Stop being polite and start demanding free speech, one Canadian researcher argues after Kirk shooting

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Following the murder of Charlie Kirk, the Heritage Foundation’s Liana Graham, a research assistant for domestic policy, was inspired by headlines she saw in the Canadian press about Kirk’s assassination to write an op-ed arguing that Canadian censorship and silencing of dissent lead to a dehumanizing culture that invites political violence.

In turn, the National Post reached out to Graham, a dual citizen of both Canada and the United States, to discuss what she sees as the political and media forces impacting censorship and free expression in Canada.

This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

Q: How would you compare the state of free speech and civil debate in Canada with the U.S., particularly after Charlie Kirk’s murder?

A: The state of free speech in the United States, politically and legally, is much more protected than it is in Canada, and that has to do with the constitutional framework in the United States, where there’s a very strong First Amendment.

In Canada, because of Section One of our Charter, we have more of a doctrine of how we view rights, which doesn’t really see them as absolute. I think that the Canadian view of the role of government is much more willing to accept government getting involved in civil society and in the affairs of common people to order society in a pleasant and tolerant way.

(In Canada), I’d say … the political system trickles down into the culture. So I think that Canadians are much more willing to accept legislation that curbs our freedom to express what we believe in, because generally speaking, we have a population of people who have a view of government that sees it as having more of a managerial role as opposed to an American perspective, which sees it as being a protector, as enforcing rights.

I think Canadians are more hesitant to share views that one might see as controversial, which is why I think we have garnered this reputation of being polite, because we’re not going to bring up things that could potentially offend or harm people in conversation.

Q: In your op-ed, you argued that Canadian media framed the killing of Kirk as more acceptable because of Kirk’s controversial views. How do you think that framing shaped public perception?

A: I think it shaped public perception by implicitly providing some sort of justification for the killing of Charlie Kirk. You saw that CBC article. Only hours after Charlie Kirk died, it recounted all of (his) controversial opinions, all of his most controversial takes. I think that shaped public opinion by immediately painting a picture of who Charlie Kirk was, which changed people’s opinions on whether or not he deserved it, which I think is obviously extremely inhumane.

I saw plenty of friends … posting things like, “Well, I’m not going to feel sorry for an individual who held X, Y, and Z positions.”

You even see that from people who work in government. You have Nahanni Fontaine in Manitoba (describing Kirk as “racist, xenophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic” and saying she has “absolutely no empathy” for him) in a post that went viral.

It’s remarkable to think that there was an elected government official publicly speaking in such atrocious language.

I take issue with the way the Canadian media immediately painted Kirk as some sort of controversial figure, somebody who tested the boundaries of what’s allowed to be said in public. (The coverage) peddled the idea that Charlie Kirk did not just engage in free speech, but that he questioned people’s right to exist or their rights in general — and the implicit argument that’s being made there is that if you are going out there (engaging in public debates), you are advocating for somebody’s rights to be taken away.

I think that framing (Kirk) as someone who questioned people’s rights is also framing him as a controversial figure. The implicit argument being made is that, in some way or another, it was inevitable and that this kind of thing was bound to happen.

Q: Is there a case for explaining what his views were or what his controversial takes were to help a reader understand the circumstances around his assassination?

A: I think there is a case to provide context, of course, for the opinions that he held, because it’s very clear to me that the assassination was political. To be sure, I do agree with that. However, I will say that the way the Canadian media framed it was not an objective, neutral framing, the way you’re suggesting.

Those were objective, factual statements about who Charlie Kirk was. He was a debater. Sometimes people did not like what he had to say.

But by implying that his positions were hateful, you’re moving from a descriptive statement about what he did to making a prescriptive statement about what he ought to have said. And you are employing a value judgment in the recounting of Charlie Kirk’s ideological position.

Q: What other examples illustrate how you think liberal censorship operates within Canadian political and media institutions?

A: There are so many. I would say that number one, on a political level, we have bills like Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act ( which was never passed by the previous Liberal government and has seen calls for it to be revived ). We have attempts from the Liberal government to curb hate speech. In describing the difference between American and Canadian jurisprudence, I’ve heard Canadians say things like “hate speech is not free speech.” And I think Canadians should be extremely concerned by laws like that try to tell people, “You’re not allowed to say this. You’re not allowed to say that” on account of it being hateful towards a specific group.

