Using history to move forward the public dialogue on free speech and social justice.

Republicans have just shown how thin their support for free speech really is

The ongoing right-wing censorship wave targeting schools, marginalized groups, protestors and activists has continued to gain steam. The latest targets are the peaceful protestors voicing their opposition to the recent leaked Supreme Court opinion which would overturn Roe v. Wade and result in abortion becoming de facto or de jure illegal in many states overnight. These protests have included a chalk drawing outside the home of Republican Senator Susan Collins, and protests at the home of right-wing justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Samuel Alito. While a few Republicans have noted that peaceful protest is protected by the First Amendment, more have come out, and come out strongly, against such protests calling for protesters to be arrested.1

Senator Collins called the police after someone wrote the following message in chalk on a public sidewalk outside her home: “Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —–> vote yes, clean up your mess.”<2>sup Senator Tom Cotton has demanded that the Justice Department prosecute protestors — at least being consistent with his previous authoritarian demand to have the military brought in to attack protestors against police brutality. Senator Mitch McConnell joined in this sentiment as well, declaring the protests to be outside the bounds of the First Amendment.3 Senator Chuck Grassley, Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, and our Dear Censor-in-Chief here in Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin, have also demanded protestors be arrested. Luckily, Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas has found the middle ground — merely threaten protestors for exercising their First Amendment rights. He says, “I would prefer a softer approach. I would prefer some type of warning to the crowd, much like getting a speeding ticket..Sometimes there’s a place for a warning, so I’d like to see those crowds get warnings before we move all the way to prosecution.”

So it turns out that the only cure for speech you don't like is more speech, far away from the target of that speech where they can't hear it and it won't have any effect.

This shouldn't come as any surprise. Just two years ago, police erased chalk messages written in support of Black Lives Matter in Washington state,4 while Republican elected officials like Cotton have consistently come after peaceful protestors using labels like “mob” to justify police brutality, authoritarian legislation, and even military intervention.

And of course, it isn't just protestors that the right-wing is targeting for censorship. Their brutal attack on free speech and the free exchange of information in schools has only continued, with the latest target being apps that enable kids to access books online.5 This latest move threatens to be even more successful at removing kid's access to books:

“The terrifying thing is that they can be censored with the flip of a switch, without due process, without evaluating the substance of the claims,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association. She said book-ban campaigns that started with criticizing school board members and librarians have now turned their attention to the tech startups that run the apps, which had existed for years without drawing much controversy. “It’s not enough to take a book off the shelf,” she said. “Now they want to filter electronic materials that have made it possible for so many people to have access to literature and information they’ve never been able to access before.”

Censorship efforts have not merely banned certain content that the right-wing finds objectionable, such efforts have now started to enforce different content. Now that our Dear Censor-in-Chief Governor Glenn Youngkin has moved to ban any “divisive concepts” in school, he has begun to force teachers — government employees — to sit through his religious speeches, a clear violation of the separation clause of the First Amendment.6

We should be very clear about what is happening here. The right doesn't really value free speech; it just likes to use it as a talking point against those advocating for greater social equality. They are more than happy to pursue continued censorship efforts at all levels from the grassroots to the U.S. Senate, so long as such efforts have the effect of enforcing their increasingly narrow view of American life on the rest of us. The media helps this effort by over and again buying into the right-wing narrative that they support free speech while the left opposes it — a lie which is ever more apparent by the day.