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The earthquake that struck Pompeii in 62AD was devastating. Houses were toppled, streets torn apart, and over 2000 people killed. The locals assumed that this was the whim of some intemperate god, rebuilt the city, and got on with their lives. But this was just the prelude. 17 years later, Vesuvius erupted and the city was swallowed in a deluge of volcanic ash.
It’s all too easy to miss the early warnings of an impending disaster. Today’s culture wars are often interpreted as the symptoms of an ephemeral fad. Most can feel the tremors — restrictions on free speech, public shaming of those with unfashionable views, regressive identity politics masquerading as “progress” — but there is a widespread sense that if we ignore the problems, they will simply disappear. But what if these rumblings presage something far worse to come? What if, like the people of Pompeii, we are at risk of civilisational collapse but are misinterpreting the signs?
Further tremors have reverberated recently with renewed attacks on the First Amendment to the US Constitution, perhaps the final bastion of free speech in the West. Speaking at the World Economic Forum earlier this month, former Secretary of State John Kerry argued that when it comes to “disinformation”, the “First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence”.
The First Amendment codifies a “negative liberty”, not a licence for certain behaviour but rather a protection from government interference. It reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It can function as a kind of barrier to the worst excesses of the illiberal Left, even at a time when their party of choice occupies the White House.
Such challenges to the First Amendment began around 10 years ago with the emergence of the Critical Social Justice (or “woke”) movement, which sought to promote equity according to group identity through authoritarian means. In March 2018, an article appeared on the website of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which noted that by this point it was “common” for Leftist activists “to call for lower legal protections for speech”. The writer concluded that such calls were misguided, describing the First Amendment as “our most powerful tool to keep the government from regulating the conversations that spark change in the world”.
But other activists took a different view from the ACLU. In 2018, two of the founders of Critical Race Theory, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, republished their 1997 book Must We Defend Nazis?: Hate Speech, Pornography, and the New First Amendment. This version of the book was modified according to the shift in activists’ demands, and the subtitle was now Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect Hate Speech and White Supremacy. In that same year, activist and legal scholar Justin Hansford argued in the Yale Law Journal Forum that, when it comes to race, the “marketplace of ideas” does not apply. “When ideas on race that would disrupt the racial hierarchy of white over Black emerge,” wrote Hansford, “the First Amendment is disproportionately applied to trample that dissent”.
The “woke” movement had always taken a pro-censorship stance, but by 2018 the First Amendment was clearly identified as the key obstacle to their aims. This was developed further in The Cult of the Constitution (2019), in which legal scholar Mary Anne Franks took aim at “First Amendment fundamentalism”. An entire chapter was devoted to what Franks calls “the cult of free speech”, a chilling phrase that recalls Labour MP Nadia Whittome’s belief that “we must not fetishise ‘debate’ as though debate is itself an innocuous, neutral act”. Authoritarians frequently resort to this kind of sophistry rather than admit outright that they find the concept of free speech inherently rebarbative.
In October 2019, former editor of Time magazine Richard Stengel continued this disturbing trend with an article for the Washington Post entitled “Why America needs a hate speech law”. Stengel rehashed the typical concerns about “false narratives” and “lies”, as though any kind of speech regulator could possibly be immune from deceptive or misleading behaviour. He also repeated the “direct effects theory” which posits that people act on cue from social media posts, even though more than six decades of research into media impact on public behaviour has seen such notions fully discredited. The First Amendment, Stengel argued, “should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw”.
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SubscribeAnd they continue the pretense that Trump is the fascist.
Projection: (in psychology) a/ “the tendency to ascribe to another person feelings, thoughts, or attitudes present in oneself”
Every dictator ever has used public safety to justify censorship and stripping people of their freedoms. It was the same argument used to justify repressive rules during Covid.
I choose to be optimistic though. The church did everything it could to control the printing press and ultimately failed. I hope I’m not being naive.
I try to share your optimism, that human ingenuity will always find a way of overcoming repression. I’m not quite so sure that the advent of electronic media will provide the same mechanisms for subverting the authoritarian impulse.