We should be very wary of, for one, vague laws, and secondly, laws that carry maximum sentences of life in prison.

So that’s at the federal level, but we also see it provincially. I’ve been very critical of buffer bubble zone laws that we’ve been seeing in Canada. We also see them in the United Kingdom. They’re known as buffer zone laws.

There are laws in place in Manitoba and Ontario, for example, that prohibit one’s ability to protest outside of abortion clinics. Not only are you not allowed to protest, you’re not allowed to give out information relating to an abortion. You are not even allowed to demonstrate any sign of disapproval, be it praying, be it sighing in exasperation.

Those laws are also in places that are Conservative, so I don’t think it’s just a Liberal issue. I think that this is something that Canadians have, by and large, begun to accept because we set a precedent for it in the way that we choose to govern, and I think that that has a trickle-down effect culturally in the way Canadians feel they’re comfortable or not comfortable in engaging with controversial topics.

We see examples of this on the university campus, where you hear stories of students who do not feel comfortable voicing their opinions. There was a paper recently about the ideological homogeneity in academic institutions in Canada that found that most professors in Canada disproportionately leaned left.

So, not only do we have this sort of monolithic ideological perspective coming from the federal government and from provincial governments, but also through our educational institutions. I think the resulting culture that we have is one in which people do not feel comfortable voicing their opinions. One of the ugly consequences of that is quite counterintuitive to the intention behind such laws. It doesn’t actually work in converting anybody’s opinion or converting their heart, so to speak. It only really works to change people’s behaviour, but if people do not have a healthy outlet through which they feel they can engage with other ideas, and that should be the university campus or the public square — if they’re not encountering any opposition, where are they going to air out these ideas? Where are they going to find consolation? They’re going to go to their encrypted chats. They’re going to go to their friend groups. They’re going to effectively resort to an echo chamber because they’re not allowed to say these things in the public square, where they’re going to feel disagreement.

If they go to an echo chamber, what happens in an echo chamber or when nobody ever disagrees with you? Your ideas are never challenged and thereby strengthened. That is a recipe for radicalization.

If you intend to make a better society, one in which people are more tolerant of other opinions, and not embracing hateful ideas, I actually think the best solution is a public square, where people are free to express what they believe. If you create this precedent that people have to resort to their echo chambers because they’re scared of saying something for fear, that the government’s going to knock on their door because they liked the wrong post, you are going to create the cultural conditions that create radicalization.

Q: You wrote: “The bullet that took Kirk’s life is the physical embodiment of the coercive spirit that animates the Canadian political class.” Do you see a moral line between Canada’s censorship culture and the coercive mindset that can justify violence?

A: I think they exist on the spectrum and that the kind of censorship that the Canadian government embraces is a kind of coercion, and violence is the utmost manifestation of that. Obviously, taking somebody’s life is far, far worse. It is horrible. It is a violation of their right to life. My point with that phrase is to say that in terms of the spirit of what’s happening, it’s really a difference of degree. It’s not really a categorical difference because what the government is doing in promoting legislation like that and potentially passing it is using force to prevent other people from speaking. It’s using force to crack down on wrongful speech, wrongful thoughts. That is precisely what Charlie Kirk’s killer did. Obviously, he did it in a way that is like the worst possible manifestation of that spirit. But there are ways that it can manifest in lesser fashions. I think it manifests in censorship in the same way. Again, it’s a type of force that the government uses to prevent somebody else from speaking.

The government enforces the law through force, and Charlie Kirk’s killer did the very same thing. He coerced him by ultimately taking his life.

It’s the worst possible manifestation of that — I don’t think they’re equivalent. But I do think they exist on a spectrum and that the type of censorship that we see in Canada is of a very much lesser degree, but that fundamentally the same sort of thing is happening there.

Q: Can you point to historical examples where speech regulation or censorship to protect vulnerable populations proceeded or correlated with violence?

A: The point I am making is that what the government defines as protecting vulnerable populations can be subject to change on the basis of the ideological positions of those who govern.

For example, in Nazi Germany, speech was heavily policed on the basis of protecting people from “degeneracy.” The Soviets policed speech that promoted “bourgeois” values to “protect” the proletariat from “corrosive” influences.

My parents grew up in Romania, and they grew up in a society where the party only allowed people to watch propaganda, eliminating all traces of a pre-communist Romania — all done for the so-called good of the people.

