In a very short time, we have witnessed the controversies generated on social networks by the transsexual actress Karla García Gascón and by the writer JK Rowling (referring, precisely, to political issues related to transsexuality). This is not the subject of this article, however. Following these two cases, I would like to explore a problematic and even uncomfortable point, which is the possibility of information control in a technological context such as the current one and within the framework of a democratic society. The social standardization of new technologies is not serving, in general terms, to strengthen the democratic project, but quite the opposite. Pseudoscientific ideas or political proposals openly hostile to democratic principles are in full swing. With a simple mobile phone in hand, anyone can spread large-scale nonsense that will reach millions of people instantly. What is the underlying problem? The democratic system is unviable in the long term with the growing expansion of ideas and attitudes such as those described, but it is also unviable with the sustained control of opinion, that is, with what has always been called censorship. Some believe that the only way to neutralize this risk is to update censorship, that is, to readjust the repressive mechanisms of the state to the new technological scenario. In my opinion, this is going back a long way and, furthermore, it is contradictory: restricting democracy in the name of democracy does not seem like a good idea.
Given our status as post-industrial societies based on information and at the same time our status as liberal societies that must have as an essential milestone the maximum freedom for the greatest possible number of individuals, we cannot rule out some type of control over the backbone of our societies – which today is none other than information – but reject new forms of census. The fitting of these two needs is possible thanks to the basic principle that distances us from minority in a Kantian sense: responsibility. In this context, responsibility can only be evaluated a posteriori. That is, I am responsible – in any sense: legal, political, ethical – for what I have said or done, but not for what I have done. could having said or done according to my convictions. In a democratic regime, in a state of law, I am ultimately responsible for the actions consequences derived from my actions, not from assumptions. It is precisely for this reason that I can be free and responsible for my freedom at the same time. In a dictatorial regime, on the other hand, my saying or my doing are never mediated by consequences, but by an a priori axiom: a political dogma, the all-powerful will of some tyrant, etc. We must eradicate, in any case, the embarrassing spectacle of what we could call scholasticism of responsibility, the axis of the current political comedy, in which an individual is, according to some, "morally responsible, but politically innocent", and according to some others he is "politically, but not morally", or "legally, but not ethically", etc. The most common translation of this rhetorical blurring of responsibility is impunity.
As long as they do not generate concrete consequences, that is, criminally objective facts, the opinions expressed in a public context by Karla García Gascón, JK Rowling or the sursumcorda may seem to me to be simply right or wrong. It is quite another thing if they were anonymous, because then they would complicate or even make this criminal objectification impossible. Hate crimes judge facts that are likely to have harmful consequences for society as a whole, but their scope is today arbitrarily selective. It is very different for Karla García Gascón to insult me as a Catalan, as she did on several occasions, than for me to insult her as a transsexual. The criminal course of insults would be totally different, as has been seen with almost obscene clarity (dic criminal course, not a media fuss that will be carried away by the wind). Due to democratic convictions, censorship seems unacceptable to me; however, selective censorship, which is what is currently classified by law through the vague legal figure of the crime of hate, is also unacceptable to me. Unlike a punch or a shot in the back of the head, insults are only words, signs, flatus vocis. Now: that principle must apply to everyone, not just those hidden in political correctness.
