Words change the thing. Kingsley Amis said that. He’s an author of diminishing influence, a mid-century comic novelist who delivers much less potency and insight than his son Martin – something that would annoy him, by all accounts.
The late Kingsley Amis was pretty intolerant of a lot of things, the misuse of words and language being one of them. But that succinct epithet of his still lands, and ironically for a man who liked the clarity of meaning in words, it is an adaptable phrase.
I thought of it twice last week. The first was after 10 people were convicted of online harassment of Brigitte Macron, the French president’s wife, for posting malicious comments on social media, mostly claiming she was a man. There were also suggestions of paedophilia related to the age difference between her and her husband. None of it was true. I’m pretty sure there was a big dollop of misogyny in it for some of them too.
The issue of free speech rose around this. One of those convicted, Bertrand Scholler, said the court rulings were a “nuclear bomb for free speech”. He’s talking garbage. I am against the rich and the powerful using their wealth and court procedure to shut down the little man with something to say. They’ve been known to use it against the media as well when they don’t like some truth that is about to be revealed.
But that’s not what this is. There is a big difference between having a fact that could change things being suppressed and being found guilty of a campaign of falsehoods that materially seek to destroy someone.
Scholler, and the others, might be hiding behind free speech, as if they are incredible truth tellers sent to perdition in a Soviet gulag, but they’re not. They’re nasty pieces of work. I don’t know what the motivation is for them – some level of fame, low self-esteem, being once slighted by a woman – but if they want to carry on with the free speech push, they’ve got to accept that there are consequences.
