I’m broadly enthusiastic about AI, especially when it operates within a legal and cultural order grounded in freedom of expression and access to information. But books remain our most powerful technology for the deep immersion and long-term diffusion of ideas.

Content optimized for speed, virality, and short attention spans rarely matches the staying power of books. We are still reading and arguing with manuscripts written thousands of years ago. I doubt the Baby Shark dance video, despite its 16 billion YouTube views, will exert the same influence as Aristotle’s Politics two and a half millennia from now.

I am certainly no Aristotle, and I do not expect my work to survive into the year 4026. But books do travel farther, and last longer, than one imagines when writing them. What began as material for a podcast in 2017 became, in 2022, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media, which has been translated into Danish, Czech, Arabic, and Japanese, with more translations to follow.

Today, I’m very pleased that the book is being published in Spanish as Libertad de expresión: Una historia global desde Sócrates hasta las redes sociales by Ladera Norte.

I’ve also been delighted to see Spanish writers and outlets engage seriously with its arguments, despite the book’s relatively limited treatment of the Spanish-speaking world.

Below are some translated snippets:

First, a column in ABC by Jesús García Calero:

We live in a volatile time, and it has become fashionable to organize summits against hate. Democracies are on the defensive, powerless to safeguard their principles, with the public sphere shattered by polarization and the arrival of a world without rules, where autocrats run rampant, and in which institutions are wounded and in question, from the UN on down. The implicit question is: who must be silenced, and why?

In recent days, the book Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media, by Jacob Mchangama, published by Ladera Norte, has fallen into my hands. It is a striking work because it analyzes the problem from a unique perspective.

What is happening to us has already happened a thousand times; it is in the books. And the question is why we keep repeating failed strategies, the mistakes that dealt the final blow to the Roman Republic (the assassination of Cicero after the Philippics), to Weimar (which helped drive the rise of Nazism), or those that turned the Terror into one of the most enduring legacies of the French Revolution in the periods that followed.

ABC has also published an excerpt from the book:

To impose silence and call it tolerance does not make it so. Real tolerance requires understanding. Understanding comes from listening. Listening presupposes speech. By connecting past speech controversies with the most pressing contemporary ones, I hope to demonstrate just how much humanity has gained from the gradual spread of free speech—and just how much we stand to lose if we allow its continued erosion in this most recent digital phase of the age-old conflict between authority and free expression.

From Miguel Ángel Aguilar in 20minutos:

For this reason, the book Free Speech: A Global History from Socrates to Social Media, written by the Dane Jacob Mchangama and published in recent days by the publisher Ladera Norte, ought to be required reading….

With insight, Jacob Mchangama points out that the entropy inherent in freedom of expression, in addition to stemming from political causes, is rooted in human psychology, and that it is the urge to please, the fear of marginalization, the desire to avoid conflict, and the norms of courtesy that push us to silence uncomfortable speakers, whether on digital platforms, university campuses, or in cultural institutions. And he concludes that, for this reason, “it is of vital importance to actively foster and sustain a culture of respect for freedom of expression in order to ensure that it endures, given that laws alone are not sufficient.”

A column by Ricardo Cayuela Gally in The Objective:

While Europe debated, printed, and engaged in polemics, the Ottoman Empire closed in on itself. The consequence was not stability, but progressive weakening and the loss of the larger historical contest with the West.

The Danish essayist Jacob Mchangama examines this episode in Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media (which Ladera Norte will publish in Spanish, to return to the bias), where he describes the ‘panic of the elites’ in the face of a disruptive technology. In that same historical survey, he also analyzes what happened in the Weimar Republic, coining the expression ‘the Weimar paradox’ to explain how the restrictions adopted to defend democracy ended up facilitating its destruction.

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And finally, here is an interview from last year with Alejo Schapire in the Argentinian magazine Seul:

There are many debates about the limits of freedom of expression, due to social media and polarization. However, as we can see in his book, much of this debate has taken place very similarly for centuries, especially with the arrival of the printing press. What is old and again in this debate?

The old is probably this dynamic of two conceptions of freedom of expression: one egalitarian and one elitist. One has its roots in Athenian democracy, the egalitarian conception, and the other is more typical of the Roman, Elitist republic, from top to bottom. The elitist conception of freedom of expression is very uncomfortable with the expansion of the public sphere through new communication technologies. So, when the public sphere expands, the traditional guardians, who are the ones who set the parameters of acceptable debate, fear that allowing new voices (mobs unfinished in the public sphere) will lead to the dissolution of society, its basic norms and values. It’s something we see over and over again.

There are many versions of this from the printing press. It happens very evidently with the Catholic Church, which is initially actually happy with the printing press, since it allows them to spread the good news faster. But suddenly, Martin Luther appears. And the Reformation uses the printing press and a very direct populist way, one could say, of communicating with the masses to fracture European Christianity. But it is also seen in the Enlightenment in France. The printing press was obviously a challenge to the Old Regime, as the thoughts of the Enlightenment became more and more prominent. And you see it now. It started with the telegraph and now you see a lot with social networks. In that sense, it is not a new dynamic as such.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (forthcoming with Jeff Kosseff).

On October 1, 1917, the Trustees of Columbia University dismissed two professors who had written and spoken out against U.S. involvement in World War I — violating a Columbia policy requiring “unqualified loyalty to the Government of the United States” by staff, students, and faculty. A faculty committee concluded that the professors had engaged in “public agitation against the conduct of the war,” disseminating doctrines “tending to encourage disloyalty,” causing “grave injury” to Columbia’s reputation.

The celebrated historian Charles Beard — who was himself investigated and later cleared after being accused of condoning disparaging comments about the U.S. flag — resigned in protest against the dismissal of his colleagues, describing an atmosphere dominated by men who “are reactionary and visionless in politics, narrow and medieval in religion.”

Even the New York Times praised Columbia for cracking down on doctrines “dangerous to the community and to the nation,” insisting that “academic freedom has two sides,” and that “freedom to teach is correlative to the freedom to dispense with poisonous teaching.” It lauded Columbia’s refusal to indulge Beard’s protest and decision to stand firm against “the teachers of false doctrines sheltering themselves behind the shibboleth of academic freedom.”

Did any of this erode free speech? Not according to the logic of Ken White (a.k.a. Popehat) — a prominent First Amendment lawyer — who published a polemic against the notion of “free speech culture,” insisting that free speech essentially means protection against state censorship. Apply White’s formulaic conception to Columbia’s purge, and there’s nothing to see.

Columbia was a private university with broad legal freedom to choose whom it employs and what norms it enforces. The New York Times was equally free to applaud the crackdown. If the standard is simply “no one was censored by a government actor,” then there is no scandal here — only private association and private editorial judgment.

But if your standard is the values that undergird an open society — if you believe universities and a free press should cultivate habits of open inquiry and pluralism rather than enforce political loyalty — then the Columbia episode looks like an attack on the very culture that sustains those principles.

Getting to the heart of which conception of free speech best sustains a liberal democracy at a time of intensive polarization and illiberal crackdowns matters enormously. White doesn’t simply reject the concept of a free speech culture as philosophically incoherent. He also claims it is easily exploited by bad-faith actors and even implicated in the rise of government censorship under the Trump administration.

He identifies some real pathologies, but he draws the wrong conclusion: he responds to hypocrisy and vagueness by trying to discredit the underlying ideal. That move is not only historically myopic but strategically self-defeating.

Let’s take his argument seriously, in good faith. And then let’s test it against principle, logic, and history.

What White Gets Right

White is right about at least three things.

First, free speech attracts bad-faith actors and grifters. Since the election of Donald Trump, free speech grifting on the political right has surged, as complaints about censorship and cancel culture have given way to gleeful mobilization of online mobs to punish dissent. White’s point that free speech hypocrisy has become rampant is depressingly obvious to anyone with a social media account.

Second, he is right that the line between criticism and “cancellation” blurs more readily in private life than the line between private pressure and the state’s coercive machinery. Government censorship is categorically different: it threatens liberty by force and is constrained by constitutional rights that prescribe relatively bright lines.

Third, he is right that we should guard against civic nonsense like “criticism is censorship.” White argues that “free speech culture” talk encourages precisely that confusion, fostering a “false equivalence” between state punishment and social sanction.

But none of this is decisive. Each point cuts both ways. Hypocrisy is real, but so is the basic insight that free speech depends not only on law but on norms. The line between criticism and cancellation is fuzzy, but fuzzy boundaries do not erase meaningful distinctions. And confusion about “censorship” may erode hard-won constitutional protections, but one of the best remedies is to teach the difference — without pretending that social coercion is morally trivial or irrelevant to how those constitutional norms took shape in the first place.

Which brings us to White’s two main arguments: the “First Speaker problem” and the claim that “free speech culture” favors the powerful over the powerless.

The “First Speaker” Problem Is Largely A Rhetorical Ploy

White’s central thought experiment imagines a censorious speaker coming to campus and students responding with protests and disruption. He then suggests that “free speech culture” asks moral questions only of the students, not of the censorious speaker.

He calls this the “First Speaker problem.” It is less a problem than a framing trick.

If a speaker arrives to argue that “gender ideology” should be banned from curricula, that faculty should be policed for “anti-American” content, or that immigrants should be deported for criticizing the government, nothing prevents students from vigorously opposing those views before, during, and after the event — so long as they do not physically or procedurally prevent the speaker from speaking or the audience from listening. That is the heckler’s veto, and opposing it is not the same as endorsing the speaker.

Indeed, the reason speakers become controversial is often that their viewpoints have already been hotly debated and criticized long before any invitation was issued. White pretends that the “first speaker” floats into an apolitical vacuum and is then crowned a hero simply because they were scheduled first.

More importantly, White conflates two separate ideas: opposing a heckler’s veto and treating the invited speaker as a moral hero.

A commitment to a robust culture of free speech entails the first. It does not entail the second. White’s repeated insinuation that “free speech culture” treats the first speaker as “the hero” and dissenters as “villains” describes a caricature, not a principle.

A culture of free speech does not grant anyone the right to be loved, amplified, platformed, or shielded from scorn. It does not guarantee an op-ed in the New York Times or a massive social media following. The point is narrower and sturdier: in institutions devoted to inquiry — universities above all — the default response to disagreeable ideas should be argument and critique, not purges and punishments. Students should be habituated to respond to ideas they dislike with arguments that articulate the substance of their disagreement, not incentivized to build echo chambers of conformity. They need not be polite or pull rhetorical punches; they can peacefully protest and use epithets if they so wish.

In other words, you can condemn the speaker’s views and condemn efforts to prevent the event from taking place. You can reject the censor’s worldview while also rejecting censorious tactics by the censor’s opponents. Anyone who works in the field of free speech recognizes this instantly. I cannot count the number of times I have argued with people who believe that “misinformation,” “hate speech,” or other poorly defined categories should be prohibited. Yet, like most other civil-libertarian proponents of free speech, my response is not to demand that people who argue for censorship be cancelled.

Like Nadine Strossen, Greg Lukianoff, Suzanne Nossell, Salman Rushdie, Floyd Abrams, and other principled free speech defenders, I respond — to the best of my ability — with arguments, evidence, and counter-mobilization. The goal is not to canonize the censor. The goal is to defeat bad ideas without turning institutions into engines of ideological punishment. That is not “preferring the first speaker” — it is refusing to imitate the censor.

What Is Cancel Culture?

White is right that “cancel culture” is often vaguely defined. But that calls for better definitions, not for dismissing the phenomenon as incoherent.

Jonathan Rauch has done what White largely declines to do: he offers a practical checklist that distinguishes criticism from cancellation. His “Cancel Culture Checklist” asks whether the response is punitive — aimed at livelihood and social exclusion with denunciations to employers and professional groups; whether it attempts to blacklist; and whether the campaign seeks to isolate or intimidate rather than persuade. Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott have written an entire book full of data and compelling examples that document and discuss cancel culture.

I have also tried my hand at defining this phenomenon in Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media:

“Determining whether private action undermines or is an exercise of the culture of free speech can be difficult. After all, free speech does not grant anyone the right to have an op-ed published in the New York Times or a huge following on social media. Still there is a fundamental difference between reacting to ideas one loathes with scorn or criticism and demanding that specific viewpoints be purged and their authors and enablers punished with loss of livelihood or disciplinary sanctions…It is particularly problematic when media institutions, social media platforms, and universities — who cannot function without free speech — come to internalize the idea that provocative opinions are ‘dangerous,’ ‘unsafe,’ or even ‘harmful’ to their own staff, students, readers, and users.”

You may disagree with any of these definitions and authors, but lumping them together with right-wing grifters and enablers of government censorship would be intellectually dishonest.

White argues that giving a platform to someone like Amy Wax to discuss her cancellation — after she was disciplined by her university for saying discriminatory things about Asian Americans — shows that the “ethos” of “free speech culture” is broken. But providing someone a platform to speak does not imply agreement. A student group inviting a communist may not be apologists for the dictatorship of the proletariat; they may simply be curious about why someone would cling to political beliefs discredited by history.

Moreover, using Amy Wax as his example makes White’s case easy by narrowing the field to edge cases with high moral salience. But the vast majority of cancellations do not target bigots or literal Nazis. They can target even mundane views, such as opposing race-based university admissions. And in recent years, many of the most intense cancellation campaigns have centered on conflicts — like Israel and Gaza — where moral certainty is widespread but moral clarity is scarce.

Unlike White’s selective examples, FIRE’s “Students Under Fire” report identified over 1,000 efforts by administrators and student governments to punish student speech from 2020 to 2024. In 637 cases — 63 percent — students or student groups received at least one administrative punishment over the five-year period.

The most frequently targeted groups span the political divide: Students for Justice in Palestine, Turning Point USA, and College Republicans. And the censorious impulse has shifted. For the first time since FIRE began its annual College Free Speech Rankings, its 2026 edition found that the percentage of students willing to allow controversial liberal speakers dropped at a greater rate than for conservative ones, suggesting that right-wing cancel culture has grown on college campuses.

This data does not tell a story about protecting powerful “first speakers.” It reveals how quickly institutions reach for coercive tools against students across ideologies — and how those who wield the power to cancel today can find themselves on the receiving end tomorrow.

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“Free Speech Culture” Protects The Vulnerable, Not Just The Powerful

White claims that “free speech culture” has “a natural tendency” to favor powerful people with big platforms over obscure people without them. He observes, fairly, that we notice prominent victims more than invisible ones.

But the conclusion does not follow. If anything, the moral logic runs the other way. The professors fired by Columbia in 1917 were neither powerful nor empowered by their dismissal.

The more economically and institutionally vulnerable you are, the more dangerous punitive social sanctions become. That is why right-wing cancellation campaigns after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump targeted not public figures but ordinary Americans — Home Depot employees, firefighters, chefs, and school counselors. And it is why I warned — after Charlie Kirk’s assassination — that “an ideological online inquisition seeking to punish people for social media comments” was producing “firings and blacklists” aimed at ordinary people, even as some of the same actors had built their brand on opposition to cancel culture.

Cancellation falls hardest on those with the least leverage: those who cannot weather reputational storms, hire lawyers, mobilize peers, wait out a news cycle, or start a successful podcast.

The deeper historical point is even more uncomfortable for White’s framing. The idea that cultural intolerance can prove more “formidable than many kinds of political oppression” was not a scheme invented by right-wing influencers to cash in on ragebaiting. Its most influential articulation comes from John Stuart Mill, who warned that Victorian norms created a “social tyranny” that could be worse than legal penalties.

Mill’s insight was not a defense of the powerful. It was a warning about how majorities— especially righteous majorities — use informal coercion to enforce conformity.

From Athens to Mill to Laski to Holmes: The Unbroken Thread White Ignores

But Mill did not invent the idea that a strong free speech culture undergirds free societies either. He refined it—drawing on a much older lineage reaching back to ancient Athens and what the Greeks called parrhēsia: frank, fearless speech as a civic practice, extolled in the Athenian statesman Pericles’ famous funeral oration around 431 BCE.

Mill’s close friend and ally, the nineteenth-century historian of Greece and radical MP George Grote, rehabilitated Athenian democracy as a model for liberal reform. Grote praised “the liberty of thought and action at Athens, not merely from excessive restraint of law, but also from practical intolerance between man and man, and tyranny of the majority over individual dissenters in taste and pursuit.” He contrasted this with modern societies where “the intolerance of the national opinion cuts down individual character.”