Perhaps the printing presses could be brought back into use. As you say, they helped undermine the doctrines of church and state; hard copy being burnt is a sure sign of malignity.
I have a very favorite anecdote that covers this topic. I have a German friend. He said that most people living in East Germany during the cold war had access to western media, either through West Germany or West Berlin. There was one valley that was not able to receive radio transmission from the west. East Germans referred these people as being from “the valley of the clueless”. My point is that it is extremely difficult to deny people the truth, no matter how much speech is censored.
Kerry’s comment, about ‘hammering’ disinformation out of existence, is truly chilling. That really is the jackboot stamping on a human face, forever.
You are right. The use of the expressions “misinformation” and “disinformation” are deceptive because what is sought to be censored thereby is usually not information, but opinions with which they disagree. But if they said that they have a different opinion the response would be “so what”! Instead, by calling it disinformation it sounds neutral.
A large portion of the Democrats voting base are mindless, thoughtless drones. The Democrats want to ensure that those people to hear was was approved by the DNC.
Maybe he has in mind his own climate disinformation
So what?
Will Kerry “hammer” out of existence those who peddled the “Russia Collusion” disinformation hoax for three years straight, or does he believe that some disinformation is more equal than others…
Wasn’t there a series of Democratic Party grandees declaring that President Biden was mentally fit and not in a King Lear-like decline? Was John Kerry one of them?
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
– Joseph Goebbels, National Socialist Propagandist
Don’t forget Nicky Haley’s suggestion that citizens be required to register with the government before being allowed to make comments on social media platforms.
Free speech has been under attack since the founding of the republic. From southern slaveholders to McCarthyites to woke social justice warriors, attacks on free speech are part of having free speech, dummies. What seems new these days is hyperbolic, hysterical, exaggeration and lunacy among hyper-partisans. Andrew Doyle is a fine example, making his living writing silly anti-woke screeds like this.
Weird. Are we supposed to simply shrug it off? And since when has free speech become a partisan issue?
Since journalism has gone down the toilet and the only way to get readers and money is to write hyperbolic nonsense. It happens at the New York Times and the Washington Post, and it happens at UnHerd and the Free Press. Measured reasoned analysis doesn’t sell anymore.
If your honest you should realize how alike the right and the left really are. Their tactics are nearly identical, but I don’t expect partisans to see it that way. In particular they make mountains out of molehills to make exaggerated attacks on each other. Both sides try to cancel people, and both will attack the other sides free speech when it suits them.
You can do what you like but I’m happy to shrug it off. Life is too short.
Be very careful. If you go around saying “the left are as bad as the right”, then be prepared for a knock on the door sometime soon. Your leftist overlords will be taking you away for re-education.
The problem is that the left controls all the institutions – big tech, academia, the bureaucracy, culture, the alphabet agencies, high finance etc… The ability of the left to punish the right is so much more powerful.
Totally agree with the sentiment here. Social media and the demise of traditional media have fueled hyper partisan political discussion.
It sucks that Trump calls Harris a commie and says a host of other crappy stuff. It sucks that Harris calls Trump a threat to democracy and a rac!st.
But they absolutely should have the right to say crappy stuff. That’s why free speech is not a partisan issue. Everyone has the right to say crappy stuff. Taking away that right is not the solution though.
If your honest you should realize how alike the right and the left really are.
The terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ have become meaningless when ‘left’ refers to the politics of a parasitic globalist plutocracy and ‘right’ describes anyone who wishes to resist their depredations.
The false equivalency strawman argument is great, as long as you ignore the facts.
As hyperbole and hysteria go, you’ve just provided us with an amusing example. Oh, throw hypocrisy in there, too.
McCarthy never went this far. You are right, however: democrats, when they are threatened about their power, resort to censorship, calls for violence, and civil war.
I don’t think McCarthy was opposed to free speech exactly. He showed up the lies and liars who protected the Lattimores of this world, to whom we owe Communist China.
Hyperbolic screechmonger, heal thyself!
Nadia Whittome’s quote is as idiotic as David Lammy’s “rights hoarding” and this clown is now UK’s Foreign Secretary.
