‘Free speech’ is losing its position in the political conversation.

It’s not only because rising middle-class poverty is shifting people’s priorities, or even that we have two generations who were never taught to value free speech by their pathetic, miserable, larping communist teachers who lack the courage to live under the ideology they praise.

No. What we are witnessing is more akin to exhaustion, just as we saw conservatives lose interest in the violation of human rights during Covid. The ‘just move on’ narrative has crept into free speech.

The government knows that if it ignores a grievance for long enough, the public will give up, no matter how important the original cause.

When the two major parties adopt a similar stance, as Labor and the Liberals have done on their distaste for free speech, there is no way for voters to compel them to change their minds. The leverage of democracy relies on conflict and collapses when the largest parties huddle together under a unifying banner. It is the creation of a practical dictatorship with an Enlightenment veneer.

The Left do not allow politicians to brush them aside. They take to the streets, scream, and destroy. Society is subjected to a relentless psychological campaign which co-opts the youth and agitates headlines in the press. They wear the politicians down. The Left value social disruption while the Right value social responsibility. Too much of either can be harmful.

We see the political landscape tugged to the Left because the Right give up on their causes and go back to pressing domestic and economic responsibilities.

That’s the problem with building your political movement on moderate, sensible, largely docile people… They are easily dissuaded from their cause.

Being dissuaded from human rights and free speech is a huge problem for the future direction of Australia. Already, we are seeing the economic, social, and cultural consequences of allowing half the conversation to be repressed, or prominent speakers to be erased under the excuse of ‘offence’.

Independent conservative publications, commentators, politicians, and activists joined in a Defending Democracy Free Speech Marathon timed to coincide with Billboard Chris’ Australian trip to face off against the eSafety Commissioner in court.

As the Online Editor of this publication, I was asked to partake and so came the task of choosing an angle on a topic that has headlined Western Civilisation and the Enlightenment for centuries.

How do you explain the insidious nature of digital censorship to conservative audiences who find social media distasteful or irrelevant? A fair position, I might add. For more than a decade, Silicon Valley went out of its way to meddle (and mangle) the political landscape. The public conversation was being pruned by basement-dwelling, borderline-crazy individuals who lived and breathed political radicalism.

Then I remembered that I am an editor and you are my dear readers.

Most would comfortably admit that social media has taken over the role of the public forum. The conversations that shape the political discourse of Australia are happening online. Those that reach a loud-enough volume echo in the halls of Parliament where knee-jerk laws are drafted to placate, woo, or manipulate shouty voting blocs.

Legislation has become reactive to social media, rather than being forged by sensible thinkers because it is simply a good idea.

Online conversations matter, but imagine what happens if those conversations take place under the curation of the eSafety Commissioner … if a bureaucrat is allowed to edit who can speak and what they can say.

As other avenues for public speech dry up, our children and grandchildren will find themselves trapped by the invisible limitations of the State.

The Defending Democracy event was about pushing government back to a respectable distance where it can listen, but not edit.

As an editor, I can attest to the power that the position has over the final product.

It is my job, and that of our Editor-in-Chief Rowan Dean, to determine the message and feel of The Spectator Australia.

We, of course, work for the greater good of liberty and common sense, but plenty of our competitors create publications dredged out of the alternate Woke reality.

Think about how different the ABC is from The Australian or Sky News Australia, or Rebel News, or The Telegraph.

That is the role of an editor.

The fingerprints of influence.

Now imagine what that editorial power does to the newsprint of your reality as a citizen…

Allow me to offer one example. What sort of impact did the introduction of ‘politically correct’ speech have on the direction of our culture, art, comedy, and education? Did that single editorial decision change Australia?

Fundamentally, and for the worse… It edited out our larrikinism.

That was the power of suggestion. Imagine how much damage an eSafety Commissioner can do with the power to erase entire people from the conversation, even those from abroad.

We may never be able to point to a single moment when the editorial influence of politics over social media tarnishes our culture because there is no track changes feature on civilisation.

That doesn’t mean Australia isn’t being redrafted by people we have no power to monitor, stop, de-elect, judge, evaluate, or punish.

Is that something we are prepared to live with?

Or can conservative voters find it within themselves to renew their defence of free speech and shout in the direction of those grand old parties who have lost their way…

Flat White is written by Alexandra Marshall. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.