{"id":944,"date":"2025-09-15T14:40:48","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T13:40:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/?page_id=944"},"modified":"2025-11-05T16:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T16:59:13","slug":"free-speech-is-coming-for-you","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/free-speech-is-coming-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Speech Is Coming For You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
The Cultural Location of fascism<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Gavan Titley<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If we want to probe the cultural locations of fascism, it is worth paying some attention to the generativity of dominant ideas of freedom of speech. We are constantly enjoined to speak as a democratic right, but not in any meaningful sense listened to in formal democratic systems. Public speech is thus vulnerable to ressentiment, <\/em>that is, the form of social vindictiveness that is produced through the experience of capitalist disjunctures. In this piece, I want to briefly explore the following contention. Contemporary ressentiment is informed by a sense of individual freedom as a trait or possession, not a process or relation. It thus imagines a radically sovereign subject, and regards any social relationality as an \u2018external constraint\u2019, and thus a potential swindle of self-fulfillment. The freedom of speech, and the politics of public speech, provide a highly productive structure for ressentiment. Just think of a common piety – you are either for free speech, or you are against it<\/em>. The idea of free speech cultivated over the last decades is one that reifies this vision of freedom as only free in the absence of all constraint. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the mysteries of contemporary free speech discussions is that they proceed without any real consideration of communication and language. If they did, it would seem unremarkable that the desires of the \u2018autonomous speaking subject\u2019 are always frustrated, not least by language and communication themselves, which are social, relational, and as constraining as they are expressive. But ressentiment, as Rahel Jaeggi frames it, is not just a feeling of frustration, impotence, or powerlessness, it is a \u2018reaction to the reaction\u2019, an \u2019affect that has affect as its content\u2019. The felt lack is socially mediated through a relation of resentment –\u00a0\u201cothers have what I don\u2019t have but at the same time feel entitled to\u201d.1<\/a><\/sup> In other words, my freedom is not just constrained but thwarted. There are always thieves of my speech, winners in a zero-sum game of silencing and silenced.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been a resurgence of interest in the idea of ressentiment<\/em> in relation to the long crisis of neoliberalism and the increasingly authoritarian demands of financialized capitalism. Placed in this context, it is in one way relatively straightforward to explain the attraction of freedom of speech to fascistic discourse. As Richard Seymour argues, the pre-fascist formations of \u2018disaster nationalism\u2019 harness the \u201cinsecurity, humiliation and miseries of heterogenous classes and social groups, including some of the poorest, to a revolt against liberal civilisation, with its pluralist and democratic norms\u201d.2<\/a><\/sup> Nevertheless, as Vallu and Luke note in their contribution, today\u2019s reactionaries also avow something, <\/em>and disaster nationalism\u2019s ideologues and activists are fascinated with the claims-making possibilities of \u2018rights\u2019. In the research I am involved in on anti-gender politics in Europe3<\/a><\/sup>, for example, the \u2018existential threat\u2019 of \u2018gender ideology\u2019 is headed off by the invention of rights, from Georgia Meloni\u2019s insistence on a \u2018right to heterosexual parents\u2019 or the \u2018right to a father\u2019 to the increasingly successful, trans-eliminationist category of \u2018sex-based rights\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unsurprising, therefore, that when J.D. Vance rocked up at the Munich Security conference in February 2025, he attacked \u2018European democracies\u2019 for \u2018retreating from their most fundamental values\u2019 and increasingly suppressing the right to free speech: \u201cDemocracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. You either uphold the principle or you don\u2019t\u201d. As well as picking a fight with a hostage audience of panicked Euro-Atlanticists, Vance was clearly pushing the interests of tech platforms that so value our freedom of expression they monetise it for often cack-handed attempts at political and commercial manipulation. Vance, the easily meme-able representative of an administration involved in the open repression of speech protesting Israeli genocide in Palestine, was clearly being gleefully hypocritical.4<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0All the same, this kind of hypocrisy is not politically or analytically interesting, because it assumes coherence is possible in relation to something called \u2018freedom of speech\u2019. What is more interesting is the imaginary of freedom and of speech that is offered to those who see themselves in the \u2018unfreedom\u2019 conjured up by Vance.