In this blistering polemic, veteran journalist Mick Hume presents an uncompromising defence of freedom of expression, which he argues is threatened in the West, not really by jackbooted censorship but with a creeping culture of conformism and You-Can’t-Say-That.

The cold-blooded murder from the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in January 2015 brought a deadly focus to the problem of free conversation. Leaders from the free-thinking globe united in condemning the killings, proclaiming ‘Je suis Charlie’. But it about Result in Warning: Is the Fear of Getting Offensive Killing Free Speech? wasn’t a long time before many commentators were arguing that this massacre showed the necessity to apply limits to free conversation also to restrict the right to become offensive.

It is becoming fashionable not merely to declare yourself offended by what someone else says, but to use the ‘offence cards’ to demand that they end up being prevented from saying it. Social media marketing websites such as Twitter have become the scene of ‘twitch hunts’ where online mobs look for trolls and various other heretics who express the ‘incorrect’ opinion. And Trigger Warnings and various other measures to ‘safeguard’ sensitive learners from potentially unpleasant material have got spread from American colleges over the Atlantic and the internet.

Hume argues that without freedom of expression, our other liberties wouldn’t normally end up being possible. Against the backdrop of the historical fight for free speech, Trigger Caution identifies the brand new dangers facing it today and spells out how unfettered freedom of expression, despite the discomfort and the problems it entails, remains the main liberty of all.