Virtue psychopaths.
Here’s John Kerry banging his fist on a table telling former British Foreign Secretary William Hague about Donald Trump’s failure to protect the constitution.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/9RJBom2GhvAv9y7g/
Underwhelming. Author fixates on a critique of some Left arguments regarding alleged Hate Speech and ignores the pressure on Free Speech from the Far Right. Fact is both ends of the political spectrum have a problem with free speech because they lean towards totalitarianism.
But in the modern World we also have to think about the power of social media and algorithms. It is not quite the same World as Madison, Jefferson and the Fathers who drafted the 1st Amendment. The Author shows a lack of sophistication in ignoring the impact these developments have on information/disinformation. Algorithms that enhance outrage and downplay calm considered thought are distorting free speech. A Bot also has no right to free speech.
You circa 1600: “But in the modern World we also have to think about the power of the printing press….Newpapers that enhance outrage and downplay calm considered thought are distorting free speech.”
BTW: It seems you’re in favour of putting in place mechanisms that prevent free speech from being “distorted.” Those mechanisms must have some way of discovering what it is that the speaker involved wants (ought??) to say, but which might suffer from distortion. After that, those mechanisms must have a means of enforcing that the speaker actually ends up saying whatever it is that the mechanism has decided they want (ought) to say. I’m interested in finding out how you think such a mechanism would work. Fact checkers? Social credit ratings? Blanket ban on social media or any media?
And who do you think should implement and run the mechanism?
Yes and quite a historical debate about whether the printing press had a good initial impact or a v poor one. It took some time, a few centuries arguably, before more pluralism and education enabled free speech. It’s an interesting reflection for us re: social media.
As regards what I’d do – it’s certainly not easy and one has to tread a fine line here, but I’d just make providers of social media subject to the same laws as other publishing media. They are responsible for their algorithms. The Law as it stands can then decide. You spread allegedly lies and you can be sued. Court can then decide as it does now. Hence, for example, why Alex Jones has a big bill.
More broadly I want to protect the right to offend, but not any right to incite violence. Courts already able to distinguish.
Inciting violence is against the law already.
Exactly. Don’t need a new law in my view. Of course this still means Judges sometimes have to make complex interpretation decisions
This ‘far right’ thing is a figment of your imagination, JW. It doesn’t exist in any significant way.
But then you know that perfectly well.
I’m sure there are fringe far right movements spreading misinformation, like the KKK. It’s just that the bulk of misinformation is coming from the left.
My point is not that there is no ‘far right’ at all, but that its impact is insignificant. JW uses it as a means to try and discredit any movement whose goals are contrary to his class interest.
Was Alex Jones online accounts a Left-ish fiction? Just one example.
Anyway I suspect it’s also the MSS and FBS totalitarians who also manipulate, and debatable whether one sees those as Far Right or Left. Either way they are Totalitarians using the freedoms in the West to sow discord and division.
So those freedoms should be rescinded? I see.
I would totally support some measure forcing social media companies to make their algorithms public and transparent. Not sure what this has to do with free speech?
The point is algorithms push some information at people more than they’d otherwise be exposed to. That’s different to deciding to buy a newspaper. It’s a form of hidden manipulation that channels certain speech more than others. I’m all for free speech but media, in this instance social media, needs to be more accountable for what it funnels.
Absolutely agree with this.
The day I can’t outsmart an algorithm is the day I surrender my thinker’s license.
You are apparently a good German ,circa 1940.
Sophie Scholl one of my heroes UH.
Many thanks J Watson for staunchly maintaining a non-partisan position in this forum, despite what follows. More power to your backbone!
I think this is a powerful and important article but it contains one assumption (backed up by thd old chestnut “studies show” without any link to said studies) that reveals a clear bias on the part of the writer, he takes issue with
“[Herbert Marcuse’s] perspective [that] “hate speech” has the power to rile up one group against another, even though the evidence for this claim is scant.”
The author claims that “studies show” social media posts don’t inspire violence. Testing that hypothesis heavily depends on measurement – billions of social media posts by “small fish” will have little/no effect, but a few by major players will. If you take the average effect, it will be negligible.
