Regent Law 2Ls Seth Brooks, Brannon Winter, and Kellen Hasle partnered with Professor Brauch and ADF International to address the tension between the bureaucratic arms of the United Nations’ apparent promotion but implicit throttling of freedom of expression through anti-hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation laws. Fundamentally, the United Nations must determine whether it truly values individual liberties over personal opinions deemed offensive or illegal by its bureaucratic agencies. Our project this semester focused on highlighting the inconsistent messaging by the organizations that have led to the prosecution of “offensive” speech, which should be protected by the RABAT plan of action’s balancing approach to expression, but have given license to social media companies especially to throttle free speech through demonetization and content removal methods.
When countering freedom of expression, the potential damage to human rights and freedom of religion is incalculable. While we found that many published articles by bureaucratic arms of the United Nations preach the importance of freedom of expression, the implicit messaging and occasional verbal slip-ups in conferences highlight a determination to limit free expression beyond the permissible scope adopted under the RABAT plan of action. Indirect suppression of expression is still suppression of expression.
Finally, we noticed a concerning trend of calling hate speech or disinformation “violence.” If words alone are “violence,” the appropriate response to offensive words becomes actual physical violence. Demonizing language to justify physical outbursts and suppression of expression is wrong. We have distorted the definition of violence to become unrecognizable. Words must have consistent, plain meaning if societies are to play by the rules. The United Nations and its bureaucratic partners have perverted the definition of violence to encompass offensive words in an attempt to justify suppressing the individual rights of citizens around the world. Our work with ADF International has hopefully just begun, and we will continue to work with the organization in the spring semester to promote free expression and all of ADF’s five generational wins: safeguarding life, religious freedom, free speech, protecting marriage and family, and parental rights.
This post was written by a student at Regent University School of Law. The views expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of Regent University, Regent Law School, or the Center for Global Justice.