Justin Trudeau's strange definition of freedom of expression8 reading minutes

Unpublished article - Jonas Follonier

Recently, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated publicly that, in his opinion, «freedom of expression is not without limits». This would mean always thinking carefully about whether what you say is potentially hurtful to others. What a curious conception of a right that's so rudimentary to any liberal mind! Curious in the sense of strange, but not curious in the sense of astonishing: communitarians are no strangers to delirium.

The reaction of the French political world to the beheading of Samuel Paty was swift, unanimous on the need to remember that freedom of expression includes the possibility of blasphemy, and that France must defend its secularism - a minimum, let's say. Justin Trudeau's reaction came much later: it took eleven days and a motion tabled by the Bloc Québécois for him to deign to speak. Already criticized for his almost culpable slowness, the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada sank a little further into ambiguity at a press conference on October 30 with this response to a question about the right to caricature:

«Freedom of expression is not without limits. [...] We owe it to ourselves to act with respect for others, and to seek not to hurt in an arbitrary or unnecessary way those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet», said the statesman calling himself a progressive liberal. But if there's one political line this declaration follows, it's that of communitarianism, not liberalism. It's no longer the individual, whoever he or she may be, who has inalienable rights, such as the right to express himself or herself: it's the communities who have rights to «recognition» and «respect», as the new Trudeau-style forces of progress tell us. After all, what's the big deal? Isn't freedom of enterprise the most important? Couldn't the Liberals live with an invitation to a few secular cartoonists to tone down their scribblings?

That would be to misunderstand the essence of freedom. Freedom is as much about details as it is about the devil hiding in them. And the great liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America (1840), had already prophesied a time when this fundamental fact would be forgotten: «After having thus taken each individual in turn into his powerful hands, and kneaded him to his will, the sovereign extends his arms over the whole of society; he covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, minute and uniform rules, through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot emerge to overtake the crowd; it does not break wills, but softens, bends and directs them; it rarely forces action, but constantly opposes it; it does not destroy, but prevents it from being born; it does not tyrannize, but hinders, compresses, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being no more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.»

More recently, in the columns of Regard Libre, the equally liberal historian Olivier Meuwly was concerned that «rights to» (so-called «positive» rights, favored by leftists) were gradually taking over from «rights to» (so-called «negative» rights): «[...] for the right, which is generally liberal, apart from the heirs of the conservative Catholic right, human rights are those of the French and American Revolutions. It seems fundamental to have superior rights protecting individual freedoms.» New «rights» that are not individual freedoms therefore represent a risk to everyone's freedom in the name of egalitarianism. Communitarianism is just one variant. It is paradoxical that this non-Western way of conceiving society should have seduced nations that had played a major role in forging the liberal idea, namely the Anglo-Saxon countries.

Universalism, in which we can find the seeds of both French-style laïcité - about which we probably talk a little too much, because that's not really the point - and the natural rights of every human being and, on an institutional level, the rule of law of our Western nations, defends a conception opposed to the communitarianism in which Canada is entangled. There is no limit to freedom of expression; self-censorship is unjustifiable. All individuals are free to express their opinions, including provocative and mocking ones. In the words of the philosopher Simone Weil, who - to say the least - was no reactionary, «total, unlimited freedom of expression, for any opinion whatsoever, without any restriction or reservation, is an absolute necessity for intelligence» (Taking root, 1949). It's as much about the spirit of debate as it is about the fundamental principle of freedom.

Having said that, let's be clear: of course, there are codes for how we address others. But these codes are not political; they're a matter of manners, civility and education. Let's also make it clear that harming others, undermining one's neighbor, one's integrity, is obviously intolerable. In the West, we derive this from our Judeo-Christian tradition, which establishes the distinction between a person and his or her beliefs or actions. It is in this cultural tradition that our modern political tradition has been built over the centuries, giving rise to the universal rights of man and citizen.

And yet, to attack the prophet in a newspaper or in a cartoon is to attack a belief, or even the instrumentalization of that belief: it is therefore a right, and even in a way a duty, if we start from the principle that to use one's intelligence, one must analyze and criticize. The Enlightenment is all about reason, and therefore criticism. The Swiss-Israeli Carlo Strenger goes so far as to say «civilized contempt» in a book bearing this expression as its title (2015): «A culture of civilized contempt is based [...] on the will to assert this way of thinking with all the consequences that this entails - such is the principle that makes it possible to form a responsible opinion.» Enlightenment versus bien-pensance.

Read also: The liberal attitude

By reducing the issue of the cartoons to a «community» that would be «stigmatized», Trudeau - does he even realize it? - falls into the terrorists« trap. For supposedly virtuous reasons, and much more reasonably out of electoral clientelism, Canada's lesson-giver casually lumps Muslims and Islamists together and confuses Muslims with Islam, as if no Muslim were capable of dissociating himself from the idea that blasphemy deserves punishment. Even as the Trudeaus drown us in »no amalgam«, it is they who find themselves calling for the loyalty demanded by Islamists from Muslims to their so-called »community«. They are the ones who reinforce the terror with declaration after declaration, law after law, stupidity after stupidity. Conversely, the accuracy of Emmanuel Macron's words - »in France, there is only one community, the national community" - stands out more strongly.

Justin Trudeau, to put it bluntly, is not Charlie. But being Charlie has never meant preferring their humor to the irony of a Philip Roth. All that common sense demands is that we accept that we can still speak, draw and live freely in our part of the world. And as journalist Konrad Yakabuski has rightly pointed out in the Canadian daily Le Devoir, the fact that the Prime Minister has since retracted his statements, assuring that he did not condemn the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo, doesn't change a thing. Because «the damage [is] done. If it took him two weeks to clarify his thinking on freedom of expression, it's because he's not that keen on it.» In fact, the fact that Trudeau clarified two weeks later that he did not condemn the cartoons is a gesture that should even chill us: it shows us precisely that he had to clarify it. To convince himself?

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

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