So before (any more of) the inevitable comments pile-on by those who suspect J Watson and I of wrongthink, how many commenters think the BLM protests weren’t influenced by social media? How many UnHerd posters think the pro-Gaza protestors got all their information from long-form history books in the university library? Is the writer seriously suggesting that “hate speech” had no influence in the rise of Stalin, Amin or Pol Pot? Was it just the pleasant and endearing parts of their philosophies that gained them mass popular support?
As for solutions, I don’t want to see social media regulated (except for under-16s, just as I wouldn’t let a kid drive a car, inject heroin or sell sex) but would suggest that the same standards of accountability should apply as for print.
This doesn’t equate to no use of pseudonymous accounts, but these should be linked to an identifiable individual (as our contributions to UnHerd are via our subscriptions) so that existing protections – for example against slander or libel (albeit these can be corrupted by lawfare) apply in digital as well as paper publishing.
It’s hard being a liberal, telling people what opinions they must have, how they should vote and why they are wrong about everything. (Apologies to Rhod Gilbert).
Did Rhod Gilbert say that? If so, good for him. I’m surprised he got away with it.
I was paraphrasing a stand up routine of his from quite some time ago (over 10 years). I threw in Liberals he went with stalkers, as in it’s tough being a stalker. It’s the people you follow, it’s all about them. Who they want to see, what they want to do, where they want to go.
He wouldn’t get away with that today, the silly thing being the joke would go over the permanently offended heads.
The British political description of “Liberal”.
No it’s not!!!
Liberal, please. Trump threatens his opponents with various punishments, just because they don’t agree and won’t vote for him. That is truly dangerous and sends us down the path of totalitarianism. Conservatives fully engage with and do not condemn this behavior.
Also, how to respond to the level of disinformation that leads to violence against FEMA workers in N. Carolina? I’ll only be OK with the endless garbage spewed on social media when the police arrest these individuals committing these acts.
For heaven’s sake please stop watching CNN or MsNBC. The key purveyors of TDS.
I’m not supporting Trump. When Kerry describes the First Ammendment of The American Constitution as a “major block”and that a Democratic victory can “implement change” then as the article says, that will lead down the path to Totalitarianism.
You compare an offhand remark by Trump – which every one of his listeners takes as “his usual hyperbole” – with the actual, present-day, enforced canceling and marginalization of conservatives, such as pro-Life Christians who are imprisoned for praying near abortion clinics.
The difference between “threat to democracy” and “loose lips” is whether there is the motive and the means to enforce the repercussions of dissent. Trump was President for four years and did none of the above. Meanwhie, the Biden-Harris administration relentlessly censors dissent as disinformaton. The DOJ, DHS, IRS and FBI, to name but 4 unelected bureaucracies, shamelessly persecute conservatives because “they are a threat to democracy”. Why? Ideology: Destroying American exceptionalism is a central facet of Critical Race Theory.
The Dem government has already tried their very best to tamper with free speech. Witness the Twitter Files, the actions of the FBI and the Dems influence over Facebook and Google.
So a privileged lifer like Kerry . A politician who rode to power lying about his service in war, and the Vietnam War in general. Who encouraged American foes from Vietnam to Iran dares to talk to a forum dedicated to making the world safe for tyranny about our right to speak is infuriating. f**k you John Kerry
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
is traditionally and aptly translated as
“Who guards the guardians?”
Authoritarians have always hated free expression and the Dems are authoritarians. The only difference is how comfortable they have become in saying the formerly quiet parts out loud.
“The First Amendment, Stengel argued, “should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw”.
The speech suppressors purposefully ignore the fact that “when everyone has a megaphone” no one in particular does. They hate this because THEY want to be the only ones with a platform.
Then Stengel either does not understand the First Amendment or counts on mass ignorance to advance his desires. It is “hateful speech” that needs protection, and he knows that inciting violence is NOT covered by free speech. Like the others, Stengel is mostly bothered by no longer having a monopoly on the microphone.