That is “free speech culture” in everything but name: the recognition that the social environment can either encourage intellectual courage or punish it into silence.

The nineteenth-century renaissance of Athenian parrhēsia would prove relevant to momentous developments in American First Amendment jurisprudence.

During World War I and the Red Scare, opponents of America’s involvement in the war were not only hounded out of universities such as Columbia. They were persecuted by the government under the Espionage Act. The legal protections of the First Amendment remained anemic as pacifists, radicals, and socialists were sentenced to years in prison for distributing anti-draft pamphlets. Yet Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous dissent in Abrams v. United States inspired later jurisprudence to move past restrictive readings of the First Amendment and protect speech even when the majority considers it objectionable.

That intellectual shift did not happen in a cultural vacuum. It happened amid precisely the kind of “cancel culture” pressures White wants to treat as morally uninteresting.

Holmes was influenced not only by abstract arguments but also by relationships—especially with younger intellectuals who lobbied him to reconsider his views. One of the most significant was British Jewish intellectual Harold Laski, then an instructor at Harvard. After pressure from faculty, administrators, and alumni to have him fired for his pro-union views, Laski ultimately left Harvard. Much of the outrage leveled at Laski was more than tinged with antisemitism. But Laski’s ordeal played a significant role in convincing Holmes that laws targeting “sedition” could just as easily scapegoat any opinion unpopular with intolerant majorities.

Here is where the Mill–Grote–Athens thread becomes more than a literary flourish.

Holmes reread Mill’s On Liberty at Laski’s suggestion. Mill’s theory of the culture of free speech helped reshape Holmes’ understanding of where to draw the constitutional lines of free speech.

“Free speech culture” was not a trendy excuse for censorship but the intellectual pathway by which a leading jurist—nudged by a younger radical who himself faced social and institutional backlash—helped lay the groundwork for modern First Amendment doctrine.

The lesson is blunt: the American constitutional story of free speech is inseparable from conflicts over private retaliation, professional sanction, and reputational ruin. White’s attempt to quarantine “culture” from “law” amounts to historical amnesia.

A Principled Bottom Line

Criticism of cancel culture is not a plea to coddle the powerful, nor a demand to canonize the “first speaker.” It is a plea for a consistent liberal ethic that rejects both state censorship of dissent and institutional purges in the name of safety, purity, or orthodoxy—especially in universities and cultural institutions that cannot function without open inquiry. These norms sit comfortably alongside full-throated protection for protest and criticism, coupled with a refusal to normalize tactics aimed at silencing and punishing rather than persuading.

Rather than a recipe for grift and bullshit, this ethic is the foundation of a resilient theory of free speech — informed by history, practical experience, and the feedback loop between culture and law.

From Athens’ parrhēsia, to Grote’s defense of dissent against majority tyranny, to Mill’s warning against “social tyranny,” to Holmes’ Mill-inspired turn toward a “free trade in ideas”—the throughline is simple:

Constitutional protections of free speech rest on broader civic commitments that are easier to lose than to rebuild. Once the civic commitment crumbles, the constitutional protections follow.

White is right to worry that bad actors will launder repression through free-speech lip service. But instead of sneering at the notion of “free speech culture,” we should insist— relentlessly — on the real thing.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (forthcoming with Jeff Kosseff).

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Democracies have long feared “Big Tech”—a shorthand for platforms that can spread hatred, disinformation, and extremism at scale. But I’m increasingly convinced Big Tech has also become a very useful villain for panicked politicians anxious about their inability to control public discourse in the digital age.

These days, almost any initiative—however coercive—can be packaged as a heroic defense of “democracy” and “digital sovereignty” (two concepts that until recently were seen as hard to reconcile) against evil tech oligarchs.

What’s more startling is how many people, media outlets, and civil society institutions cheer politicians who promise to “hold social media accountable,” without pausing to ask what that “accountability” actually means in practice.

Consider Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. In a recent speech, at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, he proposed ending anonymity on social media, holding tech executives personally criminally liable for “illegal” and “hateful” content, criminalizing certain forms of algorithmic amplification/manipulation of illegal content, and urging prosecutors to investigate platforms under a “zero-tolerance” posture.

On paper, the target sounds like tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

In reality, the main target is the millions of ordinary users in European democracies who hold, share, and argue about immigration, Israel–Palestine, health policy, foreign policy, and other topics that make governments uncomfortable—especially at a moment of geopolitical uncertainty and anti-elitist electoral revolts.

Sánchez sounds convincing when he calls social media a “failed state” and paints democracy as the victim of foreign aggression. But make no mistake: if these proposals are implemented—and then exported across Europe, as he suggests—they would amount to one of the most serious crackdowns on free speech the continent has seen since the end of the Cold War.

Elon Musk’s views on European politics may well be ill-informed and highly partisan. But criticism of political decisions lies at the very heart of free speech. Framing such criticism as an “attack” on an “elected government” implies that once elections are over, the winners’ policies, priorities, and actions should be insulated from scrutiny—as if democratic legitimacy were a shield against dissent.

That is a distorted view of liberal democracy, where pluralism, argument, and sharp criticism are the lifeblood of self-government, and where “sovereignty” does not include the power to decide which ideas and information citizens may access or share. This principle is stated with exceptional clarity in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

In any case, Sánchez and his government are hardly powerless in the face of online criticism. They have abundant means to respond, rebut, and persuade. Sánchez’s own post featuring excerpts of his speech has attracted more than 1.8 million views on X alone, and it has been greeted enthusiastically by many users across platforms.

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If anything, this is a reminder that governments are not helpless before social media—and that powerful politicians still enjoy an outsized megaphone. The real difference from the pre-social-media era is not that politicians have lost their voice, but that they now receive immediate feedback—often critical—from citizens, rather than enjoying the privilege of largely one-way, top-down communication to the masses.

It’s particularly disappointing that such proposals come from Spain—a country that knows what it means to live under stifling top-down censorship, and understands the difference between a population whose ideas and information are tightly controlled and a population allowed to think and speak for itself.

There’s also a glaring strategic contradiction. Europe rightly wants to supercharge innovation and build a vibrant European tech stack as an alternative to U.S. dominance. But how many startups will choose Europe if executives risk prison for failing to remove illegal content (a task that is not only difficult but often impossible if you also want to provide users with voice)? Would you provide a platform for users to engage in political speech if public officials effectively invite prosecutors to open zero-tolerance investigations whenever controversial content surfaces?

To truly appreciate how far democracies have gone down the road of censorship, compare Sánchez’s posture with the language used by (then) Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro after his fraudulent win in the 2024 presidential election (via The Guardian):

“Elon Musk is the owner of X and has violated all the rules of the social network itself,” said Maduro… He alleged Musk had “incited hatred”.

Maduro also accused the social network of being used by his opponents to create political unrest.

Venezuela’s president said he had signed a resolution “with the proposal made by Conatel, the National Telecommunications Commission, which has decided to remove the social network X… from circulation in Venezuela for 10 days…”

Whatever you think about Elon Musk, no principled free speech champion himself, is this really the playbook that Europe wants to adopt?

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (forthcoming with Jeff Kosseff).

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This essay was originally published by Persuasion on Jan. 28, 2025.

On October 17, 1961, tens of thousands of Algerians marched through the streets of Paris in peaceful defiance of a discriminatory curfew imposed by the French state. Police opened fire, beat protesters, arrested them en masse—and, in some cases, threw people into the Seine, where they drowned. Historians later called it “the bloodiest act of state repression of street protest in Western Europe in modern history.” At least 48—but possibly hundreds—were killed.

Yet for decades, the official story minimized the violence. The death toll, it was claimed, was three. Police had acted to defend themselves. The protesters were terrorists.

The French state actively buried the truth. Records were falsified. Evidence suppressed. Investigations blocked. Publications seized. The paper trail was shaped to match the story.

In 1999, the French Public Prosecutor’s Office concluded that a massacre had taken place, but only in 2012 did President Hollande acknowledge it on behalf of the French Republic. This is the danger of a public sphere without a distributed capacity to challenge official accounts in real time: It is difficult to imagine that the events of October 17 could have been hidden for so long if thousands of protesters and bystanders had carried smartphones, livestreamed the crackdown, and uploaded footage as the bodies hit the water.

Paris 1961 is a historical warning. Minneapolis 2026 is its modern counterpoint.

Within hours of the killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents on January 24, top officials attempted to shape the narrative. They placed the blame squarely on the victim, with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem claiming that Pretti “approached” ICE officers with a gun and was killed after he “violently resisted” attempts to disarm him. White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller called Pretti “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” FBI Director Kash Patel said, “You don’t have a right to break the law and incite violence.”

In other words, Pretti supposedly posed a threat and paid the price.

But something happened that couldn’t have happened in France in 1961. As bystander footage spread across social media, the official narrative began to collapse. Videos appeared to show a cellphone in one of Pretti’s hands and no gun in the other. Officers also appeared to remove his holstered gun—legally carried—before he was shot several times. It then emerged that Pretti was an ICU nurse with no criminal record—hardly the prototype of a terrorist.

The official account was clearly at odds with the best available evidence. Four days after the shooting, the Trump administration is already scrambling to save face, cast blame, and “de-escalate” the ICE presence in Minnesota.

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The current obsession with misinformation tends to focus on the public: online mobs, foreign influencers, flaming trolls. But history suggests a more inconvenient truth: in times of crisis, disinformation often comes from above. Governments, including democratic ones, have powerful incentives to shape information. When a state agent shoots a citizen, the response is rarely “Let’s expose ourselves to transparency.” It is often the opposite: to control the narrative, limit scrutiny, discourage dissent, and frame the event in morally legitimizing terms.

What should our response look like? The Pretti case offered an answer—not only through the videos, but through something else that happened almost simultaneously: the public correction of powerful figures, at scale. Within hours, the statements by Miller, Noem, and Patel—and even the official @DHSgov account—had all received Community Notes on X, a platform that, ironically, has become increasingly central to the populist right and is owned by Trump ally Elon Musk.

This is where social media performs a civic function.

When platforms label content as “false” in a top-down fashion, many users interpret it as bias—“truth policing” by corporate gatekeepers in cahoots with governments. But the Community Notes system is different. It is crowdsourced, asking volunteers to add context and sources to misleading posts. An open-source algorithm decides which notes become visible, and, crucially, prioritizes notes that gain support from users with different political perspectives. The point is not unanimity—it’s cross-ideological agreement sufficient to clear a threshold of credibility.

This is what makes bottom-up correction hard to dismiss as partisan censorship. It involves a distributed group of users reaching a form of consensus, often by pointing to credible reporting. It can create a positive feedback loop: journalism supplies verifiable facts; the crowd amplifies and contextualizes them; the overall information environment becomes more resilient.

Early research into the impact of crowdsourcing is promising. Studies have found high accuracy rates for Community Notes in specific domains like COVID-19 content, and a significant share of notes cite high-quality sources.

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More broadly, crowdsourced fact-checking reflects an important principle: when trust in elite institutions collapses, a purely expert-driven model may fail or even backfire. Politically diverse crowds can sometimes do what “authoritative” gatekeepers cannot: persuade skeptics that a correction is legitimate.

Crowdsourcing is not a silver bullet. The search for a single, decisive fix for disinformation is a “modern mirage” that often serves as a pretext for giving authorities new powers they will inevitably abuse. But the promise of crowdsourcing suggests we should bet on pluralism: multiple, overlapping checks that strengthen the public’s ability to verify claims without empowering any single institution—especially the state—to control the boundaries of permissible speech. The mainstreaming of crowdsourced fact-checking across social media platforms should function as a disincentive to brazen lying by politicians and political influencers.

In Paris in 1961, the state could suppress evidence, control archives, intimidate media, and deflect until public attention faded. In Minneapolis in 2026, video evidence traveled faster than the official storyline—and distributed networks of verification made it harder for powerful figures to rewrite reality without pushback.

This is what a free society should aim for: not a perfect public sphere without falsehoods (which has never existed), but a public sphere with enough openness, transparency, and decentralized checking power to ensure that lies—especially from the top—cannot become the permanent record.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (forthcoming with Jeff Kosseff).

Pope Leo XIV gave some interesting remarks on freedom of expression in his “State of the World” speech today. At the center is a worry that semantic drift is turning language into a weapon—and that appeals to free expression are used to justify duplicity rather than to advance understanding:

Today, the meaning of words is ever more fluid, and the concepts they represent are increasingly ambiguous. Language is no longer the preferred means by which human beings come to know and encounter one another. Moreover, in the contortions of semantic ambiguity, language is becoming more and more a weapon with which to deceive, or to strike and offend opponents. We need words once again to express distinct and clear realities unequivocally. Only in this way can authentic dialogue resume without misunderstandings. This should happen in our homes and public spaces, in politics, in the media and on social media.

[ . . . ]

We should also note the paradox that this weakening of language is often invoked in the name the freedom of expression itself. However, on closer inspection, the opposite is true, for freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed precisely by the certainty of language and the fact that every term is anchored in the truth. It is painful to see how, especially in the West, the space for genuine freedom of expression is rapidly shrinking. At the same time, a new Orwellian-style language is developing which, in an attempt to be increasingly inclusive, ends up excluding those who do not conform to the ideologies that are fueling it.

Ironically, I find the message itself quite ambiguous. When was this period when language did not convey “semantic ambiguity” and was used solely to express “distinct and clear realities unequivocally”?

I have no doubt that Pope Leo is a deeply caring man who views all human beings — regardless of faith or origin — as possessing equal dignity and rights.

But the Church he heads has always been deeply concerned about language and people being led astray by “falsehood” and strife. In previous ages, it has gone to extreme lengths to shield Christendom from the contamination of “heresy” and “heretics”.

Truth is certainly a powerful and compelling justification for freedom of expression, and the Pope is right to care about a common moral commitment to truth among citizens, political institutions, and the media. But Pope Leo, in my mind, goes too far when he says that “freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed precisely by the certainty of language and the fact that every term is anchored in the truth.”

Freedom of expression is humanity’s best available instrument for the pursuit of truth. But inherent in that concept is that no one ever gets the last word or the right to authoritatively define and enforce Truth. This is especially important in the realms of philosophy, science, religion, and politics, where the civilizational stakes are highest.

This is why freedom of expression is such a disruptive idea and anathema to those who believe that a stable and well-ordered society must be organized according to a specific and compulsory belief system. But anchoring freedom of expression to a particular religious or secular doctrine has been tried and failed many times.

In fact, the Catholic Church was instrumental in defeating one such disastrous experiment in the shape of European Communism, whose proponents believed it to be the very manifestation of scientific truth and justified — nay, demanded — that all dissent be silenced and crushed. Millions of Eastern and Central European Catholics were stirred to resist their Communist overlords by Pope John Paul II and his synthesis of Christianity and human rights.

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The Pope’s ambiguity (or my inability to properly understand his message) is why I’m uncertain about what to think about his “deep concern” that the space for “genuine freedom of expression” is shrinking in the West. Does he mean that genuine freedom of expression is shrinking due to the spread of misinformation and divisive rhetoric? Or is he alluding to the way that Western democracies are adopting ever more speech-restrictive laws and policies?

The latter could plausibly be inferred from the Pope’s compelling observation that the language of inclusivity is being used to exclude those who do not conform to dominant ideologies. Christians have frequently been on the receiving end of such laws when expressing their religious beliefs on issues such as abortion, gender identity, and sexual orientation (of course, several Western countries also punish blasphemy). If that’s what the Pope is criticizing, then I’m with him all the way.

But if the Pope’s real concern is how freedom of expression is used to justify the employment of language as a “weapon” that spreads lies and causes offense, then I think he overlooks a crucial point. It is exactly those concerns that — when translated into law and policy — contribute to “Orwellian” developments where ideological exclusion is justified by the language of inclusivity.

Either way, it is certainly refreshing and welcome to have a Pope who prompts discussions about first principles. It’s a powerful testament to the progress that freedom of expression has brought to the countries that have come to accept this counterintuitive, difficult, but most consequential principle.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (forthcoming with Jeff Kosseff).