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance\u2019s focus on freeing up speech was clearly part of a concerted attack on the fantasy of ‘liberal’ hegemony targeted in the first month of Trump\u2019s term; the teaching of \u2018critical race theory\u2019, inclusive language,\u00a0and of course, DEI \u2013 diversity, equity and inclusion. Executive orders banning DEI initiatives were among the very first signed by Trump, and the Department of Defence responded with alacrity, with, for example, its AI-powered censors seeking to expunge references to\u00a0Enola Gay \u2013 the aircraft used to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima \u2013 because, it\u2019s like, gay. Private corporations were quick to follow suit, with Tech Bros and all manner of Destructive Creatives trying to get on Joe Rogan to explain that they always felt emasculated by all that alphabet soup. And, freedom trickles down \u2013 an article in The Financial Times<\/em> mid-January quoted a \u2018top banker\u2019 as \u2018feeling liberated\u2019 because \u201cWe can say \u2018retard\u2019 and \u2018pussy\u2019 without the fear of getting cancelled\u2026it\u2019s a new dawn\u201d.5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new dawn for bankers, groundhog day for everyone else. The quote is nevertheless telling; a new dawn, liberation – these are states of release from existential threat. The ressentiment is palpable. No longer rendered impotent by irrational and arbitrary restriction, the zero-sum game licenses vindictive excess\u00a0\u2013 the banker, buoyed by the frisson of inflicting humiliation, will speak freely, high-fiving himself in his head. Trumpian spectacle, as Todd McGowan argued, is structured by exactly this kind of promise of vicarious and vindicated transgression.6<\/a><\/sup> Still, this does not fully explain the significance of speech here, the enjoyment that I can say these words again without constraint or consequence<\/em>. Vance\u2019s speech provoked a resurgence of alarm at the reactionary appropriation of \u2018free speech\u2019 as a licence to say whatever, whenever, wherever. Yet, this discomfort rarely reckons with the ways in which liberal ideology has prepared the ground for what is often termed free speech\u2019s \u2018weaponisation\u2019 by the radical right.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a clear echo of the banker\u2019s emancipation in the liberal insistence, post 9\/11, on the \u2018right to offend\u2019.\u00a0In the shadow of \u2018clash of civilisations\u2019 thinking, and the specific intensities of reaction that followed the Jyllands Posten<\/em> cartoons controversy in 2005-6, or the aftermath of the attacks January 2015 attacks in Paris, centrist politicians and proudly and loudly liberal commentators insisted that it was a democratic duty to \u2018offend\u2019 Muslims, who had \u2018no right not to be offended\u2019. Muslims were snowflakes avant la lettre<\/em>, and their successful integration to liberal democracy demanded a dutiful application of a \u2018pedagogy of offence\u2019: a celebration of racism as inclusive mockery, elevating expressions of anti-Muslim racism into exquisitely democratic conceits.7<\/a><\/sup> The racialisation of Muslims as unwilling or unable to \u2018integrate\u2019 positioned them, like the banker\u2019s underlings, as excessively sensitive and cossetted by elite experiments in social engineering, a mythic state-multiculturalism playing the role of contemporary DEI.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This analogy only goes so far, nonetheless. The Muslim subjected to a pedagogy of offence had to prove to democracy\u2019s keepers that they were not offended – they were under surveillance and expected to perform their integration. The banker\u2019s liberation does not depend on feedback, it depends rather on expression freed from the burden of interaction<\/em>. Here we can begin to see more closely the dominant understanding of free speech today that I referred to in opening, as one that is only free in the \u2013 impossible \u2013 absence of any constraint. It is this fantasy that is reproduced as a form of desirable self-actualisation, over and over again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, two opinion polls about attitudes to free speech were published. The first was accompanied by an opinion piece by the Editorial Board of The New York Times \u2013 <\/em>entitled \u2018<\/em>America has a free speech problem\u2019.8<\/a><\/sup> The evidence presented was a slim majority of respondents to an opinion poll saying that \u201cthey had held their tongue over the past year because they were concerned about retaliation or harsh criticism\u201d. It takes until the twenty-third paragraph of thirty-seven before they clarify that the commissioned opinion poll asked respondents \u201chow free people felt today to discuss six topics \u2013 including religion, politics, gender identity and race relations\u201d. Published early the same year, the GLES Cross-Section Pre-Election Survey in Germany asked respondents to address the statement, \u2018People like me are no longer allowed to express their opinions freely in public\u2019. 