‘The Free Speech Debate Has a Lot to Do With Race – But the Media Won’t Tell You That’

‘Trump officials to monitor immigrants’ social media for antisemitism’ — the harrowing headline made UK and US media this week, far too frequently without so much as an inverted comma around the term ‘antisemitism’.

As one Bluesky user remarked: “You know they aren’t talking about actual antisemitism and you are free to write a headline that accurately portrays this smokescreen for what it is.”

To give editors the benefit of the doubt, the absurdity of reporting under Donald Trump is such that you cannot even write a headline announcing “reciprocal tariffs” because they turn out to have nothing to do with tariff-reciprocity at all.

And you certainly can’t call antisemitism “antisemitism” when it’s judged by a man who’s right-hand man pairs Nazi salutes with AI-generated territorial claims over Gaza.

But you know antisemitism is not what they’re searching for. What they’re searching for is sedition.

With this revoking of First Amendment rights from migrants, the MAGA 180 on free speech is complete. Trump and his inner circle have gone from parading as free speech absolutists, to illegally banning access to media organisations that criticise them, sanctioning law firms that represent political opponents, rigging social media algorithms to push party propaganda, pulling federal grants that include language they oppose, publishing a literal list of ‘banned words’, and attempting to deport critics for non-criminal protest.

Despite this, the UK’s right-wing media is busy celebrating Trump’s “free speech ultimatum” to the UK, after he reportedly warned Keir Starmer “no free trade without free speech”.

The Spectator’s greatest minds can declare without a hint of irony: “The US position at least comes across as liberal and principled”. GB News ran the title: “I thank Donald Trump for his free speech ultimatum.” This is the libertarian Right that tore us out of the EU because of foreign influence. Now they’re cheerleading imperialist US intrusion into our UK policymaking?

The sheer hypocrisy could spark an identity crisis (are we even the word-police anymore, or are we liberalists now?) It’s actually pretty straightforward, Femi Oluwole, outspoken political activist, told Media Storm. “It’s a really good example of how free speech operates in terms of power.

When Trump didn’t have power, he wanted free speech to be absolute so he could say whatever he wanted without being punished for it so that he could win the election. Now he’s in power, he needs to make sure that only his narrative is allowed to thrive. Free speech works for you if you don’t have power and free speech works against you if you do have power

Femi Oluwole, political activist

The thing is, power imbalances are not reserved to the hierarchies of state. Society is unequal in many ways. And the first thing not being said nearly enough, is that the Right’s position on free speech reflects a hierarchy of rights that has a lot to do with race. White people’s right to freedom of speech overrules POC’s right to freedom from discrimination and violence, but not the other way around.

This explains why the Right saw Starmer’s heavy-handed reaction to the anti-immigrant riots last summer as the “biggest threat to free speech in history” (Nigel Farage on Fox News).

But when it comes to Trump’s detention of pro-Palestine activists, they suddenly argue there’s “a very fine line when your free speech is actually inciting violence” — plus “it’s a little bit different when we talk about free speech when you’re an American versus when you are here on a visa” (also Fox News).

Note the racial profile of those arrested. Note that the UK protests were triggered by a false rumour that the killer of three little girls was a Muslim asylum seeker. Note that the US protests were triggered by Palestinian ethnic cleansing and White settler colonialism.

The Right’s justifications of Trump’s free speech crackdown may feel like looping loops through loopholes, but the logic is what it always has been in the US and UK: white rights come first.

This week, The Telegraph published a 6,000-word op-ed arguing Lucy Connolly is a “political prisoner”. The author posted it with cracking-heart emojis and a call to “Free Lucy”. So what was poor Lucy imprisoned for? Tweeting “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the b***ards for all I care,” to her tens-of-thousands of followers.

Incidentally, we do not agree with her 31-month custodial sentence either. But not because we’re trying to minimise racist incitement to violence, simply because we don’t agree with most custodial sentences (we wrote as much at the time of Starmer’s ‘crackdown’).

You don’t need to look much further than the ‘tough-on-crime’ Telegraph to understand the UK’s overuse of prison sentences; it’s funny they only recognise it when a white woman pays.

Furthermore, Connolly is not the only one facing an unjust sentence for her crime. Many minorities still leave home in fear following the riots. As Oluwole told the podcast: “Your right to say ‘let’s go burn down that refugee hotel’ isn’t as important as my right to know that I can cross the street without being attacked for the colour of my skin”. The Telegraph disagrees: a white woman’s freedom of speech is more important than a Black man’s freedom to walk around safely.”

Another good example of this racialised hierarchy of rights is the Zuckerberg-Musk brand of ‘free speech’, which keeps them conveniently cosy with the President.

“Zuckerberg came to the White House, who I like much better now,” Trump said after Meta removed independent fact-checkers from Facebook and Instagram. Of course he does, because the unregulated clickbait algorithm favours fear-mongering over facts, which is the simplest formula for a racist’s rise to power.

Many of Facebook’s international fact-checkers were first set up in response to genocidal propaganda spreading on the site: against the Rohingya in Myanmar, or Muslims in India. After Zuckerberg announced cutbacks in January, an open letter to Zuckerberg signed by over 100 global bodies warned of possible “political instability, election interference, mob violence and even genocide” resulting from his decision. Again, in the hierarchy of rights, some people’s right to free speech comes before others’ right to safety.

The founding principle behind unregulated free speech is a noble one: a free market of ideas where Truth and Reason ultimately win out according to free and fair debate. But the debate is not free and fair when some people have more free speech than others. Meta and X’s subscriber models provide a simple analogy of how social inequalities invert the free market of ideas: those who pay more, say more.

These platforms are also privately owned, meaning they can be rigged (why do we get notified about seven Musk tweets a day when we don’t follow him?) “You cannot have a free market of ideas and a free market of media ownership,” said Oluwole simply, “it doesn’t work”.

We live in a world where four men own Britain’s print media — it is exactly why we founded Media Storm, to combat media gatekeeping and even out the playing field. It was why Byline Times was founded too.

You could look at our podcast and its very particular style of journalism and think we are biased, because we speak to the people living the issue and not those who abstractly disagree with their experiences.

Firstly, we’d say those living it should have more voice in the debate since it affects them more, but secondly we’re reacting to a pre-existing imbalance whereby the people most affected often get the smallest say in the mainstream media debates.

Minorities and vulnerable groups like asylum seekers and sex workers and trans people are spoken about in our media, often without a single quote to respond to the claims being made about them. It is a total affront to the journalistic pillar of right of reply, and makes a mockery of the rationale of free speech in a healthy democracy.

Free speech is a bendy concept and people across the political spectrum tend to apply it to those who agree with them and find the loopholes for those who don’t. We must find the logic that is consistent across the Left-Right divide, both to protect our individual rights, and to achieve the democratic benefits of a truly free market of ideas.

For respectful, self-questioning, and tolerant people on all sides of the political spectrum, that means reaching out and standing together in defence of our shared value of free speech. A free speech that does not infringe on others’ inalienable rights. Moral free speech does not call for violence against the innocent and defenceless; it does not incite hatred to others based on characteristics they do not choose.

Practicing this consistently means calling out our own tribe whenever they overstretch the bounds of tolerance. There is no ‘one rule for them, another for us’. Racists and extremists who see their way as the only way are no friend to freedom, wherever they stand.

Media Storm’s latest episode ‘Free Speech: Is it all talk?’ is out now.