In Part 1, I showed why Fara Dabhoiwala’s claim that Cato’s Letters invented the American free speech tradition is deeply flawed—and that the Levellers advanced all of Cato’s core arguments eight decades earlier.

Three decades after the Levellers had been censored and suppressed, another radical, secular, and proto-democratic defense of free speech appeared across the Channel in the Dutch Republic. Although the Theological-Political Treatise (1670) was published anonymously and carried a Hamburg imprint, it was written by the Dutch-Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and published in Amsterdam.

In contrast to Dabhoiwala’s narrative of free speech as the offspring of privilege, Spinoza’s Treatise was shaped by persecution and tragedy. Having already been excommunicated by Amsterdam’s Jewish community for heretical views, Spinoza could not risk publishing under his own name even in Europe’s most liberal and tolerant state at the time, the Dutch Republic. In 1668, two years before the Treatise’s publication, Spinoza’s friend Adriaan Koerbagh was arrested and sentenced to a decade in prison for an irreverent book. The publication made him a target for hardliners in the Reformed Church who pushed the government to narrow the permissible limits of speech. Koerbagh died in prison shortly thereafter, a broken man. Episodes like this helped push Spinoza toward a comprehensive defense of free speech that, contra Dabhoiwala, arguably went beyond Cato’s Letters.

But this is the most Dabhoiwala has to say about Spinoza:

“Even Baruch Spinoza, the most radical 17th-century theorist of libertas philosophandi, stressed this point. Freedom of philosophical speculation was ‘absolutely necessary for progress in science and the liberal arts’, he explained, but no one should speak or act against ‘the laws of the authorities’ or propound seditious doctrines: ‘loyalty to the state is paramount’.”

In a footnote to the quoted paragraph, Dabhoiwala adds: “I disagree with the interpretation of Spinoza as especially radical on this point,” but offers no explanation for why that is. Accordingly, Dabhoiwala clearly suggests that Spinoza proposed a cautious and deferential conception of free speech. But it leaves out so many vital parts of Spinoza’s complex free speech theory, set out in chapter 20 of the Treatise, that it does more to distort and misrepresent than to inform and guide. While much of the early modern world treated free speech as dangerous, Spinoza insisted on libertas philosophandi, the freedom to philosophize, and free expression as necessary preconditions for peace, prosperity, and progress. He famously argued that “in a free state everyone is at liberty to think as he pleases, and to say what he thinks.” And he makes the point in explicitly secular, institutional terms—not as a plea for toleration, but as a condition of political safety: the state is safest when the right of sovereign authorities, “whether in sacred or secular matters … [is] concerned only with actions … [and] everyone is allowed to think what they wish and to say what they think” (a phrase inspired by Tacitus’ The Histories and also referenced by Cato five decades later).

Any regime that violated this “natural right” was “tyrannical.” For Spinoza, “the end and aim of the state, in fact, is Liberty.” In a strikingly modern vein, he linked this vision of liberty to democracy rather than treating democracy as a threat to it. In the Treatise he explained: “I chose to treat democracy in preference to any other form of government because it seemed the most natural one, and the one that comes nearest to giving to each person the freedom that nature gives him”—a direct rebuttal to the idea that unshackled speech runs counter to democracy and at a time where absolutist or strongly centralized monarchist rule was dominant on most parts of the continent.

Centuries before today’s debates about the tension between free speech and toleration in diverse societies, Spinoza argued that freedom of expression is indispensable for peaceful coexistence among people of different faiths and backgrounds. He held up seventeenth-century Amsterdam as an example, “where the fruits of this liberty of thought and opinion are seen in its wonderful increase and testified to by the admiration of every people. In this most flourishing republic and noble city, men of every nation, and creed, and sect live together in the utmost harmony.” He contrasted this with the efforts of hard-liners in the Dutch Reformed Church to impose strict limits on the freedom of religion and thought of dissenters—limits that, according to Spinoza, did not “arise from the anxious study of truth” but rather “from the lust of dominion.”

Against the backdrop of the Early Modern world, Spinoza’s defense of free expression looks incredibly expansive. Even the more liberty-minded American colonies in the late seventeenth century routinely suppressed controversial speech. True, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Rhode Island codified religious toleration. But contrary to Spinoza’s insistence on free speech as a prerequisite for social peace in diverse societies, both Pennsylvania and Maryland punished blasphemous speech and what we today might call “religious hatred” aimed at other sects. Blasphemy, including the denial of the Trinity, was a capital offense in Maryland. Moreover, religious toleration did not translate into political free speech. In Rhode Island, it was a crime to use “words of contempt” against public officials, and the colony even punished open criticism of the assembly’s acts and orders with penalties ranging from fines to whipping and up to a year in jail. William Penn—a onetime prisoner of conscience—instituted prepublication censorship, and Pennsylvania’s 1682 Frame of Government authorized punishment of “scandalous and malicious reporters… defamers and spreaders of false news.” In the second half of the seventeenth century, Europe’s most liberal state after the Dutch Republic, Britain, also used a combination of licensing, sedition and even treason laws to prevent and punish, sometimes with the death penalty, dissent against the Crown and the government. In other words, the world Spinoza was writing into—and the world his ideas would later influence—was one in which law routinely treated criticism of officials and “false news” not as speech to be answered, but as offenses to be suppressed.

On “sedition”: actions, not opinions

It’s true that Spinoza’s free speech doctrine was not all-encompassing. He, too, had his “buts,” since unlimited freedom “would be most baneful.” He put a premium on calm and reasoned debate, distinguishing between criticism of laws grounded in (permissible) “good sense” and (impermissible) sedition—a distinction that can feel frustratingly vague, and therefore open to abuse. It raises the thorny question of who gets to determine what counts as “good sense” and what counts as “sedition.” Yet Spinoza’s account of sedition is also, in a crucial respect, more principled than most early modern theorists—including Cato—because he tries, however imperfectly, to root the boundary in actions rather than opinions.

For Spinoza, “everyone’s loyalty to the state, like their faith in God, can only be known from their works”—a separation of deeds from words that foreshadows the First Amendment’s insistence that speech alone is not sedition. He explicitly states that “a government which denies each person freedom to speak and to communicate what they think, will be a very violent government, whereas a state where everyone is conceded this freedom will be moderate.” The only speech he plainly treats as seditious is holding that “a sovereign power does not have an autonomous right,” and even here it is “subversive not so much because of the judgments and opinions in themselves as because of the actions which such views imply.” Spinoza expert Steven Nadler suggests that a plausible interpretation of where Spinoza draws the line is that criticism of the government’s laws and policies is protected, but that advocating for what today we might call civil disobedience is punishable. As such, Spinoza might have agreed with the US Supreme Court in the infamous WWI era Schenck decision, where anti-draft activists were convicted for distributing leaflets urging resistance to conscription—a decision later eclipsed by Brandenburg v. Ohio, which requires incitement to imminent lawless action likely to produce such outcomes, before speech can be suppressed.

In that sense, Spinoza falls significantly short of modern First Amendment doctrine. But for his time, he is extraordinary: he treats free expression as a precondition of social peace, not a danger to it, and he insists that actions—not words—should do the decisive work when governments claim to be suppressing “sedition.” Paramount loyalty to the state, in his view, does not include surrendering your right to criticize the government or its policies— so long as you actually obey the laws that you want to change.

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A presumption against prohibition

Moreover, the flaws introduced by Spinoza’s vagueness are tempered by what is arguably an underlying presumption against prohibition. He does not pretend liberty is cost-free: “Undeniably, there are sometimes some disadvantages in such freedom.” Yet he insists that trying to control everything by law backfires: “Trying to control everything by laws will encourage vices rather than correcting them.” Because some evils invariably prevail against legal coercion, “Things which cannot be prevented must necessarily be allowed, even though they are often harmful.” In other words, even where Spinoza draws lines, his default posture is that speech should remain lawful unless the case for suppression is compelling—because the attempt to legislate away every harm produces worse ones.

Despite Spinoza’s reservations, his expansive view of free speech would undoubtedly have encompassed much of what English common law for centuries treated as “seditious libel,” which could include merely criticizing the actions or policies of ministers and governments. For Spinoza, despite the dangers involved in permitting free expression—in his day, sedition; in ours, Dabhoiwala might say bigotry and disinformation—free speech was essential: “this liberty is absolutely essential to the advancement of the arts and sciences; for they can be cultivated with success only by those with a free and unfettered judgment.” Whatever its dangers, the liberty to think and speak freely was, for him, a condition of human progress.

Spinoza vs. Cato

This is precisely why Dabhoiwala’s attempt to minimize Spinoza’s radicalism in favor of Cato is so odd. It is not at all clear that Cato’s support for free speech goes further than Spinoza’s—there is a strong case that Cato imposes more restrictions on speech than Spinoza, not fewer. Letter No. 62 concedes that “civil government” ought to regulate “natural and absolute liberty” lest it “grow licentious.” It adds that individuals have the right “to think what he will, and act as he thinks, provided he acts not to the Prejudice of another.” That may help explain why Letter No. 32 describes “libels against government” as “always base and unlawful.” Cato even suggests that “a libel is not the less a libel for being true” and that “there are some truths not fit to be told.” Letter No. 32 treats attacks on the head of state as uniquely grave: “when they strike at the person of the prince, the measure of their guilt is complete,” and whoever “vilifies and traduces him” is cast as “an enemy to society and to mankind.” Contrary to Dabhoiwala’s framing, Cato’s Letters arguably embrace a more circumscribed conception of free speech than what Spinoza defends.

Throughout his book, Dabhoiwala portrays First Amendment–style protections as dangerous: they allegedly invite hatred rather than reasoned discussion. By contrast, “European-style” speech regulation—expression confined within the bounds of “reason”—is presented as a saner, more democratic alternative. In short, Dabhoiwala seems to want the reader to choose his Spinoza over his Cato. But Spinoza was not a tame apostle of managed speech. He was a radical who faced real repercussions: he was excommunicated, published anonymously, and wrote in a political climate where heterodox ideas could land you in prison— even within the comparably tolerant Dutch Republic. Spinoza died in 1677, but his writings remained notorious and were widely banned and maligned by Throne and Altar in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe.

This matters for a final reason. Dabhoiwala frames robust free speech as an inheritance from privileged English Whigs whose ideas were allegedly “mendacious” from the start. Spinoza is a direct counterexample: a Jewish, secular, democratic, emancipatory thinker who treats liberty of thought and expression as a natural right, and who sees the end and aim of the state as liberty itself. Jonathan Israel has argued that Spinoza was a trailblazer of what he calls the “Radical Enlightenment,” seeking to embed an emancipatory, libertarian, democratic ideology in society. However contested that label, it captures something important: Spinoza’s telos is far more ambitious than Cato’s defense of a more permissive post-1688 settlement—a settlement that stopped well short of democracy or the recognition that sedition depends on actions, not ideas.

I hope to have demonstrated that Dabhoiwala’s What is Free Speech? is an unreliable guide to the history of free speech. Its real purpose is to polemicise against modern First Amendment doctrine. To do so, Dabhoiwala has created a distorted origin story in which the American free speech tradition was invented by two venal hacks, out of self-interest rather than any notion of the common good. But this history depends on showing Cato and its authors in the worst possible light and ignoring earlier, and more radical, contributions to free speech from protagonists who championed democracy, equality, and toleration—the very values that Dabhoiwala claims “free speech absolutism” endangers. The end result is not only bad history, but a silencing of voices who paid a heavy price for advocating the freedom that Dabhoiwala seems to take for granted, even though he depends on it for a living.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (forthcoming with Jeff Kosseff).

I recently wrote a critical review essay of Fara Dabhoiwala’s new book, What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea, in Foreign Affairs. That essay mainly used contemporary events to argue that Dabhoiwala’s reservations about robust free speech protections are misguided.

In this post, I want to focus on something more important for a book on the history of free speech: Dabhoiwala’s chronology.

A central plank of What Is Free Speech? is an origin story about modern (especially American) free speech. In Dabhoiwala’s telling, the modern American conception of free speech is the end-product of ideals first expressed in the famous eighteenth-century Cato’s Letters—pamphlets that went viral in Britain’s expanding public sphere and then in North America, where they helped shape revolutionary political culture and were canonized in Virginia’s Declaration of Rights and Madison’s first draft of what would become the First Amendment. Authored by the British radical Whigs John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letter No. 15 famously declares that freedom of speech is “the bulwark of liberty.” That line—and the wider claim that public liberty depends on public criticism—became a kind of Enlightenment meme, echoing from America to revolutionary France and beyond.

So far, so orthodox. But Dabhoiwala pushes this story much further. According to him, “No one before ‘Cato’ had ever put forward an essentially secular ideal of free speech as a popular political right, let alone made it the very foundation of all liberty.” He describes Cato’s Letters as radically novel: “everything about them was unprecedented: their breadth, their essentially secular conception, their unconditional valorising of public judgement.” In Dabhoiwala’s framing, Cato isn’t merely an influential milestone. It is the decisive break—the moment “freedom of speech” becomes a modern political right, detached from older ideas about parliamentary privilege or (religious) freedom of conscience and elevated into the foundation of political and individual freedom itself.

That matters because Dabhoiwala is not offering a neutral genealogy. He is offering a genealogy with a damning verdict. On his account, Cato is not only the root of modern free speech but also the root of its pathologies. Cato supposedly bequeaths a First Amendment “absolutist” position that “no anti-governmental speech should ever be silenced,” and Dabhoiwala connects that lineage to modern First Amendment doctrine that protects speech he regards as plainly harmful—racism, sexism, and disinformation. For Dabhoiwala, the moral is not simply that free speech has a complicated past. It’s that the past helps explain why modern free-speech protections are so often, in his view, an instrument of privilege for the powerful rather than a shield for the powerless.

This is why the book spends so much energy on Trenchard and Gordon themselves. Dabhoiwala’s verdict on Cato’s apparent endorsement of “absolutism” is damning: in their hands, “freedom of speech first came to be conceived of as a mechanism for truth, an antidote to falsehood, and the foundation of all liberty,” but “ironically, this new and powerful theory was itself a deliberately mendacious fiction.” He portrays them as ardent sexists, “self-serving” opportunists, and—by family ties and later career choices—entangled with the machinery of empire, patronage, and slavery.

He notes, for example, that when the government finally lost patience with Cato, Gordon became a paid-for-hire propagandist for the powerful politician Sir Robert Walpole, and repudiated Cato’s stance on free speech. He also finds it relevant that Gordon’s family ended up in Jamaica, the epicenter of British plantation slavery. Whatever one thinks of these biographical and moral indictments (and whatever weight they should carry), Dabhoiwala’s narrative is clear: Cato is origin, Cato is tainted, and the taint has been inherited by the modern American free speech tradition, which uncritically wears it as a badge of honor, when in fact it constitutes a mark of shame.

There’s a methodological problem here even before we get to the history. Discrediting a principle by discrediting its supposed originators is a familiar move—if frequently an unconvincing one. But it has an obvious weakness: it depends on getting the origin story right. If Cato is not actually the beginning—if it is one influential node in a much older, more diverse, and more radical tradition—then the entire “poisoned roots” framing becomes much harder to sustain. You can still criticize modern doctrine, of course. But you cannot credibly argue that the doctrine is fundamentally compromised because it springs from the narrow privilege and alleged mendacity of two unprincipled eighteenth-century pamphleteers.

And that brings us back to the central point: Dabhoiwala’s chronology is faulty. Not because Cato’s Letters were unimportant—they were immensely important—but because the core arguments Dabhoiwala treats as unprecedented were already being made, in strikingly modern terms, by persecuted radicals long before Trenchard and Gordon put pen to paper.

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The “Cato-first” chronology

Let’s begin with Dabhoiwala’s headline claim: “No one before ‘Cato’ had ever put forward an essentially secular ideal of free speech as a popular political right, let alone made it the very foundation of all liberty.”

This claim is not only historically fragile; it also carries serious consequences. It has already helped canonize a convenient but misleading chronology—one in which modern free speech appears suddenly, in a recognizably “absolutist” American form, conjured by an ambitious and venal pamphleteering duo and then exported to the United States.

