There is no shortage of contradiction within the ranks of the New Zealand Green Party and their adoring acolytes. This is a party that appears to make policy decisions not on the merit or inherent value of the ideas they endorse but rather based on the perceived virtue or the political status of those who promote them. In such a carnival of confusion, one of the more curious pairings involves their simultaneous support for radical prison reform – if not the closure of prisons outright – and their endorsement of the previous governments hate speech laws.
The incoherence of this alliance is glaring, and yet it seems to escape the scrutiny of those who march under the Green banner. The key to understanding this paradox lies not merely in the words but in the ideological subtext that these policies represent. The Green Party surely knows that hate speech laws do not merely promise punitive measures; implicit was the threat of imprisonment for speech. At the higher end, these laws could have subjected individuals to lengthy prison terms for words spoken, with all the attendant consequences: the stripping away of agency, the severance from society, the indelible stigma that follows a prison sentence – even poverty, and the potential trauma for the convicted’s spouse and offspring. All of this, they would have us believe, would have been a legitimate response to the spoken word. Meanwhile, violent offenders, whose actions cause tangible harm to others, are presented by abolitionists as too deserving of our compassion to be incarcerated at all. They are to be treated, as it were, as victims of an inherently flawed system rather than perpetrators of acts that damage and destroy lives.
This, of course, is not to mention the deeply ironic argument that prisons themselves are a colonial construct, a tool of systemic oppression that disproportionately targets non-white individuals; international evidence demonstrates that hate speech laws disproportionately harm minorities as well. The idea that one form of harm is more acceptable than the other, simply because it involves words rather than actions, exposes the deep contradictions inherent in this thinking. One might well ask: if the state is to wield the power of imprisonment over those whose words are deemed to offend, then why should the more violent transgressors not also be subject to the same indifference to their plight? In both cases, the individual is denied agency, autonomy, and the possibility of redemption.
In truth, there is a coherent and unspoken principle that ties together the abolitionists and the free speech advocates, and it reveals the essential hypocrisy of the current political mood. The reformers, the libertarians, and the civil rights champions share a common thread: they are driven by a vision of a society that values the treatment of its most vulnerable, its most despised. A liberal democracy, at least in its most idealistic form, is judged by how it treats its outcasts, its pariahs, and those who fall through the cracks. The question is not merely how we treat the saintly, the virtuous, or those whose conduct aligns with societal norms; it is how we treat those who commit acts of violence, those whose words offend, and those whose mere existence may be seen as an affront to prevailing mores. It is precisely the treatment of these individuals that reveals the true nature of a society.
Take, for example, the mass murderer: we do not strip them of their dignity, subject them to the degrading treatment of bread and water, or consign them to a life without a pillow or mattress. This is not because we see them as morally worthy, but because we understand that to do so is to poison the very system of justice we claim to uphold. If we are prepared to treat the most contemptible of individuals with a modicum of dignity, then we can be certain that the society at large will be assured of its own treatment. It is a matter of principle that, even in the most extreme cases, justice cannot be divorced from humanity. To debase one is to debase all.
This is where the free speech advocate and the prison reformer, despite their apparent ideological divergence, meet on common ground. Both are champions of human dignity. Both oppose the reduction of individuals to mere objects of state control. And, both should stand in opposition to the shrill, morally muddled voices that demand the crushing of speech and the imprisonment over words. The notion that we must protect the speech of even the most abhorrent, even the most dangerous, is not simply a matter of pragmatic politics – it is a principle as old as democratic liberty itself. It is the firmest guarantee that the rights of all are safeguarded.
And yet, how often are we told that groups like the Free Speech Union would be wiser to choose their battles more carefully, to pick and choose which rights to defend based on the public mood or the political utility of the issue at hand? This betrays an ignorance of the principle of free speech. The right to speak freely is not a privilege to be granted based on taste, decency, or public approval. It is a fundamental human right that must be defended in the most extreme circumstances, not merely when it is politically convenient. The protection of speech for all, whether the speech is distasteful, radical, or even outright dangerous, is the only true way to ensure that no one’s voice is silenced by the iron fist of the state. For if we fail to defend the speech of the most loathsome, we are, with our lack of action, forfeiting our own.
And so, the call for prison reform and the defense of free speech are not simply two disconnected movements. They are part of the same struggle for a society that does not break its promises to the individual. The Green Party, like so many of its peers, has failed to recognise that in their blind enthusiasm for certain policies, they are only perpetuating the very contradictions that undermine the values they claim to champion. Prison abolitionists and hate speech advocates, in their refusal to face the full consequences of their positions, leave the individual unprotected – vulnerable to the capricious power of a state that seeks to control, punish, and suppress. In the end, these issues are not about words or prisons alone. They are about the nature of freedom itself.
