Against Free Speech

This book examines the renewed and vociferous defence of free speech witnessed in relation to a number of recent events, including the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Brexit and Trump campaigns, and recent campus politics. Anthony Leaker argues that the defence of free speech has played a pivotal role in a resurgent right-wing nationalism, that it is the rallying point for a wider set of reactionary political demands, a form of aggrieved liberalism at best and patriarchal white supremacy at worst, aided by a complicit liberal centre. By focusing on these events and situating them within the wider geopolitical context of a post-democratic, post-truth world of austerity, ongoing conflict in the Middle East, pasokification, and rising fascism, Leaker critiques the role that the defence of free speech has played in legitimising the scapegoating of oppressed minorities while deflecting attention from the egregious operations of power that have led to ever greater inequality, injustice and capitalist destruction.This powerful book shows that free speech is in fact a myth, an ideological tool employed by those in power to sustain existing power relations.

This is a pugnacious polemic that dissects and exposes the flaws, gaps, unstated assumptions and unexamined prejudices that lie beneath the surface of dominant and barely questioned arguments for free speech that have been deployed on behalf of powerful social groups and interests against the subordinated and marginalised. All who value public discourse and social justice should read it.--Anshuman Mondal, Professor of Modern Literature & Director of Research, University of East Anglia, Uncompromising, appropriately scornful where necessary, and with a fine eye for his opponents' contradictions and complacencies, Anthony Leaker's Against Free Speech lucidly unpicks the liberal mainstream's ubiquitous clichés about speech rights. In reminding us what 'free speech' means for its victims, Leaker's critique is sure to infuriate all those whose hypocrisies he incisively and expertly lays bare.--Nick Riemer, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Sydney

Anthony Leaker is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Critical Theory at the University of Brighton.