Why I support free speech too much to join the Free Speech Union
It's the same reason I wouldn't join the Taxpayers Union, or any union really.
In a letter of resignation to the Friars’ Club, Groucho Marx’s wrote: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”
I've always related to the sentiment behind this - any group that would have me as a member would probably have anyone as one and the only way you can avoid being dragged down by others is to stand on your own two feet.
I was disappointed, but not surprised, when the official X/Twitter account for the Free Speech Union started posting this week about the inherent superiority of Anglo-Saxon cultures over all others.
People are welcome to their opinions - they are, as the crude old saying goes, like arse holes (everyone has one and they are all full of… you get it) - but this isn't within the realm of free speech, it is some (likely unpaid) intern having a rant about why they and their ancestors are more special than anyone else's.
It's like kids arguing in a school field over whether Iron Man could beat the Hulk, it's both juvenile and unproveable.
This person, using the social media account of a somewhat serious group, is promoting the virtues of Britain at the same time the British government is prosecuting people for Twitter posts.
This club, the Free Speech Union, seems like it will accept anyone as an active and empowered member.
In doing so, it has strayed from the purpose of its name or the ideals it was founded on - the right to freedom of expression as inalienable in a just liberal society - and become a sort of open mic or defender of illiberal society and some speech being more valuable based on the ethnicity or cultural background of whoever is saying it.
Everyone does, in a liberal society, have the right to be an aforementioned arse hole, but that doesn't mean I have to support them or join a group with a few too many arse holes in it for my liking. I have the freedom to look down my nose at them.
While the majority of the people involved with FSU are serious academics and thinkers, they also attract a bad faith crowd that they have proven unable to weed out. Unable, or uninterested.
I didn't always feel this way, when the FSU started I was optimistic.
As a PR person I know not everyone or every idea gets a fair shake in our small country with its weak and easily cowered media industry. Someone does need to stick up for freedom of speech and I think they've done that well on a few occasions.
They've supported the free speech rights of both drag queen story time and groups who oppose things like drag queen story time, but who nonetheless should also be given their freedom to express their views (even if they are inherently anti-free speech views).
That's the way it should be, committed to the principle even when it makes for uncomfortable bedfellows.
Business Desk released the findings of a staff survey that has troubling work environment at AUT's Law School (https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/law-regulation/survey-reveals-troubling-work-environment-at-auts-law-school).
Only 30% of staff felt able or comfortable to report inappropriate behaviour by colleagues, even more said they had experienced bullying in the workplace.
This cannot be accepted, and I was glad that the FSU's responded (https://www.fsu.nz/internal_aut_law_school_survey_reiterates_growing_challenges_to_academic_freedom).
This side of the Free Speech Union, the one largely made up of practising academics, appears to be consistent in its philosophical position and speaking to a genuine issue.
If that was the only side, all they did, then I can see the FSU as serving its purpose well.
Sadly, it isn't.
These distinguished academics can, and will, get dragged down by the FSU's unhealthy mix of serious academics and the terminally online.
They are trying to start a movement, a discourse, in a time when every movement and discourse is being hijacked by bad faith actors who don't actually believe in their cause but see them as a weak organisation open for manipulation to their own cause.
As I wrote about on this SubStack (https://haimona.substack.com/p/why-cancelling-events-almost-always) I'm against deplatforming campaigns. They only embolden bad actors and make situations worse.
I do support the FSU's efforts in that space, but I'm no longer sure whether they actually want to be issue agnostic and consistent to philosophy, or whether they're just an anarchic group who will give any idea (especially illiberal ones) free airtime to juice their membership numbers.
People have the right to be stupid and to say stupid things, but that doesn't mean I need to cheer on or financially support their jackassery.
Another pressure group has similarly failed to meet my impossibly high expectations, even while espousing principles I agree with.
The Taxpayers Union was started by a guy I went to uni with, and has highlighted some troubling public expenditure over its time, while also disappointing me even more than the FSU.
