This Guardian essay, written by an anthropologist, argues that the ferocity of modern free speech debates stems not from disagreements over rules and principles but from implicit judgments about people's character. The author traces the argument back to the January 2015 al-Qaida attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which killed cartoonists over their depictions of the prophet Muhammad, and describes how it split their social circle into two morally incompatible camps. The wider point is that when we clash over what should be allowed and where lines should be drawn, we are often really asking what kind of person holds each view.

The author recalls how French childhood friends mourned the murdered cartoonists and feared for free speech, while British and American academic colleagues worried about the stigmatisation of French Muslims and questioned the wisdom of publishing the cartoons at all. Rather than argue online, the author left Facebook and began a research project into the phenomenon. Drawing on the philosophical field of "virtue ethics", the piece contends that free speech arguments are really about virtues such as sincerity, courage, resilience, generosity and care — hence the proliferation of character caricatures like "snowflakes", "trolls", "edgelords" and "bigots". It notes that although most people in Europe and the US broadly endorse free speech, they hold competing visions of the ideal "free speaker", from the measured, rational citizen to the passionate breaker of rules.