Now, I want to bracket one obvious issue: the ancient antecedents. Athenian isegoria (equality of speech) and parrhesia (fearless speech), Roman classical republican ideals and critiques of tyranny all mattered to early modern political writers. John Milton’s polemics, Trenchard and Gordon’s language, and Thomas Paine’s arguments are saturated with classical references. A serious intellectual history that speaks confidently about what is “unprecedented” in early modern freedom of speech should at least engage that influence. Dabhoiwala largely doesn’t—which is damning for a history book.

But we don’t need to start in Athens to show that “no one before Cato” is wrong. We can start in Civil War–era England, with radicals who most certainly were not writing from a place of power or privilege and who paid dearly for their commitment to political liberty: the Levellers.

Exhibit A: the Levellers got there first

The Levellers were not a coherent party in the modern sense. They were a loose, turbulent movement of writers, agitators, pamphleteers, and soldiers who pressed the revolutionary implications of the English Civil War. They defended ideas that were, for their time, startlingly democratic—popular sovereignty, equality before the law, religious toleration, and (in some formulations) something close to universal male suffrage. They were also, crucially, ferocious critics of censorship and defenders of free expression. But all we’re told by Dawhoiwala is that “In the 1640s, a few writings by leaders of the so-called Leveller movement had gestured towards a principled theory of political press liberty.” That’s it.

This omission matters because the Levellers’ place in free speech history makes nonsense of the claim that the call for robust free speech protections emerged as the self-serving invention of eighteenth-century elites. The Levellers were not agitating from a safe position of power and privilege. They were persecuted radicals, repeatedly harassed, imprisoned, prosecuted, and silenced by the very regimes that claimed to be building a godly commonwealth.

Several Leveller leaders attacked censorship and demanded free and open political debate, although their writings are not always consistent. The clearest Leveller articulation of free speech comes in a 1649 petition to Parliament—a moment when the revolutionary coalition, now aligned with Cromwell’s military power, ferociously cracked down on unlicensed presses and dissent. In other words: the old machinery of censorship was being refurbished and redeployed, not by a Stuart monarch, but by the revolution’s new masters, who had themselves been censored by Charles I.

The Levellers saw this pattern with remarkable clarity. They argued that although rulers always justify censorshipin the name of the public good, it reliably functions as the handmaiden of tyranny:

“For what-ever specious pretences of good to the Common-wealth have bin devised to over-aw the Press, yet all times fore-gone will manifest, it hath ever ushered in a tyrannie; mens mouths being to be kept from making noise, whilst they are robd of their liberties.”

They then draw the direct historical line Dabhoiwala says no one before Cato had drawn: censorship is not merely bad policy; it is an instrument of domination. Under Charles I’s prerogative rule, they argued, licensing and prior restraint had suppressed truth and kept the people ignorant—“fitted only to serve the unjust ends of Tyrants and Oppressors.”

This is not an argument about parliamentary privilege. It is not an argument about the sanctity of private conscience. It is an argument about a popular political right, rooted in the practical requirements of liberty: a free people cannot remain free if they cannot criticize power. Crucially, the arguments made by the Levellers for free speech are decidedly political, not religious, and therefore essentially secular, even if the Levellers were devout Christians who could not imagine a secular society in its 21st century manifestations.

And the Levellers didn’t stop at denouncing licensing. They made the positive case that freedom of expression is a precondition of popular sovereignty. Parliament, they insisted, should hold itself “to the supreme end, the Freedom of the People,” which depends on the ability of the people to speak, write, print, and publish their minds freely—without “Masters, Tutors, and Controulers over them.” Even “the least restraint upon the Press” was “altogether inconsistent with the good of the Commonwealth” and “dangerous to the liberties of the people.” To safeguard free speech, the Levellers demanded that Parliament “revoke all Ordinances and Orders to the contrary.”

If this sounds familiar, it should. Now consider the famous passage in Cato that Dabhoiwala treats as the crystallization of modern free-speech ideology:

“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as publick liberty, without freedom of speech.”

Or this equally famous line:

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of the nation, must begin by subduing the freedom of speech; a thing terrible to publick traitors.”

But the Levellers also go further than Cato in a way that exposes another weakness in Dabhoiwala’s narrative. They link free speech not merely to restraining tyranny, but to democratizing authority. Their broader program demanded popular sovereignty, expanded suffrage, and robust religious liberty; their defense of expression is embedded in a radical constitutional vision. This is most clearly evident in Colonel Thomas Rainborough’s famous comments at the Putney Debates in 1647:

“I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government. And I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under.”

Trenchard and Gordon, by contrast, largely worked within the horizon of the Glorious Revolution—a settlement that preserved a restricted franchise, limited religious toleration, and enshrined “freedom of speech” as a parliamentary privilege rather than an individual right.

To be sure, the Revolution and subsequent reforms helped loosen some of the older instruments of control, including harsh treason procedures and the regime of pre-publication licensing. But the lapse of licensing in 1695 did not mean the state stopped policing dissent. As political print exploded, both Tory and Whig governments repurposed —and in practice broadened—the law of seditious libel to target writers who attacked the Crown, its ministers, and public policy. That legal and political environment helps explain why radical Whigs like Trenchard and Gordon made such a point of heralding the blessings of free speech and warning about the dangers of suppressing it. They were, in effect, alarmed that even fellow Whigs were willing to suppress speech, once in office. They were right to fret, because these censorial tendencies were ultimately aimed at Cato. Even so, Cato is more abstract, allegorical, and less willing to name names than Leveller publications that openly pointed fingers at those who pulled the levers of suppression.

Here is another key point: the Levellers anticipate the “counterspeech” idea that Dabhoiwala treats as part of modern liberal free speech “absolutism”—the idea that the remedy for bad speech is more speech, not censorship. The 1649 petition argues that a government confident in its justice should want to hear “all voices and judgements,” which it can only do through a free press. And if someone abuses that freedom with scandalous pamphlets, the authorities will “never want able Advocates” to vindicate the innocent. The answer to falsehood is not suppression; it is rebuttal.

Crucially, the petition is not making this point as an abstract principle (unlike Cato). It reminds Parliament and the Army that, in their struggle against Charles I, they had been “very much strengthened all along by unlicensed Printing.” Now that they held power, they were turning the old machinery of licensing and suppression against the very critics and comrades who had helped bring them to office.

Cato is eloquent. Cato is memorable. Cato is quotable. But Cato is not inventing the underlying logic out of whole cloth. It is repackaging, popularizing, and sharpening an argument that the Levellers—among others—had already articulated in the heat of revolutionary struggle.

To be clear, this is not a claim that Trenchard and Gordon were plagiarists—or that Cato adds nothing. Cato’s distinctive contribution is partly rhetorical brilliance and partly political timing. It appears at a moment when older tools of censorship were mutating into new legal forms—when a burgeoning public sphere was colliding with a state still determined to control it and when the seeds of the Enlightenment were starting to take root.

Just as importantly, Cato speaks in a more abstract and universal voice than Leveller writings, entirely contingent on developments during the English Civil War. Cato’s arguments are interwoven with a rich historical tapestry—drawing on threads from antiquity and republican precedents in ways that make the case for free speech feel timeless and portable. All of these factors help explain why Cato could travel so effectively as an Enlightenment meme—from revolutionary North America to France and beyond.

But that is a very different claim from saying that “no one before Cato” had framed free speech as a political right foundational to liberty.

Persecution matters for the “privilege” story

There is a second reason the Levellers are so important for this debate. Their example is a direct rebuttal to the claim that free speech is born as an instrument of privilege.

The Levellers were persecuted not only under Charles I’s monarchy but also under Cromwell’s Commonwealth. John Lilburne—“Freeborn John”—is the emblematic figure here: a relentless critic of arbitrary power, repeatedly prosecuted, repeatedly imprisoned. Under Charles I, Star Chamber proceedings led to brutal punishment: he was whipped and pilloried. Under Cromwell, Lilburne was tried for high treason and acquitted by a jury in 1653—only for the government to keep him imprisoned afterward.

This history matters because Dabhoiwala’s moral genealogy leans heavily on the alleged privilege of Cato’s authors. Yet here we have a movement that (1) articulated many of Cato’s core arguments decades earlier, (2) did so while advocating reforms that would expand democracy and equality, and (3) suffered repression precisely because it insisted that ordinary people must be able to criticize power, unlike Cato which sold itself to the very government it had criticized when threatened with legal consequences.

If you want a story in which free speech is a shield for the downtrodden rather than a perk for the privileged, you could do far worse than begin with the Levellers.

And that is why the historical dispute matters now. At a time of a global free speech recession —in which people across the political spectrum are tempted to treat speech as a dangerous contagion—the last thing we need is a comforting story that portrays robust free speech as an elite con, a “deliberately mendacious fiction,” whose only real legacy is the protection of modern bigotry. Free speech has been defended by hypocrites. It has been invoked in bad faith. Speech has led to harm. All of that is true. But free speech has also been fought for by persecuted radicals, bound up with democratic demands, and justified—again and again—as a precondition of both popular sovereignty and individual freedom and equality.

The Levellers understood something that remains easy to forget: censorship is not just a tool that silences bad ideas. It is a tool that trains a people to accept being ruled without being heard. And once you accept that logic, you no longer have to pretend that “no one before Cato” saw free speech as the foundation of liberty. Many did. Some of them paid for it with their limbs and liberty.

If Dabhoiwala wants to criticize modern free speech doctrine, he should do so on the merits – something his book fails to do convincingly, as I argue in my Foreign Affairs essay. But if he wants to discredit robust free speech by narrating it as the tainted invention of Trenchard and Gordon, he must first get the history right.

He doesn’t. And the Levellers are one reason why. But they’re not the only ones.

In part 2, I’ll explore Baruch Spinoza, who insisted that “in a free state everyone is at liberty to think as he pleases, and to say what he thinks.” This powerful line—repeated almost verbatim by Cato—Dabhoiwala mangles into a tame call for toleration of “philosophical speculation” rather than what it was: a radical call for free speech as a “natural right” in a democratic state whose “end and aim” is “liberty”.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (forthcoming with Jeff Kosseff).

On December 10, 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt stood before the United Nations chamber in Paris to unveil a remarkable achievement: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The document enshrined the right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

That core principle was fiercely resisted by the Soviet bloc, which insisted that states should be obliged to punish hate speech and false information. On the eve of the adoption of the UDHR, Roosevelt pointedly commented on late Soviet attempts to amend the already agreed-upon Declaration:

The Soviet amendment…is obviously a very restrictive statement of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. It sets up standards which would enable any state practically to deny all freedom of opinion and expression without violating the article.

Roosevelt insisted on a robust protection of free speech because she understood that free expression was not a Western luxury but the safeguard of every other liberty enshrined in the UDHR.

Seventy-six years later, the United States is preparing to mark Human Rights Day with a decidedly more mixed message. According to new State Department instructions, U.S. embassies will now be asked to categorize arrests or “official investigations or warnings for speech” as human rights violations.

Indeed, it is becoming increasingly apparent that authoritarian states are not the only perpetrators of mass censorship efforts. Many democracies, including several in Europe, have adopted laws that criminalize online hate speech or impose expansive duties on platforms to police content.

Washington is right to call attention to the idea that suppressing controversial speech—whether through criminal probes, online “safety” laws, or vague prohibitions on extremism—is incompatible with human dignity and democratic rights.

But this stance is only useful if it’s coherent. And today, America risks undermining its message at the very moment the world needs clarity.

For more than a century, the United States has been the world’s most consequential—however imperfect—champion of freedom of expression. During the Cold War, American shortwave broadcasts carried uncensored news past the Iron Curtain in dozens of languages. Václav Havel later recalled how Radio Free Europe and Voice of America “informed us truthfully of events around the world and in our country as well,” helping sow the seeds of the 1989 revolutions.

Beyond broadcasting uncensored news and supporting dissidents abroad, the United States also built a constitutional architecture at home that became the global benchmark for free expression. Over the twentieth century, the Supreme Court forged principles that prohibited government from punishing speech based on viewpoint, protected criticism of public officials as indispensable to democratic accountability—as affirmed in New York Times v. Sullivan—and rejected the idea that citizens must obtain permission before criticizing their leaders.

In the digital age, Congress extended this commitment through Section 230 and other intermediary-liability protections, which ensured that online platforms empowered individuals to speak rather than function as instruments of state control. No other nation has articulated such a consistent, liberty-expanding vision of free expression

But the effort to champion these principles abroad is now in retreat. In recent years, the U.S. has scaled back funding for institutions that promote free speech ideals and provide independent reporting in societies where censorship is the norm. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Voice of America—all vital tools for reaching people in closed societies—have faced cuts or political interference.

Meanwhile, authoritarian rivals have grown bolder. China and Russia, having perfected sophisticated systems of digital censorship at home, now export those models through international bodies and regional alliances. Their approach rejects and inverts the very premise Roosevelt fought for: that human rights limit state power.

Foreign agent laws offer one of the clearest examples of this authoritarian playbook. Russia’s 2012 law marked a watershed: it allowed authorities to brand NGOs, journalists, academics, and cultural figures as “foreign agents” based on opaque criteria and without any need to prove foreign funding or direction. The designation triggers crippling reporting requirements, social stigma, and the constant threat of criminal prosecution.

What began as a tool to marginalize independent civil society has now metastasized. Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Hungary (to mention just a few countries) have all adopted versions of this model, transforming transparency rules into instruments of political control. These laws institutionalize the very logic Roosevelt warned against: the presumption that dissent is a security threat rather than an integral part of public life.

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The global free-speech recession is even more alarming because it is no longer driven solely by authoritarian regimes. Some of the world’s largest democracies—countries whose constitutional traditions and geopolitical weight shape global norms—are now eroding core expressive freedoms.

India has repeatedly shut down the internet and pressured tech companies to censor social media platforms and chatbots. Brazil has pursued sweeping judicial orders to suspend platforms and block users accused of spreading “disinformation.” South Africa has enacted legislation against “malicious communication” that is so broad it risks criminalizing ordinary political debate. When influential democracies adopt illiberal speech controls, they legitimize the very censorship models they once helped restrain.

At a time when the U.S. should be championing global free expression, the current administration is doing more harm than good. It is entirely appropriate to criticize allied democracies for overbroad speech restrictions. But such criticism rings hollow while simultaneously narrowing the scope of human rights reporting abroad, deporting noncitizens for speech the government doesn’t like, monitoring foreign visitors’ social media accounts, relentlessly threatening American media outlets with lawsuits and possible revocation of broadcast licenses, and comparing political criticism to treason punishable with death, to mention just a few examples. The result is not simply inconsistency; it is a strategic self-inflicted wound that weakens America’s ability to defend the very values it urges others to uphold.

The issue is not whether Washington should call out flawed policies abroad, nor whether America must attain perfection at home before doing so. The record since the adoption of the UDHR shows that U.S. leadership on free expression has been a driving force behind an unprecedented global Golden Age of free speech—an authority that carries the greatest weight when grounded in principle rather than grievance-fueled partisanship.

That ideal remains indispensable but also vulnerable. The Golden Age has now been in retreat for close to two decades, with calamitous consequences for democracy and freedom around the globe. If the United States walks away from its post-war role as the loudest defender of free expression, the vacuum will not remain empty. It will be filled by governments that treat speech as a threat to be managed rather than a right to be protected, and the free speech recession will only deepen.

Human Rights Day offers an opportunity to remember that free expression has been one of America’s most persuasive forms of diplomacy. Roosevelt knew that the power of an idea—broadcast by radio, carried in samizdat, or shared online—can outlast totalitarian regimes and pierce Iron Curtains. If the United States wants to deter censorship abroad, it must model the confidence in speech it urges others to show.

The world is watching not only what Washington condemns, but whether it lives up to the principles it claims to defend.

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Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media and The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy’s Most Essential Freedom (forthcoming with Jeff Kosseff).

I have long shouted from the rooftops about the free speech recession in European democracies. But those most receptive to this message are often Americans who look to Europe to vindicate (or gloat about) American (constitutional) free-speech exceptionalism.

Europeans, on the other hand, have a remarkable tendency to ignore the glaringly obvious and insist that everything is fine and that if there are problems, these are isolated cases exaggerated by MAGA-types to dunk on the Old World.

So I was very pleasantly surprised to receive an invitation from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung—a German center-left think tank affiliated with the Social Democratic Party—to write an opinion piece at IPG Journal on the state of free speech in Europe, with a special focus on Germany and France.

I hope this can be a small contribution to a much-needed debate about first principles on the continent that bequeathed the idea of free speech to the world in the first place.

Below are some excerpts of the piece, roughly translated from German. I open with a story that sounds almost dystopian:

On the morning of the 26. In November, three armed policemen dived into the Berlin apartment of the US author C. J. Hopkins on. They issued a search warrant, seized his computer and questioned him and his wife. The alleged threat to the German rule of law? The cover of a self-laid book. Hopkins, a contentious left-wing critic of the Covid-19 policy, had mounted a pale swastika behind a face mask to satirically criticise what he perceived as authoritarian tendencies in Germany.

If this were an isolated case, it could be dismissed. But as I write in the piece:

In European countries such as Germany and France, the Hopkins case is no longer an exception. And unlike in the U.S., there is hardly any public protest against the increasing restrictions on freedom of expression.

The scale of enforcement is staggering.

In March 2022, the president of the Federal Criminal Police Office made it unequivocally clear that the state would answer online intolerance with real intolerance: “Whoever posts hate messages must expect that the police will be at the door.” The New York Times reviewed German records in 2022 and found more than 8 500 ongoing investigations into online statements. Since 2018, at least 1 000 people had been charged or punished.

Even more revealing:

In February 2025, many Americans were shocked when they saw a reportage of 60 Minutes accompanying German police and prosecutors cracking down on “online crimes.” Prosecutors smilingly declared that the repost, or even just the “liking” of false or offensive content – such as hate speech, foul denunciation, fake quotes or personal insults – could be punishable. Even calling a politician a “weakhead” or mocking someone with a poop heap emoji could trigger a house search.

In the full piece, I also highlight how things in France aren’t faring much better, with, for example, Emmanuel Macron banning 46 civil society organizations by decree for “language offenses,” which includes sharp government criticism or failure to remove hateful user comments from social media channels.

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On the subject of Europe’s free speech recession, I also had the opportunity to speak more about how European democracies are failing on free expression at the Battle of Ideas festival in London.

On my panel, I recount how my own country of Denmark—which had proudly resisted pressure to enact blasphemy laws after the Muhammad cartoon crisis 20 years ago—suddenly reversed course a couple of years ago after Quran burnings. The government introduced a law prohibiting the desecration of sacred texts, essentially caving to what I call “the jihadist veto” after having stood firm for nearly two decades.

I also discuss how the European Court of Human Rights, which should defend free speech, is actually entrenching the free speech recession. The court has ruled that free speech doesn’t protect “gratuitously offensive” statements about religion or hate speech—without clearly defining either term.

Making matters worse, the European Union is now working to harmonize hate speech laws across all member states, pushing countries to criminalize more speech. When Ireland’s problematic hate speech bill collapsed due to criticism, the European Commission wrote to the Irish government saying it was violating EU obligations by not criminalizing hate speech further.

The question I pose at the end of my IPG Journal piece remains urgent:

Has Europe’s crackdown on expressions of opinion become a greater danger to democracy than the extremists it is supposed to contain? The answer to this will not only shape Europe’s future, but the fate of liberal democracy as a whole.

I encourage you to read the full IPG article here to see additional examples illustrating why Europe’s “defensive democracy” could prove a cautionary tale rather than a role model.

And watch my full remarks from the Battle of Ideas festival to hear more about how Europe’s approach to free speech is emboldening authoritarian states worldwide.

For a broader and historical view of the free speech recession, as well as discussions about what’s been happening in the UK, you can check out my recent chat with the Institute of Economic Affairs Podcast here:

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

How can we best use history to make sense of the current challenges to free speech in America?

That was the question CNN recently asked me and Princeton historian Fara Dabhoiwala, who has just published a new book, What is Free Speech: The History of a Dangerous Idea, with a very different thesis than my Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

In the CNN interview, I stress that censorship has most often been employed as a weapon against unpopular minorities and that persecuted groups have been essential in the crystallization of American free speech exceptionalism. I also express hope that popular support for free speech might be strengthened:

Mchangama, on the other hand, hopes the American left will look at the Trump administration today and dial back on efforts to control speech.

“Power changes hands,” Mchangama said.

New leaders have new ideas about which groups are worthy of protection, and which should be targeted, which is what we’re seeing right now with Trump.

Fabhoiwala recognizes that draconian crackdowns on communists, pacifists, and others during the Red Scares contributed to a more robust interpretation of the First Amendment, but nonetheless claims that:

“The sad truth is, free speech has always been a weaponized slogan, right from the outset, when it’s first invented in the early 18th century.”

He then goes on to say that under the Trump administration, “what we’re seeing is really a third Red Scare where once again, we have an authoritarian government trying to shut down political voices that it disagrees with.”

But then Dabhoiwala changes tack and claims that the free speech rights enjoyed by social media companies under the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act are the real problem:

“We’re in such a mess because these providers don’t have any legal responsibility to the truth or to the common good, and they are happily monetizing and making giant amounts of profit out of spreading lies and untruths alongside truth and deliberation of a serious kind.”

Then – it seems – Dabhoiwala calls for further restrictions on free speech:

“The moment we say this is all just the same and free speech, say what you like, you open the door to vast quantities of misinformation, to manipulation by hostile outside actors, by politicians just bullshitting their way to power.”

This is a good example of the essential incoherence of Dabhoiwala’s book: When Trump restricts the free speech of his opponents, it is “authoritarian.” But when people with whom Dabhoiwala disagrees exercise their right to free speech, it constitutes “disinformation,” which should be exempt from protection.

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In a new essay for Foreign Affairs, I review Dabhoiwala’s book in depth and explain why his understanding of free speech is historically flawed, and why the cure he prescribes is worse than the disease he imprecisely diagnoses by confusing symptoms with the underlying cause.

Here are a couple of block quotes from the piece, which I hope you’ll consider reading in its entirety.

Ultimately, Dabhoiwala’s account—both grievance-driven in its reading of the First Amendment and uncritical in its praise of European restrictions—is profoundly distorted. Its selective telling of history obscures a basic truth: across centuries, free speech has been a genuine engine of emancipation, not merely a contingent privilege. Especially now, as supposed champions of free speech seek to suppress it in the United States, it is crucial to reinforce the principle’s real meaning rather than let those who wield it cynically strip the public’s faith in its potential. Free speech has repeatedly offered the powerless a peaceful way to challenge the powerful—a legacy illuminated by key episodes in U.S. history that Dabhoiwala mostly ignores.

In other words, the defenders of American free-speech exceptionalism have not principally been “propertied white men.” They have often been the descendants of those who had been enslaved, excluded, and persecuted—people who were rightly distrustful of government power. Their belief in the value of free speech arose from firsthand exposure to the trauma of racist violence and the bitter consequences of empowering the state to decide who can be silenced.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

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Last weekend’s Global Free Speech Summit in Nashville was a powerful reminder of why this work matters. Over two days, we brought together dissidents, journalists, scholars, and technologists from around the world who are at the forefront of defending and expanding the space for free expression.

It was an honor to sit down with Tyler Cowen to discuss how artificial intelligence will shape the future of free speech—and how we can ensure that freedom of thought remains a core value in an age of algorithms. I also had the privilege of joining Yascha Mounk, Renée DiResta, and Jonathan Rauch for a live recording of The Good Fight podcast, where we explored the state of free speech under both the Biden and Trump administrations, as well as the new challenges facing open discourse on campuses. You can listen to that conversation here.

.The energy and insight shared by our speakers—from courageous dissidents and investigative journalists to policy experts and digital innovators—made this Summit our most inspiring yet. I would also like to extend my deepest thanks to everyone who joined us, as well as to our generous sponsors: FIRE, Freedom Forum, Heterodox Academy, and the Knight Foundation.

Looking ahead, I’m very much looking forward to the forthcoming publication of our new AI report that was presented at The Summit titled “That Violates My Policies: AI Laws, Chatbots, and the Future of Expression,” directed by me, Jordi Calvet-Bademunt, and Isabelle Anzabi. The report ranks eight major chatbots based on their “free-speech culture”—how open they are to lawful but potentially controversial discussions—and assesses six national AI regimes by their legal protections for expression.

Be sure to subscribe to The Future of Free Speech newsletter to stay updated when the report is released:

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Without further ado, please find my opening remarks below and check out a teaser gallery of some of the highlights from the Summit. More photos and videos to come.

Opening Remarks

Good morning, everyone. I’m Jacob Mchangama, Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech.

It’s my great pleasure to welcome you to the second Annual Global Free Speech Summit. I want to thank you all for being here today and also to thank our sponsors who have made this event possible, first and foremost Vanderbilt University, but also our friends at FIRE, the Freedom Forum, Heterodox Academy, and the Knight Foundation. And I also want to thank my great team at The Future of Free Speech for their hard work in bringing all of us together this weekend.

I will keep this brief, but I'd like to tell you a little bit about why we’re here today. As you can maybe tell from my accent, I’m not from here. And as you probably guessed from my appearance, I’m from Scandinavia. Growing up in Denmark in the early 2000s, I rarely worried about my right to free speech. In this cozy haven of liberal and secular values, speaking freely felt as natural as breathing.

But twenty years ago this very week, that feeling changed.

On September 30, 2005, a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. No one fired bullets. No one dropped bombs. Artists just put ink on paper.

Yet those cartoons detonated a global firestorm that forced democracies to confront a searing question: Can free expression survive the “Fanatics’ Veto”? Where violent extremists impose rigid dogma through the barrel of a gun?

A decade ago, that veto struck with deadly precision in Paris. Gunmen stormed French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s offices, murdering twelve people, also for offensive cartoons.

Weeks later, lethal violence struck my hometown of Copenhagen. There, an attacker opened fire during a debate on blasphemy and free speech.

The Cartoon Crisis was formative for me—it’s one of the main reasons I’ve dedicated my professional life to advancing free speech. But it was just one tremor in a broader Free Speech Recession that has swept the world, crashing ashore even in democracy’s traditional bastions.

I could overwhelm you with statistics—record numbers of journalists imprisoned and killed, the proliferation of laws against “misinformation” and “extremism” that governments weaponize to monopolize power. And we will discuss censorship in AI, digital authoritarianism in China, European paternalism, and the assault on American free speech exceptionalism.

But this Summit isn’t only about cataloging threats. It’s also about building solutions.

Too often, the free speech movement’s response to new threats are slogans that seem abstract and theoretical to those who worry more about the harms of viral hatred and hoaxes than slippery slopes.

We need to shift from merely protecting speech to actively strengthening the culture and infrastructure that makes it thrive. And we must show—concretely—how free expression helps solve problems that many believe it has caused.

Over the next two days, you’ll hear about AI tools that can help update deliberative democracy for the digital age; Civil society groups organizing to defy authoritarianism; free speech organizations creating lasting impact and ways to create social media that empower users to take control of their feeds. You’ll hear how incredible courage can pierce the veil of gender apartheid in Afghanistan and so much more.

The common denominator? A belief that Free expression is the operating system for free and flourishing societies.

In this room, I see academics devoted to distilling the principles of open societies. Activists who’ve risked their freedom to challenge tyranny. Tech innovators building systems that reward true dialogue. Journalists who pursue truth in the darkest of places. Lawyers defending the defenseless. Students who will inherit this fight.

I know you disagree—passionately—about many things. Religion. Gaza. Immigration. But in an era of polarization, where zero-sum thinking corrodes principles, this room represents something precious: the recognition that free speech isn’t a luxury for those we agree with—it’s the foundation that allows us to disagree productively and settle our differences with words instead of violence.

You’re here because you understand that the answer to speech we hate isn’t silencing—it’s a digital-age renaissance of the Ancient Athenian ideals of free and equal speech. These principles constitute the most effective error-correcting mechanism humans have discovered. Not perfect. Often messy. But vastly superior to the top-down imposition of orthodoxy. That is why we’re here.

But we wouldn’t be here without the visionary support of Vanderbilt University. Two and a half years ago, I met with Chancellor Diermeier to discuss a bold idea: Could Nashville become a global hub for free expression? A space where diverse voices unite around shared principles?

Under his leadership, Vanderbilt has risen to 7th in FIRE’s campus free speech rankings—a testament to what’s possible when institutions commit to open inquiry not only on paper but in practice.

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming someone who understands that universities must be laboratories for bold ideas, not echo chambers of conformity—Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier.

A preview of some photos from the Summit:

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

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Twenty years ago today, September 30, 2005, a small Danish newspaper dared to publish 12 cartoons. Not bullets, not bombs. Just ink on paper.

But those cartoons detonated a global firestorm, forcing the world to confront a single, searing question:  Do democracies still have the courage to defend free speech, even when it offends?

Those drawings of the Prophet Muhammad in Jyllands-Posten challenged the growing shadow of self-censorship. What followed was chaos: riots across the Muslim world, burned embassies, and over 200 lives lost in the violence. It was the birth of what I termed the “jihadist’s veto” — the brutal enforcement of silence through fear, where extremists, not laws, dictate what can be said.

A decade later, that veto struck with deadly precision.

On January 7, 2015, gunmen stormed the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, slaughtering 12 people for reprinting those very cartoons. Satirists and editors gave their lives because they refused to bow to intimidation.

Just weeks after, the horror hit closer to home: In the Copenhagen area where I was born and raised, during a debate on blasphemy and free expression, an attacker opened fire, killing a filmmaker and later targeting a synagogue. The bullets weren’t abstract threats anymore; they were shattering lives in my own city.

Now, 20 years on, while the use of violence to veto speech evolves, it endures and is being entrenched in speech-restrictive laws in some of the world’s traditional bastions of democracy. The Cartoon Crisis was formative for me and one of the main reasons I have dedicated my professional life to advancing free speech.

On this day, I would like to share and quote from a few recent writings that address this issue.

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First, an excerpt from my piece today in Persuasion:

Growing up in Denmark in the early 2000s, I rarely worried about my right to free speech. In this cozy haven of liberal values and secular democracy, speaking freely felt as natural as breathing. Few contested this state of affairs, least of all religious groups, whose influence had long since faded.

That outlook changed twenty years ago today. On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published an editorial titled “The Face of Muhammad,” accompanied by 12 cartoons, some of which depicted the Prophet Muhammad. The publication set off a global firestorm and turned criticism of Islam into a minefield that remains deadly to traverse even in open societies. And rather than defending the principle at stake, European democracies are increasingly choosing appeasement—trading away free speech for the promise of a precarious peace.

(For a French version, read this translation in Le Point).

Then, in The Telegraph, I explore how Britain’s justice system first punished a Turkish citizen for a provocative but peaceful protest in which he burned the Quran outside the Turkish consulate in London. Then, it let a man who violently attacked the protestor with a knife off with a suspended prison sentence, since the assailant was “clearly deeply offended” by the Quran burning.

In 1742 David Hume boasted that: “Nothing is more apt to surprise a foreigner than the extreme liberty which we enjoy in this country of communicating whatever we please to the public”. Voltaire saw 18th-century Britain as a paradise of tolerance and freedom that stood in stark contrast to despotic France. Today foreigners are more likely to be shocked by Britain’s determination to eviscerate that proud tradition.

[ . . . ]

In essence criticism of religion was transformed into hatred against Muslims: “blasphemy” turned into hate crime. Worse still was the judge’s logic in deeming Coskun’s protest “disorderly”. This was “no better illustrated,” he said, than by the fact that it provoked “serious public disorder” when Coskun was attacked by two different people.

In other words: being violently assaulted turned Coskun’s peaceful protest into a crime, while Kadri, who resorted to violence because he was offended, escaped prison altogether.”

I tackle the broader issue of free speech and blasphemy at the global level in this podcast interview with Daniel James Sharp from The Freethinker.

Two decades from now, I hope free and open societies will look back at their willingness to sacrifice free speech in the face of fanaticism as a shameful era never to be repeated. But that will require concerted efforts to reinvigorate the culture of free speech, which is so clearly eroding in the very part of the world where this freedom was first articulated.

The cartoons were never really about Muhammad. They were about whether democracies would defend the hard edges of freedom—the parts that make us uncomfortable, that offend our sensibilities, that challenge our pieties.

