I need to read Stefan Collini’s That’s Offensive!: Criticism, Identity, Respect, of which there is a short review here by William Skidelsky. I don’t know if the review gives a full enough account of Collini’s manifesto (as the work is styled), but this is what Skidelsky says about it:
Collini’s concern… is to analyse just one form of modern censorship (or, perhaps more accurately, self-censorship), one that may not strike many liberal readers as obvious, or even particularly important. This is the idea that, out of concern not to give “offence”, one should refrain from criticising ideas, beliefs or practices that one regards as wrong.
As Collini notes, this particular limitation to expression represents an important deviation from, and challenge to, the “free speech” debate as traditionally maintained. When people talk of the right to free speech, they are usually thinking of those whose words are constrained by a superior, and demonstrably illiberal, power. Such is the case, for example, when a writer is imprisoned for criticising the state. But in the type of censorship that Collini is concerned with, the power equation is typically reversed. When, in contemporary society, a particular view is labelled “offensive”, it is usually on the basis that the offended party is in some way at a disadvantage in relation to the person who has expressed the offending view. As a disadvantaged person, he or she is entitled to an additional measure of “respect” – which may include the right not to be criticised.
Collini, it should be noted, is not against showing respect. What he does think, however, is that the use of the word, in the context of giving offence, is usually bogus, since it is connected to a form of identity politics that seeks to depict people first as members of a group, and only second as individuals. And that is to treat them not with real respect at all, but with condescension. To regard someone as capable of taking, and responding to, criticism (as long as it isn’t gratuitous) is to treat them fully as your equal. To not criticise them on the grounds that they may be offended is, paradoxically, to perpetrate the very superiority that the rhetoric of “respect” is designed to counteract. As Collini neatly puts it: “While there are various ways to show respect for people some of whose beliefs and practices differ from our own, exempting those beliefs and practices from criticism is not one of them.”
With much of this I have no quarrel. Other things equal, treating those who hold different beliefs from yours with respect isn’t a bad principle, and in many cases criticizing someone’s beliefs can indeed be construed as showing them the basic respect of engaging with their views because you think those views are worth engaging with; or even if you don’t, of believing that those holding the views should be engaged with as equals and capable of being persuaded.
However, criticism doesn’t have to be respectful in these ways. In certain cases you may not judge the views in question as worth taking seriously but want to criticize them because you find them contemptible, obnoxious, dangerous or what have you, and want to influence the thinking of other people to the same effect. Furthermore, you’re not obliged to respect the holder of beliefs you disagree with, regardless of the content of those beliefs. Much disagreement even on very fundamental matters can be contained within attitudes of mutual respect and indeed should be. But there are beliefs that are so poisonous that a person may reasonably decline to respect the holder of them. While, as I’ve said, showing respect to others is in general a good thing, no one has a right to be respected come what may – without regard for what they think, say or do. We all do have a human right that our humanity be respected: that we be not treated in cruel ways or ways that degrade our elementary human dignity. But no one is entitled, beyond this, to be well regarded by others regardless of how they conduct themselves – and the propagation of beliefs is part of a person’s conduct. For example, I don’t have to respect people who put about hatreds of one kind and another. Nor am I obliged to criticize them or their views in a way that is respectful of either.