As a former public servant I know firsthand how wasteful and reckless public service leaders can be. The idea that the cost to the taxpayer is regularly ignored by government departments has grounding in reality.
If they were truly committed to calling out wasteful spending, committed to this and solely this, I would support them.
I don't think they are committed, or maybe just not enough for my liking, and I think they're both too partisan and too narrow in focus.
While I despise expensive public sector branding exercises as frivolous, including those introducing Te Reo names to entities that have never had Maori's best interests at heart, I also think this government's unbranding exercises are just as frivolous. It's throwing good money after bad.
Likewise, while I think it is right to raise concerns around lavish parties and office refits for government departments, that's also the absolute lowest hanging fruit.
Tweeting out every time the Regional Events Promotion Fund gives a couple of grand to a tourism scheme is just whiny.
Less narrow would be having more serious conversations - ones like ‘how many tens of millions of taxpayer dollars has Lester Levy received over the decades while being praised for running fiscally disciplined organisations?’ or ‘is perfect public sector spending even possible and should we be focused on dollars spent or outcomes gained?’
It might be newsworthy when a few grand is spent poorly, I guess, but for me the bigger issue is the systemic stuff like public sector leadership salaries that can be double what the Prime Minister receives.
They're focused on small time hit pieces and they seem to lack my genuine belief in the need for there to be a public service (even if it needs to be saved from itself sometimes).
While they do some things I like, they're also everything I feared when I turned down the opportunity to be one of their founders - anarchic and seeking a Maori name to offset the other member who described himself to me as a Paleo-Conservative and "proud racist.”
I'm a purist, arguably puritanical so, and therefore I don't love either group - while supporting their premises - because I don't think they're pure enough to their causes or discerning enough.
In his seminal text, God And Man At Yale, William Buckley described in highly readable prose the problem of academia becoming more intolerant to Christians and to right wing thought.
His argument was that academics at his alma mater, Yale, impeded students' religious freedom through their hostility to religion and that Yale was denying its students their right to individualism by forcing them to embrace the ideas of liberalism.
He was a very traditional social conservative, he was seeking to promote his side - a partisan, in the truest sense - and that side also included restrictions on speech and cynicism towards individual liberty.
Buckley has been proven correct about academia's growing partisanship and hostility to religion, but he wasn't really advocating for freedom of expression, he wanted his views to be dominant.
This is a problem with groups that promote freedom - they'll inevitably promote some views more, they’ll become pawns in others' games unless they are entirely committed to not allowing this to happen.
People involved in TU and FSU will say that they are, but they are not enough for my liking.
There's another person I went to Uni with who I find a really good commentator on many issues, and someone who I think bowls a straight ball - lawyer Graeme Edgeler.
My favourite thing about Graeme, something anyone who has interacted with him online can attest to, is that he's stubbornly committed to principle.
Sometimes he's pedantic, but he's also unafraid of being on the ‘wrong side’ if that is also the side of truth.
I couldn't place him on a political compass - I know he has values, I've been around him enough to attest to his commitment to his principles, but they go beyond any binary or partisanship.
Sometimes this means on the same day he's pissing off the left, right, and centre.
I like that. We need people like Graeme, and both the TU and FSU could learn a lot about message discipline and how to communicate from Graeme.
Organisations like TU and FSU need to be above culture war nonsense like he, above the minor frays and committed only to what's in their name.
Right now they are not.
Unless they face their issues, both systemic and communication based, I'm not sure they will ever be too good to have me as a member.
"The other member who described himself to me as a Paleo-Conservative and "proud racist.” - This person is Alex Fogerty. Unsure whether he was actively involved in TU beyond the initialconversations, but he was a cofounder of Vote for Change, which was also started by Williams, and was previously a site administrator for the white nationalist group Australian New Nation.
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/politics/anti-mmp-campaigner-resigns-amid-supremacist-allegations