do you, so you push back against it,
Speaker 2: And a lot of anti workist endeavor is really about
Speaker 2: underneath old the metrics. It's about denying the rights of
Speaker 2: people to that fair pace.
Speaker 3: People that talk about cancel culture never seem to shut
Speaker 3: the like. There's more speech now than ever before. The
Speaker 3: Internet has democratized criticism. What do we do for a living.
Speaker 3: We talk, we criticize, we postulate, we opine, we make jokes,
Speaker 3: and now other people are having their say.
Speaker 4: And that's not cancel culture.
Speaker 1: That's relentlessness.
Speaker 3: We live in relentless culture, and the system of the
Speaker 3: Internet and all those other things are incentivized to find
Speaker 3: the pressure points of that and exacerbate it.
Speaker 1: And to be canceled. And it's peppered throughout history and
Speaker 1: different kind of iterations, isn't it, from things like banishment
Speaker 1: and to the more extreme of course death. The war
Speaker 1: on woke is just the latest iteration. Tell me a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that, right.
Speaker 2: Well, the whole of history is really about canceling. You know,
Speaker 2: war is one group trying to cancel another group, and
Speaker 2: society is canceled. So, for example, we cancel criminals by
Speaker 2: locking them up in prison. Canceling can be positive and negative.
Speaker 2: So positive canceling is what happens when you're trying to
Speaker 2: protect people from harm, so you cancel the harm doers.
Speaker 2: You cancel the criminal by locking them away in order
Speaker 2: to protect society, but also importantly to try to get
Speaker 2: them to think again and reform and perhaps even make
Speaker 2: some reparations. The thing about the cancel culture, which is
Speaker 2: practiced by people on the more active wing of Wokism,
Speaker 2: is that it can be undiscriminating. One has to be
Speaker 2: awfully careful always to try to be fair and to
Speaker 2: use a due process, you know, because these social media
Speaker 2: pyons are really mob linchings, aren't they. The people who
Speaker 2: do it are judge, jury prosecutor, and sometimes they catch
Speaker 2: in their net people who are therefore unjustly treated. So
Speaker 2: although one can understand the frustration and the anger of
Speaker 2: people who get involved in canceling endeavors, and although there
Speaker 2: are certainly cases of people who need to be canceled
Speaker 2: I'll give you Harvey Weinstein as an egregious example, it's
Speaker 2: also the case that in all these great struggles in
Speaker 2: society to get things right, they will be over each
Speaker 2: on both sides. But I do have to point something out,
Speaker 2: which is that if you look at the sort of
Speaker 2: extremes of workism and anti workism, on the kind of
Speaker 2: extreme of workism, you get people who you know, talk
Speaker 2: about pronouns or they go in for canceling of people
Speaker 2: that they're really angry with. But on the other side
Speaker 2: of the story, on the far right, what have you got.
Speaker 2: You've got neo Nazis, white supremacist, misogynists, masculist influences, you know,
Speaker 2: dreadful people. There's no symmetry here. It's not as though
Speaker 2: there's a kind of moral equivalence that the anti workers
Speaker 2: who are defending their interests and who don't like people
Speaker 2: of color or women or gays or something. I mean,
Speaker 2: they are vile, whereas you know, somebody says to you
Speaker 2: call me them or they. It's hardly the same thing,
Speaker 2: is it. But the point is to get beneath the
Speaker 2: kind of rhetorical battle, because the rhetorical battle is very distracting.
Speaker 2: The real issues are issues about human rights. They're the
Speaker 2: issues about people just having a fair place in society
Speaker 2: and be accepted no matter what their color or sexuality
Speaker 2: or whatever. That's the really key issue.
Speaker 1: And I'm really recognizing the difference between discrimination and being offended.
Speaker 2: Hey, well yeah, I mean, look, the factor of the
Speaker 2: matter is that nobody has a right not to be offended.
Speaker 2: We're all offended by something, okay, and we can be
Speaker 2: mutually offended by something that a person does or say
Speaker 2: will offend somebody else. That person might be offended that
Speaker 2: the person is taking offense. So I'm afraid there are
Speaker 2: going to be lots of things that one has to do.
