A lot of member states prohibit holocost denial, and the european union is a sort of half way prohibited holocos denial. And then you had a lot of eastern and central european countries who said, ok, but then we wanta criminalization of the denial of the crimes of communism. I think that sends a very compli difficult message. Ultimately, it plays into the hands of some of the anti semetic tropes about how jews in control the mediam and control the narrative. But if open democracies, if our past,. you know, history is obviously incredibly important for any nation to have a better understanding of where comfort came from or why our values are
Hailed as the “first freedom,” free speech is the bedrock of democracy, and it is subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat.
In this episode, based on the book Free Speech, Michael Shermer and Jacob Mchangama discuss the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of the principle, how much we have gained from it, and how much we stand to lose without it. Mchangama reveals how the free exchange of ideas underlies all intellectual achievement and has enabled the advancement of both freedom and equality worldwide. Yet the desire to restrict speech, too, is a constant.