[Angus Johnston] - Protesting against a speaker...
when is that an expression of your free speech rights,
and when it is that a violation of
their free speech rights?
There is no one-sentence answer to that question.
At what point does a heck--
[Audience member begins shouting]
[Tom Slater] - Hold up! ... We're coming back out to you
in 30 seconds--
Wait a second, hold on a second.
You just interrupted me.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
[Audience member continues shouting]
[Angus Johnston] - Wait, wait, wait, no, wait,
listen to what I'm saying, please!
You just interrupted me, did you violate my
free speech rights?
Did you?
[Audience member continues shouting]
[Angus Johnston] - Wait, but did you just,
right.
Okay, so, wait, hold on a second.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
This is wonderful.
I am loving this so much because I am being
prevented from finishing my sentence by people
who feel like I am expressing in opposition
to free speech.
This is great.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
Wait, hold on a second, give me a sentence,
give me one more sentence to say why I think
that you have the right to interrupt me.
I'm here, I've got a microphone, I've got
a lot of power.
I've got a lot of power in this room, not
as much as the guy with the the clock, but
I've got a lot of power and so if I have a
microphone, I can speak over you.
If you are interrupting me, I can push on
past you.
I can wait 'til you're done and then I can
respond.
I can get the last word.
There's a lot of stuff that I can do, and so
I would say that when y'all start getting
real frustrated with me and interrupting me,
you are not at all violating my free speech rights,
you are expressing your free speech
rights, you are exercising your free speech rights.
There comes a point, probably--maybe you cut
the mic, maybe you storm the stage, maybe
you pull a fire alarm, right?
Maybe there does come a point where my free
speech rights have been violated by your disruption,
but certainly the disruption that we just
experienced was not a violation my free speech rights.
And, so, it's not just one sentence thing, because
it's complicated.
There is a mushy middle--
[Audience member continues shouting]
[Tom Slater] - Hold up, hold up.
[Audience Member] - Excuse me, you like Antifa,
I'm just doing what they do.
[Tom Slater] - And I'm gonna do what they
do and tell you to be quiet at this point.
[Angus Johnston] - Can I just say one thing
and then we'll move on?
This room of civil libertarians is the first
time I've ever been interrupted as a speaker,
so that's wonderful. I love that.
[ Brendan O'Neill] - One of the greatest things
ever written about freedom of speech was written
in response to the heckling question, it was
"A Plea for Free Speech" by Frederick Douglass,
the great abolitionist who wrote this piece
after a meeting of abolitionists in Boston
was interrupted by racists and pro-slavery
people and shouted down, and he wrote a plea
for free speech which is one of the best and
most passionate things you will ever read
in defense of freedom of speech, so that wasn't
a 1st Amendment issue, the state, Congress,
government, was not interfering with his and
the other people's rights.
that was a matter of informal censorship enforced
by a mob.
So this question of informal censorship has
been around for a long time, and if you want
to know when heckling becomes a problem,
i.e. when someone is prevented from speaking, read Frederick Douglass,
read the minority groups who struggled
for freedom of speech for decades, who you
now demean through saying, "Oh, free speech
doesn't matter," that's the shocking thing,
heroes of mine had their ears cut off, their
tongues pulled out, they were tied to the
stocks, they were pelted with eggs, they were
jailed for years
for expressing their freedom of speech.
The idea that you would now turn against the
idea of freedom of speech is a grave insult
to history and to the people who made our
lives as nice as they currently are.