Speaker 2: There's hard work that has to be done to make
Speaker 2: society a more inclusive and tolerant place, and one of
Speaker 2: them is to recognize that being offended is a kind
Speaker 2: of inevitability. You've got to suck it up, and you've
Speaker 2: got to recognize that as best we can anyway not
Speaker 2: to offend people.
Speaker 1: Be polite.
Speaker 2: It's easy enough to be polite, but that you're not
Speaker 2: going to be able to please everybody all the time.
Speaker 1: When it comes to cancel culture, do you think some
Speaker 1: individuals or groups can be too quick to label people
Speaker 1: as extremists or racists or homophobes and shut down those
Speaker 1: conversations rather than having a debate or a discussion.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean that there's always the potential for overreach,
Speaker 2: there's no question. And when you consider the the frustration
Speaker 2: that people feel that progress is not enough, progress is
Speaker 2: being made, and it's quite interesting, you know, because if
Speaker 2: you think about that whole story, which has been unfolding
Speaker 2: since the nineteen sixties, a huge amount of progress has
Speaker 2: been made by people of color and women and gays
Speaker 2: and so on to get more accepted in society and
Speaker 2: a better chance that journey is not yet over, that
Speaker 2: the destination is still some way away. You can prove
Speaker 2: it easily enough by just looking at the fact that
Speaker 2: fifty six percent of university graduates in the US are women.
Speaker 2: The proportion of women who are right in the top
Speaker 2: levels of business and government and society in the US
Speaker 2: is much much lower than fifty six percent. So something
Speaker 2: is going on between the two, which is the systemic
Speaker 2: sexism that still prevents real opportunities for equal treatment. But
Speaker 2: even though a huge amount of progress has been made,
Speaker 2: still to find doors barred against you, or find people
Speaker 2: clumbniating you because you're saying we want our rights, or
Speaker 2: you're an ally of people to see their rights, I
Speaker 2: can make people angry, and so you get as a
Speaker 2: result over each It happens on both sides. Again, I
Speaker 2: iterate the point that the rhetorical battle, the noise, the smoke,
Speaker 2: the things that people say and do which are very
Speaker 2: distracting should not distract us. We should look down at
Speaker 2: what's really an issue and see that this is just
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of what we philosophers call the epiphenomenon,
Speaker 2: which means that the kind of glow that's given off
Speaker 2: by the situation, because there are really important, serious matters
Speaker 2: that underlie the whole woke endeavor.
Speaker 1: And in speaking of human rights in your book, you
Speaker 1: refer to the killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: But I use this as an example to kind of
Speaker 2: surprise people. All right, now, some of it, I was, Well,
Speaker 2: the thing is some have bin Laden is an extremely
Speaker 2: unappealing candidate for being treated, you know, in accordance with
Speaker 2: human rights ideas, because human rights says everybody has right
Speaker 2: to a fair trial, everybody has a right to a
Speaker 2: defense to be hurt. Everybody has a right when arrested
Speaker 2: and charged with a crime, to be treated with a
Speaker 2: degree of respect and deference, and not to be treated
Speaker 2: to arbitrary punishment. Now, as have been lod was shot
Speaker 2: dead and dropped into the Arabian Gulf, and for good
Speaker 2: pragmatic reasons, because had he been arrested and taken to
Speaker 2: Guantanamo Bay, he might have continued to be a focus
Speaker 2: of attention on the part of supporters of his So
Speaker 2: from a pragmatic, short term point of view, there was
Speaker 2: a justification that could be offered by the US government.