55% of respondents felt they could not, and discussion also focused on the \u2018sensitivities\u2019 of being able to speak freely on issues of gender and race.9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opinion polls, as Bourdieu reminds us, have already decided what the problem is, and people are not their answers to pollsters. As Sita Balani has argued recently, so-called \u2018culture war\u2019 discussions risk \u2018imagining political subjects as both flat and coherent\u2019.10<\/a><\/sup> It is nevertheless possible, I think, to examine the splitting <\/em>that occurs in answers such as these. By which I mean, one of the things that contemporary free speech discourse does is to ask people to imagine speech extracted from the rest of life. People know that language is a shared human practice, that it is irreducibly social. Every day, for example, reflexivity stops us from saying things to others for all kinds of reasons \u2013 but in free speech discourse, this can only be understood as \u2018self-censorship\u2019. The sociality of speech and communication is, among other things, organised by a multitude of\u00a0– unevenly distributed and experienced \u2013 constraints. And yet, of all the exclusions and foreclosures people routinely experience, it is these constraints, I can\u2019t say what I like about them<\/em>, that are now routinely elevated to the pitch of vengeful spectacle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting on the German opinion poll, Carolin Amlinger and Olivier Nachtwey proceed from extensive interviews with people involved in the rash of ephemeral movements that took shape during the period of Covid restrictions (their book Offended Freedom<\/em> makes a great companion read to Naomi Klein\u2019s Doppelganger<\/em>).11<\/a><\/sup> They situate their discussion in a consideration of how well-educated middle class subjects experience the conflicting imperatives of competitive individual responsibilisation and the cultural performance of an authentic self. This contradiction produces, they argue, an idea of individual freedom as a character trait. This freedom is constantly \u2018offended\u2019 because self-realization is systematically disappointed. It produces what they describe as \u201c\u2026libertarian authoritarianism as the symptom of a reified concept of freedom that serves to repel the acknowledgement of social dependencies\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consequently, disappointment and frustration can become fixated on opportunities to demonstrate that the practice of freedom means being \u2018no longer obliged by socially compelling norms\u2019. Here, speech is particularly productive, they argue, because particular rage is reserved for \u2018any new or altered social conventions\u2019 that are regarded as nothing more than illegitimately imposed external restrictions. Their respondents reserve particular ire for triggers such as the so-called \u2018gender asterisk\u2019, inserted in German between the word stem and the gender-specific suffix in order to render it gender-neutral. It comes to symbolise, again in a characteristically exaggerated register, evidence of \u2018mounting unfreedom\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of freedom of speech is particularly easy to suffuse with ressentiment because it has already reified this idea of freedom; that of the sovereign speaker, autonomous only when free to express without constraint, including the very sociality of language itself. And yet, if our speech does not often amount to very much, rage at the conditions that simultaneously elevate and dissipate speech can be directed at those who appear to enjoy in excess<\/em> that which we should be entitled to. In fact, the subaltern doesn\u2019t just speak, these days they never shut up, and their elite champions never stop telling us what to say and which pronouns to use. In this context, it is a duty to say the N word, to misgender, to say the unsayable about them, an unsayable which tastes of transgression despite being reproduced many times that day already, online, in parliament and in highly remunerated opinion columns. Freedom demands nothing less, and even the mildest and clunkiest attempts at what is always termed \u2018social engineering\u2019 can be \u2018received as an existential threat\u2019.12<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, with existential threats, all bets are off. I think, from here, we can start to think about how an idea such as freedom of speech, sacralised for its democratic character, can become integrated within a fascistic structure of feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Previous<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Next<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
  1. Rahel Jaeggi, \u2018Modes of Regression: The Case of Ressentiment\u2019, Critical Times<\/em>, 1.12.22 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  2. Richard Seymour Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilisation<\/em>. (London: Verso, 2024). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  3. The RESIST project: Fostering Queer Feminist Intersectional Resistances against Transnational Anti-Gender Politics<\/em> https:\/\/theresistproject.eu\/what-we-have-found\/#Map<\/a> \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  4. It is beyond the scope of this short blog, but utterly central to any contemporary discussion of freedom of speech, to underline the extraordinary repression and suspension of civil rights produced by the European political class\u2019s defence of Israel\u2019s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. For all the gasps of centrist despair in Munich, many of the political representatives present had profound affinities with Vance and the Trump administration. They too have orchestrated and justified a full frontal assault not just on the right to protest, but on the right to use language as if it has referents in a shared reality. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  5. \u2018Is corporate America going MAGA?\u2019 FT Reporters, The Financial Times<\/em> January 14 2025. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  6. Todd McGown Enjoyment Right & Left<\/em>. (New York: Sublation, 2022). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  7. See Gavan Titley Is Free Speech Racist?<\/em> Chapter 3 (Cambridge: Polity, 2020). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  8. Editorial Board, \u2018American has a free speech problem\u2019, New York Times<\/em> 18 March, 2022. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  9. For discussion see Menzner, Jan and Traunm\u00fcller, Richard, \u201cSubjective Freedom of Speech: Why Do Citizens Think They Cannot Speak Freely?\u201d\u00a0(March 8, 2022). Available at SSRN:\u00a0https:\/\/ssrn.com\/abstract=4052854<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.2139\/ssrn.4052854<\/a> \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  10. Sita Balani (2025) \u2018Not normal but ordinary: Living against the culture wars\u2019. Radical Philosophy<\/em>, no. 218 (Spring 2025). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  11. Carolin Amlinger & Oliver Nacthwey Offended Freedom: The Rise of Libertarian Authoritarianism<\/em> (Cambridge: Polity, 2024). Naomi Klein: Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World<\/em>. (London: Penguin, 2023). \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  12. Seymour op.cit. p. 14 \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Gavan Titley If we want to probe the cultural locations of fascism, it is worth paying some attention to the generativity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"id\":\"42cef361-68b2-4547-83de-0de382c66635\",\"content\":\"Rahel Jaeggi, \\u2018Modes of Regression: The Case of Ressentiment\\u2019, Critical Times<\\\/em>, 1.12.22\"},{\"id\":\"3901c04e-170d-4d5d-9bec-f950128e5816\",\"content\":\"Richard Seymour Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilisation<\\\/em>. (London: Verso, 2024).\"},{\"id\":\"cab4b503-840c-432d-bd82-5e528a84d7f3\",\"content\":\"The RESIST project: Fostering Queer Feminist Intersectional Resistances against Transnational Anti-Gender Politics<\\\/em> https:\\\/\\\/theresistproject.eu\\\/what-we-have-found\\\/#Map<\\\/a>\"},{\"id\":\"d649aade-42b2-42c5-983b-ad67c3aa3b26\",\"content\":\"It is beyond the scope of this short blog, but utterly central to any contemporary discussion of freedom of speech, to underline the extraordinary repression and suspension of civil rights produced by the European political class\\u2019s defence of Israel\\u2019s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. For all the gasps of centrist despair in Munich, many of the political representatives present had profound affinities with Vance and the Trump administration. They too have orchestrated and justified a full frontal assault not just on the right to protest, but on the right to use language as if it has referents in a shared reality.\"},{\"id\":\"39d65389-cd28-4d4d-b362-63dd9cd806a2\",\"content\":\"\\u2018Is corporate America going MAGA?\\u2019 FT Reporters, The Financial Times<\\\/em> January 14 2025.\"},{\"id\":\"5ecb4be3-613c-4c6a-8c7d-bb5ff0739120\",\"content\":\"Todd McGown Enjoyment Right & Left<\\\/em>. (New York: Sublation, 2022).\"},{\"id\":\"97dc055a-0b67-44d3-98f8-5b43298c4f2a\",\"content\":\"See Gavan Titley Is Free Speech Racist?<\\\/em> Chapter 3 (Cambridge: Polity, 2020).\"},{\"id\":\"64c88715-96e1-47cf-a711-01b9d21ff4c8\",\"content\":\"Editorial Board, \\u2018American has a free speech problem\\u2019, New York Times<\\\/em> 18 March, 2022.\"},{\"id\":\"49f5d6aa-b0db-44fa-a461-a2cae404b76f\",\"content\":\"For discussion see Menzner, Jan and Traunm\\u00fcller, Richard, \\u201cSubjective Freedom of Speech: Why Do Citizens Think They Cannot Speak Freely?\\u201d\\u00a0(March 8, 2022). Available at SSRN:\\u00a0https:\\\/\\\/ssrn.com\\\/abstract=4052854<\\\/a>\\u00a0or\\u00a0http:\\\/\\\/dx.doi.org\\\/10.2139\\\/ssrn.4052854<\\\/a>\"},{\"id\":\"2fec66c0-4cee-4d4b-8d00-c7faa6052e14\",\"content\":\"Sita Balani (2025) \\u2018Not normal but ordinary: Living against the culture wars\\u2019. Radical Philosophy<\\\/em>, no. 218 (Spring 2025).\"},{\"id\":\"21ad51ed-7331-419e-ab33-8fb91225e791\",\"content\":\"Carolin Amlinger & Oliver Nacthwey Offended Freedom: The Rise of Libertarian Authoritarianism<\\\/em> (Cambridge: Polity, 2024). Naomi Klein: Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World<\\\/em>. (London: Penguin, 2023).\"},{\"id\":\"4b08ee66-6e2b-432b-81fe-0b221213c9ee\",\"content\":\"Seymour op.cit. p. 14\"}]"},"class_list":["post-944","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1314,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/944\/revisions\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/statesofculturalanalysis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}