On Free Speech and Consequences
Journalist P.E. Moskowitz begins their recent book, The Case Against Free Speech, with an interesting distinction: “This book is not anti-free-speech,” they say, “It is anti-the-concept-of-free-speech. It’s an important distinction. Everyone should have the right to say what they want…free speech, as a concept, is meaningless…it is a dialectical smokescreen more than an ideal to be upheld.”
Moskowitz’s book is an important contribution to the current reactionary positions being taken by those on the right and by some liberals. Free speech is an important absolute right, they reason. What they want is not freedom of speech; indeed, the fact that they are publishing all the problematic things they are without any intervention or censorship by the government means they already have freedom of speech. What they actually want is three-fold: freedom from consequences, freedom from criticism, and the right to force any platform to publish anything they say.
Indeed, absolute free speech has never existed, either in the United States or anywhere else in the world. There have always been restrictions on freedom of speech, and there has never been a freedom from consequences for our speech. If I were to publish a racist or sexist diatribe, I would probably be able to distribute it, maybe even have it seen because of my position as a public figure. However, I would soon also find myself facing the prospect of a negotiated resignation from my current ministerial position.
And they would be right to do so. And there would be no violation of my freedom of speech.
Since June, I have watched members of my faith community, Unitarian Universalists, assert time and time again that certain people within our faith are being censored, that their freedom of speech is being violated. They say this in public blogs, Facebook posts and groups, and self-published books on Amazon that are reaching many, many people. The irony of their insistence they are being censored is not lost on me. The fact I know all of their writing exists, that I’ve read a good deal of it, and this despite the fact I essentially disagree with them on almost every point tells me, like Moskowitz, that all this talk about freedom of speech is essentially a smoke screen.
Moskowitz says that, since freedom of speech was co-opted from the left by the right and the Koch brothers starting in the late 1970s, that it’s been used for another purpose. Time and time again, those on the right use freedom of speech as a rallying cry when their ideas are not well-received academically or popularly. We see this today every time 45 or Fox News attacks the media for supposed biased coverage of the outrage of the day simply because such news stories make the president and those in power look foolish and incompetent.
And it works: the fact that anyone still supports 45 after all he’s done in the last three years is evidence of a mass propaganda machine in action.
I see the same thing happening today in liberal circles: old modernist and liberal notions of anti-oppression theory have fallen out of favor, both in the academy and in activist circles, especially since the ascendancy of mass movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. Those who still support these notions insist they are being censored, that their free speech is being violated, that they want open dialogue and debate. And time and time again, their open dialogue and debate looks more like an attempt to exert supremacy over those they disagree with, to go back to a time they are comfortable with so.
At the beginning of July, I wrote that I welcomed dialogue. Now I’m not so sure. After months of near-constant attacks on myself and people I highly respect as well as outright disrespectful and insulting rhetoric being thrown my way (seriously, how many times can a few people accuse this English major and former university writing center staff member of not understanding the difference between an argumentative and a descriptive essay before it becomes farce?), I am convinced that what many people are looking for isn’t dialogue, but conversion.
And now, a letter is circulating blanketly accusing all critics of The Gadfly Papers of not reading the book (absurd since many of us directly rebutted all or part of it) or of not trying to engage its author in dialogue. First of all, I want to hear none of that; he didn’t engage me or most other people involved in the stories in his essays before publishing them. Second, I very publicly invited him to dialogue; he never responded.
The fourth principle of Unitarian Universalism declares that we believe in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Many have quoted that principle and how it has supposedly been trampled on. In reality, they are talking about the free part of the principle while ignoring the responsible part. The responsible part demands that we, as Unitarian Universalists, examine our own biases and privileges, engage in dialogue before we self-publish, and recognize that an argument can look completely rational and logical and still be oppressive (just ask the victims of the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a movement many Unitarians supported).
Biological racists, white nationalists, gender essentialists, anti-vaxers, and those who believe Stanley Kubrick and the government conspired to fake the moon landing all think they are being rational and logical and have a litany of rebuttals for every objection you will present. They are each exercising their free search, but not the responsible one.
If you are looking to publish whatever comes to your mind about marginalized identities without engaging in the hard work of understanding your own privilege, you are not engaging the responsible part of the fourth principle. As a rule of thumb, if your beliefs uphold the current status quo and demand that difference be suppressed in the name of creating sameness, your beliefs are probably oppressive.
I no longer believe this is about free speech. I no longer believe many, if any, people are truly interested in dialogue. And I don’t believe any of this is new; it’s been going since the Black Empowerment controversy, continued when the Reagan-era Republicans convinced us that some marginalized people are just too sensitive, or politically correct, epitomized when Bill Clinton popularized the idea of reverse racism, and legitimized in the current era where open white nationalists deserve their freedom of speech while those who would protest and criticize their bigotry are declared to be the enemies of all that we hold to be sacred and good.
My humanity, my liberation is not a subject for dialogue or debate.
This is not an indictment of any one person but rather a pointing out of some patterns I’ve seen in the last several months. I’m sure people will assert that I, too, am trying to censor them, all the while making such accusations in their own public blog and Facebook posts. Like Moskowitz, though, I declare that I am not anti-free-speech; I am anti-the-concept-of-free-speech, at least as it’s being framed in popular politics today.
Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences or criticism. And absolute free speech does not constitute a responsible search for truth and meaning. I suspect that those who want to disagree with me will have a litany of slippery slope logical fallacies and questions of who decides when free speech goes too far. Until we can all agree that free speech does not mean freedom from consequences, criticism, or responsibility, we aren’t in a place to even begin to discuss these questions.
