Shut Your Mouth
Recent incidents tell us how quickly the world, America included, is moving toward limiting speech that does not support approved ideas.
In Hong Kong, a pop singer was arrested for performing two songs at a political rally and encouraging attendees to vote for a pro-democracy candidate.
In Florida, three law professors were forbidden by the University of Florida from testifying in court as expert witnesses in a lawsuit challenging a recently passed law that affected voting procedures.
In predominately Hindu India, seven Muslim students were arrested for celebrating Pakistan’s victory over India in the World Cup cricket match. They were charged with cyberterrorism and “promoting enmity among groups”.
In Boston, an invited lecture on climate change by a University of Chicago geophysics professor was cancelled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after some students and others objected to the professor’s previously expressed opinion on diversity and inclusion.
We won the fight against secular and religious potentates to freely express ourselves. It took centuries and more than a little bloodshed. Today, an increasing number of voices are being raised to stop speech. Speech one doesn’t like, thinks is dangerous, creates discomfort, or undermines authority.
We use what power we have, not to engage or combat, but to suppress.
When we start down that road, we have to contemplate who will be the enforcers of allowable speech. History provides the answer. Those who have the guns. Those who have the power to pass the laws that forbid.
Once the expression of some ideas is not acceptable, the law of the jungle takes over. Only speech approved by the strongest is allowed.
Democracy is no more than a process. A framework within which we can debate, argue, and eventually make decisions by voting. If that process is not protected, if only certain ideas are allowed, if speech is not free, the possibilities for change, reform, and progress are limited. Those who own the existing Truth will increasingly use their power to enforce that Truth.
If we sacrifice the process to achieve our Truth, the process will not be there when we want protection from those who would impose a Truth that is not ours and which we disapprove.
The question of free speech and if it should be limited when it conflicts with other values has been vigorously debated. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has over the years been the primary defender of free speech by any person or organization no matter how unpopular or repugnant the message. In court case after court case, it argued on behalf of Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, conscientious objectors, labor organizers, the Nation of Islam, individuals accused of communist sympathies, and others, that the ability to speak freely was protected by the Constitution and essential to maintaining freedom and democracy.
Recently, however, there are those within the ACLU who argue that there are values which are more important than free speech. (The following paragraphs draw freely from a long New York Times story published June 6, 2021.)
New guidelines for their lawyers suggest that representing right-wing groups whose “values are contrary to our values” should be weighed against the potential such a case might give “offense to marginalized groups.” In its internal debate, some in the organization have argued that free speech cases should not be pursued that run counter to the interests of groups whose values the ACLU also shares.
“When a book argued that the increase in the number of teenage girls identifying as transgender was a ‘craze’ caused by social contagion, a transgender ACLU lawyer sent a tweet … ‘Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.’”
The role the ACLU played in Charlottesville in connection with the alt-right action that resulted in the death of a woman became a flashpoint. When the executive director of the Virginia ACLU went to the College of William and Mary to talk about free speech, students who proclaimed themselves allied with Black Lives Matter physically walled off the platform and podium chanting, “ACLU you protect Hitler too.”
She had planned to argue that by defending the rights of the objectionable, the ACLU preserved the rights of all, but left after a half hour without being able to say anything. A second chant by the students illuminates the stakes. “The revolution will not uphold the Constitution.”
The response in 1999 in New York City to the ACLU’s successful challenge to then Mayor Rudolph Giuliana’s attempt to block a Ku Klux Klan rally downtown was much different. The then leader of the New York chapter recalled the support from Black newspapers and activists, and the standing ovation he received from a Black audience.
“A woman came up and said: ‘You did the right thing. If Giuliani could shut down the Klan, he would do it to us,’” he recalled.
And that, I would argue, is the point. Once we limit free speech in furtherance of some other goal, there is no recognizable stopping point. Whoever has power will use that power to stop speech that does not further their goals, that does not promote their Truth.
The Chinese Communist Party imprisons those who question or cast doubt on the official history of the Party.
Marco Rubio, Republican senator from Florida, and a candidate for President in 2016, advocates using the law to enforce “corporate patriotism”.
In an op ed piece November 1 in The American Conservative, Rubio accuses corporate leaders of using “Marxist tactics … to spread corporate propaganda … to remake our society, our culture, our country … to redefine what constitutes a good life in America.”
Rubio is not content, however, to support and argue his case. He goes on to threaten legal sanctions if “corporate patriotism” is not properly displayed. “We should require that the leadership of large companies be subject to strict scrutiny and legal liability when they abuse their corporate privilege by pushing wasteful, anti-American nonsense.”
The chief difference between the Chinese Communist Party and Rubio is that the Party has more guns.
We understand that democracy is at risk from the Big Lie. Democracy is also at risk from those who would impose an Official Truth.
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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