Speaker 2: But from a long term point of view, from the
Speaker 2: point of view of trying to respect due process and
Speaker 2: individual human rights, it would have served the world better
Speaker 2: if the United States, which after all sets it's used
Speaker 2: to set itself up before as a place of law
Speaker 2: and civil liberties and human rights, would have been better
Speaker 2: if they had respected those constraints. It's harder to do,
Speaker 2: it's hard work to do that, it's disgusting to have
Speaker 2: to do it with somebody like Osama bin Laden, But
Speaker 2: in the end, it would have been better than to
Speaker 2: engage in an extra judicial killing or to say that
Speaker 2: he was an enemy compatent or something. So I use
Speaker 2: that as an example to sort of joke people into
Speaker 2: thinking that if you're going to take the idea of
Speaker 2: human rights seriously, and they should be taking seriously, because
Speaker 2: in the end, if the world is going to be
Speaker 2: a better place and a fairer place, more inclusive place,
Speaker 2: and every single one of us is going to have
Speaker 2: a chance to make for ourselves lives worth living, good lives,
Speaker 2: meaningful lives. We have to have our rights respected. That
Speaker 2: means you misrespect other people's rights, and so the whole
Speaker 2: idea of human rights is absolutely fundamental.
Speaker 4: Last week I determined that we had enough intelligence to
Speaker 4: take action and authorized an operation to get Osama bin
Speaker 4: Laden and bring him to justice. After a firefight, they
Speaker 4: killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
Speaker 4: For over two decades, Laden has been al Qaeda's leader
Speaker 4: and symbol, and it's continued to plot attacks against our
Speaker 4: country and our friends and allies. The death have been
Speaker 4: Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our
Speaker 4: nation's effort to defeat al Qaeda. It death does not
Speaker 4: mark the end of our effort.
Speaker 1: Do you think that if Osama bin Laden was taken
Speaker 1: in alive and chucked in Guantanamo Bay that his views
Speaker 1: could have been changed with debate, discussion, education.
Speaker 2: Probably not. I mean, you know that there are going
Speaker 2: to be people who are pretty hardline in their views
Speaker 2: objection and are not going to be persuaded and suddenly
Speaker 2: become a fuzzy liberal democrat types agreed, But just because
Speaker 2: the Issama bin Laden's might not change doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: there aren't possibilities for other people to change. After all,
Speaker 2: it's evident if you think about, say the last couple
Speaker 2: of hundred years, let's say, just think about human treatment
Speaker 2: of animals, think about how people treated horses and dogs
Speaker 2: and so on, that kind of treatment of animal is unacceptable. Now,
Speaker 2: the shows that moral progress is possible, and it's possible
Speaker 2: because we do a number of things. We argue, discuss, debate,
Speaker 2: we set an example, We even introduce laws to protect
Speaker 2: vulnerable creatures, and bit by bit we managed to shift society.
Speaker 2: So even though there were always going to be people
Speaker 2: who can't be shifted, we've got a hope that we
Speaker 2: can shift other people. And the empirical evidence suggests that
Speaker 2: we can shift people. So, you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: people to go to prison and you don't like it
Speaker 2: in prison or were brought to consider their what they
Speaker 2: did in the harm they caused to other people. You know,
Speaker 2: we can hope of them that they can reform and
Speaker 2: do better later, and some do so. Anyway, what's the
Speaker 2: alternative to being optimistic about these things?
Speaker 1: If examples of cancelations throughout history and whatever form or
Speaker 1: anything to go by. And I'm talking about the ones
Speaker 1: in your book as well. There seems to be a
Speaker 1: huge amount of hypocrisy at play, you know, like someone
Speaker 1: who's committed a adultery chastising someone who identifies as homosexual. Now,
Speaker 1: do you have to be a perfect person and to
Speaker 1: have committed quote unquote no sins to be able to
Speaker 1: or allowed to cancel someone?
