Freedom of Speech (and Why Apparently We Can't Handle It)
When extremism breeds extremism
You'd think freedom of speech would be simple.
I talk, you talk, maybe you think I'm a moron, maybe I think you're a clown, but at the end of it we shake hands, play a round of pool, throw some cheeky low blows like actual adults, and then crack open a beer and bond over the important stuff, like how we somehow got a political assassination before GTA 6. Seriously, who wrote this timeline?
That should be the default setting of adulthood. But no.
Turns out in 2025, "freedom of speech" is less like a human right and more like your phone battery, promised to last all day, dies before lunch.
For those living under a rock (I envy you, I really do), someone just got publicly assassinated. Old mate bleeding out in front of his wife and kids. That image hasn’t left me, and it’s been gnawing at my brain all day, which, oh yeah, happens to be September 11th. Because irony never sleeps.
Is it the visceral brutality of the act? Maybe.
Is it the commentary from the peanut gallery afterward? Oh, absolutely.
Now here’s my problem: how do I write about this without getting dragged into partisan mud wrestling? Spoiler: I can’t. But here goes nothing.
Let me just lay my cards on the table, I believe in some right-wing stuff, I believe in some left-wing stuff. Crazy, right? Almost like a normal human being with nuance. I don’t hate people for their beliefs. I only get cranky when those beliefs actively harm people. That’s where I draw the line. Call me radical.
See, politics is basically the dumbest human invention since the selfie stick. It strips away common decency and replaces it with “us vs. them” tribalism. Spoiler: it’s never that clear cut.
Why the Hell Are We Like This?
Humans have never been good at disagreement. Ever.
We're tribal by design. We find teams, we form camps, and then we sharpen our sticks. Religion, politics, ideology, doesn't matter. It's always us vs. them. And it always ends the same way: not with compromise, but with somebody bleeding.
Look at history:
Rome exiled philosophers when their ideas were too spicy.
The Church burned books (and people).
Stalin disappeared you if you blinked wrong.
We like to think we've "progressed." Really, we've just upgraded the weapons.
The Why of Extremism
Here's what really fries my brain: the idea that someone can look at another breathing, living, soul-filled human being and think: "Yep, I can kill them because I disagree."
Like… how?
To kill, you first have to downgrade someone's humanity. Nazis called Jews rats. Rwanda called Tutsis cockroaches. Modern politics calls people trash, vermin, scum. Once you convince yourself the other person isn't really a person, murder feels less like a crime and more like pest control.
To kill for politics? That's even dumber. At least serial killers are honest, they're insane, they kill because they're broken. Extremists? They kill because they've convinced themselves their ideology is worth more than life itself. Spoiler: it's not.
And here's the kicker, extremism breeds extremism.
Monkey see, monkey do. One side screams, the other side screams louder. One side justifies violence, the other side stocks up on guns. Before long, everyone's screaming into the void and nobody remembers what the argument even was.
The Algorithm Eats Everything
And now we've put that whole mess on steroids.
Freedom of speech didn't get murdered by politicians or extremists. It got murdered by algorithms.
Remember when the internet was supposed to be about connection, about ideas, about freedom? Yeah, now it's basically a pokie machine for your brain, designed to pay out in rage.
Facebook: "Oh hey, you liked one post about climate change. Here's a group of 20,000 people who think clouds are government spyware."
YouTube: "You clicked a video on keto diets? Here's a playlist of guys explaining why society is collapsing because of feminism."
Twitter/X/Whatever Elon's Calling It This Week: a 24/7 cage fight where context is dead and everyone's screaming in all caps.
Algorithms don't give a damn about truth. They don't care about nuance. They only care about one thing: engagement.
Translation: how angry can we make you before you rage quit.
Outrage = Profit
It's the simplest business model in history:
Make you angry.
Keep you scrolling.
Sell you crypto scams, VPNs, and overpriced coffee subscriptions.
And you know what doesn't sell? Nuance. "Hey mate, I see your point." Nobody clicks that. But "KILL THEM ALL" or "THIS IS THE END OF DEMOCRACY"? Oh yeah, that sells. That spreads.
Freedom of speech isn't dead because governments banned it. It's dead because Silicon Valley found a way to monetise it.
My Problem With Extremism (Both Sides, Don't Get Smug)
I hate extremism. Hate it. Doesn't matter if it's Left or Right, you're just as bad as each other.
Extremism removes the human. It strips people down to caricatures. It convinces you that "those people" aren't worth empathy. And the second you think someone's less than you, atrocities suddenly look like options.
And don't get me started on the sideline commentary. The comments after an assassination. The "we should kill more" takes. The people who cheer it on because it was someone they didn't like.
Like mate, you couldn't even kill a cockroach in your bathroom without crying. But sure, you're suddenly the Che Guevara of Reddit because you typed "good riddance" under a news article. Grow up.
My Compass (Spoiler: It's Not Politics)
Here's where I draw my lines. I'm a Christian, so my moral compass is basically:
Murder? Bad.
Adultery? Bad, destroys lives.
Respect your parents? Yeah, they clothed me, fed me, raised me, done deal.
The rest? It's all shades of grey. And that's where nuance comes in.
The older I get, the more I realise: politics makes you hate everything. I used to be that little political shit, yelling about ideology. It made me miserable. The second you realise that's not the actual world, life gets better.
Jesus wasn't some firebrand anarchist with a Molotov in hand, He was something harder. He was consistent. Loving when it was inconvenient. Forgiving when it was undeserved. Compassionate to the people everyone else spat on, prostitutes, lepers, beggars, the outcasts society wrote off. And for that, He was killed. Not because He was violent, but because He refused to play the tribal game.
And even then, literally nailed to a cross, He forgave the people who killed Him. That's the bar.
It's why Matthew 7:1-2 still cuts deep today:
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
If the Son of God could forgive His executioners, maybe the least we can do is stop fantasising about killing people we disagree with.
Playground Logic
And here's the bit that really exposes how childish this all is.
Every time I hear someone justify violence or censorship or extremism with "but they did it first," I want to scream.
That's not an argument. That's not political theory. That's not philosophy. That's playground logic. That's five-year-olds fighting over a Tonka truck.
If your entire justification for hatred is "well, they started it," congratulations, you're not a revolutionary. You're a toddler throwing sand.
Why This Matters (And Why It's Coming Here Too)
We like to think, "oh thank God we live in Australia, where this doesn't happen." Yeah, nah. Give it time. Extremist ideologies travel faster than your Uber Eats. Nazism is already creeping up in Queensland. Protests are turning violent. The line is thinner than we want to admit.
Freedom of speech collapses not with a bang, but with a shrug. With every "good, glad they're dead" comment. With every rationalisation that "the ends justify the means." One day, you wake up and realise the right to disagree without dying was optional all along.
So What Now?
Maybe America implodes into civil war. Maybe World War III kicks off over some idiot with a drone. Who knows. The world's a circus and the clowns are armed.
But here's my radical, out-there, 100% insane suggestion:
Stop being assholes.
Stop cheering on violence.
Stop dehumanising people you disagree with.
Start listening.
That's it. That's literally the point of democracy. Not to scream until the other side shuts up, but to compromise. To live together. To be human.
Because if we can't even manage that, if we think murder and extremism are acceptable substitutes for conversation, then we don't deserve freedom of speech at all.
And yeah, my articles are getting darker. The world is crumbling. Algorithms are feeding us outrage like slop. But if this is the ride we're stuck on, I'd rather be the one yelling:
"Hey, maybe let's not?"