Jillaine Heather: Words, not witch hunts

We’ve said it over and over: censorship is a trap. The wind changes, and it blows right back in your face.

At the Free Speech Union, we’ve spent years defending the slim, uncomfortable space that lets bad ideas be seen and argued with, not buried to fester away.

But celebrations over the assassination of a man for his opinions? This has stopped me in my tracks. I had to step back for a moment.

We’re watching from the other side of the world, seeing individuals fired from their jobs for holding this opinion.

I had to return to our first principles. Why is it essential that all speech is free, even the speech I find abhorrent?

Because sunlight is the best disinfectant.

And here’s the clincher: Does firing someone from their job do anything to change their mind?

Professional exile rarely persuades. Surely it makes them double down or bury their views underground only to have them crop up in more dramatic ways.

As New Zealand watches the response to the tragic killing of Charlie Kirk in the US, we’re seeing a sudden change in the tide. This reminds us: free speech is not a left or right matter. It’s a foundational principle.

Too many powerful actors who previously called out censorship are reflexively reaching for punishment: politicians promising prosecutions for ‘hate speech’, and pressure campaigns demanding people lose their jobs over offensive, ugly or ill-timed remarks. Do they not see what they’re doing?

When it comes to censorship, we always ask, ‘What happens when the shoe is on the other foot?’. Well, this is it.

Look - private employers can and do set standards – but they should avoid becoming the censorship arm of the loudest online crowd.

Free speech protects speech you despise as much as speech you celebrate. If we only defend the speech we like, it’s not freedom; it’s a preference pretending to be principled. This is challenging, and this has tested me.

But censorship is narrow-minded. It’s shortsighted. Yes, it’s a natural impulse to ideas we find abhorrent. But it’s through calling them out that progress is made, not by cancelling them.

Engage in counter speech; dismantle the bad ideas; make people uncomfortable with persuasion, not with punishment, and ultimately trust the public to judge; don’t turn to censors to decide what is allowed for you.

The price we pay for our freedom from governmental overreach and authoritarian schemes is allowing everyone to have their say, no matter how uncomfortable.

Remember, we’re talking about a man being murdered because someone didn’t like his opinions. Have Charlie Kirk’s ideas disappeared since he was killed? No – they’ve reached further than they ever have. Will firing someone from their job change their views on this? Unlikely.

Let the courts and police pursue criminals - not the politics of purges or the ‘call out crowd’ in which power appears to reside in whoever yells the loudest.

That means condemning violence without using grief as an excuse to shrink the space for speech, and extending a little more grace and compassion to all in these heightened times. It means answering rotten ideas with better ones.

It means standing up for the principle that freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend – because protecting freedom protects everyone’s right to speak – a public square – rough, argumentative, resilient, and free.

Jillaine Heather is the Chief Executive of the Free Speech Union.