We must defend the right to offend because protecting people’s right to say things that I consider offensive is precisely what protects my right to offend. This, of course, unless the offended person is offended in an obscenely impostered manner.
We have been reading it for years in columns, tribunes, debates and pulpits: freedom of expression is in danger because the Holy Company of Cancel Culture walks through our society imperturbably. The culprits: the warriors of social justice, the sanctimonious of morality, the offended, those who exaggerate their vulnerability. As a consequence of this notable threat, years ago, a genre of public intellectuals emerged whose main – and sometimes only – attraction is their declared willingness to defend freedom of expression. The basic idea of his thesis is the following: in the good times – the old ones – people could accept a joke or a politically incorrect comment, not anymore. He status quo has been reduced to a group of whining lazy people.
What do we know about them? The new Red Guardians of Morals are mostly young, left-wing and easily offended. Have you noticed this disturbance in your freedom of expression? Probably not. Most of us have continued unperturbed with our lives. Because beyond a handful of overexposed controversies – most of them in American universities – no one in their day-to-day life would know how to identify how this cancel culture affects them. But let’s talk about freedom of expression.
I personally agree with the threat posed by a group of people imposing strict rules that limit our ability to express ourselves. But isn’t that precisely what certain conservative sectors do? Aren’t they the ones who hyperventilate every time a vulva appears in a play, every time there is a joke about religion, every time a textbook talks about sexuality, every time someone does a performance with some religious topic, every time the debate on sexual education comes to the fore, or now with the thousand times mentioned heifer of the Grand Prix? Aren’t they, from some of their vigilante apparatuses like Hazte Oír, the ones who, in reality, live and profit from trying to limit freedom of expression? Aren’t they the ones who criticize the indoctrination of others while they try to indoctrinate based on complaints?
In the absence of a pan-global offense calculator that measures exactly what things should offend us most as a society, we people have our own scales. Salman Rushdie says it, who knows a lot about offending: “No one has the right not to be offended. That right does not exist in any statement I have read. If someone is offended, it’s your problem and nothing happens: many things offend many people. If we really want a free society, we have to defend the right to offend – with the obvious limit of inciting violence. And beyond that, we also have to defend the possibility, always probable, of feeling offended by someone. Because what protects people’s right to say things I consider offensive is precisely what protects my right to offend. This, of course, unless the person offended is in an obscenely false way.
#offend
