Last week the Federal Court found that Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt had breached the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) in two articles published in 2009. The aftermath of the judgment has been heated debate about freedom of speech. And it hasn’t just been journalists who are speaking up about the ruling. What grabbed us so much about this particular case? Why do people care so deeply about freedom of speech? What was Bolt up to that so sharply divided our opinions about the right to offend in a public forum?
So many of us operate with a kind of adolescent idea of freedom. I gotta do what I gotta do. This is an impulse control issue, not an issue of freedom. There are lots of things I’d like to say here about Andrew Bolt — things straight from my id in particular. To write them might be fun, even cathartic, but it wouldn’t qualify as an expression of freedom.
Real freedom isn’t about acting on impulse. What has been restricted for Andrew Bolt through this imperfect legislation is not freedom but impulsivity. Having to get your facts straight is part of a genuine expression of freedom, because real freedom is always connected to actual knowledge. Without knowledge, even the freedom to speak becomes just a stab in the dark.
This of course doesn’t mean that the current RDA legislation isn’t flawed. And it doesn’t mean that racism will be curbed by its enforcement either. The facts can always be made friendly. But what raises our hackles about restricting what might cause offence? In the commentary on the decision to penalise Andrew Bolt, a lot of time has been spent on either drawing the line or refusing to accept the need for lines at all.
In the responses both to Bolt’s contested columns and to the restriction of them, we have revealed a very deep-seated obsession with transgression. We are fascinated with both his ability to say stupid and hateful things, and with whether the punishment he received will stop him and ultimately restrict us. We’re deeply concerned with how far we can go and with where the line is.
We are also obsessed with appearance here — the appearance of having the facts straight, the appearance of light and dark skin, and the appearance of freedom of speech. In fact real freedom is always accompanied by a commitment to understanding. It is never about the superficial.
To look at freedom of speech in the light of this case, we need to go beyond the superficial and analyse what it is Andrew Bolt is actually doing and how his particular style of commentary functions.
Bolt can line up at the back of a long queue of white men who have tried to define blackness for other people. Nothing new here. Attempting to pit black people against each other? Nothing new there either.
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