A belief still clings stubbornly to the calloused underbelly of debate that social media is somehow unrelated to the real world and shouldn’t be measured by real world standards.

That’s patent nonsense. Social media starts riots, brings down governments, destroys reputations, and can lead to love, death, marriage or murder. Social media is as real as any flesh and blood body.

Yet we police social media differently. The standards by which Elon Musk’s despotic X platform operates are completely different to the standards by which this newspaper operates. Musk isn’t held accountable for what he publishes; yet editors and newspaper publishers face civil, and even criminal action, for decisions they make. I know from personal experience the limits of free speech set upon journalists. During long-running investigations for The Herald into the activities of British security forces in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, severe restrictions were placed on me and this newspaper by the Ministry of Defence in terms of what we could and couldn’t publish.

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As I write, I’m looking at a cutting from December 3, 2000 headed "MoD mounts legal bid to gag Sunday Herald". The piece explains how we’d been investigating crimes committed by British army intelligence officers when the MoD began the process of interdicting the paper.

Two months later, on February 11, 2001, another headline reads "MoD farce as Sunday Herald gagged". The piece reports how government solicitors threatened us with interdict if we continued our investigations. We were unable to publish the intended investigation. Indeed, to this day, I’m prevented from reporting anything related to that particular investigation.

At the time, the Herald’s lawyer said the gag made a “mockery of the Government’s pledge of open government”.

So believe me when I say that as an investigative journalist of more than 30 years' standing I value freedom of speech as much, if not more, than any citizen.

However, I doubt very much that the Enlightenment’s greatest minds had the vomited cruelties of attention-seeking Twitter users in their thoughts when they promulgated the rights of citizens to speak as they wish without fear of persecution.

Freedom of speech was championed as a universal right so that ordinary citizens could express opinion without the tyranny of the church or state coming down upon them. Freedom of speech has never been about the right to behave as disgustingly as you please.

You’re not free to walk up to strangers in the street and hurl racial epithets at them. You’ll be arrested, at the very least, for breach of the peace. You’re not free to call innocent people paedophiles. You’ll be sued for defamation.

All freedoms have limits. The concept of "free speech absolutism" is an absurdity. Free speech absolutists are also very one-sided. Let’s take self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Musk.

He ruled that the term "cis" or "cisgender" is a slur for which Twitter users would “receive at minimum temporary suspensions”. It hardly needs pointed out that Twitter is riddled with extremists using the most disgraceful racial and antisemitic slurs.

Yet Musk, who has a personal issue with the term "cis" due to his transgender child disowning him, bans not the Nazis but a word.

Now, perhaps there’s a discussion to be had about the term "cis". Yet banning a word is hardly the mark of a free speech absolutist who’d die for your right to voice opinions he disagrees with.

Currently, Britain’s mini-Musks are desperately trying to create a culture war over another free speech mirage. They’re often more pitiful than the so-called "woke snowflakes" they decry. Yet if culture war is all that validates you, then perhaps this explains their antics.

The mirage in question involves Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson. Pearson claims police came to her home and accused her of a “non-crime hate incident” related to an unspecified Tweet. The Telegraph has splattered the story across its front pages.

Cue much frothing, from the likes of Boris Johnson with claims that it was all “redolent of the Soviet Union”. This is a common, and pitiful, rhetorical flourish. Nicola Sturgeon - not someone I greatly admire - has been deemed "Stalinist". However, neither Pearson nor Sturgeon’s political enemies were shot by the KGB, I believe.

Allison PearsonAllison Pearson (Image: GB News)

Police, though, came out fighting regarding Pearson. Officers said she was lying. She had indeed been spoken to regarding an alleged crime - specifically an offence “of potentially inciting racial hatred online”.

The tweet, the Guardian discovered, featured a picture “of two people of colour holding the flag of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, a Pakistani political party founded by Imran Khan, alongside police officers from Greater Manchester Police”.

Pearson appears to have believed the officers were from the Metropolitan Police and wrote this Tweet targeting the Met: “How dare they. Invited to pose for a photo with lovely peaceful British Friends of Israel on Saturday police refused. Look at this lot smiling with the Jew haters.”

I wonder what police would have done if Pearson had walked up to random people of colour in the street and called them "Jew Haters"? And what the reaction of the Johnsons of this world might have been? Evidently, in the street, maybe 50 people would hear her bile; online, perhaps 50 million.

A member of the public complained that Pearson's comments were “racist and inflammatory”. The police investigated. Pearson denied all accusations.

So matters aren’t as simple as Pearson, the Telegraph or Johnson - who was Prime Minister while these laws he so hates were on the statute book - would have you believe.

Police have complained to the media standards watchdog Ipso over alleged false reporting about its ongoing investigation.

Around the world, it’s now wearyingly commonplace that those who claim to cherish free speech are more often than not liberty’s enemies. Glance across the Atlantic and you’ll see that when it comes to banning books, it’s the Christian Right which is smothering freedom, nobody else.

Free speech has been traduced by charlatans so they can parlay this great cause into a cheap pay-day. There are few rights more precious than the right to speak without fear of persecution. There are few failings more shaming than perverting that right in the interests of your petty bigotries.

Neil Mackay is The Herald’s Writer at Large. He’s a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics