Censorship & John Stuart Mill

Within this essay, I wish to analyze the legitimacy of censoring offensive material with reference to the views of John Stuart Mill. Mill’s views on censorship are heavily influenced by his principle of individual freedom (Sintes 2016, p.193–194). This ethos demands that freedom of expression and the press are upheld with very few caveats. Mill saw this as the key to collective wellbeing, with truth being the driving force. I will return to this concept in the body of this essay. Speaking in general terms, Mill would have disagreed with the censoring of purely offensive material, as it is an example of arbitrary government action and a reproof of freedom of expression. Mill was openly hostile to this sort of action taken by governments “and condemned the remnants of the ancient regime which lingered on in his times” (Sintes 2016, p.194). Yet Mill’s beliefs were not an unqualified resistance to all forms of censorship. He believed that individual freedoms should be limited and restricted only if they ultimately lead to the harm of others, otherwise known as the Harm Principle (Sintes 2016,p.194). What I wish to look at throughout this essay is how this area of policymaking has become muddled and complex as the so-called ‘right to be a bigot’ has taken centre stage in many western nations. This is only furthered by offensive material being disseminated across the ungoverned expanse of social media which can have legitimately harmful consequences. I hope by the end of this essay to have shown the complexity and difficulty in trying to create legislation as such from both a moral and policy-making perspective.

John Stuart Mill was influenced by an almost utilitarian position. He believed that through granting the widest range of freedoms to people, truth and justice will ultimately prevail. Mill outlines four specific reasons for conceding the widest margin of freedom for peoples within a society (Sintes 2016, p.195). Firstly, given that knowledge rarely comes with complete certainty, silencing an opinion means asserting one’s own infallibility. Secondly, almost all opinions, even those considered most erroneous, may contain some degree of truth. Since general opinion is rarely the whole truth, actual truth can oftentimes be found in clashes of different points of view. Thirdly, even if the general opinion were entirely true, without contesting ideas to debate and investigate, truth may be taken as dogma with little understanding or investigating the basic assumptions. This dogma can then become a formal position amongst society (Riley 1998, p.195). These propositions limit the scenarios wherein speech may be censored down to a “few situations where such expression is ‘a positive instigation to some mischievous act’ that is seriously harmful to others” (Riley 1998, p.56).

In western society today, are Mill’s concepts being followed? In the past couple of years we have seen direct calls for violence ignored, such as when Alan Jones stated that Jacinda Ardern should “have a sock shoved down her throat” or even more recently with Donald Trump stating that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. Both of these comments can be interpreted as an instigation to violence yet they have gone formally unpunished and were uncensored (except on a private platform level). It would seem, that though Mill would not be in favor of censoring offensive free speech, it may be difficult to hold the source accountable for any consequent harm or violence. In the Jacinda Ardern case one can argue that no such violence has been perpetrated against herself so the words and opinions of Jones had no direct effect. For Mill, there are special circumstances which “cannot be treated as self-regarding because it has ‘at least a probable connexion’ to an act which is seriously harmful to others” (Riley 1998, p.56). In our technologically connected world, the capability for information to spread rapidly and expansively, means that comments such as these detailed above, especially when they come from people with a strong influence over their followers, can have detrimental consequences even if unintended and unacknowledged by the source of the material. For many, such comments are merely a voicing of opinion, something they see as an innate right, yet under Mill’s guidance, if a probable connection to harm can be ascertained, then it is no longer ‘self-regarding speech’ and therefore will not fit under the banner of free speech. Let me now turn to another example: the misinformation spread about the Covid-19 virus. In America, one can see the consequences of misinformation on almost every level of both government and civil society. Hence, are those that are voicing potentially harmful anti-lockdown sentiments ‘self-regarding’ in their admonitions? This view, especially when espoused by those with power or large platforms, is no longer self-regarding but rather (if one holds this view) a direct incitement to harm, which Mill would therefore consider, appropriate to censure.

I have brought forward the above examples to show the difficulty in implementing Mill’s intentions in our current system. For Mill, there was a clear distinction between an opinion which one holds and an opinion being a political power. Put another way, “The knowledge which is power, is not the highest description of knowledge only: any knowledge which gives the habit of forming an opinion, and the capacity of expressing that opinion, constitutes a political power; and if combined with the capacity and habit of acting in concert, a formidable one” (Sintes 2016, p.201). Here, Mill makes the distinction between a person voicing a bigotted sentiment to a colleague in a private setting, and Alan Jones, for example, voicing hatred from his platform to thousands of listeners. As is clear, this ability for an idea/opinion to influence the broader public and in so doing constituting itself as political power is much broader than it was in Mill’s time. For one, everyone has a way of connecting with the world through social media etc. This allows for incitements of violence, and for hate speech to spread more rapidly and become a political power in and of itself. So for Mill, protection is needed against “the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them” (Sintes 2016, p.202). Mill spends much time extolling the need to protect against public opinion overwhelming minority voices. Though, in case after case, this has been shown not to be the case — from Kolin Kapernick to the initial reporting of child sexual abuses within the Catholic Church. Alexis De Tocqueville coined this ‘the tyranny of the majority’ (JSintes 2016, p.194).

