Book Review: Katharine Gelber, Free Speech after 9/11
| Published date | 01 February 2018 |
| Date | 01 February 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929917724125 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsComparative Politics |
Political Studies Review
2018, Vol. 16(1) NP64
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Book Review
724125PSW0010.1177/1478929917724125Political Studies ReviewBook Review – Comparative Politics
book-review2017
Book Review – Comparative Politics
Free Speech after 9/11 by Katharine Gelber.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 193pp.,
£33.69 (h/c), ISBN 978019877793
This analytical and detailed book surveys the
limitations introduced by Australia, United
States and United Kingdom on freedom of
speech after the terror attack of 9/11 2001.
Gelber analysed 3969 speeches on the topic of
national security from September 2001 to
September 2011. The results of this meticulous
analysis show strong similarities in the discur-
sive security justifications to limit speech in
the three countries. Gelber identified eight
common themes elucidated by key agents in
the three countries in support of free speech
restrictions: describing the post 9/11 era as a
war; describing the relationship between secu-
rity and liberty in hierarchical terms that privi-
leged security; accentuating the need for a new
policy paradigm, for securing freedom and
order, for pushing the limits of the law in order
to address the looming threat, for ensuring
public safety, for changing our views about
freedom, and for protecting the innocent and
law-abiding citizens.
In this quite gloomy book, Gelber also dis-
cussed the chilling effects on speech, the gov-
ernment access to private data of ordinary
citizens, most of whom have no connection
with terrorism, the increased levels of mass sur-
veillance, and the governments’ overreaction
manifested by the detention of thousands of
people. She concluded that the results of what
she called ‘the new normal’ restrictive policy of
free speech amounts to a wholesale rewriting of
the place that freedom of speech has in these
three liberal democracies and a commensurate
rewriting of the extent to which speech can be
criminalised. This worrying trend has happened
in all three countries, including the United
States, the Land of the Free.
Gelber is highly critical of the three govern-
ments. She does not think that the anti-terror
policies have made the countries more secure.
Quite the opposite. Gelber thinks that Australia,
United States and United Kingdom are now in a
more precarious situation and that the cost of
undermining free speech is far too high. She
ends her book by raising a clear voice for
reversing the illiberal policies to the pre-9/11
situation.
Raphael Cohen-Almagor
(University of Hull)
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929917724125
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