We often take for granted our right to criticize people in positions of power in the United States. No matter how difficult our lives are, that right to speak and write—to freely express our thoughts—is a refuge. We can connect to one another and push for real change, all thanks to the First Amendment.
It’s easy to consider such rights as something naturally given to us by just being alive. We’re social animals. We speak and write, it’s how we connect and convey meaning. Since it’s how we function, free speech feels like a natural right given to us by birth.
But that is not the way things are. Is it the way it should be? In my opinion, yes. But we have to work with what we’re given. Freedom of speech is enjoyed by those living in the United States strictly because it is upheld by those in positions of power. When this is no longer deemed important by those who oversee our rights, then that freedom we often take for granted vanishes completely. Most likely for good.
A prime example of what it looks like to lose your rights from the simple act of speaking your mind is in Ahmet Altan’s memoir I Will Never See the World Again, a collection of his writings from a cell after he was sentenced to life in prison for writing deemed to be dangerously critical of and “dangerous” to the Turkish government. And, while he did manage to make it out of prison, he has since been sentenced to three more years, charged once again with being a threat to his government by the mere act of writing.
Because of the lack of a protection of speech (as we know it in the United States), Ahmet Altan’s writing was free to be interpreted in any way his government saw fit. Throughout his memoir he does not shy away from his dreadful experiences in prison, his rising despair at being trapped forever, but he also shares the endurance and freedom he finds through the act of writing, and how it will still prevail even when he is physically bound, “You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here,” he writes. “Because, like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through your walls with ease.”
In Toni Morrison’s essay, “Peril,” she writes, “Writers—journalists, essayists, bloggers, poets, playwrights—can disturb the social oppression that functions like a coma on the population, a coma despots call peace.”
This is precisely what happened to Ahmet Altan, what happens to many writers across the world. His writing disturbed the social oppression, disrupted the order of things, and made those in power tremble. So they put him away so that others might think twice before they put their own thoughts to paper.
Many might assume such things would never happen in the United States, with its first amendment protection and supposed values of freedom and individuality. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t often reflect this.
The American Library Association is a nonprofit organization promoting library education that reports on cases of censorship every year. For the year of 2021, they reported 602 attempts to remove school and library materials, leading to 1,858 book challenges or removals for unique titles. In 2022, the Association received 1,031 reports of book challenges targeting 2,571 unique titles. And in 2023, they received 938 reports, targeting 4,240 unique titles. As you can see, the number for unique titles challenged goes up with each passing year, something that shouldn’t be happening in a country that claims to value freedom of speech.
And you may look at those numbers and wonder why—what is leading to such large numbers? Why are these books being banned? Who are the people being silenced?
PEN America, another nonprofit organization paying attention to cases of censorship, reports that the vast majority of titles targeted are written by people of color or LGBTQ+-identified people. It doesn’t take much critical thought to realize that the social oppression Toni Morrison references in her essay would be disturbed by marginalized communities the most.
To question what one is told not to question, to create worlds that one is told shouldn’t exist, bringing light to injustices and oppressions expected to remain as the status quo for those the status quo benefits—these all may be protected rights in the United States on paper, but such protections are increasingly not desired in an attempt to control what people think and how people communicate, especially in states such as Florida and Texas.
One of the most terrifying short stories I’ve ever read is “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison.
[Spoiler alert] At the end, the story’s protagonist is turned into a gelatinous mass of flesh by a hateful machine that tortures him forever. The machine takes away his ability to kill himself and his ability to speak, and we learn that the title is the protagonist’s final thought: “I have no mouth and I must scream.”
I often remember this story of horror and madness when I think about free speech, and for a while I thought that connection to be a bit dramatic. But it’s clear that many American citizens are not aware of what dangers may wait around the corner for our first amendment rights.
It starts with marginalized communities, and those of us who meanwhile feel safe will frown and shake our heads and lament such things. But eventually, the less people take action, everyone will be taken over by the machine, just like in “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.”
If you are a writer, I urge you to consider yourself in the shoes of those experiencing injustice and a lack of freedom across the world to express themselves and use their voices. Your right to write is not set in stone. There are forces at work attempting to make sure that right no longer exists. We must never give in to so-called “moral insensitivities,”, something we’ve seen again and again in the United States, from the satanic panic, to the moral fears surrounding violent video games, all the way to people’s sexuality or racial identity.
Freedom of speech is vital when it comes to educating oneself, and in order to do that we must be able to be wrong, to be flawed, to express ourselves naturally and to question authority. Without that right we would only be reading, writing and thinking what we’d be told is correct to do so by the people at the top of a power structure that wouldn’t even function if its subordinates could freely criticize and question said power structure.
Thankfully we are not there yet. I hope we learn the lessons from all the brave writers and artists who came before us, those who presently suffer instead of us, who have faced censorship and imprisonment and even death for their words. It is very much a possibility for our natural ability to speak to become criminalized. It can happen to us too.
“Because when another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.” - Orhan Pamuk