Speaker 2: Look outside the readership and listenership of the Herald here
Speaker 2: in Auckland. There are no perfect people. Okay, So we're
Speaker 2: all an alloy. We've all got faults and failings, and
Speaker 2: the fact that we have, the fact that nobody is
Speaker 2: squeaky clean cannot be allowed to be a barrier to
Speaker 2: trying to make ourselves and other people better by argument
Speaker 2: or by example, or by setting up a social conversation,
Speaker 2: a public conversation about what's going to be acceptable and
Speaker 2: right and try to shift things in the right direction. So, yes,
Speaker 2: I'm in. You know, hypocrisy is a feature of human
Speaker 2: nature to some extent. Of course, it makes human nature
Speaker 2: kind of interesting. I mean, there'll be no movies and
Speaker 2: books about love affairs and things like that, and has
Speaker 2: that with the case, But it would be ad hominem
Speaker 2: to say to somebody, you know, I if smoker said
Speaker 2: to you, don't smoke, it's bad for your health, and
Speaker 2: you say, oh, but you're a smoker. That's a classic
Speaker 2: ad hominem argument, failing to recognize that what that person
Speaker 2: has just said is right. So, you know, hypocrites can
Speaker 2: sometimes amazingly tell the truth and say things that are right.
Speaker 2: So we've just got to go for the best here.
Speaker 2: We've got to try to look at what is persuasive
Speaker 2: because it stands up, because a good case can be
Speaker 2: made for it. That's the thing that should matter, not
Speaker 2: individual people, but ideas, movements in society. The destination that
Speaker 2: we're trying to reach, which is for a good, peaceful, constructive, cooperative,
Speaker 2: happy society. I say at the end of the book
Speaker 2: that if everybody respected everybody else's human rights, the world
Speaker 2: would really be a very, very much better place. And
Speaker 2: what we would achieve is convivencia. Now, this beautiful word
Speaker 2: is a word that was used to describe the situation
Speaker 2: in Spain during the medieval period when Christians and Jews
Speaker 2: and Muslims all lived together, were got on together, corporated
Speaker 2: work together, learned from one another, and of course the
Speaker 2: historians over idealized it. I'm sure there were some frictions
Speaker 2: and so no doubt, but that period of time is
Speaker 2: known as the period of convivens here of being able
Speaker 2: to live together in a mutually tolerant and accepting way,
Speaker 2: and that should be our aim. And in fact, you know,
Speaker 2: the woke endeavor is really an endeavor to get there
Speaker 2: and endeavor to say, every one of us, no matter
Speaker 2: what our skin color, what our sexuality, you know, how
Speaker 2: we feel about ourselves, we should have our place. We
Speaker 2: should have a fair place and be accepted by others.
Speaker 1: In June twenty twenty, JK. Rowlinging tweeted, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that you've heard a lot about JK rowling in your research.
Speaker 1: She said, I respect every trans person's right to live
Speaker 1: in any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them.
Speaker 1: I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on
Speaker 1: the basis of being trans. Now, five years later, it
Speaker 1: feels like her entire online existence is about trans people,
Speaker 1: none of it positive, by the way, and none of
Speaker 1: it seeming to fit with that earlier sentiment. How has
Speaker 1: someone like her gone down this path within the space
Speaker 1: of five years, have we pushed her to go there
Speaker 1: or those similar down there by making fun of them
Speaker 1: or immediately labeling them as transphobic or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really interesting example of something in fact
Speaker 2: of a deliberate phenomenon. Really, if you go back to
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, the Supreme Court in the United States gave
Speaker 2: the final sign off on same sex marriage. Now, for
Speaker 2: years and years before then, there was an organization, hugely
Speaker 2: well funded organization called the American Principles Project the APP,
Speaker 2: and they've been campaigning against same sex marriage. But when
Speaker 2: they lost that when it got to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 2: they pivoted in public it's in the public domain here.
Speaker 2: They pivoted and said, so we're going to tackle another issue,
Speaker 2: and this issue is trans trans women, mainly across trans men.
Speaker 2: No problem to men, but trans women and women's spaces
Speaker 2: and the fugitive invasion of women's spaces by people who
Speaker 2: want to present as women but who may pre full
Speaker 2: transition still be male in some respect. So they transitioned
Speaker 2: to that. And this just shows you how a very
Speaker 2: well funded and well focused campaign can really become the issue.
