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“It shouldn’t be a criminal offence to criticise politicians, however strongly”

Interview: Alexander Wendt

Publico: For a long time the UK had the reputation as the motherland of free speech. What has happened that a Free Speech Union is necessary now?

Young: I’m not sure that reputation was every really deserved. Until last year, people could still be prosecuted for blasphemy in Scotland. But things have deteriorated sharply since the 1960s, with more and more laws being passed that fetter our free speech. It’s the result of politicians prioritising safety over liberty, particularly when it comes to protecting the feelings of minorities. Why has that happened? More women entering public life, mass immigration, the decline of Christianity and the rise of identity politics.

Publico: After a career as journalist, you became the General Secretary of the FSU. Why? What is your personal passion when it comes to free speech?

Young: I was a victim of cancel culture in 2018 when some offense archaelogists dug up some ‘offensive’ things I’d said on social media and had to step down from five different positions. At the time, when I was being cancelled, I desperately wanted the advise of a good, professional organisation that specialised in protecting people who found themselves at the bottom of a social media pile-on, but no such organisation existed. So when I’d recovered from my own cancellation, I started that organisation.

Publico: How would you rate the freedom to express political opinions in UK? What has changed under Starmer?

Young: Among the world’s liberal democracies, the UK is still in the top 10 when it comes to freedom of expression, but it’s been falling down the table. Things have got considerably worse under Sir Keir Starmer, who encouraged the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute people for hurty words last summer following the Southport attack. One man was sent to prison for eight weeks for sharing an ‘offensive’ meme on Facebook three times.

Publico: Where do your clients come from?

Young: All walks of life, but the largest single category in our case files are gender critical women. Nearly 40% of the 3,500+ cases we’ve taken on in the past five years have been women who’ve got into trouble for expressing their belief in the biological reality of sex.

Publico: In one of your most spectacular cases, FSU defended a man who was taken to court after he made a link between the Southport stabbing and illegal migration on a social network. Please tell our German readers what FSU did for him.

Young: That was Jamie Michael, a former Royal Marine. He was prosecuted for stirring up racial hatred after he posted a 12-minute video about the Southport attack on Facebook because he wrongly claimed the attacker was an illegal Muslim migrant. We provided him with a legal team and paid their fees. It took a jury all of 17 minutes to unanimously return a verdict of ’not guilty’.

Publico: How would you judge the state of free speech in Germany? For example, a few weeks ago, a lawyer was fined 3000 Euros for calling Ministers Baerbock and Habeck “malicious failures” (“bösartige Versager” in German). Now he may even lose his licence as a lawyer . Is the situation in Gemany now worse than UK or in any other European country (excepting Belarus)?

Young:I think free speech is certainly in a worse state in Germany than it is in the UK. It shouldn’t be a criminal offence to criticise politicians, however strongly. But things are probably even worse in Poland since Donald Tusk became Prime Minister.

Publico: Was J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich a game changer when he raised a topic European elites don’t want to discuss – the war on free speech?

Young: It was an important speech and he was right to raise the issue, but the response of European leaders was disappointing. Vance told them that if they wanted to continue to rely on the military protection of the United States, they’d have to restore their citizens’ right to  free speech. I had hoped that their response would be, ‘Yes, no problem. Good idea.’ Instead, it was, ‘Well, we cannot possibly do that so we’re on our own from now on.’

Publico: Now there are Free Speech Unions in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Switzerland. Is this a network of some sort? Which countries will be next?

Young: Yes, it’s a network of sister organisations that’s growing rapidly as more Free Speech Unions get set up in different parts of the world. I’d like to see an FSU set up in Germany and if anyone reading this is interested in helping, they should email Jon Benjamin, head of FSU International, on [email protected].

Publico: Especially people from the left claim free speech is a ‘right wing dog whistle’. What is your answer?

Young: Free speech has become coded as a ‘right wing’ issue, but it shouldn’t be. Historically, left wing causes have benefitted from free speech much more than right wing causes. Without free speech, we wouldn’t have had the Suffragette movement, the Civil Rights movement or the gay rights movement. It’s in everyone’s interests to defend free speech, not just conservatives.

Publico: If some people in Germany would join together to found a Free Speech Union, how could you support them from UK?

Young: We could convene a group, chair that group, provide them with a starter pack and guide them through the process of setting up a Free Speech Union. We might also be able to provide them with some seed funding.

Publico: The EU is working on a “prebunking” program, which means, according to Mrs von der Leyen, to “vaccinate” people “against disinformation”. What do you think of this?

Young: I think Ursula von der Leyen is wrong to think of free speech as a virus that European people need to be vaccinated against. On the contrary, we need to be vaccinated against would-be censors like her.