Twenty years later, we’re still failing that test.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

Your support fuels this vital work. To help The Future of Free Speech fight the free speech recession, please consider making a gift on this important anniversary.

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Make no mistake. Charlie Kirk’s assassination was an attack on free speech and open debate. While we are still learning more about the shooter’s motivations, Kirk was killed because someone disagreed with his speech.

Words are not violence, and political violence has no place in a free society. Those who celebrate the killing of a political opponent deserve moral condemnation, and their ideas should be challenged before they make further inroads into the body politic.

An ideological online inquisition seeking to punish people for social media comments is not the way to achieve this important goal. Unfortunately, this seems to be the direction that several conservative activists and influencers have gone down with tacit and not-so-tacit support from the White House.

At FIRE’s Substack, Expression, Adam Goldstein writes, “We are in the cancel culture part of the tragedy cycle.”

He’s right. In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, social media mobs have gone hunting for anyone whose posts could be read as celebrating his death.

Some of those posts are ugly, abhorrent, and in bad taste. And it’s true that speech online is public, with potential professional and personal consequences. The First Amendment protects against government punishment, not social sanction.

Yet, as civil-libertarians and many conservatives have stressed repeatedly in debates with progressives who view words as violence over the past decade or so, free speech depends not only on legal protections, but also on a commitment to a culture of free speech.

What is troubling now is the wave of firings and blacklists aimed at people who expressed criticism—or even dark humor—about Kirk. Even more concerning are reports of a publicly searchable database of tens of thousands of posts, often from ordinary people from all walks of life. Not least because Trump was elected and championed by Kirk supporters, partly for his opposition to cancel culture.

Yet now punitive cancellations of people on the Left are being celebrated as righteous and virtuous and the White House’s Deputy Chief of Staff has vowed to “use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy this network and make America safe again for the American people” referring unspecified elements of the “radical Left” as “domestic terrorists”.

On another level of irony, the American Right, which has been extremely critical (and rightly so) of Europe’s crackdowns on free speech, is once again guilty of targeting the same sort of speech at home. As I’m writing this, a mother of three in my home country of Denmark is on trial for posting a Facebook comment expressing happiness to a news headline about the attack on Israel on October 7th. The prosecutor is demanding that she be sentenced to 4 months in prison. In the U.S., such speech — however abhorrent — is protected under the First Amendment, which many conservatives rightly point out is a guardian against the types of speech restrictions that characterize the Old World.

For those on the Right who justify this latest wave of cancel culture as a response to the firings and cancellations promoted by the Left during the 2020 “reckoning,” I’d like to re-up my piece that appeared in Persuasion almost a year ago, after the, thankfully unsuccessful, assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

Here’s what I wrote back in September 2024:

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Reflections on Right-Wing Cancel Culture

“The Left started it.”

That was the common retort from right-wing X accounts like Libs of TikTok and their supporters, who attempted and often succeeded at getting people fired for making tasteless social media posts about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump back in July.

Most of their victims weren’t public figures but regular Americans like Home Depot employees, firefighters, chefs, and school counselors. This was fine and good, many argued, because it constituted sweet revenge for cancel culture excesses driven by the Left. At The American Spectator, Nate Hochman claimed that the only way to get the Left to change is to make them “understand, at a visceral level, the penalties for the system that they themselves constructed—so much so, in fact, that they are no longer interested in perpetuating it.”

But the idea that the Left invented cancel culture is a poor and convenient excuse for satisfying the intolerant impulses that have tempted all humans throughout history regardless of political orientation. Using similarly flawed logic, Catholic persecution of paganism was justified since emperor Nero “started it.” Protestants would be entitled to persecute Catholics, as Protestant states frequently did, because the Church excommunicated Luther, banned his books, and punished heretics. We would also have to reevaluate the censorship and persecution in socialist and communist states. After all, Marx, Lenin, and Stalin were all subject to harsh censorship from various political and religious factions of the “bourgeoisie” before the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat turned the censored into censors.

A Brief History of Right-Wing Cancel Culture

Progressive ideas have often been confronted with hostility by conservatives and proponents of the status quo. In On Liberty, the high priest of liberalism, John Stuart Mill, warned that the cultural norms of 19th-century Victorian England created “a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression.”

This sort of “social tyranny” has also manifested itself in the United States at decisive historical moments where first principles were at stake:

• In 1850, a professor at the University of North Carolina named Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick faced severe repercussions for his public support of anti-slavery Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont. Students, faculty, and local newspapers condemned Hedrick, and he was even burned in effigy on campus. When he was fired and forced to flee North Carolina, The Standard newspaper boasted about successfully removing “an avowed Fremont man” from the university and the state.

• During World War I, the first Red Scare targeted anti-war protestors and those suspected of holding or sympathizing with socialist and communist views. In 1917, the Columbia University history professor Charles Beard resigned in protest after the Board of Trustees dismissed two professors opposed to the war. The New York Times editorial board celebrated Beard’s resignation, praising the school for cracking down on doctrines “dangerous to the community and to the nation” and ridiculing the idea that “academic freedom” must include “poisonous teachings.”

• During the second Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s, the fear of communism led to the widespread blacklisting and firing of individuals suspected of having leftist sympathies. Over 378 teachers in New York City alone were dismissed, forced to resign, or take early retirement due to suspicions of communist involvement. Meanwhile, over 300 writers, actors, directors, and producers were placed on a Hollywood blacklist. The conservative American Legion criticized concepts like “academic freedom” and questioned whether communist professors should be allowed to teach on campus.

• Cancellation attempts continued throughout the Civil Rights era, including the firings of those participating in activism to promote equal rights. In 1960, civil rights activist Reverend James Lawson led lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville. Lawson was enrolled at Vanderbilt University’s divinity school at the time, but, after a local newspaper described Lawson as an “agent of strife” university officials deemed his Gandhi-inspired nonviolent protest techniques too radical and expelled him.

• Finally, spurred by the Satanic panic and the rise of the Evangelical Right, conservatives in the 1970s and 1980s coalesced to root out what they viewed as corrupting ideas, targeting wide swaths of art, music, and literature. Mundane pursuits like Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal music ended up in the crosshairs. In 1981, a coalition led by the Moral Majority promoted a national boycott of companies that sponsored or advertised on TV shows they deemed offensive due to “excessive sex, violence, and profanity” in an attempt to get such programs removed from the airwaves.

The Need for Principled Defenders of Free Speech

These examples underscore a critical lesson: the original sin of cancel culture does not rest with any single ideology or group, but rather with our species' hard-wired tendencies towards tribalistic behavior and the self-righteous urge to punish outgroups who transgress taboos. 2,500 years before the advent of social media, the Buddha aptly warned against giving into anger with its “poisoned root and honeyed tip.” This dynamic explains the endless battles ginned up by Very-Online Culture Warriors, including those involved in recent attempts to cancel left-wingers who post distasteful things about Trump.

But no one can claim a moral high ground according to which the ends justify the means of cancel culture. Those who are serious about fostering a resilient culture of free speech should instead commit to resisting the honeyed tip of tribal outrage and thus help prevent the spread of its poisoned roots.

History provides numerous role models who have paved the way.

The great orator Frederick Douglass was subjected to multiple cancellation attempts for his abolitionist speeches. He was almost killed by a mob shouting “kill the n*gger” after an 1843 speech in Pendleton, Indiana, and was shouted down by another mob in Boston in 1860. His response was not to demand the censorship of pro-slavery advocates. In his essay “A Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston,” Douglass wrote that “there can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up, or however humble, however young, or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments.” Douglass also made the important point that free speech is not only an individual right of the speaker, but in fact a common good that benefits all, and thus, “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

Douglass’ civil-libertarian ethos was ultimately reflected in First Amendment jurisprudence. In the landmark Brandenburg v. Ohio decision, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protected the speech of a KKK leader who warned that he might take action against “N*ggers” and “Jews” if the government didn't. Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court Justice, grew up in the Jim Crow era, graduated from a segregated school system, and fought against the oppressive and censorial reality of Jim Crow. Despite this, he voted with the majority in Brandenburg, since he recognized that, as one commentator put it, “liberty and equality, properly understood, complemented each other.”

More recently, the author Salman Rushdie has lived with the consequences of exercising free speech, enduring countless cancellations, threats, and violence, culminating in a near-fatal attack in 2022. Yet throughout his forty-year ordeal, Rushdie has remained a steadfast defender of free speech, advocating for the rights of even those who abhor his work and wish him harm.

Douglass, Marshall, and Rushdie all paid a high price for their principles, standing firm against censorship and persecution. Their sacrifices underscore the urgent need for a collective commitment to uphold the principles of a vibrant culture of free speech, which will allow us to respond to ideas we loathe with scorn or criticism without resorting to punitive measures that undermine the pluralistic foundation of free societies.

We must follow their example and reject the poisoned roots of tribalistic anger and the false justification of cancel culture just because “the other side started it.”

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

President Trump’s Executive Order on Prosecuting the Burning of the American Flag has sparked intense debate. Does the EO violate the First Amendment, or — given its many qualifiers — is it simply symbolic, designed to send a political signal?

Even if the EO doesn’t stand up to legal scrutiny, its mere existence may chill expression by suggesting that certain forms of dissent are unwelcome.

But beyond its constitutional implications, the EO raises a deeper cultural and philosophical question: Is a ban on flag burning a form of secular blasphemy law?

Consider the language of the EO:

“Our great American Flag is the most sacred and cherished symbol of the United States of America, and of American freedom, identity, and strength. Over nearly two-and-a-half centuries, many thousands of American patriots have fought, bled, and died to keep the Stars and Stripes waving proudly. The American Flag is a special symbol in our national life that should unite and represent all Americans of every background and walk of life. Desecrating it is uniquely offensive and provocative. It is a statement of contempt, hostility, and violence against our Nation — the clearest possible expression of opposition to the political union that preserves our rights, liberty, and security.”

The parallels between this language and historical arguments in favor of religious blasphemy bans are striking. In the 18th and 19th centuries, blasphemy laws were no longer justified as a means to appease divine wrath, but rather as a way to preserve the moral and social order, which was thought to be grounded in shared religious values. The word religion, after all, comes from the Latin ligare — to bind.

In 1811, the Supreme Court of Judicature in New York affirmed the conviction of John Ruggles for blasphemy after he declared in a tavern: “Jesus Christ was a bastard, and his mother must be a whore.” Chief Justice James Kent upheld the conviction, writing:

“Though the Constitution has discarded religious establishments, it does not forbid judicial cognizance of those offences against religion and morality... punishable because they strike at the root of moral obligation, and weaken the security of the social ties. [...]The free, equal, and undisturbed enjoyment of religious opinion, whatever it may be, and free and decent discussions on any religious subject, is granted and secured; but to revile, with malicious and blasphemous contempt, the religion professed by almost the whole community, is an abuse of that right. [...]To scandalize the author of [Christian] doctrines is not only impious, but... a gross violation of decency and good order.”

Like Trump’s EO, Kent’s opinion is rooted in a particularist conception of the state — one in which shared values (whether Christian doctrine or reverence for the flag) are seen as foundational to the social order. From this perspective, robust free speech protections grounded in viewpoint neutrality would not be considered protective of the common good. On the contrary, they are corrosive to the moral framework without which no society can thrive — a framework that presupposes deference to certain sacred and inviolable norms.

Many civil libertarians, of course, deeply value both the American flag and core religious traditions. But they argue that freedom means allowing others to express criticism of those very values — even in ways that are deeply shocking and offensive.

In an X-post defending the EO, Vice President J.D. Vance insisted it complies with Texas v. Johnson, the 1989, 5–4 Supreme Court ruling that protected flag burning under the First Amendment. But he also endorsed then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s dissent in that case. This is quite ironic, given that Rehnquist’s dissent bears a remarkable resemblance to the speech-restrictive reasoning found in European jurisprudence, which Vance has often and vocally criticized.

Take this excerpt from Rehnquist’s dissent in Texas v. Johnson (joined by Justices White and O’Connor):

“Far from being a case of ‘one picture being worth a thousand words,’ flag burning is the equivalent of an inarticulate grunt or roar that, it seems fair to say, is most likely to be indulged in not to express any particular idea, but to antagonize others. […] The Texas statute deprived Johnson of only one rather inarticulate symbolic form of protest—a form of protest that was profoundly offensive to many—and left him with a full panoply of other symbols and every conceivable form of verbal expression to express his deep disapproval of national policy.”

Compare that to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) 9-5 majority opinion in Otto-Preminger-Institut v. Austria (1994), which upheld the seizure of a satirical film critical of Christianity:

“Whoever exercises [freedom of expression] undertakes ‘duties and responsibilities’. Amongst them – in the context of religious opinions and beliefs – may legitimately be included an obligation to avoid as far as possible expressions that are gratuitously offensive to others and thus an infringement of their rights, and which therefore do not contribute to any form of public debate capable of furthering progress in human affairs.” [Emphasis mine]

Both Rehnquist and the European judges acknowledge that free speech is an important right that must enjoy strong protection in a democratic society. But they draw the line at expressions that offend foundational symbols: for Rehnquist, the American flag; for the ECtHR, Austria’s state religion.

Rehnquist again:

“Surely one of the high purposes of a democratic society is the ability to legislate against conduct that is regarded as evil and profoundly offensive to the majority of people—whether it be murder, embezzlement, pollution, or flag burning.” [Emphasis mine]

The ECtHR echoed a similar rationale:

“The Court cannot disregard the fact that the Roman Catholic religion is the religion of the overwhelming majority of Tyroleans. In seizing the film, the Austrian authorities acted to ensure religious peace in that region and to prevent that some people should feel the object of attacks on their religious beliefs in an unwarranted and offensive manner.” [Emphasis mine]

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These passages reveal a common logic: that majoritarian reverence for sacred values — whether religious or civic — should take precedence over the individual’s right to transgress them. The underlying assumption is that peace, order, and cohesion depend on collective veneration of these symbols.

Arguably, Rehnquist’s view is even more sweeping than that of his European colleagues. It channels the English common law tradition of seditious and blasphemous libel, which drew no meaningful distinction between words and actions, and thus criminalized both. That tradition is deeply incompatible with a Madisonian conception of free speech.

In the former tradition, burning a flag isn’t an expression — it’s an act of symbolic violence. That is literally the underlying assumption of the EO, which states that “[flag burning] is a statement of contempt, hostility, and violence against our Nation.” [Emphasis mine]

But if we follow that logic, we invite a state that polices not just conduct, but emotional transgressions: outrage, irreverence, dissent. It is precisely because modern speech doctrines distinguish between words and actions that free countries no longer treat heresy and treason in the same manner — and why today you can get drunk in a New York bar, shout profanities about Christianity, and not end up serving three months on Riker’s Island.

More importantly, the fact that Rehnquist’s argument lost in Texas v. Johnson, while similar arguments prevailed in Otto-Preminger, is a contributing factor to why people in Europe are being arrested and convicted for burning Qurans, a state of affairs that J.D. Vance rightly lamented in his famous Munich speech. Such speech restrictions were “shocking to American ears,” Vance insisted.

What should be even more shocking is that Vance and his boss now want to import the very logic he condemned to arrest and prosecute Americans who burn their own flags.

In a pluralist society, the right to offend — even profoundly — is not a bug of free speech. It’s the feature that protects us from enforced orthodoxy, religious or secular.

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Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

It’s not every day that a government official invites you to write a lead essay critical of speech restrictions.

That openness itself is worth noting — and commending, and I'm very grateful to (now former) UK Counter Extremism Commissioner Robin Simcox for inviting me and a number of other authors to provide perspectives that are often absent — or paid lip service to — by governments when restricting free speech in the name of countering extremism.

The sincerity of Robin Simcox's concern about this issue can not be doubted and is made clear from his foreword:

I hoped to shift a perception that I know can exist around the counter-extremism field writ large: that while it may pay lip service to defending free speech, in practice it is too often a cudgel by which to enforce ideological and intellectual conformity. That it inevitably leads to more restrictive laws and ultimately more censorship. That it obscures systemic challenges, rather than addressing them.

Yet countering extremism and advancing free speech must go hand-in-hand. Where free speech thrives, so too does human liberty. After all, things we now know to be scientific fact were once considered heretical or blasphemous.

