Paul Thistoll’s paean to Michel Foucault is a predictable blend of abstract jargon and ideological fervor, the kind of writing that mistakes opacity for profundity and radical chic for rigorous argument. While Foucault is undoubtedly one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, the slavish devotion to his work exhibited by Thistoll, a known opponent of free speech, reveals something more troubling: an intellectual climate that uses Foucault’s theories not as tools of analysis but as blunt instruments to silence dissent. Thistoll’s argument, riddled with contradictions, collapses under the weight of its own inconsistencies.
Thistoll begins by celebrating Foucault’s supposed dismantling of “immutable categories” in law and society. The irony is almost comical. The very people who insist that Foucault exposed the contingent nature of identity, knowledge, and morality are the same ones who now enforce rigid ideological orthodoxies with religious zeal. Consider the contemporary debates around gender, human rights, and law—precisely the areas Thistoll invokes to defend Foucault’s enduring relevance. The activists who claim to draw inspiration from Foucault use his work not to open debate but to shut it down, labelling dissenters as bigots and heretics.
Thistoll’s breathless assertion that Foucault’s work “reveals that even what we consider the bedrock of biological identity is subject to the influence of power and knowledge” is a textbook case of how postmodernism has been weaponized to erode any possibility of objective truth. If everything is merely a product of discourse and power, if biological categories are merely social constructs, why should we take any claims of injustice seriously? If power is everywhere and knowledge is merely a tool of oppression, then what distinguishes Thistoll’s arguments from those of the authorities he critiques?
Thistoll predictably invokes Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge to argue that legal principles are not universal moral truths but products of historical and political forces. While this is undoubtedly true in some cases, Thistoll refuses to acknowledge the glaring contradiction in his own position. If all knowledge is shaped by power, then why should we assume that his interpretation of Foucault is any less compromised by ideological biases?
The real danger in Thistoll’s application of Foucault’s ideas is that it provides a ready-made justification for censorship and repression. When he claims that “the knowledge produced by governments, media, and institutions about asylum seekers determines who is considered worthy of protection under human rights law,” he is not merely analyzing power structures—he is suggesting that those who disagree with his particular political vision are engaged in a sinister act of control. This is the same rhetorical sleight-of-hand that allows activists to claim that free speech is not a neutral principle but a tool of oppression, thus justifying their own authoritarian impulses.
One of the most insidious aspects of Thistoll’s piece is his embrace of Foucault’s discourse theory, which he argues explains the evolution of legal rights. According to this view, laws and moral norms are not rooted in reason or ethical principles but are mere artifacts of shifting social and linguistic constructs. This argument, however, cuts both ways. If today’s legal norms around gender and human rights are products of discourse, then so were the norms that once excluded these categories from legal protection. What, then, makes the new discourse any more legitimate than the old one? The answer, according to Thistoll and his ilk, is simple: power. But if power is the only criterion, then all moral claims are rendered meaningless, and we are left with nothing but the brute force of competing ideological camps.
This is where the anti-free speech implications of Thistoll’s argument become most apparent. If discourse determines reality, then controlling discourse becomes the highest priority. This is precisely why today’s Foucauldian activists are obsessed with language policing, de-platforming, and censorship. They do not seek open dialogue but the imposition of a new orthodoxy in which only certain voices are permitted to speak. In this world, debate is redefined as violence, and disagreement is framed as an existential threat.
While Thistoll praises Foucault’s critique of state power and institutional control, he conveniently ignores one of the most glaring deficiencies in Foucault’s own work: his failure to account for the tyranny of the present. Foucault was excellent at deconstructing the power structures of the past, but he had little to say about how similar dynamics operate in contemporary ideological movements. This blind spot has allowed his followers to become precisely what he opposed: enforcers of rigid dogma who use the rhetoric of liberation to justify new forms of coercion.
Nowhere in Thistoll’s essay is there even a hint of self-reflection on this point. Nowhere does he acknowledge that the radical subjectivism he champions has led not to greater freedom but to intellectual stagnation and a culture of fear. When every utterance is a potential microaggression and every debate a site of power struggle, true critical thought becomes impossible. Instead of questioning authority, we are left with a new priesthood of ideological enforcers who invoke Foucault’s name as they purge heretics from the public square.
Foucault remains a valuable thinker, but not in the way Thistoll imagines. His work is useful precisely because it forces us to interrogate how power operates—not just in governments and institutions, but also within the movements that claim to oppose them. Thistoll’s invocation of Foucault as a prophet of human rights and legal reform is deeply misleading. The truth is that Foucault’s radical skepticism leaves no foundation for human rights at all. If law and morality are nothing more than expressions of power, then any claim to justice is merely another assertion of dominance.
Ultimately, Thistoll’s attempt to enlist Foucault in the service of his anti-free speech agenda is a betrayal of the very spirit of critical inquiry. If we are to take anything from Foucault, it should be the imperative to question all forms of authority—including those who drape themselves in the rhetoric of progress while silencing their opponents. The real lesson of Foucault is not that power is bad, but that it is inevitable—and that the greatest danger comes not from those who acknowledge it, but from those who pretend they are above it.
