The View From the Ramparts: Freeing speech?
Left-wing attempts to censor continue to backfire
After serving as the primary defenders of the value of free speech from the anti-war movement of the 1960s through at least the Clinton administration, the Democratic Party and the larger political left have rather suddenly become the largest promoters of Orwellian-level censorship.
While numerous commentators and observers cite the populist rise of Donald Trump and/or the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic as the primary drivers of this push for censorship, it is more likely that those were no more than convenient excuses that also provided political cover.
Trump and COVID were the opportunity for a pre-existing impulse to be acted upon.
The political left in this country has gone from viewing itself in the 1960s as the street-wise challengers to the power elite to now being the power elite, and seeing itself as the sole representative of American (and, indeed, Western) political legitimacy.
And yet, for a demographic that sees itself as eminently sophisticated, discerning and educated, the Left has repeatedly made a pretty significant mistake over the past few years in its attempts to stifle any public challenges to its cultural, political and economic hegemony:
It keeps trying to overtly censor its opponents.
And the more those efforts blow up in its faces, the more the Left doubles down on the effort.
From trying to get Trump banned from social media platforms to getting NBC to fire former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel last month, the left’s censorship campaign has been a series of small tactical victories that rather quickly morph into glaring strategic losses.
For supposedly bright people, they aren’t behaving very intelligently.
Getting Donald Trump banned from Twitter and Facebook did not, in fact, silence him. I think after left-wing pressure against the upstart Parler app — which marketed itself as a free-speech alternative to Twitter — succeeded in pressuring both Google and Apple to drop it from their app stores, the leftists thought that was their new playbook: Top-down control of what Americans would be allowed to say in polite company.
The movement that had proudly declared itself the “resistance” was about to make it practically impossible for its own political opponents to do the same.
But not only did Trump increase his personal wealth by some billions of dollars via Truth Social’s IPO last month, but other alternative outlets devoted to a robust exchange of ideas continue to gain in influence and reach: the Rumble video-sharing site (which has a far more tolerant policy than Google’s YouTube or the increasingly autocratic Vimeo), and Substack, the place where you’re reading this.
Perhaps most tellingly, the left’s censorship campaign led to the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, purchasing a controlling share of Twitter. That led to not only a loosening of what political speech is allowed on Twitter (now rebranded as “X”), but Musk also opened the files to expose just how ham-fisted the previous regime had been in trying to stifle conservative and moderate voices.
Censorship is like any other form of bullying: It comes from a place of deep insecurity. People who are confident in their world view, who have studied whatever it is they are discussing, who are able to muster strong arguments in favor of their point of view tend to welcome debate.
Free-speech supporters also have a deep, abiding belief in the decency of their fellow humans: They believe their neighbors can be persuaded through solid arguments that marshal facts, and present them in a cohesive, coherent package.
They believe in the power of ideas.
Those who would silence all who disagree with them, not so much.
Today’s secular left resembles nothing so much as Medieval church leaders who distrusted the missionary spirit that had led to Christianity and Islam spreading across two-thirds of the globe in just a few centuries. Rather than preach the Gospel or Quran as a positive alternative to the prevailing pagan beliefs of the time, as their predecessors had, Middle Age Christian and Islamic leaders cracked down on any competing theologies. Declared some books to be prohibited. Imposed severe secular punishment for religious heresy — where early Christian leaders had simply broken ties with heretics, without seeking to imprison or kill them.
Much as the contemporary Left does today.
The censorious left (and fairness demands that it be pointed out that there are many on the Left who are absolutely committed to free speech and appalled by this left-of-center strain of McCarthyism) of late has responded to the growing pushback against censorship attempts by trying to brand free speech as “right wing,” a “dog whistle” to stir up fascists.
Because, you know, fascists have such a strong history of supporting free speech.
This sort of juvenile name-calling further exposes the fact that the would-be censors not only don’t have any good arguments for limiting free speech, they don’t even believe in what arguments they do offer. (And, really, is any phrase more self-defining than “dog whistle”? Every time you use it aren’t you just trying to trigger an emotional response in the folks you believe to be on your side?)
Attempting to rationalize censorship by claiming it’s only “disinformation” or “misinformation” that needs regulating because it’s a “threat to democracy” might not be quite so laughable had the rest of us not just lived through seven years of Russian collusion hoax by many of the exact same players now wringing their hands over the spreading of falsehoods. That was followed by the national media trying to ban any discussion on the origins of COVID-19, or the efficacy of lockdowns during the pandemic.
Because, you know, “misinformation.”
But as more and more of the national media’s own narrative has been uncovered as factually wrong, fewer Americans are willing to let a ruling class with such a bad track record of differentiating between truth and falsehood decide what the rest of us are allowed to say.
The ruling elite are not letting go of their illicit power to control public discourse without a fight, of course. But their increasingly hysteric arguments are far more effective at revealing their own paranoia than they are in convincing the rest of us to hand over our freedoms to a self-proclaimed elite class.
It is likely that this modern McCarthyism has already peaked — and if not, it will soon.
The censors have lost the argument — mostly because they chose not to engage in the debate at all, preferring to try to silence the rest of us.
But while they were busy attempting to impose a new censorship regime, the rest of us did have that discussion about the appropriateness of such efforts — and by and large decided that was not going to happen.
Just as in the 1960s, free speech has been embraced by a younger generation whose appreciation for it comes from having the previous generation try to deny it to them.
Nothing makes freedom taste quite so sweet as the possibility of losing it.
I apologize for the lengthy break in posts here. I had what the doctors assured me was a minor procedure last month — and discovered again that a “minor procedure” is a procedure performed on someone else.
I underestimated my recovery time, and overestimated the return of my stamina.
But by all accounts (and by “all accounts,” I mean “according to the people who were actually awake during the procedure”) it went well, and I’m on the road to recovery.
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Keep it up! I mean figuratively, of course. We missed you.
Money quote: "Censorship is like any other form of bullying: It comes from a place of deep insecurity. People who are confident in their world view, who have studied whatever it is they are discussing, who are able to muster strong arguments in favor of their point of view tend to welcome debate."