Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know.

This sacred Privilege is so essential to free Governments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to Publick Traytors.
– Benjamin Franklin

BLUF
The U.K. government must crack down on lawless riots in its streets. But in the long run, its creep into truly Orwellian levels of censorship poses a far bigger threat to its citizens’ freedom than any riot ever could. And this whole saga serves as a reminder to Americans as to why we should cherish our First Amendment because without strict legal protections for free speech, even a Western nation can quickly descend into dystopia

The UK descends into dystopian levels of censorship.

“Think before you post.”

That’s the chilling message that was just posted from social media accounts affiliated with the United Kingdom’s government. Amid the riots and civil unrest in the streets of Britain that were initially sparked by anti-immigration protesters, the posts warned citizens not directly involved in the uprisings that they too could face arrest even just for their speech.

“Content that incites violence or hatred isn’t just harmful — it can be illegal,” the Crown Prosecution Service tweeted. “The CPS takes online violence seriously and will prosecute when the legal test is met. Remind those close to you to share responsibly or face the consequences.”

These aren’t just idle threats, either.

Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions of England and Wales, warned that there are “dedicated police officers” tasked with “scouring social media” to “follow up with identification [and] arrests” when people “publish or distribute material which is insulting or abusive which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred.”

This censorious effort is coming from the top levels of government. In an interview with Sky News, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said social media is “not a law-free zone” and that he wanted to issue “a reminder to everyone that whether you’re directly involved or whether you’re remotely involved, you’re culpable, and you will be put before the courts if you’ve broken the law.”

The arrests have already begun.

As Sky News reports, one 28-year-old man, Jordan Parlour, has been sentenced to 20 months in prison after writing on Facebook that “every man and his dog should smash [the] f*** out of Britannia hotel (in Leeds),” even though his post only received six likes and there’s no direct evidence that any of the people who went on to attack the hotel did so because of his post. (The hotel was targeted for housing refugees at taxpayer expense.)

Meanwhile, according to the Guardian, a 55-year-old woman was arrested simply for sharing inaccurate information about the suspect involved in the horrific stabbing attack that led to the uprisings. More arrests are sure to follow.

There is no word for this other than “dystopian.” The U.K. government is going full speech police and arresting and imprisoning people simply for the words they say.

Of course, anyone who has actually participated in the riots and crimes, such as mob beatings, looting, and vandalism, should be arrested and subjected to full legal consequences. Whether it’s Black Lives Matter activists in the United States in 2020 or anti-immigration agitators in these current U.K. riots, violence and victimizing the innocent are never acceptable forms of protest. But going beyond that and arresting people simply for their words is beyond the pale.

For one, you are quite literally punishing people for the actions of others who are not in their control. That alone makes these arrests unjust.

Even in the more extreme cases, such as that of Jordan Parlour, who did explicitly encourage violence with his words, he did so while sitting at home. He didn’t throw a single brick or smash a single window. No one was compelled to do anything simply because he posted something idiotic on Facebook. To punish him so severely because of the decisions other people made is to assign to him responsibility he does not bear — and take the blame off the shoulders of the people who actually committed the violent acts.

And to arrest people simply for spreading inaccurate information is incredibly dangerous. (In this case, the riots were, in part, motivated by false rumors that the man who committed a stabbing attack was an illegal immigrant.) Yes, people have a responsibility to be careful with their words and not spread fake information, but that should be considered a civic and moral responsibility, not a legal one.

Crossing into the alarming territory of arresting people after sharing “false” information requires making the government the ultimate arbiter of truth. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, as we’ve been repeatedly reminded in recent years, the government is not all-knowing and often gets things wrong. Just ask the many people who challenged the U.S. government’s claims on everything from the lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origins to the efficacy of mask mandates and beyond, who were initially labeled as purveyors of “misinformation” but, as time went on, were revealed to be correct or, at least, not necessarily incorrect.

Government officials are only human and are not capable of accurately determining one “truth” to anywhere near the degree of certainty required to punish people justly for spreading “falsehoods.” Granting any government this power is also dangerous because it’s so ripe for abuse.

The government often seeks to obfuscate or cover up facts that are harmful to its public perception, which it regularly labels “false” during initial media reports only to admit later it was wrong. See the Washington Post’s Afghanistan papers, for example, which extensively document how U.S. officials misled the public about the status of the war in Afghanistan to burnish their image.

Even if the government were somehow able to separate fact from fiction with a reasonable degree of accuracy and never abused this power, engaging in this kind of censorship would nevertheless have a chilling effect.

People would, quite understandably, be afraid to speak their minds openly or challenge a consensus, and they would engage in self-censorship as a result. This kind of repressed society is incompatible with the basic principles of democracy, where good ideas are supposed to win out over time through the open exchange of arguments, and such repression endangers everything from scientific progress to entrepreneurial innovation, which both require the freedom to risk being wrong.

The conclusion here is inescapable.

The U.K. government must crack down on lawless riots in its streets. But in the long run, its creep into truly Orwellian levels of censorship poses a far bigger threat to its citizens’ freedom than any riot ever could. And this whole saga serves as a reminder to Americans as to why we should cherish our First Amendment because without strict legal protections for free speech, even a Western nation can quickly descend into dystopia.