The policing of opinion transitioned from camps to courts during the first years of the Third Reich. The criminalization of criticism traced to the Reichstag Fire. Emergency decrees permitted arbitrary detention for suppressing a communist uprising and criminalized “disinformation.” Loose regulation quickly expanded enforcement from Marxist organizations and publicly supporting revolution to include private expressions of dissent by “chronic complainers and grumblers.” Mounting skepticism about this protracted state of emergency led to accusations of lawlessness from Hitler’s conservative partners by 1934. Policymakers responded by reining in protective custody and rewriting treason statutes to prosecute communist sedition through the courts. The disinformation decree was also rewritten to cover criticizing the regime. Stricter regulation brought the focus back to organized communist resistance, but the rewritten laws left the door open to policing private opinion in society at large. By 1935, the policing of criticism had settled into routine practices and formal processes under a newly expanded Law against Malicious Gossip governing the private conversations of Germans.

The Gestapo gradually wrested enforcement authority from the courts between 1935 and 1939. A conflict over jurisdiction played out in national journals as the political police asserted a mandate of prevention. At first, case officers reported findings to prosecutors without commentary. After Himmler became Chief of German Police in June 1936, the Gestapo routinely withheld cases with insufficient evidence to convict and even dropped charges against a few remarkably loyal offenders in extraordinary circumstances. Enforcement authority remained with prosecutors in most cases. The Party and the Ministry of Justice exercised joint discretion built into the law to target highly public offences, recidivists, and political opponents presumed to be subversives. But the Gestapo increasingly encroached by prescribing a desired outcome in the case summary. Political police used these “recommendations,” backed by the power of protective custody, to gradually assert control over enforcement decisions by the judiciary. By 1939, the Gestapo determined who deserved to be punished based on their character, while the courts determined who could be punished based on available evidence.

This chapter surveys Richard Wright’s contemporary reception, from his dramatic rise to literary fame through works of naturalist fiction, to the existential novels he wrote in exile, to his later nonfiction on the decolonization process in Africa and Asia. Although his career has often been reduced to a peak with Native Son and a subsequent decline, Wright’s complex and changing critical reception can best be understood through the shifting relationships between American literary intellectuals, discourses of race and racism, and global geopolitics. This chapter examines the political debates that lingered over Wright’s work from his earliest publications; it explains the critical resentment for his exile and interest in existentialism; and it emphasizes how his journalistic writing represents early, and generally well-reviewed, contributions to an emerging interest in the post-colonial world. These final books, too often overlooked today, offer important evidence of Wright’s ongoing interest in black leadership, the relationship between racial solidarity and liberal geopolitics, and the challenges facing an African diaspora.

This chapter describes how, over the course of the fourth century, Christians took over the role that was traditionally ascribed to the pagan court philosopher, who was defined (at least in the public imagination) by his freedom of speech, disregard for wealth and social conventions, equanimity, and an uncompromising attitude towards political authority. It discusses biographies and histories from the fourth and fifth centuries AD, which recount the lives and deeds of pagan philosophers and Christian holy men. It also analyses one ceremonial speech delivered by the court philosopher Themistius to Emperor Constantius II, showing that a speech of praise could also be a vehicle for advice and criticism. The chapter focuses on the cultural construction, performance and narrative representation of two varieties of political parrhesia, to wit, ‘bold speech’ and ‘privileged access’, that were relevant to the pagan philosopher and later to the free-speaking bishop who followed in his footsteps.

This chapter investigates narrative representations of free speech in early Christian martyr acts written between c. 150 and the end of persecution in 313. It discusses both pagan and Christian models that inspired authors of early Christian martyr acts to represent the speech and behaviour of martyrs in a certain manner. One of the issues the authors addressed was how a Christian should behave when he or she stood trial before secular authorities, and what measure of frank speech was appropriate in this situation. Early Christian martyrs are often presented as respectful, polite and reticent towards authorities during interrogation. We also see a clear preference for plain speech over studied rhetoric. The chapter addresses the question of whether new interpretations of parrhesia that we find in these martyrdom narratives should be seen as indicative of a growing reluctance among Christians to criticise those in power, or as part of a process of acculturation.