Speaker 2: Think about this. The number of people who have gender
Speaker 2: dysphoria in the world as a whole is less than
Speaker 2: one percent. Climate change is a huge problem, but you
Speaker 2: would think that the trans issue was equally a big
Speaker 2: problem because of the fact that the right have focused
Speaker 2: on it and dramatized it as a big issue. By
Speaker 2: choosing the most vulnerable group of people and really focusing
Speaker 2: on them, they've achieved two things. First, they can make
Speaker 2: the whole woke endeavors. I mean, it's very difficult to
Speaker 2: tackle sexism or gay rights or something, but if you
Speaker 2: tackle trans and call it woke and the things that
Speaker 2: pro trans people say, you can demonize the whole woke thing. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that's part of the strategy there. But the other
Speaker 2: thing is that that they've succeeded in turning feminists against
Speaker 2: one another, pro trans and trans skeptical feminists. And this
Speaker 2: is perfect if you can get your enemy to start
Speaker 2: fighting among themselves, which is exactly what the right wing
Speaker 2: wanted to happen, and you've seen it happen in the
Speaker 2: feminist movement over the trans issue. And if you really
Speaker 2: think about the trans issue, firstly, people who are unhappy
Speaker 2: with the assigned sexual gender that they had it at birth.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of them really, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a really serious thing for them, and it's very difficult
Speaker 2: for them to live in a way that feels really false,
Speaker 2: and if they do adopt the gender expression that feels
Speaker 2: more natural, it's pretty hard to be accepted in society.
Speaker 2: The proof that they're serious is that they're prepared to
Speaker 2: do the work of putting up with lack of acceptance
Speaker 2: and you know, people scorning them and so on, so
Speaker 2: you know, for them it's a really key issue. But
Speaker 2: all the issue about women's spaces, women's toilets, women's prisons,
Speaker 2: women's sports and so on, there are solutions. You know,
Speaker 2: if only there was a calm, rational discussion about this,
Speaker 2: it could be sorted out instead of lumping it all
Speaker 2: into one thing, which is you know, biological males invading
Speaker 2: women's toilets and so on. That there are ways of
Speaker 2: sorting it out, which would you know, bring peace to
Speaker 2: this whole issue. But it's used as a tool to
Speaker 2: have a go at the whole cause by picking on
Speaker 2: the most vulnerable group. And when you talk about JK. Rowling,
Speaker 2: you see what happens. She was not against individual trans people,
Speaker 2: but she was raising concerns about women's spaces, which some
Speaker 2: feminists feel very strongly about. You know, there are very
Speaker 2: sincere views and boothsades here. But if you can get
Speaker 2: people quarreling with one another, and it gets more and
Speaker 2: more and more as Herbic people get driven into a
Speaker 2: more and more polarized position, and then they're all start
Speaker 2: hating one another and they forget that actually they are
Speaker 2: victims of an attempt to discredit everything to do with
Speaker 2: wuke and to attack this very vulnerable group.
Speaker 5: What all of these principles have in common is that
Speaker 5: they afford Mardi different rights from other New Zealanders, seeing
Speaker 5: the treaty is a quote partnership between races, as the
Speaker 5: Court of Appeal once said, does not work as a
Speaker 5: constitutional foundation for our country. The lawyers will defend their
Speaker 5: logic to the helps, but there is one question they
Speaker 5: cannot answer. Where in the world is it a good
Speaker 5: idea to give citizens different rights based on ancestry. Where
Speaker 5: in the world has that approach been a success?
Speaker 1: And the Coalition government at the moment has disestablished something
Speaker 1: called the Maori Health Authority, which was focused on bettering
Speaker 1: health outcomes for Maori. Given those outcomes are different from
Speaker 1: paquiha or white people. There's also a controversial bill, the
Speaker 1: Treaty Principles Bill, that essentially sought to make it so
Speaker 1: there were equal rights for all New Zealanders. So this
Speaker 1: line stuck out to me from your book, and I
Speaker 1: thought of this, this line. To treat people equally is
Speaker 1: not always to treat them fairly. Can you tak me
Speaker 1: through an example of.
Speaker 2: This, right, Well, if you had an Olympic athlete who
Speaker 2: needed five thousand calories a day and you had a
Speaker 2: little old lady who needed fifteen hundred calories a day,
Speaker 2: and you forced them to eat the same number of
Speaker 2: calories let's say three thousand calories a day each, you're
Speaker 2: unfair to both. You're treating them equally, but you're unfair
Speaker 2: to both. Equity or fairness is the goal, not just
Speaker 2: crude equality. However, equality matters when it comes to what
Speaker 2: are sometimes called equality of concern. So people should be
Speaker 2: treated equally before the law, they should be treated equally
Speaker 2: by government provision, welfare provision. They should have an equal
Speaker 2: opportunity to gain access to what gives you a chance
Speaker 2: in life, which is health and education. So their equality
Speaker 2: matters in many other respects. It can be unfair because
Speaker 2: that's where equity matters, where fairness matters. And so again
Speaker 2: it's a question of thinking a bit about it, you know,
Speaker 2: just a question of going below the surface and just
Speaker 2: trying to work things out in a discriminating way. Where
Speaker 2: we mean by discriminating this time something positive, discriminating, separating
Speaker 2: things out, seeing things clearly, defining things properly, and then
Speaker 2: you see how these things work.
Speaker 1: If the work to understand though different points of view
Speaker 1: cannot be one sided, then how can you make the
Speaker 1: side that benefits from injustice and discrimination actually do the
Speaker 1: work right.
Speaker 2: Well, you've got to keep hammering away at them on
Speaker 2: a number of different fronts. So of course the best
Speaker 2: way because you know, one of the things which is
Speaker 2: an issue in the current wars is so called the
Speaker 2: freedom of expression issue.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: Of course, people forget that freedom of expression used only
Speaker 2: to be the possession of the right because they own
Speaker 2: the means of expression and other people didn't even have
Speaker 2: a voice. Now, people on the work side of the
Speaker 2: argument need freedom of expression to make their case and
Speaker 2: to put their point. Freedom of expression is incredibly precious.
Speaker 2: You can't have law without you can't have accusation and defense.
Speaker 2: You can't have political process putting forward public policy proposals
Speaker 2: and criticizing them kind of education worth the name. If
Speaker 2: you can't discuss ideas, can't have creativity. Freedom of expression
Speaker 2: is absolutely fundamental, but it is not unqualified. There are
Speaker 2: occasions famous one of course, is shouting fire and a
Speaker 2: crowded theater. You know, there are occasions when the use
Speaker 2: of your right to free expression can be irresponsible. So
Speaker 2: the big question is what counts as responsible use of
Speaker 2: free expression, and that is something that can only be
Speaker 2: decided on a case by case basis. That ifether there's
Speaker 2: going to be a qualification on freedom of expression, like
Speaker 2: in time of war, you want to limit what newspapers
Speaker 2: can report so the enemy don't get information. That's a
Speaker 2: justified limitation on free expression. But it has to be
Speaker 2: case by case. It has to be term limited, it
Speaker 2: can't be forever. And that the remedies against abuse of
Speaker 2: free expression can't be prior constraint or censorship. There must
Speaker 2: be post factor remedies. I mean, you have to see
Speaker 2: how important freedom of expression is and then think of
Speaker 2: ways of managing abuses of it. And I always say,
Speaker 2: I say to my students, for example, the way to
Speaker 2: deal with bad expression like hate speech and racist speech
Speaker 2: and sexist speech and so on. The way to deal
Speaker 2: with it is not by canceling or not by censoring,
Speaker 2: not by no platforming, but by better free expression, by
Speaker 2: having good arguments, and by standing up and challenge. So
Speaker 2: the answer to your question is that the response that
Speaker 2: we must give must be organized endeavor to try to
Speaker 2: say and do things which are better than the bad
Speaker 2: things that are said and done by the people we oppose.
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 1: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 1: at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 1: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 1: our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Speaker 1: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: tune in on Monday for another look behind the headlines.