Dangerous ideas. By Eric Berkowitz. Beacon Press; 320 pages; $ 29.95. The Westbourne Press; £ 20

TSOUND ALIVE and the vast history of censorship opens with a wise reminder. “The compulsion to silence others,” writes Eric Berkowitz, an American lawyer and author, “is as old as the urge to speak”. As a strong supporter of free speech, Berkowitz views censorship through the ages as essentially futile, perverse or wrong. Yet he understands that none of the parts of this ancient competition are outright. In his gripping tale, freedom of speech or its adversaries also never achieve final victories.

Mr. Berkowitz focuses mainly on the United States and Great Britain, with glances on other European countries, such as 17th and 18th century France, famous for libels, slanderous and generally sexual attacks on royalty, clergy and other notables. He briefly widens the field at the end for a disheartening look at the enemies of free speech in less liberal or less democratic places.

Speech silencers work directly and indirectly. The most obvious direct type is state censorship. It can ban speech unless authorized in advance (pre-censorship), punish it after the event (criminal defamation), or impose excessive regulations or taxes on publishers and media. The speech here includes not only the uttering or spreading of words, but the proclamation of your faith as you wish, campaigning for the causes you have chosen, and artistic creation without interference.

Pre-censorship has often proved doomed to failure. With the advent of print, books generally needed a license before being published. In Britain, where licensing was contracted out to the Printers’ Guild, previous control was found to be ineffective and corrupt, and was abandoned at the end of the 17th century. The papal Index of prohibited books (1559-1966), supported by law in many Catholic countries, advertised works that would otherwise have remained obscure. The harder the Soviet censors worked, the stronger the underground newspapers, political jokes and public disbelief became.

Criminal defamation, which has replaced pre-censorship in common law countries, can be seditious, obscene or blasphemous. This triple division outlined the main concerns of the silent: political dissent, fascination with sex and contempt for religion. The prosecution continued even at the end of the 20th century. Especially in front of the juries, they could turn against them, as Mr. Berkowitz says with pleasure. In 1817 William Hone was accused in Britain of blasphemy for having parodied the liturgy of the Church. In defense, Hone read passages from his parodies that reduced the courtroom to laughter so much that an acquittal was secured. Obscenity trials have often stumbled upon the prosecution’s dilemma of whether to say the unspeakable or allude to it.

As entertaining as they were, the Yard Falls were the exception. Mr Berkowitz points out that repression had the upper hand until recently. The most eloquent modern champion of free speech, John Stuart Mill, published “On Liberty” in 1859; but in Europe and America, state censorship did not weaken until the 1950s and 1960s. Back then and at other times, the law responded to public opinion. It is the second indirect means by which speech can be silenced – or released. The pressure may come from the perspective of the majority or (as now) from the sensitivities of ethno-religious minorities.

In America, where the First Amendment prohibits the government from limiting speech except for exceptional reasons, the courts have tended to strike down post-1945 laws controlling “hate speech”. In Europe, on the other hand, such laws are common and accepted even by free speech liberals. Thus, American courts are often considered to be more “absolutist” when it comes to freedom of expression. Berkowitz corrects this half-truth, noting that US courts upheld the bans on speech by pacifists in wartime and communists in the Cold War.

Another indirect control turns on the opportunities to speak. Even if everyone should be free to do so, should everyone be given a platform, a newspaper, a public? To approach the question differently, does the controlling power of the media and web giants distort public argument?

Governments have sometimes stepped in to have the giants share their megaphones and refrained from interfering with others. Recently, US regulators and courts have favored the giants. The demands of fairness in political broadcasting were dropped in the 1980s. A 1996 law considers web providers not to be publishers and therefore protected from civil lawsuits over posted material. The Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that businesses enjoy protection against free speech, making political spending limits, among other things, more difficult to enforce. Different social silencers, those now called platformless and “cancellation culture,” stridently compose what they lack formal influence (although Berkowitz thinks their meaning is exaggerated).

Without always diving deep or giving clear answers, “Dangerous Ideas” shows that conflicts between freedom of expression and censorship are rarely simple or settled for long. Above all, Berkowitz understands how quarrels over free speech are often, at bottom, struggles for control of the argument. ■

This article appeared in the Books and Arts section of the print edition under the title “And be damned”