been agreeably posited. This is more compelling than Scanlon and Mill, as, in
this respect, reinforced by Berlin’s (1969) liberty concept, hate speech restricts
‘negative freedoms’ by interfering with self-determination through forcing such
experiences and damaging Cohen’s (2009) bourgeois notion of equal
opportunity (p.15). Perhaps, it is indeed more ‘freeing’ to restrict hate speech,
improving marginalised persons’ autonomy/welfare, similar to Rawls’ ‘Maximin
Principle’. Fundamentally, I diverge from Mill in arguing hate speech is, in
normative-ethical terms, harmful, and deserves curtailing to enforce negative
duties.
Furthermore, I maintain that speech has a similarly potent power manifested
in denialism, leading to my argument for explicit UK false-claim restriction (to
include social-media groups), through warnings and fines, thus further
disagreeing with Mill. Mill (1859) argues free speech rectifies fallibility through
diverse “opinion ” (p.73), allowing truth to emerge, even if “ extinguished...
many times ” (p.49). While this compels, it represents a dangerous rhetoric for
what may prevail. A frank empirical example here is Donald Trump’s 2020
election-denial, which, arguably, incited the US Capitol Attack (Bash et al.,
2022). This challenges Mill’s (1859) notion: “ all silencing... is an assumption of
infallibility ” (p.30), as speech suppression, here, would not equivocate certainty
of opinion, but promote public safety.
Conversely, building on Mill’s ‘infallibility’ argument, Gray (2021) contests
denialism censorship, in this example, of Trump’s social-media election-denial:
“ If... powerful corporations... can proscribe the far right without... democratic
accountability, who.. [is] next? ” Regarding denialism, he implies suppression is
a ‘slippery slope’. I contest Mill and Gray’s insinuation: restricting a false claim
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