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Does free speech make democracies more vulnerable to division than dictatorships ?
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this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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I'd argue no.
The problem of a democracy is that it's largely unsatisfactory across the board. At most, you'll get most of what you want, but that little bit you didn't get can be the basis of radicalization. If we'd just been a bit more demand, less willing to compromise, we could've gotten it all! And when you get less that most of what you want, the population is left with even greater feelings of disappointment in their political leaders. Free speech will be used to exploit these vulnerabilities. Free speech can also alleviate the pressure of these vulnerabilities on democracy.
In contrast, a dictatorship basically demands people act like the decrees of the dictator are everything they want. Only uncritical speech survives in the open, while the critical speech is underground. It is much more demanding on a critical individual than democracy, because their public life must support the dictatorship, while their private life is filled of thoughts that oppose the public. And it's not like they're safe sharing their critical thoughts either, it's always a potential avenue of self-destruction, both of the individual and of the dictatorship. As such, critical thoughts in a dictatorship must be policed strictly, invading personal privacy short of literally digging around in people's heads, to ensure and reassure the ruling power that all is well.
See, I think everything you've said there actually says yes. Without free speech, there's only one opinion, and that's the opinion of who's in power. You say otherwise, you disappear, so, people stop saying otherwise.
You might have thoughts, but you aren't saying them, and since nobody else is, there can be no us vs them because nobody knows who's on what team.
I want to clarify that I don't think that's a good thing. Division is not a weakness of democracy, it's a strength.
I"d argue along that division in a democracy only is a strength if there's enough division to warrant coalition. Without enough division it can become an us versus them game with neither side willing to find common ground.