So we should not just defend free speech out of habit. We defend it because freedom of expression is the route by which we discover the truth; because testing conflicting opinion can be challenging but ultimately makes our discourse healthier; and because we learn to accept and indeed cherish those with differing viewpoints. The alternative – a coerced, ‘acceptable’ consensus of the day – offers a bleak vision of the future.

My essay aims to contribute to Simcox’s vision by exploring an underappreciated paradox: what happens when efforts to counter extremism undermine free speech—and in doing so, risk fueling the very extremism they aim to prevent?

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Below is an excerpt:

Introduction: Free Expression as a Safety Valve

In 1964, Nelson Mandela stood in a Pretoria courtroom charged with “sabotage” for using armed force against South Africa’s white supremacist Apartheid regime. In his famous “Rivonia Trial” speech Mandela provided a clear and unapologetic explanation for why the armed wing of the African National Congress had resorted to violence:

“All lawful modes of expressing opposition to [Apartheid] had been closed by legislation, and we were placed in a position in which we had either to accept a permanent state of inferiority, or to defy the Government. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the Government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.”

Mandela essentially likened free expression to a safety valve in a pressure cooker: if people cannot peacefully voice grievances, their anger will explode in other ways. His insight was simple but profound: when governments suppress peaceful expression, even those committed to democracy may see violence as the only remaining option. This pressure cooker theory of free speech suggests that open debate and protest offer a nonviolent alternative to extremism and conflict.

Modern democracies, of course, are not Apartheid South Africa. They fight terrorism in the name of protecting freedom and equality, not entrenching oppression. Moreover, their foes are typically not freedom fighters committed to democracy and human rights, but groups and individuals whose religious or ideological doctrines call for violently abolishing these values. Yet Mandela’s warning remains strikingly relevant. Today, many governments – democratic and authoritarian alike – are expanding anti- terrorism and extremism laws to curb radical ideas and movements. These measures are often justified as essential for national security or public order. But history and emerging evidence suggest that overzealous censorship and suppression can backfire, undermining the very democratic values they purport to defend.

This essay explores the growing tension between counter-extremism efforts and freedom of speech. It begins with the approach of the UK, France, and Germany, showing how even well-intentioned democracies risk eroding civil liberties. Next, it examines how authoritarian states have made “extremism” a catch-all excuse to silence dissent – and how they are influencing global norms. We then turn to the paradox of censorship: why suppressing extremist speech can make society less safe. Finally, we consider how democratic backsliding and authoritarian influence are reshaping international free speech standards and argue for a more principled path that defends both security and liberty.

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Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

Last week, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) issued one of the more remarkable statements I’ve seen from a group dedicated to press freedom. It criticized the Trump administration for imposing 50% tariffs on Brazil in response to what the U.S. called the Brazilian government and judiciary’s “unprecedented actions to tyrannically and arbitrarily coerce U.S. companies to censor political speech.”

To be clear, there are fair reasons to question the administration’s sincerity and its focus on Brazil. Why, for instance, isn’t the U.S. going after Russia, which has long banned U.S. tech companies for spreading “illegal content” and fined Google $360 million in 2022 and $78 million this year for failing to remove “prohibited material”? Meanwhile, the administration’s own record on speech and press freedom at home severely undermines its credibility when criticizing wrongdoings abroad.

But these were not RSF’s objections. Instead, one of the world’s best-known press-freedom organizations effectively endorsed Brazil’s approach:

“Using free speech as a pretext for trade sanctions is both cynical and misleading. Freedom of expression does not excuse disinformation, and it is not a shield for corporate influence. Brazil must not back off legitimate regulatory efforts designed to strengthen the right to reliable information and protect democratic debate online. Initiatives to counter disinformation, hate speech, and online harm are essential to protect journalism and democratic debate.”

According to RSF, prohibiting “disinformation” is not only legitimate but necessary—and it strengthens, rather than weakens, journalism and democratic debate. That’s an unusual stance for a press-freedom group.

International human-rights standards protect even false information absent narrow, specific harms and set a high bar for restricting “hate speech.” As then-UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression and Opinion, David Kaye, stated in 2019:

"online ‘hate speech’, [is] a short-hand phrase that conventional international law does not define. The phrase’s vagueness can be abused to enable infringements on a wide range of lawful expression. Many governments use ‘hate speech,’ like ‘fake news,’ to attack political enemies, non-believers, dissenters and critics"

And as the current Special Rapporteur stated in 2021:

"the right to freedom of expression applies to all kinds of information and ideas, including those that may shock, offend or disturb, and irrespective of the truth or falsehood of the content. Under international human rights law, people have the right to express ill-founded opinions and statements or indulge in parody or satire if they so wish....Vague laws that confer excessive discretion can lead to arbitrary decision-making and are incompatible with article 19 (3) of the Covenant. Any limitation of disinformation must establish a close and concrete connection to the protection of one of the legitimate aims stated in article 19 (3). The prohibition of false information is not in itself a legitimate aim under international human rights law"

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There’s a reason for this high bar: as of December 2024, the Committee to Protect Journalists counts 41 journalists imprisoned around the world on “false information” charges—often for investigating government abuses or corruption. Vague bans on “hate speech” and “disinformation” are the favorite tools of illiberal governments from Turkey to Russia to Venezuela.

RSF would surely say it doesn’t endorse Putin, Erdoğan, or Maduro. But the logic is the same: once the state can police truth at scale, it will, and the impact will not be limited to the social media companies that press freedom groups like RSF think should be more thoroughly policed. In fact, as I argue in my recent dispatch from Brazil for Persuasion, Brazil is drifting toward top-down control of the digital public square, not away from it:

In 2019, then-Supreme Court President Dias Taffoli announced an investigation into fake news, putting Justice Alexandre de Moraes in charge. Moraes immediately started a crackdown, ordering the magazine Crusoé to take down an article linking the Chief Justice to corruption (but backing down when the magazine proved it accurate). He then escalated, ordering arrests, searches, and censorship of right-wing figures, often with flimsy legal and factual bases. Even the left was targeted when he ordered the blocking of communist social media accounts for calling him a “skinhead” and criticizing the Supreme Court.

More recently, a majority of the Supreme Court struck down parts of a law requiring a court order for internet intermediaries to remove user-generated content. This shield against intermediary liability once made Brazil a progressive trailblazer for internet freedom in Latin America. But now the floodgates have been opened wide for the government to require platforms to monitor and remove illegal content or face liability. This development is likely to incentivize platforms to remove even legal content that the government, or activist judges, flag as problematic.

Moraes’ aggressive approach has split Brazilian opinion—hailed by some as a defender of democracy, denounced by others as the censorial Grand Inquisitor of the public sphere. Yet his powers have only grown.

In 2022, in addition to being a justice of the Supreme Court, Moraes became President of Brazil’s Electoral Court, which expanded its powers to police political speech, ostensibly to stop “knowingly false or gravely decontextualized” election information. The Court suspended media outlets and censored speech that, in a democracy, should be debated and judged by voters—not suppressed by judges applying subjective, paternalistic standards.

[ . . . ]

It is not only disinformation that is severely punished by Brazilian judges. The courts have also dramatically expanded the country’s laws against hate speech. Earlier this month, the prominent Brazilian standup comedian Leo Lins was sentenced to eight years in prison for racist, homophobic, and ableist hate speech in one of his routines. Meanwhile, two university employees—a janitor and an administrator—face up to five years in prison for hate speech after misgendering a transgender student and asking her to leave a women’s bathroom.

But despite the powerful role that Brazilian courts have carved out for themselves, criticizing or even discussing the role of Brazilian judges can be risky. In several cases, Supreme Court judges—including Moraes—have sued or initiated criminal proceedings against investigative journalists and vocal critics. One journalist was sued and fined for accurately reporting the salary of a judge. Considering how much power the judiciary wields in Brazilian politics, the simultaneous punishment and intimidation of public scrutiny is a deeply worrying step by this unelected branch of government.

When I spoke to journalists, editors, and publishers of various media outlets across the political spectrum, they all reported extensive self-censoring out of fear of being sued for civil or criminal defamation, or facing other consequences such as the blocking of social media accounts or the banning of articles and documentaries.

However frustrated RSF may be with social media, abandoning the very principles that protect the billions of ordinary people that use social media to share and access ideas —in favor of a narrow conception of “press freedom” that benefits traditional media—will (a) further deepen distrust in elite media institutions and (b) hand governments a ready-made pretext to target legacy outlets next.

For more on why all democracies and press freedom advocates should avoid calls to follow in Brazil’s footsteps, you can read my whole essay, “Don’t Resort to Censorship to Fight Populism,” over at Persuasion.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

Although it has become increasingly trendy among American elites to frame Europe’s approach to free speech as responsible and “balanced,” the cracks in that narrative are starting to show, as more people are being tangibly harmed by Europe’s speech restrictions.

For years, The Future of Free Speech has been warning about the increasingly censorious direction that European policymakers have been taking in recent years — from the UK’s draconian enforcement of hate speech laws to Germany’s crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests and more. So we were pleased to see comprehensive reporting on this issue in a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled “Europe’s Crackdown on Speech Goes Far and Wide.”

The free speech chasm between Europe and the U.S. has become even clearer in the digital age, with European governments conducting police raids, making arrests, and imprisoning people for social media posts that offend minorities, “stir up hatred,” or even insult politicians, as the WSJ article describes.

Other major outlets are also starting to catch up. A recent Economist essay pulls no punches, declaring that “Europe really does have a problem with free speech,” and criticizing laws that punish speech for being offensive, insulting, or politically inconvenient. A separate Economist article details how British police now arrest more than 30 people a day for online speech, and how outdated laws have allowed minor disputes — including in private WhatsApp groups — to escalate into criminal cases. Meanwhile, in the Financial Times, Camilla Cavendish warns that the UK’s approach has become so muddled and arbitrary that “we should look with envy at [America’s] First Amendment.”

These are welcome additions to the conversation, and they reinforce what our research has long shown: that Europe’s speech laws are neither balanced nor principled — they are vague, subjective, and increasingly prone to abuse.

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In the U.S., free speech, even hate speech, is protected except in narrow circumstances such as direct incitement to violence. But the European Court of Human Rights has held that governments may “sanction or even prevent all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred.”

The WSJ notes that Europe’s approach to hate speech stems from the fact that it is a “continent scarred by the Holocaust.” But as I have chronicled in my book and elsewhere, it is not the case that the Nazis took advantage of unrestricted free speech in Weimar Germany to rise to power; in fact, they were frequently censored and punished for their extremist rhetoric.

We have also warned about how the push for stricter prohibitions against hate speech in Europe will undoubtedly be used against the very minority groups such laws are intended to protect. In the UK, for instance, a young black man was arrested in his home, had his phone seized, and was prosecuted for the ‘crime’ of tweeting a raccoon emoji and using the word ‘coons’ towards a black Conservative politician. I highlight several other egregious examples in these two essays for the WSJ.

The WSJ authors also note the recent UK court decision finding Hamit Coskun guilty of “religiously motivated public disorder” for burning a Quran in front of the Turkish embassy. For years, we have pushed back on the re-emergence of blasphemy laws in Europe as countries like Sweden and Denmark, and now the UK, have made it a crime to insult religious texts.

The arrests related to the crackdown on defamation, hate speech, and blasphemy make for jarring headlines, but Europe’s approach to digital regulation also raises red flags. As my colleagues Joan Barata and Jordi Calvet-Bademunt have continued to point out, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and AI Act’s obligation for social media platforms and AI companies to address the vague concept of “systemic risks” undermines international standards for freedom of expression and will likely encourage platforms to overremove legal content.

In a few recent, glaring examples of the DSA’s worrying impact, the EU Commission’s former “digital enforcer,” Thierry Breton, suggested that social media platforms could face shutdowns if they do not remove problematic content during riots. He also sent a letter to Elon Musk warning that hosting an interview with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on X could violate the DSA.

The WSJ article also notes how NGOs in Germany “scour the internet for instances of hate speech.” Under the DSA’s Hate Speech Code of Conduct, the EU Commission has delegated to NGOs the task of flagging content in a similar manner. My colleague Natalie Alkiviadou has recently expressed concerns about how free expression experts are severely lacking among these “trusted flagger” NGOs.

It might also interest WSJ readers to learn that what happens in Europe doesn’t stay there. In what is often deemed the “Brussels Effect,” our research has shown time and again how regulations in Europe often become blueprints for authoritarian regimes like Russia and Pakistan to justify crackdowns on digital dissent. We have also recently been tracking the same trend wherein the DSA has been used as a cover for censorship in Latin America and the Asia Pacific.

While the U.S. is currently grappling with its own problems — from attacks on the press from the Trump administration to the crackdown on unpopular speech through immigration enforcement actions, among many other troubling examples — European governments lack the strong and principled First Amendment protections that have already begun to curtail some of these most egregious abuses of power. (It should also be noted that European governments have also used immigration enforcement to punish speech.)

We are glad the WSJ and others are drawing additional attention to the creeping intolerance of European speech regulations and their disproportionate enforcement. Europe’s commitment to free speech will continue to deteriorate so long as its civil society neglects the need for free speech as the “bulwark of liberty” in a democratic society.

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Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

This article originally appeared on Expression — FIRE’s new Substack — on June 13, 2025.

Generative AI is changing the way we learn, think, discover, and create. Researchers at UC San Diego are using generative AI technology to accelerate climate modeling. Scientists at Harvard Medical School have developed a chatbot that can help diagnose cancers. In Belarus, Venezuela, and Russia, political dissidents and embattled journalists have created AI tools to bypass censorship.

Despite these benefits, a recent global survey from The Future of Free Speech, a think tank where I am the executive director, finds that people around the world support strict guardrails — whether imposed by companies or governments — on the types of content that AI can create.

These findings were part of a broader survey that ranked 33 countries on overall support for free speech, including on controversial but legal topics. In every country, even high-scoring ones, fewer than half supported AI generating content that, for instance, might offend religious beliefs or insult the national flag — speech that would be protected in most democracies. While some people might find these topics beyond reproach, the ability to question these orthodoxies is a fundamental freedom that underpins free and open societies.

This tension reflects two competing approaches for how societies should harness AI’s power. The first, “User Empowerment,” sees generative AI as a powerful but neutral tool. Harm lies not in the tool itself, but in how it’s used and by whom. This approach affirms that free expression includes not just the right to speak, but the right to access information across borders and media — a collective good essential to informed choice and democratic life. Laws should prohibit using AI to commit fraud or harassment, not ban AI from discussing controversial political topics.

The second, “Preemptive Safetyism,” treats some speech as inherently harmful and seeks to block it before it’s even created. While this instinct may seem appealing given the potential for using AI to supercharge harm production, it risks turning AI into a tool of censorship and control, especially in the hands of powerful corporate or political actors.

As AI becomes an integrated operating system in our everyday life, it is critical that we not cut off access to ideas and information that may challenge us. Otherwise, we risk limiting human creativity and stifling scientific discovery.

Concerns Over AI Moderation

In 2024, The Future of Free Speech analyzed the policies of six major chatbots and tested 268 prompts to see how they handled controversial but legal topics, such as the participation of transgender athletes in women's sports and the “lab-leak” theory. We found that chatbots refused to generate content for more than 40% of prompts. This year, we repeated our tests and found that refusal rates dropped significantly to about 25% of the time.

Despite these positive developments, our survey’s findings indicate that people are comfortable with companies and governments erecting strict guardrails on what their AI chatbots can generate, which may result in large-scale government-mandated corporate control of users’ access to information and ideas.

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Overwhelming Opposition to Political Deepfakes

Unsurprisingly, the category of AI content that received the lowest support across the board in our survey was deepfakes of politicians. No more than 38% of respondents in any country expressed approval of political deepfakes. This finding aligns with a surge of legislative activity in both the U.S. and abroad as policymakers rush to regulate the use of AI deepfakes in elections.

At least 40 U.S. states introduced deepfake-related bills in the 2024 legislative session alone, with more than 50 bills already enacted. China, the EU, and others are all scrambling to pass laws requiring the detection, disclosure, and/or removal of deepfakes. Europe’s AI Act requires platforms to mitigate nebulous and ill-defined “systemic risks to society,” which could lead companies to preemptively remove lawful but controversial speech like deepfakes critical of politicians.