Q: How can a society strike a real balance or genuine balance between free expression and protection against hate or harm?

A: I think that the best way to mitigate against hate and harm is to actually provide for a free public square. And I’m also just a believer that truth is so powerful that truth wins out. When you give people the ability and the freedom to reason about what they believe in, to combat their ideas, the best antidote to a bad idea is another idea.

If you want a society in which people genuinely have respect for one another, and in which people not only do not say hateful things, but genuinely do not really believe hateful things — and where the majority of people respect human dignity and the other person with whom they’re engaging — I think the way to create that is through a free public square because you’re giving people the opportunity to speak what they believe in, and they have to face up against other people’s opinions.

In the public square, the ideas that people hold are refined. They’re tested, and people, witnessing this, because they have a rational capacity, get to judge for themselves based on the evidence which one is true, which one wins out.

I would prefer to live in a society where people genuinely have respect for one another, not a society in which people are pretending to like one another because they’re afraid of what the government’s going to do to them if they say the wrong thing.

Q: Which Canadian laws or proposals most concern you, and how do you personally define censorship? Is it just through state action, cultural pressure, or both?

A: I’m concerned about the Online Harms Act, and I think that it’s probably the most concerning bill at the moment. I realize it’s not currently being spoken about, but the thing about the Online Harms Act is that it didn’t get debated on the Parliament floor. It didn’t die through a reasoned debate in Parliament. It died because Parliament was prorogued, and there’s nothing really telling me that a bill like that won’t be proposed again. We do have the justice minister saying that it’s not off the books yet.

I’m incredibly concerned by censorship of that nature, and I think all Canadians should be concerned.

That naturally leads into your follow-up question: What is censorship?

I think that government censorship is when you use coercion to force out those ideas. So at the very heart of censorship is coercion. That’s why I would not call cultural pressures censorship, because I don’t see them as inherently coercive. You can choose to associate with an idea that everybody thinks is stupid. You just have to accept the fact that people think that, but there’s no one forcing you to accept the opposite idea. I think censorship involves using force to prevent other people from saying something that you do not like. Whether you have a good reason for not liking it is irrelevant to me.

When the government uses force to police what people can say and think, that is what I consider coercive and censorship.

Q: What specific reforms or social changes would help Canada reject liberal censorship while expanding open discourse?

A: If you’re digging a hole, the first step is to stop digging. So, number one, we need to stop promoting censorship laws. We should debate and defeat bills like the Online Harms Act and any other type of legislation that seeks to police what people can say or think. And I also think we need to promote diversity — the good kind of diversity. In academic institutions, we need to promote diversity amongst the student body in terms of what they believe. Ideologically, we need to promote diversity among the faculty. Obviously, students should be encouraged to view education as something that builds them morally, and they should not be afraid of saying something that they think their professor or their classmates would disagree with.

We need some sort of reform in the universities in Canada through which young individuals are raised intellectually in a culture where they’re constantly engaging with ideas that they’re not familiar with and learning to reason through them.

Q: What do you see as the next major battlegrounds for free speech in Canada? Is it academic freedom, campus speech codes, online moderation, or other regulatory bills? How should Canadians prepare and respond?

A: All of the above. I do think, though, given the kind of bills that are being spoken about right now in Parliament, online regulation is something that seems to be at the forefront of Liberal attempts to promote censorship.

I think Canadians should particularly guard themselves against that, and the best way for Canadians to respond is to speak up. We should pressure politicians who are entertaining laws like this by speaking up. We should be writing articles. Peaceful protests are a good idea. Anything to communicate to the Canadian public that we’re not okay with this and to shift the Overton window such that Canadians feel more comfortable speaking up when their politicians are doing things against their interests, which is something that happens quite often in Canada.

I do not think we have the culture of speaking up and debating and pushing back against that to the extent that it exists in the United States. So I think that the response is a grassroots one, and it’s one that focuses on a cultural renewal of the Canadian public. Those cultural pressures will shift the Overton window politically also, so that Canadian politicians will stop promoting things that Canadians no longer agree with.

Cultural change is a prerequisite to political change. And if we want to shift the Overton window, we have to begin there. We have to begin with the culture, and that starts with speaking up and making friends … and maintaining good relations with those with whom you do not necessarily agree. It begins on a micro scale — at the grassroots.

National Post

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