notes-politics-freeSpeechAndSchellingPoints

i had always thought of the 'absolute free speech' position, and near-absolute free speech positions, as good ideas because:

if those are your reasons for supporting free speech, then you can't make exceptions for any particular point of view, e.g. Holocaust denial.

However, in this article, subsection Coalitions of Resistance, Yvain proposes a different reason: the idea of free speech is a Schelling point that various minorities can rally around, forming an ad-hoc coalition to protect minorities against the majority. An interesting consequence is that in this model, if there is a strong enough cultural tradition to create a credible Schelling point, then it may be possible to make certain exceptions to free speech (e.g. Holocaust denial) while still reaping almost all of the same benefits as absolute free speech; Yvain proposes that this is what has happened in contemporary Europe (as of 2012) (note that there is room for factual debate whether free-speech-with-exceptions is actually a credible Schelling point; some of the commentors in the above page dispute this; but i find the mere theoretical possibility to be of interest).

Yvain also presents a funny and instructive parody of a well-known quote:

" First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, but we had already abandoned the only defensible Schelling point "