ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the campaign waged in 2020 against Priyamvada Gopal, a Cambridge lecturer who has spoken out against claims that White Lives Matter. All participants in contemporary debate, it argues, have become used to a highly ideological conception of free speech, so that when genuine free speech crises occur outside that context, almost no one in politics (on either the left or the right) is capable of recognising them as such. Free speech is not for Muslims. It applies to people seeking a platform to speak within a university, i.e. coming from outside. It does not apply to anyone (whether a student or a lecturer) who is already there. It applies to the leaders of right-wing parties who want to employ social media to advance their positions without having to deal with the problem of anyone arguing back against them. It applies to the instigators of political arguments, and not to those who disagree with them, who criticise, or who heckle.
