Who actually has a platform to speak?
Jolyon deploys the irregular verbs.
Oh but I’m sure posh rich smug pale Jolyon knows far more about it than mere community-havers like Kenan.
Honestly. You couldn’t make it up. Maugham tweets a stupid ignorant criticism of Kenan’s piece on Rushdie and free speech, and then whines about “hostility or personal animus” when Kenan points out what he got wrong about those “communities” that Kenan knows a good deal more about than he does. You could build a whole city out of the bricks of Maugham’s smugness and conceit.
Maugham’s idea that relative power means you shouldn’t have a platform to speak is suspect, too. If you tell those in power “you can’t speak while I can”, that means the ones in “power” don’t actually have power. Anyone who can deny you your right to speak is the one with power, even if that isn’t readily apparent.
Power has a right to speak for itself; the only thing it doesn’t have is the right to be assumed correct in every way all the time. One of the problems we have created in these debates is that the lack of (political/social/financial) power has come to mean that you not only have the right to speak, but the right to be assumed correct. No one should have that right; all views need to be able to be looked at skeptically. If one person thinks God is great, another thinks Allahu Akhbar, and a third thinks a pox on both their houses, all these views have a right to engage in a civil debate…or even an uncivil one, with mockery and name calling. They do not have a right to force others to shut up or the right to kill over “offense”.
Having power does not lose you your rights. Not having power should not mean you lose your rights. And allowing rich white men to define who has “relative power” is a foolish choice.
Power protects its own speech. It is only in the face of power that speech needs external protection.
This is knowable a priori.
Also, the liberal conception of government is that government ought not have the ability to determine the purpose to which we apply our reason. That’s what freedom of conscience means, Women’s Kimono Boy.
What the heck IS Maugham’s “point”? What is it that he wants addressed? And it’s notable that HE doesn’t engage with the point of Malik’s essay, but essentially “criticizes” the essay by whining, “but you didn’t pay attention to ME!” Why should anyone have to respond to you and what you want to talk about, rather than what they themselves want to talk about? How do you get to dictate what other people get to say about free speech and freedom of expression?
Because he is Good. He says so himself.
Just chiming in to express my admiration for this sentence in particular!
Aww shucks.