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

State of the Debate: What's the Bigger Threat to Free Speech?

This week, anti-racist protesters in Portland, Oregon were picked up in unmarked vans, driven around, searched, and returned to the streets.1 For weeks following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department, reporters have documented hundreds of incidents, most of them by police, targeting them and their equipment. Peaceful protesters, some in high-profile cases, have for weeks been attacked by police using chemical irritants and other projectiles, resulting in serious injury. President Trump and federal law enforcement have made sweeping generalizations about protesters – calling them a “violent mob” and promising retribution by federal officials. Dozens of people protesting Breonna Taylor's death by police received felony charges for a peaceful protest – charges that have now been dropped.2 Democratic Governor Ralph Northam imposed a strict curfew on anti-racist protesters on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. Black Lives Matter protesters have had their chalk messages on public sidewalk erased by local officials.3 There is a pattern here of violence and intimidation being used against anti-racist protesters across the country by law enforcement and politicians. If that is not censorship, I am not sure what is.

Yet, the free speech world is not really focused on this. Instead, commentators and hot-take blue checks on Twitter are spending their days bemoaning “cancel culture.” They have been particularly enthralled with a letter signed by such luminaries as J.K. Rowling and Noam Chomsky that decries that threat to free speech posed by “cancel culture.”4 There has been no such letter about the pattern of threat to free speech actually posed by government intimidation of anti-racist protesters.

Zaid Jilani recently went on The Hill's Rising program to denounce “cancel culture,”5 but in regards to the kidnapping of protesters in Portland he says,

“My guess is they recorded particular suspects with cameras over past few weeks and arresting them but the story is written as if they are targeting random protesters..too vague to make a conclusion”6

Matt Taibbi, who recently got some attention for his article on “cancel culture” run amok has had seemingly nothing to say about the kidnappings. J.K. Rowling, who signed the letter condemning “cancel culture” has also had seemingly nothing to say about them. Steven Pinker, another signatory of the letter and target of a recent “cancel culture” campaign against him, has also had seemingly nothing to say.7

I cannot understand this. How are people online getting someone fired for saying something they dislike a greater threat to free speech than literal government intimidation? Why does the one draw so much ire and attention from these public figures, while the other draws only dismissal or neglect?

It is not just intimidation tactics by government officials against anti-racist protesters that have gone ignored by the anti-cancel culture crowd. I have seen nothing from them on recent cases involving armed protesters shutting down the Michigan state assembly, or the Jewish woman in Montana targeted by white supremacists, or systemic abuse against women and girls online or many of the other threats to free speech in America today. By any reasonable metric, these other threats are far more severe than online leftists getting random people fired. These other threats impact far more people, with far more severe consequences, far more frequently, and on occasion with the force, sometimes literally, of the most powerful state in the world.

If I am being ungenerous, it seems like what is happening is a case of special pleading by certain people in academia and media. They object to “cancel culture” because it impacts them directly, or because they can stake their career making hand-wringing op-eds about political correctness run amok. Any other threats are unimportant.

If I am being generous, it seems to me that like the thoughtless mob they claim to rise above with reasoned discourse, they too fail to understand the significance and history of censorship, or of free speech.