Nathan Smith: You Don't Need To Defend Frivolous Speech

Come on, guys. We have to get smarter at this.

Complaining about the end of free speech every time someone gets a visit from the police for writing a few words online is childish. Just because you have to say something doesn’t mean you have something to say. And just because you have something to say doesn’t mean you know how to say it. Simply offering a blanket defence of free speech makes everyone dumber. Quality over quantity, every time.

Brian Tamaki says a lot of good things. But he is far too often frivolous with his speech, and that is what gets him in trouble. This week, Tamaki appeared before a district court where he pleaded not guilty to three charges of “inciting racial disharmony.” The courts said Tamaki’s words were racist against Indians, but he retorted that they were aimed at countering the religions coming from India, like Islam and Hinduism.

But if we dig a bit deeper into what Tamaki said, the reason for the police visit becomes painfully clear. After he pointed out that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was purging Christians in that country, Tamaki wrote the following on Facebook:

“He [Modi] is currently purging India of all Christians and burning church buildings down. I think we should reciprocate in kind. Let’s purge New Zealand of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. And, while we’re at it, if they’re burning churches down, why don’t we burn mosques and their temples down? Tit for tat.”

Look, I like Tamaki. He is the dark matter of New Zealand politics: present through influence. He has things he believes in, and he can be highly effective at getting things done. The man has a natural feeling for power that simply isn’t matched anywhere else on the political landscape. If Tamaki was 20 years younger (he’s 68), he would be a real force to be reckoned with.

But all that charisma and energy washes out to nothing because he doesn’t know how to write.

Despite how Tamaki wants to frame his legal troubles, I don’t agree that this is a free speech issue at all. Rather, this is a bad writing issue. Once you understand politics, it’s fairly obvious that there is no such thing as censorship. It’s a giant illusion. They are not coming for your speech. You can say whatever you want at any time; you just have to be smarter about how it gets said. To do that, all of us must learn how to write better.

A major reason the serious people in this world care so much about reputation is that it matters. Like, a lot. How you are seen by others determines more than any other variable how far you will go in life. If your peers suspect that you can’t be trusted, no amount of money can ever buy you access into that level of society again. Reputation matters because the things you say can both hurt you and create more power. It’s all about which words you use, in what context and when.

Reputation is why serious people tell their kids about the Newspaper Test. It’s a simple principle: Never do anything you wouldn’t be comfortable seeing on the front page of the New York Times the next morning. This rule carries a layer of ethics. But the deeper function of the test is that it forces you to say things effectively, and not frivolously.

So, when Tamaki uses phrases like “purge,” “reciprocate” and “burn the Mosques and Temples down,” it should be obvious that this wouldn’t pass the Newspaper Test. If he wanted to deliver the message that New Zealand should be wary of religious persecution creeping into this country with foreign attitudes towards Christians, then dancing around the edges of inciting violence isn’t the way to do that. Why not? Because unless Tamaki really had the power to “purge New Zealand of Hindus,” then using that phrase was frivolous because he doesn’t believe it.

If you asked Tamaki for the details behind his plan to “purge” the Hindus from this country, and for a map of which temples should be burned down, he would look at you bewildered and probably slightly annoyed. No! He didn’t really mean that. He was just being provocative and metaphorical. It was a hypothetical. He wouldn’t really “purge” anyone and certainly wouldn’t burn down private property. Tamaki is all about love and Christianity and stuff.

Then why say those words? Why write frivolously about an issue he is clearly so passionate about? Can you see the problem? There’s a disconnect here.

On the one hand, Tamaki wants us to believe that he believes in the problem of foreign influence so fully that he will sacrifice his reputation to fix those problems. But on the other hand, he demonstrably does not believe the problem is sufficiently serious to demand more care about the words he uses to discuss those problems in public. Said differently, you don’t get to be a comedian on Tuesday and a political pundit on Friday. You’re either a frivolous person who shouldn’t be taken seriously or a serious person who is never frivolous. But you can’t be both.

Tamaki isn’t stupid. He almost certainly knew what the word “purge” denoted, and he absolutely knew that saying “we” should “burn mosques and temples” sounds like incitement. The courts and police certainly knew what those phrases meant. But if Tamaki meant it was just joking or being metaphorical, it’s not the police’s fault for misinterpreting. After all, Tamaki presents himself as a serious person with a serious agenda, so it is perfectly reasonable for the police to also treat his words with the seriousness Tamaki demands.

This is why what happened to Tamaki is absolutely not an example of censorship and has nothing to do with free speech. Tamaki is just a bad writer.

Is being a bad writer a crime? Not necessarily (I’d be in jail if it were). But bad writers tend to run a higher-than-average risk of putting words in a sequence that might be considered illegal. They might pick phrases that sound cool, possess a colloquial meaning, or seem to get across the passion which they feel so strongly. But because they are bad writers, it’s not obvious to them why words arranged in a specific order could lead to a knock on the door from police.

This is not the law’s fault. The thing you must remember about the law is that it has no margin for frivolousness built in. The police, for their part and in every interaction with the public, must assume that the words used by a person are meant seriously. The whole system falls apart without that assumption.

When someone says they will exchange $5 for a can of Coke, the law assumes that the buyer and the seller are serious about the words they’re using to describe the value exchange in that transaction. Commerce wouldn’t work if the buyer handed over $4 instead and claimed the $5 was metaphorical. Neither would it work if the seller pulled out a Pepsi and shrugged that it was pretty much the same thing. The words you say have legal weight. This assumption is the basis of civilisation. The Romans even had a maxim for it: pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept).

If you go round talking about “purging” Hindus from New Zealand and burning down their temples, the law only has your words. It is ridiculous to assume that the law knows you were just joking or being metaphorical. The police cannot read your mind (and you wouldn’t want them to have that power, either). The law is best thought of as a machine, and the output of every machine is only as good as the input it receives. If you don’t want the law to misinterpret your words, then you must get better at writing.

In the coming world, it is critical that we bash into our heads that censorship is a dangerous illusion. They’re not trying to shut you up. Everyone will always have free speech. You can say anything you want. You’re just a bad writer.

Now, think about what you could accomplish if you were a good writer. The potential for power would be infinite. I am a firm believer that if you get the words in the right order, you can convince people of anything.

Nathan Smith is a British-born New Zealand journalist, writer, and editor. This article was sourced HERE