Mill was not only concerned with material harm though, he was “also concerned with the “moral coercion” exercised by powerful groups” (Dyzenhaus 1992, p.544). This can also be seen in the danger he saw to liberty of thought and discussion lurking in the claim that “‘Christian morality…is the whole truth on that subject’ (II.37, p.254). Thus, he complains that the ‘narrow’ and ‘one-sided’ ‘theological morality’ which now passes for Christianity ‘is becoming a grave political evil” (Riley 1998, p.55–56). It seems to me that Mill was concerned with any monopoly on thought, and wanted society to actively oppose any moral or political monopoly. Mill was, as many philosophers before him, convinced that truth “when permitted to expand and compete with falsity, will sooner or later be victorious” (Sintes 2016, p.195). Much of Mill’s philosophy is built on this single assumption. We should allow vile opinions to be debated in public because the truth will eventually prevail. Our present age has been dubbed the ‘post-truth age’. Perhaps this would alter all of Mill’s beliefs as conditions have become so complex. We have seen time and time again that truth does not ultimately prevail, especially when there are powerful voices shouting misinformation and lies. This is one such example where I am more lenient toward using the power of censorship to silence flagrant lies masquerading as ‘opinion’ — whether it be that Labor wanted to destroy the ute or that Obama is a Muslim.

I will now turn briefly to my view separate from Mill’s. Growing up in a Western democracy it is difficult to look at censorship as anything more than government tyranny. I’m sure part of this is due to the way we are taught about Mill and Liberalism more generally. Society has changed much from Mill’s era — with almost everyone having the power and infrastructure to turn their opinion (whatever it may be) into a genuine political power. This has been a great thing for many and a drain on many others. Facebook is now the main source of news for many people (44% of users getting their news from Facebook) — and this change in how society disseminates data has glorified any and all opinion, no matter how unsubstantiated it may be. Many people can feel politically involved through sharing a post, even those who may never have had any interaction with politics. This leads to more situations that are showing a need for censorship (think Facebook & Twitter). Yet, how countries should go about doing this without falling into everything that Mill warned of — tyranny of the majority, dogma becoming normality etc, is a tricky and slippery slope. For opinion to be censored, without a direct causal link to harm, drifts into the area of subjectivity. Subjectivity, in the legal domain, can be misused by those lacking any morality. I believe that if Mill was present today he would update some of his texts to reflect a change in the distribution of information — but to broadly implement censorship laws without direct, causal harm is a difficult, complex, and potentially dangerous road to venture onto.

Throughout this essay, I hope to have shown that it is more difficult than we think to bring forth Mill’s teachings into the current age. For if we were to follow Mill’s words as I have interpreted them, there are many acts that should be censored today that clearly are not. In general, I wish to echo the sentiments expressed in the essay ‘John Stuart Mill and the Harm of Pornography’ where it is stated “that Mill’s understanding of the right to freedom of expression is not as absolutist as is commonly thought. It is sufficiently complex to permit what we might think of as a liberal censorship policy” (Dyzenhaus 1992, p.547). I hope to have shown that offensive material can have more consequences than direct harm to an individual. Moral degradation of society can occur through offensive material being promulgated and endorsed, especially when enacted by those who have influence over others — yet to ban this behaviour, to censure it, brings its own dangers and risks which. More so, the qualification of such behavior would be so difficult to define, that to pin it down would be a gargantuan task. As an optimist though, I hope that Mill’s assumptions about truth prevailing in the public sphere will one day come to fruition.

Sources Quoted:

• Sintes, M. 2016. Freedom of Expression, Public Opinion and Journalism in the Work of John Stuart Mill. Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics, (7), pp.Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics, 2016, Issue 7.
• Riley, J. & Ebooks Corporation, 1998. Mill on liberty / Jonathan Riley., London ; New York: Routledge
• Dyzenhaus, D., 1992. John Stuart Mill and the Harm of Pornography. Ethics, 102(3), pp.534–551.