Kenan Malik makes some valid and nuanced points about the tendency of people on both the left and the right to defend freedom of speech only for views with which they agree (“If you defend free speech, you must defend it all and not silence those you disagree with”, Comment). But he is wrong to invoke freedom of speech to defend attempts to silence certain views.
Malik describes the fact that the Oxford student union was forced to retract a public demand that “gender critical” feminist Kathleen Stock should be no-platformed as a “blatant denial of free speech”. He implies that it is hypocritical for free-speech advocates not to support the right to attempt to silence others. But this confuses the right to protest and criticise with a right to attempt to silence those with opposing views.
