Abstract

Free political speech – understood as (1) the right to publicly criticize the government, (2) the right to represent theories and ideologies that are contrary to the ruling one, (3) the right to advocate political and institutional changes, etc. – is the speech that enables a fundamental distinction between democratic and non-democratic systems. As part of the discussions on free political speech, the discussions related to the very content of the freedom of political speech that incites rebellion against the political order are particularly important; they advocate racism, hate speech or, for example, the disclosure of state secrets. In this context, we will open a discussion about the freedom of political speech in Rawls’s political liberalism with special emphasis on the idea of the public reason, and so that the discussion does not remain at the level of theoretical analysis, we will analyze Rawls’s understanding of the freedom of political speech additionally through the case of Trump vs. Twitter.