Can someone’s voice be taken away for their alleged faults?
Occasionally, and to be honest, more rarely than often, I have to overcome my deep and gigantic aversion to social networks and point a camera at my face. I do it without the respect that the hatred I have for this tool, which I consider barbaric, deserves, but which we all continue to use to tell stories.
After my legal proceedings, which are still ongoing and not definitive, it periodically happens, despite me being a person with no criminal record, who is free and serene—and despite democracy guaranteeing me extraordinary tools such as freedom of teaching and movement—that everything read on the internet is partial, often false, and in a state of flux. I happen to work on articles, books, exhibitions, and conferences that are requested of me, without me soliciting anything. Those who know me know that I tend to mind my own business, to read, study, and write, and I continue to consider myself a fortunate person, with the privilege of being able to air my brain.
And yet, it happens to all these people who commission me for a job that at the last minute, just before publishing or holding a conference, they tell me: “We’d like to do it, because your idea is good and you’re good at what you do, but someone complained. So-and-so, such-and-such, and someone else expressed their dissent. For this reason, we cannot publish, we cannot make the book or the magazine, we have to postpone the conference.” Even if the students want to participate, it is enough for a single user on social media to raise an objection.
This creates a platoon of narrow-minded individuals, to whom we have granted the power to dialogue, even if their brains seem to have been replaced by a pneumatic vacuum. These are the same people who spit on literature, history, and the variety of languages that belong to us. They do it by saying that one must act this way so as not to offend anyone, without understanding that the true offense is the imposition of silence. This phenomenon, in which a noisy minority dictates the law, is exactly what the anarchist thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon would have called a “tyranny of the majority” or, in this case, a tyranny of digitalized public opinion. Anarchism, in its purest sense, is not chaos, but opposition to all forms of arbitrary domination and authority, including that exercised by informal groups that use shame and media lynching as weapons.
The incredible aspect is that the same system of power called democracy, which gives this legion of critics the power of speech, would technically also give it to me, a person with no criminal record and an unfinalized conviction. I have taught my whole life in penal institutions, in prisons, and I have never thought of being able to take away someone’s voice, not even from those who have been accused and convicted. I respect institutions, but I do not consider them divine truths descended from heaven. An intellectual, a writer, cannot ignore that institutions are conventional and partial power devices. They must be respected, but respecting does not mean agreeing. Anarchism, in this sense, teaches us to questionevery form of authority and not to passively accept its decisions, especially when they violate individual rights.
Denying people a voice, even those who are considered guilty or deserving of blame, is one of the most despicable, anti-democratic, and demonizing acts that exist. Every form of life is a bundle of complexity, contradictions, and articulations of good and evil, right and wrong, useful and useless. To pretend to remove someone’s voice, perhaps to silence violent or petty individuals, is the violent act par excellence. Our millennial culture teaches us that he who is without sin should cast the first stone, and yet we cannot understand that removing someone’s voice is the most absurd and serious thing that can exist. And all this, it is believed, is done in the name of good, in a form of moral puritanism that recalls the worst forms of censorship.
No one is obligated to listen: you can simply turn around and walk away. This is the foundation of libertarian culture. Freedom of speech, in the anarchist thought of figures like Mikhail Bakunin or Emma Goldman, is not just the right to speak, but also the freedom to be heard or not. It is a matter of individual freedom and personal responsibility. We cannot pretend to be immune from debate or criticism, but we have the right to express ourselves. Preventing someone from speaking is called fascism and is true violence. The only way to rise above an adversary, even when you believe they deserve to be silent, is to still grant them the possibility to speak. This is the state, this is democracy, this is civilization. This is what the Enlightenment and Europe have taught us. Voltaire summarized it with the famous aphorism: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
No one can ever lose their voice. At most, there is dialogue, debate, and, if one is capable, the ability to counter-attack and overturn that voice. But silence and coercion to silence transform the fight for non-violence into the most violent thing that exists. A fundamental concept in anarchism is the propaganda of the deed, the idea that direct action and example are worth more than a thousand words. Likewise, preventing others from speaking is an act of performative violence, which nullifies the individual and their potential contribution to society.
I still have a voice, thank God. I write and travel, and I say my opinions without too many problems. I have people who respect me and read what I do, and I could even stop, because I don’t care. What I find absurd is not fighting the battles I have always fought for others, and which now directly concern me.
Anyone who takes someone’s voice away just because they don’t want to listen to it commits an act of incredible barbarism. We must defend democracy. If we do not and prefer a form of pseudo-moralistic tyranny, then let’s not complain if the right wins and governs, because it is precisely from that side that we are letting them teach us libertarian culture. And this is a sickening thing. It is useless for us to deal with “multi-species design” and other frivolities if we are not capable of fighting for the fundamental rights of the people around us. This attitude is not progressive, but deeply reactionary, because it undermines the foundations of freedom of thought and individualism that are the basis of every healthy and pluralistic society.
