What Is Free Speech?

The History of a Dangerous Idea

By: Fara Dabhoiwala

Narrated by: Matthew Spencer

Every premodern society, from Sumeria to China to seventeenth–century Europe, knew that bad words could destroy lives, undermine social order, and create political unrest. Given the obvious dangers of outspokenness, regulating speech and print was universally accepted as a necessary and proper activity of government. Only in the early 1700s did this old way begin to break down. In a brief span of time, the freedom to use words as one pleased was reimagined as an ideal to be held and defended in common.

Fara Dabhoiwala explores the surprising paths free speech has taken across the globe since its invention three hundred years ago. Though free speech has become a central democratic principle, its origins and evolution have less to do with the high-minded pursuit of liberty and truth than with the self-interest of the wealthy, the greedy, and the powerful. Free speech, as we know it, is a product of the pursuit of profit, of technological disruption, of racial and imperial hypocrisy, and of the contradictions involved in maintaining openness while suppressing falsehood.

Rejecting platitudes about the First Amendment and its international equivalents, and leaving no ideological position undisturbed, What Is Free Speech? Is the unsettling history of an ideal as cherished as it is misunderstood.

©2025 Fara Dabhoiwala (P)2025 Penguin Audio

The most urgent issue of our age- by any measure.

Scholars can’t help writing with other scholars looking over their shoulders. This is a must read. And it needs to be seriously abridged and represented for the ordinary public.

Incoherent incomplete incompetent

This book doesn’t accomplish what it sets out to, despite a promising start. It leaves out much of the world’s grappling with this idea and omits any history that runs contrary to its theme. But really, the theme itself is barely discernible as the book devolves into a rant against colonialism and capitalism - regardless of the merits of such a critique or lack thereof. If you’re someone who 1) finds it ‘insightful’ that advocates of ideals behave in ways contradictory or hypocritical to those ideals, or 2) find an unreformed 1st year undergraduate Marxism take on world affairs compelling - well, you’re in for a good time. Otherwise, don’t bother.