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The colonial roots of the modernist framework of free speech is embedded in hegemonic constructions of civility.

Inherent historically in the idea of free speech is the marking of communicative space, shaped in the ambits of colonial power.

Free speech and colonialism are co-constitutive.

The freedom to speak historically belonged to the White colonial master, even as the colonized were systematically and often violently erased from the spaces and sites of articulation. Marked as the “other” of civility, the colonized belonged outside the public sphere, outside the domains of civil society.

White colonial societies reproduced the image of the primitive savage to erase colonized voices even as they celebrated emancipatory ideas of free speech.

The freedom of speech thus was a privilege of White colonialists while colonized savages, the other of modernity, were systematically erased from spaces of participation. As colonized voices started emerging in resistance, the colonialists reproduced laws of sedition that marked the colonized as terrorist, as threat to the security of the colonial occupation. This communicative inversion is fundamental to the modernist production of free speech.

The White colonial history of free speech continues to play out in contemporary contexts of settler colonialism and indigenous resistance to settler colonialism.

While indigenous resistance that fundamentally resists ongoing forms of colonial occupation continue to be marked as criminal, White colonialists deploy the trope of free speech to denigrate indigenous culture, language, and ways of life. Inherent in the deployment of free speech is the play of power.

This interplay of free speech and White settler colonialism is in display in the recent unfolding of the free speech debate at Massey University.

When the Massey University Vice Chancellor Jan Thomas cancelled a speaking event by the opposition politician Don  Brash citing concerns over security, the University came under attack for the apparent violation of the principle of free speech.

In her response, Professor Thomas reiterated the security concerns for the University, and also noted:

“Mr Brash’s leadership of Hobson’s Pledge and views he and its supporters espoused in relation to Māori wards on councils was clearly of concern to many staff, particularly Māori staff…In my opinion, the views expressed by members of Hobson’s Pledge come dangerously close to hate speech. They are certainly not conducive with the university’s strategy of recognising the values of a Tiriti o Waitangi-led organisation.”

Subsequently, internal emails secured through the Official Information Act by blogger David Farrar seem to suggest that Thomas didn’t want “a Te Tiriti led university be seen to be endorsing racist behaviours.”

Social media responses in the White mainstream reiterate the free speech rhetoric to demand the resignation of the Vice Chancellor.

Many academics, once again mostly White, and ensconced in White colonial privilege, are upset about this violation of free speech.

Essential to this culture of White colonial performance of free speech is the erasure of questions of power and colonialism.

That the freedom of White colonialists to reproduce settler colonial depictions of indigenous people as backward is fundamentally a form of violence that violates the basic right to dignity of colonized peoples offers a very different anchor to the free speech conversation.

The privilege to speak freely is precisely the trope through which White settler colonialists continue to assert their racist power of erasure.

 

As inequalities have grown globally, global elites (the 1%) and their academic mouthpieces respond to the growing public anger about inequalities by issuing calls for societal transformation.

They inform us, inequalities are rising and that’s a problem (just as they profit from these inequalities).

The urgent need for transformation in the individual mindset is the call of the hour.

They appeal to our consience, suggesting a much needed transformation in our beliefs and attitudes is needed to address global inequality.

Appeals for addressing inequality are rife with narratives of kindness, heartfulness, caring, and compassion.

Elite media are rife with stories of inequality, often hidden behind a paywall. They document different aspects of inequalities and then present expert voices pontificating on the trends in inequalities.

Elites urge “greater attention needs to be paid to inequality.”

Now that elites have declared inequality is a trend for concern, academic mouthpieces jump onto the bandwagon. New talks, discussion forums, exhibitions, and closed door meetings are organized on solving the problem of inequality. Academics looking for funding are given a new problem to work on.

The sort of transformation urged by these elites however is very much a perpetuation of the neoliberal status quo, urging for greater empathy toward the underserved segments of society. It is the responsibility of the individual to feel empathy, to develop a heart, and to rise up to the challenges of giving to the needy.

The solution to inequality therefore is the cultivation of heart among the bourgeoisie and the power elite.

Elite audiences are urged to respond with feelings.

The often-used missionary rhetoric of “lifting the burden of the soul” is scripted into the empathy narrative.

Images, stories, voices are catalyzed by the elite to generate empathy.

An entire array of market-based tools then are promoted by the inequality industry in solving the problem of inequality, all directed toward cultivating individual empathy.

As a “communicative inversion” (Dutta, 2016), the seduction of empathy keeps intact the neoliberal status quo while at the same time offering a narrative of transformation.

While individual behaviors are targeted, the overarching structures are kept intact. This is the fundamental paradox of the inequality industry.

The feel good talk perpetuated by the industry calling for urgent societal response leaves intact the fundamental inequalities in distribution of power, opportunities for impacting policy, voice, and material distribution of resources.

That the vast concentration of resources in the hands of the power elite is the fundamental problem underlying global inequalities is inverted, instead presenting the 1% as the panacea to the problem of inequality.

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