Molyneux & Southern V Goff: This was never about free speech

Having achieved its $50,000 target, NZ's newly-minted Free Speech Coalition has proceeded immediately into battle by demonstrating that it knows very little about free speech.

Free speech does not require that you, or the state, provide anyone with a microphone. It simply means that the state must refrain from banning anyone from using their own.

In the case being litigated by the Coalition, the state (in the guise of the Auckland mayor) has not banned speech. It has simply withdrawn a taxpayer-funded microphone.

That is not a free speech violation. It is a judgement call.

It's true that the issue is more confused because the microphone is ratepayer-funded. But as Thomas Jefferson long ago pointed out,* there is little that is more repugnant than to force people to pay to support views they despise. I, for one, (as I've said here many times) despise everything these two stand for. I would not want a cent of mine to go towards supporting their views. Many others, I'm grateful to learn, feel the same.

And that said, nothing stops these oafs from purchasing their own microphone and continuing their tour. They haven't, perhaps because touring here was never their genuine intention. Their true intention, I strongly suspect, was simply to achieve what they've already achieved: headlines and notoriety and a small degree of public martyrdom by a little bit of astute guerrilla marketing.

You really can't buy the publicity garnered in the last few days. Before this spat, there were probably 12 people in the country who knew who these two alt-right morons were, and maybe half-a-dozen who may have ever paid to hear them. Now, many thousands do, and might.

Well played Mr Promoter -- because it seems clear that those thousands, and Mr Goff, have been well played. Have been very well played indeed...

But ... but ... the venue they'd booked is "public property," I still hear many of you cry. But ... but ... "the premises in question are public!" screams an anonymous commenter here this morning. Well, since this is perhaps the part of this issue that most confuses free speech supporters, let's have it out.

Do you think there might be a reason their promoter booked a ratepayer-paid venue instead of a private one?

Yes, I think there probably is.

Bear in mind that one of the defining characteristics of alt-right activism is to use left-wing tactics and ideas against the left.

Hence, for example, the whole-hearted and facile embrace by the alt-right of identity politics.

Hence, as well, the adoption of the mis-directional guerrilla marketing of the left to popularise the alt-right people.

Leave aside for a moment the idiocy of adopting your erstwhile opponent's principles; but the adoption of their tactics is here proving very effective.

And about those tactics and the question of "public property": cast your mind back to the first and very public student protests at Berkeley back in the early 60s, to the protests on "public property" that kicked off the Free Speech Movement (as it was officially called) which swiftly morphed into more violent and more obscene action (such as the Filthy Language Movement, as it was also officially called, that plastered the places with precisely what is said on the label) -- a movement that challenged university regents across the United States to shut down frequently obscene and violent behaviour on public campuses, to then be tarred with the erroneous claim that the regents had "shut down free speech." The aim of the activism being, naturally, to achieve the shutdown.

The key feature here, argued Ayn Rand in a piece analysing the birth of this movement, is

that a radical core uses legitimate issues ambiguously in order to manipulate a larger mass.

The legitimate issue is free speech. The ambiguity involves so-called public property. The manipulation is to gain credibility and public attention for what in any other context should attract only odium.

Isn't that precisely what happened here in New Zealand this week?

To paraphrase Johnny Rotten, "Ever get the feeling you've been manipulated?"

There was a very good reason that so-called "public property" was chosen for those protests and this booking: not because no other venues were more suitable (a back room in a small pub would have been far more appropriate for the booking) but precisely because of the concept's very ambiguity. (And because of it, a larger mass than the oafs truly deserve are doing all they can to publicise two people who never more deserved anonymity.)

This is one of the many important points made in Rand's analysis, and is worth considering here: that the many contradictions of the mixed economy are those so well exploited by these movements. Consider it in the case of the so-called Free Speech Movement that erupted on those campuses:

There can be no such thing as the right to an unrestricted freedom of speech (or of action) on someone else’s property. The fact that the University at Berkeley is owned by the state merely complicates the issue, but does not alter it. The owners of a state university are the voters and taxpayers of that state. The University administration, appointed (directly or indirectly) by an elected official, is, theoretically, the agent of the owners—and has to act as such, so long as state universities exist. (Whether they should exist is a different question.)... The right to determine what sort of language is permissible belongs to the administration of a university—fully as much as to the owner of a barroom.

Just as the right to determine what sort of activity is permissible in a council concert venue belongs to the administration of the council.

But what proper ideological policy should such an administration adopt in taking bookings? Answer: In a free society, there is no proper policy they can take. As Rand observes, "it is a question that has no answer."

 There are no solutions for the many contradictions inherent in the concept of “public property,” particularly when the property is directly concerned with the dissemination of ideas. This is one of the reasons why the rebels would choose a state university [or a council-run venue] as their first battleground...

A good case could be made for the claim that a state university [or council administration] has no right to forbid the ... advocacy of any political viewpoint whatever... An equally good case could be made for the claim that [it] has no right to permit the ... advocacy of any political viewpoint which (as, for instance, communism) is a direct threat to the property, freedom, and lives of the majority of the taxpaying owners... 

On the one hand, a government institution has no right to forbid the expression of any ideas. On the other hand, a government institution has no right to harbour, assist, and finance the [ratepayer’s] enemies...

In the context of a mixed economy, the question is quite literally irresolvable.

Does this then illustrate that free speech is inherently unworkable in a free society? Not at all. What it demonstrates instead is that free speech is inherently unworkable without property rights.

The source of these contradictions does not lie in the principle of individual rights, but in their violation by the collectivist institution of “public property.”

And this, I suggest, is precisely why "public property" was chosen for the farce. Precisely because of its ambiguity.

The technique of the rebels, as of all statists, was to take advantage of the principles of a free society in order to undercut them by an alleged demonstration of their “impracticability”—in this case, the “impracticability” of the right of free speech. But, in fact, what they have demonstrated is a point farthest removed from their goals: that no rights of any kind can be exercised without property rights. It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.

That obvious principle has been demonstrated over and over -- and has again, here, this week.

If that could be the one lesson the supporters of the mis-named Free Speech Coalition would at least recognise, I would be happy.

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* "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves & abhors, is sinful & tyrannical." ~ Thomas Jefferson
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