A Point of View: Why We Should Defend the Right to Be Offensive

Around the world, one of the most dangerous modern ideas is spreading quietly through politics, media, culture, and online life, the belief that causing offence is, by itself, enough to justify suppression. I reject that idea completely.

A free society cannot be built around the emotional threshold of the most easily offended person in the room. Once offence becomes the standard for what may be said, the boundaries of speech stop being set by principle and start being set by sensitivity, ideology, pressure campaigns, and fear. That is not freedom. That is soft censorship dressed up as moral concern.

The global case for free expression has long been clear. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and across frontiers. The same core protection appears in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, one of the key international human rights instruments governing freedom of expression worldwide.

That matters because freedom of expression was never designed only for agreeable speech. Its whole purpose is to protect the messy, difficult, confrontational reality of human disagreement. One of the clearest formulations of this came from the European Court of Human Rights in Handyside v United Kingdom, which said freedom of expression applies not only to ideas that are favourably received, but also to those that “offend, shock or disturb.” That line remains powerful because it captures the principle perfectly: if speech loses protection the moment it offends, then speech was never truly free to begin with.

My view is simple. We should defend the right to be offensive, not because offensive speech is always admirable, but because the right itself is essential. Some speech is crude. Some is tasteless. Some is arrogant, immature, abrasive, mocking, or needlessly provocative. Fine. Criticise it. Ridicule it. Argue against it. But the mere fact that someone feels offended should not be enough to erase another person’s liberty to speak.

That is the key distinction too many people now refuse to make: offence is not the same thing as harm.

Speech can absolutely cross real lines. Threats, direct incitement to violence, targeted harassment, coercion, defamation, and certain forms of unlawful hate advocacy can and do fall outside broad free-expression protections in many legal systems. International law itself recognises that expression can be restricted in limited circumstances, including for the protection of the rights of others, public order, and national security, provided those restrictions are lawful and necessary. The UN Human Rights Committee has also said freedom of opinion and expression is foundational to every free and democratic society, while still acknowledging that restrictions must meet strict tests.

In the United States, for example, one of the strongest modern protections for speech came through Brandenburg v. Ohio, where the Supreme Court held that advocacy may only be prohibited when it is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action. That is a very high bar, and rightly so. It reflects an important principle: speech should not be suppressed simply because it is heated, ugly, radical, or offensive.

This is why the phrase “you chose to be offended” matters, even if it sounds blunt. It does not mean feelings are fake. It does not mean words have no impact. It does not mean every speaker is wise, decent, or worth defending as a person. It means that offence is, in many situations, partly interpretive. People hear the same sentence and come away with completely different judgments. One hears satire. Another hears blasphemy. Another hears truth. Another hears cruelty. Another hears heresy. Another hears common sense spoken too directly. That subjectivity is exactly why offence alone cannot become the master key for censorship.

If society forgets that, then the censorship ratchet begins. First, rude jokes become unacceptable. Then satire becomes suspect. Then criticism of religion becomes “harmful.” Then political dissent becomes “unsafe.” Then unpopular analysis becomes “dangerous.” Then blunt truths become punishable if enough people claim injury. The category keeps expanding, because offence is infinitely elastic.

That is why mature societies need stronger civic muscles, not weaker speech rules. Adults should be able to hear views they hate without immediately demanding they be removed. They should be able to argue, rebut, mock, debate, boycott, condemn, and reject. Those are all legitimate responses. But the default response to offence should not be censorship.

The right to be offensive is really the stress test for whether we believe in freedom at all. Almost everyone supports speech they agree with. That proves nothing. The real question is whether we defend the principle when the words are abrasive, impolite, inflammatory, irreverent, or deeply uncomfortable.

Because that is where freedom either survives, or fails.

To be clear, defending the right to be offensive is not the same as praising all offensive speech. It is not a defence of threats, intimidation, or campaigns of direct dehumanisation. It is not a demand that everyone clap for vulgarity. It is a defence of breathing room the social and legal space for disagreement, irreverence, dissent, blasphemy, satire, taboo-breaking, ridicule, and rough edged opinion.

Without that space, public discourse becomes a managed performance where only approved language survives. And once that happens, power wins. Institutions win. Majorities win. organised pressure groups win. The thin skinned win. Everyone else learns to whisper.

My position is this, people do have a right to say things others may find offensive. That does not mean every offensive statement is smart. It does not remove consequences like criticism or backlash. It does not override genuine legal limits where real harm is involved. But it does mean offence alone should never be enough.

You have the right to dislike what someone says. You have the right to condemn it. You have the right to say it is crude, wrong, stupid, immoral, or beneath contempt.

But in a free world, the right to speak must remain bigger than the desire never to be offended.