Freedom of speech: From Socrates through Social MediaJacob Mchangama, a Danish scholar and activist, argues that there’s always been tension between elite speech and egalitarian speech and that the battles for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter today are just the latest of a series of efforts by the powerful silence the masses.
The 43-year-old founder of the think tank Justitia tells me how the “Danish cartoon controversy” intensified his commitment to free speech, why hate speech laws empower authoritarians and hurt the people they are designed to protect, and why he’s optimistic that the current global “free speech recession” will be eventually be beaten back.