Re: “something called Section 230… referring to the section of the Communications Decency Act introduced in 1996 that protects online platforms from liability for comments posted by users. Without these protections, big tech would have little choice but to implement draconian censorship measures.”
Repealing 230 would make internet based media outlets liable in the same way that all newspapers and magazines were (and still are) before the internet. The author misses the difference between hate speech; and defamation by slander and libel. The legal responsibility most be judged in court. A specific plaintiff is required, and the charge of libel must be proven. “I hate so and so” won’t cut it. “So and so beats his wife and children” will; but only if the defendant can show that it’s true.
And, finally, I can’t help but notice that 230 doesn’t stop fb, twitter, instagram et al from censoring, at will, in re: covid, climate, gender, etc, but does actively encourage the most angry, uncivil, hateful and foolish invective.
Enlightenment payback. If we cannot be equal souls under God, we must be equal rational economic agents under man, which is measured with a highly empirical yardstick – disparate impact theory. Anything that distracts from the reality of leveled sameness is not merely untrue, it is a crime as it seeks to divert, indeed steal, what rightfully belongs to another. Hold tight, ye pantheists.
I have argued before that there should be no legal recognition for hate speech or hate laws. Criminal acts are already covered by laws and don’t need any bells or whistles.
The introduction of ‘hate’ merely injects opinion into the proceedings based on identity or victimhood. This allows people to draw the conclusion (right or wrong) that some groups are more protected or more criminal than others.
So… Free Speech is a bulwark (under heavy attack) to prevent the establishment of a Two Tier justice system.
Are you worried yet?
Free speech allows ideas we dislike to gain traction. It may be annoying, but it’s a feature, not a bug, of any liberal democratic system.
Some of those ideas can be objectively terrible. The first time we had a revolution in communications media, after the development of the printing press in Europe, a Dominican monk named Heinrich Kramer published a book called Malleus Maleficarum, or the Hammer of the Witches. A sort of Witch-hunting for Dummies published during the Renaissance, at the same time DaVinci was drawing helicopters, it linked the emergence of “modern” witches to anomalous weather patterns and crop failures during the Little Ice Age.
Kramer’s Bishop described him as senile and crazy, and his book was comprehensively demolished soon after publication, but it still became a bestseller second only to the Bible for 150 years. It also managed to overturn a ban on witch-hunting that had lasted nearly a thousand years, throughout the Dark Ages. Ultimately 60,000 people would perish, 80% of them women.
The marketplace of free ideas doesn’t always lead to the best conclusion, but liberal societies have always acknowledged that freedom of speech is better than the alternative. What has changed since the rise of social media is the extent to which the information we receive has already been curated.
Ever since Gangnam Style (seriously) social media companies have been adapting their algorithms in a way that throws more red meat to partisans, rather than presenting them with alternative points of view. I am no fan of government regulation of speech, but nor do I like giant corporations using opaque mathematical models to determine what I see.
The answer, surely, is not to constrain the freedoms protected by the First Amendment. We don’t have to hold social media giants accountable for the accuracy of the opinions expressed on their platforms, in the same way that we have done for printed media for generations. We do need to shine a spotlight on the algorithms they use, and explore ways in which atomized, personalized news feeds can become less like an echo chamber.
Great comment. The issue is in fact a grey area. Freedom of speech is (probably) the least bad option, rather than the obvious holy grail. Some ideas really do lead to evil things happening, such as the persecution of presumed witches that you cite.
And I like your point that the real issue with social media companies is not what they censor, but how they curate information for consumers.
If it is truly true that we have outgrown the liberties codified by the Founding Fathers, is it any wonder that I yearn for the past?
Agreed on all your points except Hillary is right about repealing Section 230. This blanket immunity is unique to the tech sector and removing it would help unfashionable types avoid doxxing, among other things.
The tremors are becoming more frequent, and we ignore them at our peril.
I’m an American and I can assure Mr. Doyle that we are not ignoring the threat. I would add that our second amendment acts as a last resort to protect the first. I don’t say that lightly. We take a lot of heat (including from people at UnHerd) for being a violent society that has idiotic ideas about personal gun ownership.
