The Thought-Police are Alive and Well

Two well-publicised incidents of private conversations-made public have caught my attention: the Chief Executive of the Premier League’s sexist emails and the Prince of Wales’ comments likening Putin to Hitler. I oppose sexism and I dislike lazy historical parallels, but it is an underlying issue that is exercising my mind: the public policing of personal opinion.

Leaving to one side the motivation behind those who ‘expose’ personal comments and the sanctimonious manner in which the media deals with such exposures, is it right to judge a person’s ability to do his or her job on the basis of which opinions they might hold or express in private?  This is a thorny issue and it affects more than public figures; there are many cases of co-workers embroiled in disciplinary procedures because of perceived offence.

There is no doubt that if we discover that individuals hold opinions that are odious to us, it will affect how we think of them.  We might be offended, outraged or angry and we might choose to have as little to do with them as possible.  This is, however, very different from saying that if people hold odious opinions they cannot, or ought not to be allowed, to do their jobs.

I hate discrimination and I am more than happy to challenge it either in private or in public and I have no time for the ‘nod and wink’ culture that suggests that as long as we are ‘all mates together’ we can engage in racist, sexist or any-other-ist talk. If I have any backbone, I will challenge opinions that I find offensive.

I am, however, deeply concerned by the attitude that suggests that offensive opinions ought to be punished.  I accept that some opinions equate to ‘hate-speech’ and are illegal or they equate to harassment or bullying and are rightly matters for disciplinary procedures, but most offensive statements fall short of that mark.  There is no ‘right not to be offended’ even though we do have a right not to be treated in a deliberately offensive manner.  Too often that distinction is not recognised. 

Once we go down the road of punishing people for their opinions (however offensive they might be) instead of opposing them by counter-argument we head down the road of censorship and heresy trials.  Centuries ago people were burnt at the stake because they held theological opinions that outraged their contemporaries but which are barely understood by most people today.  We need to be extremely careful that we don’t simply replace one type of inquisition by another.