Episode 38 - The Totalitarian Temptation – Part I
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
Release Date: 01/15/2020
Episode 41 - Free Speech and Racial Justice: Friends or Foes?
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
This episode will focus on what role the dynamic between censorship and free speech has played in maintaining and challenging racist and oppressive societies. The episode will use American slavery and segregation, British colonialism, and South African apartheid as case studies.
info_outline
Special Edition - Suzanne Nossel
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
In this Special Edition, we will zoom in on current challenges to free speech – specifically in the US. With me to discuss this timely subject, I have CEO of PEN America, Suzanne Nossel, who has just published her new book Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All.
info_outline
Special Edition - Daphne Keller & Kate Klonick
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
“Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal” read a recent Atlantic article, that stated that “governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values.”
info_outline
Special Edition - Dunja Mijatović
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
Since the coronavirus became a pandemic, governments around the world have adopted a wide range of measures affecting basic human rights. This includes many of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe all of whom are legally bound by the European Convention on Human Rights.
info_outline
Special Edition - Monika Bickert
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
The Coronavirus has disrupted life as we know it. And the Internet overflows with torrents of data, news and updates about the ongoing crisis. But in parallel with the corona pandemic, WHO has warned of an “infodemic” of mis- and disinformation spreading through social media and messaging apps.
info_outline
Episode 40 - The Age of Human Rights: Tragedy and Triumph
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
In this episode we will explore:
info_outline
Episode 39 - The Totalitarian Temptation – Part II - Der Untergang
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
Weimar Germany was deeply conflicted about the value of free speech. On the one hand, freedom of expression was constitutionally protected. On the other hand, the constitution allowed censorship of cinema and “trash and filth” in literature.
info_outline
Episode 38 - The Totalitarian Temptation – Part I
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
In this first of a two-part episode on totalitarianism in Communist Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, we will focus on the rise of communism and Italian fascism and the effects of these ideologies on free expression. Hopefully this journey into the darkest of pasts will help shed light on how to grapple with one of democracy’s eternal and inevitable dilemmas: What should be the limits of free speech?
info_outline
Episode 37 - Expert opinion: The History of Mass Surveillance, with Andreas Marklund
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
In this episode, we discuss the history of mass surveillance and its consequences for freedom of expression and information. With me is Andreas Marklund who is the head of research at the ENIGMA Museum of Communication, in Copenhagen.
info_outline
Episode 36 - Expert opinion: Thomas Healy on how Oliver Wendell Holmes changed the history of free speech in America
Clear and Present Danger - A history of free speech
In this conversation, professor Thomas Healy explains how Wendell Holmes changed his mind on free speech and laid the foundation for the current strong legal protection of the First Amendment. Thomas Healy is a professor of law at Seton Hall University School of Law and the author of the award-winning book “The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind--And Changed the History of Free Speech in America”.
info_outlineIn George Orwell’s 1946 work, “The Prevention of Literature,” he wrote:
[O]rganised lying … is … integral to totalitarianism, [and] would … continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary. … A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. … Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.
As we shall see, the Orwellian diagnosis of totalitarianism was surgical in its precision. But despite the defeat of European communism, fascism, and Nazism, the dark and bloody past of totalitarianism still casts long shadows on European liberal democracies. On the one hand, freedom of expression is a foundational value ensuring the pluralism and autonomy that is anathema to totalitarianism. On the other hand many countries restrict free speech to safeguard against totalitarian propaganda aimed at undermining democracy. This raises the question: Should we be most afraid of totalitarian movements abusing free speech to abolish other freedoms and democracy, or of democracies abusing limits on free speech to silent dissent? In this first of a two-part episode on totalitarianism in Communist Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany, we will focus on the rise of communism and Italian fascism and the effects of these ideologies on free expression. Hopefully this journey into the darkest of pasts will help shed light on how to grapple with one of democracy’s eternal and inevitable dilemmas: What should be the limits of free speech?
In this episode we will explore:
- How Tsarist Russia was the last European great power to abolish preventive censorship;
- How the fall of the Tsarist regime led to a brief period of full press freedom;
- How, once in power, the very first legislative act of the Bolsheviks was to suppress the “bourgeois press” by closing down hundreds of publications and print shops;
- How Lenin and Trotsky defeated Bolshevik and socialist opponents who demanded an end to press censorship in revolutionary Russia;
- How Lenin combined suffocating censorship with terror against “class enemies”;
- How Stalin expanded Lenin’s repressive censorship machinery and radicalized the terror, killing millions of people;
- How Mussolini went from working as a socialist journalist to founding a fascist newspaper;
- How fascist violence and intimidation paved the way for Mussolini to assume power;
- How Mussolini combined censorship and propaganda to ensure ideological uniformity of the press;
- How fascist blackshirts and secret police kept political opponents cowed through surveillance, intimidation, and murder; and
- How a novel on interracial love infuriated Mussolini and caused book censorship to be severely expanded.
Why have kings, emperors, and governments killed and imprisoned people to shut them up? And why have countless people risked death and imprisonment to express their beliefs? Jacob Mchangama guides you through the history of free speech from the trial of Socrates to the Great Firewall.
You can subscribe and listen to Clear and Present Danger on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, YouTube, TuneIn, and Stitcher, or download episodes directly from SoundCloud.
Stay up to date with Clear and Present Danger on the show’s Facebook and Twitter pages, or visit the podcast’s website at freespeechhistory.com. Email us feedback at [email protected].