Glorifying Censorship? Anti-Terror Law, Speech, and Online Regulation

This chapter investigates how many Western democracies—and the European Union—are enacting increasingly draconian measures against terrorist-related speech that undermine long-standing free speech principles. It outlines a number of factors that tend towards skewed perceptions of the risks of terrorism. The chapter then sketches the rapid spread of laws aimed at terrorist propaganda, noting the unusual role of the UN Security Council in ‘directing national legislative practice’ in the criminal sphere. While there are legitimate arguments for restricting certain types of terrorist material, existing laws and policies tend indiscriminately to lump truly dangerous material together with mere expressions of support or sympathy for groups that use violence, including against despotic regimes, or groups that once, but no longer, used violence to achieve political ends. Skewed perceptions of the threat of terrorism appears to have an almost unique capacity to cause the weakening, if not outright abandonment of the standards that normally provide robust expression to freedom of speech.