But, in times like these, when our most basic rights and freedoms are being threatened not from abroad, but from our own government, the genius of the founders’ inclusion of the second amendment starts to become clear.
It’s messy, but I’d never trade our constitutional rights for ‘safety’ whether it’s from violence or ‘hate speech’. Looking at how the people of the UK are being ‘protected’ from ‘hate speech’ and the like, I wish you well. It’s clear to me your government has little concern about ratcheting up the criminal penalties against those who tweet mean things and the like. Your government has no fear of the people and it shows.
Amen brother!
I am with you. For as divisive as the internet can be, it also allows us unprecedented ability to assemble and actually rally around a cause. That is something that prior civilizations didn’t have access to when a dictator showed up stomping his foot down. I understand the fear, and I don’t like when our Bill of Rights is getting attacked, but I do feel it will be MUCH more difficult in this current day and age to pull the wool over our eyes. And I still have tremendous faith in society to push back and do the right thing when our backs are to the wall. Even though we may throw barbs at one another online, at the end of the day, most of us care about one another and our country. Naive and overly optimistic? Perhaps, but I would counter that many folks these days are overly cynical and pessimistic.
‘Speaking at the World Economic Forum earlier this month, former Secretary of State John Kerry argued that when it comes to “disinformation”, the “First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence”’
The WEF let’s go socialist and ruin business for everyone dictatorship shows it’s true colours yet again. Fundamentally their policies have proved nonsense and they have done a really bad job, when faced with these facts however they find it easier to hammer them out of existence rather than confront the carnage they have caused.
‘ Hillary Clinton weighed into the debate during an interview with CNN. “We should be, in my view, repealing something called Section 230,” she argued, referring to the section of the Communications Decency Act introduced in 1996 that protects online platforms from liability for comments posted by users’
Hillary never let’s the side down. Allow the American police state to further expand it’s big brother watch. Anybody and everybody that dares to talk to anyone else about anything of consequence on any platform will be sued by the state, burned at the stake and thrown in the sea. Hillary says you are deplorable and talking nonsense, your views do not coincide with Americas latest version of what is acceptable and nice. You are now classed as domestic terrorist for liking a tweet that doesn’t like Hillary.
This is rather off topic but, I think relevant.
There’s a recent clip of a US news interview with a free speech advocate. He says that he trusts only two things, the first ammendment and boobs.
Rather funny I thought but the horror on the face of the (very glamorous) interviewer was hilarious. She made Mary Whitehouse look like a libertine.
What’s the matter with us when a trivial joke can cause consternation? Really are women offended that men are interested in breasts?
(Apparently, it is only human femans whose breasts are permanently enlarged. I wonder if men’s interest in breasts might have something to do with the survival of the species?)
Rather amusing that the purveyors of Critical Race Theory, a branch of opinion submerged in vicious racism and anti white hatred, believe that the US first amendment ought not to protect hate speech. Be careful what you wish for friends.
Exactly! It’s just that their form of prejudice and fascism is much more acceptable, apparently.
In yet more depressing news, please read Matt Tiabbi’s reporting on the UK “advisors” pushing this agenda in the US election.
Thanks for the heads up.
I for one would like to hear the commentariat’s declamations on how all this might relate to say, hearing of a wholly positive report of a non-familial “adult/child” relationship that included, yea celebrated, its sexual aspects.
Would the Unherdsmen pretend to remain neutral, or what?
Excellent, insight article on an important topic. The beginning of free speech suppression has already begun in the English-speaking world. In only the last five years, Canada, UK, Ireland, NZ and Australia have enacted laws to chastise (even imprison) those who merely express an opinion deemed not in accordance with official pronouncements or current leftist stance on political or cultural issues.
Leave it to Doyle to deftly summarize Woke in a few words:
Critical Social Justice (or “woke”) movement, which sought to promote equity according to group identity through authoritarian means…
Brilliant
Also John Kerry is pathetic and surely would have used the ability to censor to suppress reporting of his flagrant womanizing on the good ship “Monkey Business” back in the day… I’ll be damed before I sit by as such moral bankrupts such as him try to control my speech…