In modern times, several comedians are battling cancel culture, where if a joke is deemed as offensive to a group of people, an attempt is made to cancel the piece (and the artist himself) and retract it from the public sphere. This phenomenon is a form of easy activism in which the righteous mob can demonstrate its moral advantage by destroying a comedian's work through online outcry. In Greece, this happened with Markos Seferlis, who was criticized for his recent performance.
In this performance, Mr. Seferlis satirizes Nemo, winner of the last Eurovision and a non-binary person. Thus, this was seen as hate speech against the non-binary community and the artist was slammed with a barrage of backlash. The same has happened to other comedians such as Ricky Gervais with his jokes about overweight people and Dave Chappelle about transgender people. Thus, jokes that refer to vulnerable social groups, lead the comedians who make them to receive a lot of criticism, even boycotts.
Criticism of any piece of art is, of course, welcome and necessary. When an artist exposes their art to the world, they also expect the public's judgemenet, since the public has the last word. Here it is not the same: negative criticism seems not to be enough, but we see character assassination attempts against comedians, and an aim at retraction of their work when deemed as hate speech. This, however, is not welcome. It is one thing to judge a work negatively and another to try to erase it from the face of the earth. This is censorship.
One would reasonably say, that when a minority/vulnerable group is at risk, censorship is necessary. First, no social group is at risk from jokes. Jokes are meant to entertain. When they have more nefarious motives, they usually don't manage to have much impact. But let's say that such jokes can indirectly do harm. Then what do we do? Do we then have the right to demand their retraction and censor them?
The answer is still no. First and foremost, censorship is not meant to exist where the freedom to expression is protected. Censorship, even if it is done with the best intentions, creates precedents that lead to the destruction of freedom of expression. Secondly, every piece of art has the potential to offend. Art must provoke the public, and when it provokes, it always risks offending. Thus, the individual may avoid the particular piece of art if offended. However, If every time we were offended by a work of art we sought its deletion, there would be no art left.
Censorship, therefore, is not the solution. The solution is criticism both in its expression and its application. The offended may criticize and choose to practive their disapproval by not financially supporting the art. Censhorship is a remnant of the past that could only lead to worse outcomes. In the end, if something is intended to offend and not to entertain, society will reject it by itself, without making the artist a hero who is silenced.
In summary, censorship is dangerous even when it initially serves the best of intentions. Even if we are for it, who decides what should be censored and what shouldn't? To whomever we want to give this authority, there is always the possibility that they will eventually abuse it. As for Markos Seferlis, I don't like his comedy. But as a democratic citizen I owe him and his audience the freedom to expression and entertainment. Because freedom of speech may risk offending but the lack of freedom ensures the beginning of the end.
*: Non-binary people are people who define themselves without using the genders Male and Female, considering that the concept of gender is not binary but a prism on which they place themselves.
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