Although deepfakes can have real-world consequences, First Amendment advocates who have challenged deepfake regulations in the U.S. rightly argue that laws targeting political deepfakes open the door for governments to censor lawful dissent, criticism, or satire of candidates, a vital function of the democratic process. This is not a merely speculative risk.

The editor of a far-right German media outlet was sentenced to a seven-month suspended prison sentence for sharing a fake meme of the Interior Minister holding a sign that ironically read, “I hate freedom of speech.” For much of 2024, Google restricted Gemini’s ability to generate factual responses about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after the Indian government accused the company of breaking the law when its chatbot responded that Modi had been “accused of implementing policies some experts characterized as fascist.”

And despite panic over AI-driven disinformation undermining global elections in 2024, studies from Princeton, the EU, and the Alan Turing Institute found no evidence that a wave of deepfakes affected election results in places like the U.S., Europe, or India.

People Want Regulation But Don’t Trust Regulators

A recent Pew Research Center survey found that nearly six in 10 U.S. adults believed the government would not adequately regulate AI. Our survey confirms these findings on a global scale. In all countries surveyed except Taiwan, at least a plurality supported dual regulation by both governments and tech companies.

Indeed, a 2023 Pew survey found that 55% of Americans supported government restrictions on false information online, even if it limited free expression. But a 2024 Axios poll found that more Americans fear misinformation from politicians than from AI, foreign governments, or social media. In other words, the public appears willing to empower those they distrust most with policing online and AI misinformation.

A new FIRE poll, conducted in May 2025, underscores this tension. Although about 47% of respondents said they prioritize protecting free speech in politics, even if that means tolerating some deceptive content, 41% said it’s more important to protect people from misinformation than to protect free speech. Even so, 69% said they were “moderately” to “extremely” concerned that the government might use AI rules to silence criticism of elected officials.

In a democracy, public opinion matters — and The Future of Free Speech survey suggests that people around the world, including in liberal democracies, favor regulating AI to suppress offensive or controversial content. But democracies are not mere megaphones for majorities. They must still safeguard the very freedoms — like the right to access information, question orthodoxy, and challenge those in power — that make self-government possible.

We Should Avoid ‘Preemptive Safetyism’

The dangers of Preemptive Safetyism are most vividly on display in China, where AI tools like DeepSeek must enforce “core socialist values,” avoiding topics like Taiwan, Xinjiang, or Tiananmen, even when released in the West. What looks like a safety net can easily become a dragnet for dissent.

Speech being generated by a machine does not negate the human right to receive it, especially as those algorithms become central to the very search engines, email clients, and word processors that we use as an interface for the exchange of ideas and information in the digital age.

The greatest danger to speech often arises not from what is said, but from the fear of what might be said. An open society cannot thrive if its digital architecture is built to exclude dissent by design.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also a senior fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

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Earlier this week, I spoke at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit about how generative AI is reshaping the future of free expression. What follows is an adapted version of my remarks, featuring some of the most promising examples of “Creative AI”, the rising dangers of “Intrusive AI”, and the global tug-of-war between openness and control. You can also watch the full video of my talk at 43:28 here. I explore this topic in greater depth in my forthcoming book, The Future of Free Speech, co-authored with Jeff Kosseff and due out from Johns Hopkins University Press in 2026.

When it comes to AI and free speech, I find it helpful to distinguish between two broad categories that we might call Creative AI and Intrusive AI.

Creative AI can be incredibly empowering. It helps us think, research, and create more effectively. It’s like an exoskeleton for the mind. And it’s no longer just about chatbots. Generative AI is quickly becoming the backbone of how we search, write, email—how we access and process information. It’s turning into the default interface for knowledge and expression. So how it’s trained, filtered, and governed won’t just shape what we see and say—it may shape how we think.

From a free speech perspective, one of the most promising features of Creative AI is its ability to empower dissidents in authoritarian states. In Belarus, the banned opposition launched an AI-generated candidate to share uncensored ideas. In Venezuela, independent journalists are using AI-generated avatars to report the news and avoid arrest. And in Russia, the exiled outlet IStories developed an AI tool called Charon, which identified over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed or missing in Ukraine—data-driven journalism that would be impossible from inside the country.

But there’s a darker side: Intrusive AI, which is used to monitor, predict, and manipulate behavior, often without consent. In the U.S., the State Department’s “Catch and Revoke” program tracks visa holders’ social media for signs of dissent. And in Russia and China, we’re seeing the authoritarian endgame: real-time surveillance, facial recognition, and AI-powered censorship at scale.

The stakes are high. AI could supercharge free expression—or supercharge its suppression. Which path we take depends on the choices we make now.

Last year, The Future of Free Speech tested 268 prompts on six major chatbots—including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude—to see how they handled controversial but legal topics. The results were troubling: about half the time, these AI systems refused to respond. Topics like transgender athletes in sports or the COVID-19 lab leak were simply off-limits—not because the content was illegal, but because the models were over-correcting in the name of safety.

But here’s the good news: things are changing. When we repeated our tests this year, refusal rates dropped significantly—from around 50% to 25%. OpenAI introduced an “intellectual freedom” policy. Anthropic cut unnecessary refusals nearly in half. Grok had a perfect record with zero refusals.

We also tested how chatbots handled sensitive topics about China. Most U.S. models passed. But DeepSeek—a powerful Chinese open-source model that performed well otherwise—completely shut down on issues like Taiwan, Tiananmen, and Xinjiang. It’s trained to reflect “core socialist values,” which is code for whatever the Communist Party wants you to believe.

So yes, we’re seeing real progress toward more open, viewpoint-diverse AI. But that progress is fragile. New political winds, profit motives, or social pressures can easily change the calculus.

This is especially true when so much power is concentrated in the hands of so few. We’ve seen this play out with Elon Musk and his technology ventures. On X, his social media platform, he’s imposed ideological moderation rules, punished progressive voices, sued critics, and complied with takedown demands from governments like India and Turkey. That’s a far cry from his claim to be a free speech absolutist.

But interestingly, Musk’s chatbot Grok tells a different story. When I asked Grok about Musk’s role in DOGE, it gave a long, detailed answer and concluded that his involvement raises serious ethical and legal concerns due to his dual role as a government advisor with oversight over areas affecting his own businesses.

Still, the broader concern remains: with so much power in so few hands, AI companies may suppress content. That’s why open-source models are so important. They allow anyone to access and modify the technology, helping preserve freedom of thought and access to information.

Of course, openness comes with risks—disinformation, hate speech, and abuse. But that tradeoff is inherent to any communication technology that democratizes access to information. The printing press and the Internet both paved the way for disruptive reformations and revolutions. The challenge isn’t to eliminate all harms, but to manage and mitigate them in ways that don’t undermine the foundations of open societies.

AI is changing how we engage with information, and not always for the better. It allows bad actors to scale attacks on the information ecosystem, potentially eroding the shared reality that democracies rely on for collective action. In our recent global survey across 33 countries, we found strong public support for regulating AI-generated speech and very low tolerance for controversial content like political deepfakes or images mocking national symbols. That fear is now driving new legislation across democracies.

But it’s important that we not freak out and keep our perspective. Take the 2024 panic over AI-driven disinformation. Yes, we saw deepfakes and viral hoaxes. But studies from Princeton, the EU, and the Alan Turing Institute found no evidence that AI disinformation changed election results in the U.S., Europe, or India. The real threat wasn’t the content; it was the erosion of trust. And clamping down on speech tends to make that worse, not better.

That’s why Taiwan’s model deserves more attention. Under constant pressure from Chinese propaganda, Taiwan didn’t respond with censorship. Instead, they built a civic-tech ecosystem rooted in openness and public participation. Fact-checking in Taiwan is often crowdsourced and increasingly AI-enhanced. Tools like Cofacts let users submit suspected disinformation, which is then reviewed by a combination of community members and automated tools. The process is fast, transparent, and bottom-up.

Taiwan has also pioneered alignment assemblies—citizen deliberation platforms that foster shared understanding rather than fueling outrage. They show how technology can strengthen, rather than undermine, democratic resilience.

These are lessons for the wider democratic world. If Taiwan can resist authoritarian interference without sacrificing free speech, then so can we.

This brings us to regulation. We’re seeing two competing models of AI governance emerge—what I call User Empowerment versus Preemptive Safetyism.

User Empowerment sees generative AI as a powerful but neutral tool. Harm lies not in the tool itself, but in how it’s used and by whom. This approach affirms that free expression includes not just the right to speak, but the right to access information across borders and media—a collective good essential to informed choice and democratic life. Preemptive Safetyism, by contrast, treats certain speech as inherently harmful, regardless of context or intent, and aims to block it at the source. Like pre-publication censorship in the age of the printing press, it seeks to prevent disfavored ideas from being created and diffused at all.

And Preemptive Safetyism is gaining ground. In the U.S., states like California and Minnesota have passed laws targeting deepfakes in elections. But some go too far. Minnesota criminalizes AI-generated content that might “influence” an election or “injure” a candidate—language so vague it could chill satire or dissent. A federal judge in California blocked a similar law, calling it “a hammer instead of a scalpel.”

Europe’s new AI Act blends both instincts. It mandates watermarking—fair enough. But it also requires platforms to mitigate undefined “systemic risks to society.” That vagueness could push companies to preemptively scrub lawful, but controversial, speech.

In China, the logic of Preemptive Safetyism has been taken to its extreme. As mentioned previously, AI is explicitly required to align with “core socialist values,” mixing censorship with state propaganda.

So yes, some AI regulation is necessary to prevent catastrophic harms and narrow categories of content like child sexual abuse material. But if democracies regulate out of fear instead of principle, bad governance could easily end up being more dangerous than bad content.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.

Watch my full conversation with CBS News’ Melissa Mahtani from the Copenhagen Democracy Summit starting at 43:28 in this video.

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We would like to thank the Swedish Postcode Lottery Foundation for their generous support.

This article was originally published in The Dispatch on April 24, 2025.

Two years ago, I moved to the United States to found a think tank devoted to defending global free expression. What better place to launch than America, which is, according to the law professor and First Amendment expert Lee Bollinger, “the most speech protective of any nation on Earth, now or throughout history”?

Despite being Danish, I’ve always found America’s civil-libertarian free speech tradition more appealing than the Old World’s model, with its vague terms and conditions. For much of my career, I’ve been evangelizing a First Amendment approach to free speech to skeptical Europeans and doubtful Americans, who are often tempted by laws banning “hate speech,” “extremism,” and “disinformation.” That appreciation for the First Amendment is something I share with many foreigners—Germans, Iranians, Russians—who now call America home. For some of us, that tradition has become a kind of secular article of faith—the realization of which not only offers a sense of identity, but also a rite of passage into American ideals. Indeed, many of us noncitizens nodded in agreement in February when Vice President J.D. Vance said that European speech restrictions are “shocking to American ears.”

But the very ideal that so many of us noncitizens cherish as America’s “first freedom” is now being curtailed. The administration is invoking a clause of the Immigration Nationality Act of 1952 that allows the secretary of state unfettered discretion to deport aliens, including anyone he believes “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.” This new scheme has begun with the detaining of foreign students—including visa and green card holders—for allegedly antisemitic speech.

Combating antisemitism is an important and legitimate government interest, and both Americans and noncitizens are safer when bigotry is confronted. But for six decades America has prohibited censorship and relied on counterspeech as the main bulwark against hatred, not least because leading Jewish and black civil rights groups have long recognized the danger of giving the government power over speech. Had the administration focused on noncitizens engaged in illegal or seriously disruptive conduct targeting Jewish students—which clearly occurred on some campuses after the October 7 terrorist Hamas attacks—few could have objected.

But it’s now clear that the government is targeting noncitizens for ideas and speech protected by the First Amendment. The most worrying example (so far) is a Turkish student at Tufts University, apparently targeted for co-authoring a student op-ed calling for, among other things, Tufts to divest from companies with ties to Israel. One report estimates that around 1,700 students from universities across the country have had their visas revoked so far.

Instead of correcting this overreach, the government has doubled down. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently announced that it would begin screening the social media posts of aliens “whose posts indicate support for antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, or other antisemitic activity.” Shortly after, the X account of USCIS posted about a “robust social media vetting program” and warned: “EVERYONE should be on notice. If you’re a guest in our country—act like it.” And four days later, White House homeland security adviser Stephen Miller promised to deport “anyone who preaches hate for America.” What that means is anybody’s guess—and seems to depend entirely on subjective assessments.

This has created a wave of self-censorship among the millions of noncitizens who live, study, and work in the U.S. Conversations among expats now center on how many have stopped posting political content or canceled travel abroad, fearing they won’t be let back in. Noncitizens in think tanks and public policy roles I have spoken to are using burner phones and keeping immigration lawyers on speed dial. Universities are advising foreign students and faculty not to publicly criticize the U.S. government or officials. Students are complying, even going so far as to ask to have their bylines removed from articles, refraining from peaceful protests and scrubbing their social media accounts. Even more surreal: People, including me, are receiving constant pleas from friends and family to come home, fearing what might happen if we stay. After all, this is America, not Russia.

As a green card holder, I understand why so many foreign students, faculty members, and other legal residents who live in and love this country might prefer to stay silent—after all, they came here for a reason, whether to study, work, or start a life with loved ones. But silence would be a betrayal of the very values that brought many of us here in the first place. In fact, I can think of few things more un-American than having to self-censor out of fear of being targeted by the government.

This isn’t the first time America has targeted foreign dissenters. In 1798, President John Adams signed the Alien Act, giving himself sweeping power to deport any noncitizen from a friendly nation deemed “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,” or merely “suspected” of treason or “secret machinations against the government.” In response, James Madison warned the law’s vague language “can never be mistaken for legal rules or certain definitions” and “subvert[ed] the general principles of free government.” Thomas Jefferson called it “a most detestable thing … worthy of the 8th or 9th century.” Their concerns were vindicated when Americans handed Adams’ Federalists a catastrophic defeat in the 1800 election, and the Alien Act expired under Jefferson.

During the Red Scares of the 20th century, waves of government paranoia led to the surveillance, detention, and deportation of “subversive” noncitizens. McCarthyism has been roundly criticized in the decades since, and few have likely imagined that a McCarthy-era statute would not only survive but be revived and aggressively expanded in the 21st century.

The late British-American journalist Christopher Hitchens is a more recent testament to the long tolerance of America toward foreign dissent. Before becoming a U.S. citizen in 2007, Hitchens spent decades as a legal resident—and as one of America’s most acerbic public intellectuals. He accused Ronald Reagan of being “a liar and trickster,” called Israel America’s “chosen surrogate” for “dirty work” and “terrorism,” lambasted Bill Clinton as “almost psychopathically deceitful,” and accused the George W. Bush administration of torture and illegal surveillance. If a student can be deported for writing a campus op-ed critical of Israel, any of Hitchens’ views could have been used to justify deporting him.

Those applauding the recent crackdowns should remember how quickly the target can change. An overzealous administration focused on countering “Islamophobia” rather than antisemitism might have barred Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Salman Rushdie before they became citizens. The next might decide Douglas Murray crosses the line.

Surely Secretary of State Marco Rubio knows this. In a recent interview, he warned that if Americans are denied entry to or face consequences in Europe for their online speech, it would undermine “one of the pillars of our shared values”—freedom of expression. Yet his own department now targets foreign nationals in the U.S. for the same online speech he was ostensibly protecting.

Had America been known for deporting, rather than welcoming, dissent, I would never have made it my home. That might not have been much of a loss. But consider this: 35 percent of U.S.-affiliated academic Nobel laureates are immigrants, and nearly half of all American unicorn startups have founders born outside the country. How many of these brilliant minds would have chosen the United States if they risked exile for crossing the speech red lines of the moment?

As a European who owes my freedom in life thus far to the America that fought Nazism and defeated communism, I feel a responsibility to speak out when this country strays from its founding ideals. I came to America for its freedom, not just to enjoy it, but to defend it—even if that puts me at risk.

Update, April 24, 2025: This article has been updated to reflect a more recent count of the number of students who have lost their visas.

Jacob Mchangama is the Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech and a research professor at Vanderbilt University. He is also a senior fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the author of Free Speech: A History From Socrates to Social Media.