Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?

By: Mick Hume

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

In this blistering polemic, veteran journalist Mick Hume presents an uncompromising defence of freedom of expression, which he argues is threatened in the West, not by jackbooted censorship but by a creeping culture of conformism and You-Can’t-Say-That.

The cold-blooded murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in January 2015 brought a deadly focus to the issue of free speech. Leaders of the free-thinking world united in condemning the killings, proclaiming ‘Je suis Charlie’. But it wasn’t long before many commentators were arguing that the massacre showed the need to apply limits to free speech and to restrict the right to be offensive.

It has become fashionable not only to declare yourself offended by what somebody else says, but to use the ‘offence card’ to demand that they be prevented from saying it. Social media websites such as Twitter have become the scene of ‘twitch hunts’ where online mobs hunt down trolls and other heretics who express the ‘wrong’ opinion. And Trigger Warnings and other measures to ‘protect’ sensitive students from potentially offensive material have spread from American universities across the Atlantic and the internet.

Hume argues that without freedom of expression, our other liberties would not be possible. Against the background of the historic fight for free speech, Trigger Warning identifies the new threats facing it today and spells out how unfettered freedom of expression, despite the pain and the problems it entails, remains the most important liberty of all.

©2015 Mike Hume (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"This is an important book, and couldn't be more timely. It's strong-minded, unafraid, determined to knock down all the various specious arguments against free speech, unapologetic about insisting on the value of free expression, and terrifically well argued. In these weak-minded times it's good to have so uncompromising a defence." (Salman Rushdie)

thoughtful

A most interesting book in the Spirit of Orwell. It observes the trends of todays social climate in a thoughtful way.

Think While It's Still Legal...

A book everyone should read. As a college English instructor, I can attest to the vital importance of its message.

Interesting exploration of Political Correctness in the US/UK

Hume does an interesting exploration of how political correctness runs society and its effects that are attacking individual liberty. Check how through Trigger Warning.

To The Death

I can't agree with some of the author's over simplifications - he might be writing this way for effect! For the most part an entertaining if sometimes slightly confused case for extreme freedom of speech.

Whilst he is not very fussy about getting some historical facts correct, I'll defend to the death (preferably his) the author's right to be wrong!

Marvellously rambunctious narration but.

must read for everyone!

everyone needs to read this book. there is a lot going on in our world today that people don't understand. we take for granted things like free speech, until it's gone.

Read if you want to think

This was a fantastic read that really challenges how commited Western civilization is to freedom of speech.

Good but repetitive

I agree with the point of the whole thing, but I felt as if it was longer than it needed to be. Every chapter seemed to make the same point in the same way. But I liked it