The Free Speech Crowd Doesn't Want Free Speech
Your freedom to be an annoying asshole will never outstrip mine to be a proud hater
The right-wing Free Speech crowd has based a platform around free speech and their being censored. Nevermind that the random Twitter user who hates your speech isn’t a government censor. Nevermind that in reality, the right-wing free speech crowd has become increasingly ready to police
I bring this up because recently, the right has increasingly based a platform around lashing out at protected speech. The so-called Free Speech crowd has become the first to shut down free speech. In just the first few months of Trump’s presidency, according to the ACLU:
The Trump administration imposed sanctions on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), in practice preventing human rights advocates — and Americans as a whole — from speaking with the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor in any capacity;
The Department of Education threatened to cut schools’ federal funding if they engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives (blocked by a lawsuit);
ICE has arrested and targeted for deportation a litany of scholars for their exercise of free speech, including Mahmoud Khalil, Dr. Badar Khan Suri, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and others; and
The Department of Defense (DoD) began systematically banning books and altering curricula in schools on military bases following several executive orders signed by President Trump.
Just last week, the House considered H.R. 867, the “IGO Anti-Boycott Act,” which would punish Americans with fines of up to $1 million or prison terms up to 20 years for participating in boycotts of Israel or Israeli settlements that are promoted by international governmental organizations (IGOs), such as the UN or EU. Prison for 20 years for refusing to buy a consumer product — in other words, for speaking with our money.
The party so eager to criticize the Democrats for ‘shutting down other viewpoints’ has become the party most eager to legally shut down other viewpoints. That should be, and is, far more concerning to those sincerely worried about our rights.
I don’t mean to imply that progressivism is immune from shutting down protected speech; the progressive tendency to ask for articles to not be published if they exist in opposition to progressive viewpoints is I think understandably concerning to some who genuinely care about freedom of expression. But whether a viewpoint is published — i.e. set directly into the public discourse — is not quite the same as whether it is allowed at all. Nevermind that conservative viewpoints have always found plenty of room for expression — particularly given how old some are.
The anti-woke crowd believes, deeply, that it has been marginalized. It carries, and perhaps is defined by, a sense of pervasive victimhood — doubly ironic, considering its constant critique of the left as snowflakes. To cry censorship is just one expression of a deep belief that you are the marginalized, because your beliefs are not loved by those in the public discourse.
Those in the U.S. protesting from a conservative lens are expressing an opinion that’s been expressed by the president. They are not special. They are not victims, and they are not targets. Conservatives are still protected. And the left does not typically wish for them not to be protected — it wishes for them to evolve their beliefs (many of which frequently contradict their ideologies).
To say “I’m not woke, and I don’t care about trans people because I’m not politically correct and don’t censor myself” is not a statement about freedom of speech. It is a statement about transness. What is being requested and expected is not freedom to speak, but freedom to speak without consequence in the public discourse — and thus, protection from their freedom of speech. The U.S. constitution says “the government can’t legally censor you.” Nowhere does it say “no one is ever allowed to hate you for being a piece of shit.”
Related Reading: The Nation wrote about the hypocrisy of the anti-cancel-culture crowd.
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