:: Media Times Review Blog ::

by Göran Rosenberg, Dagens Nyheter

The formal laws constituting freedom of expression in democratic societies are only the tip of the iceberg of unwritten agreements between citizens about what they can express publicly in one context or another, says Göran Rosenberg. These agreements differ from society to society: in the case of Denmark, the agreement to allow expressions of anti-Muslim prejudice has served to produce conflict instead of dealing with it. With communications technology enabling the proliferation of parallel public spheres, the need for common agreements on freedom of expression are all the more necessary if conflicts such as the latest controversy over the Mohammed cartoons are not to intensify.

At the trial of major German war criminals at Nuremberg, Julius Streicher, the publisher of the anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, argued in his defence that he had not killed anyone, but had merely published a newspaper. It was a lie of course. Streicher had killed millions of people. Perhaps not with his hands, but with his words. It was for these that Streicher was hanged to death in Nuremberg on 16 October 1946.

Some might argue that Streicher’s words would never have had the same deadly consequences in a democracy, since in a democracy there would have been counter-voices and counter-forces. And most importantly, there would have been no totalitarian state prepared to put into practice the genocide to which the words of Streicher had incited. But when Streicher founded Der Stürmer in 1923, Germany was still a democracy, and since then he had “in his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism, and incited the German People to active persecution”. It was for this prolonged and persistent use of words only that he was found guilty of “crimes against humanity” and sentenced to death by the Court in Nuremberg.

We thus know that words can kill. Anti-Semitic caricatures of the kind once published in Der Stürmer are not possible to publish today. If Jyllands-Posten in Denmark had done that, very few would have accepted the argument that the newspaper only wanted to manifest its freedom of expression. Nor would the prime minister of Denmark have failed to distance himself from such a manifestation. Most people would have seen through the real motives behind such a publication. Most people would also have understood that everything that is legal to say nevertheless must not be said, and that freedom of expression has its limits.

Not saying whatever whenever is in fact a fundamental requirement for human communication. We cannot lie too often since eventually no one would take us seriously. We cannot always say in public what we say in private, since what we say in private needs to be understood by only those we know, while what we say in public must also be understood by strangers. The risk of what we say in public being misunderstood is therefore greater.

The risk is also greater that what we say publicly may inadvertently cause hurt. When we talk in everyday conversation about hurting somebody we are normally talking about the effects of words, not of knives. When we hurt someone in private we are normally aware of what we do, or can at least understand how what we say might be perceived, and sometimes we regret what has been said and wish it had remained unsaid. When we hurt in public we do not always know what we do, since we cannot always know how what we say will be perceived. Normally we don’t care much either, since we don’t know the people we might hurt. This demands that what we say in public be publicly countered and disputed. A condition of freedom of expression is thus a public arena where words effectively can be put against words.

Read the full article >>> http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-03-03-rosenberg-en.html