The Coming Strangulation of Free Speech
It’s the First Amendment for a reason: free speech is a fundamental prerequisite for liberal democracy. But The Guardian, with logic that Stalin would have appreciated, insists the concern over free speech has been “concocted” by the Right. This is one example of many that shows the assault on free speech today primarily comes from the very people—the legacy media, academia, and progressives—who once championed unencumbered dialogue.
Given the increasing likelihood of a Kamala Harris presidency, the outlook for free speech could turn even more dismal. As California’s attorney general, when it came to privacy legislation, she supported policies favored by her tech backers, and also evidenced little interest in protecting pivotal rights of free societies such as due process.
Under Harris, the censorship regime would likely get even stronger. She has spoken openly about wanting to “censor misinformation and hate.” Already under Biden, there has been strong support for suppressing online dissent, even proposing to create a “disinformation” board. This likely would be used not only to cover COVID-related issues but also climate change, with the Biden Administration’s top climate adviser Gina McCarthy casting censorship as a “health issue.”
To be sure, the U.S. will have to get much worse to beat our erstwhile democratic allies’ abandonment of free speech; unlike the U.S., the U.K. has no First Amendment. Even as authoritarian regimes are expanding all around the world, notes Freedom House, other Western nations seem to be tilting toward greater restraints on free expression, with “hate speech” laws already surfacing in Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and Canada.
Britain, the historic incubator of basic freedom, has become ever more oppressive. According to a December 2021YouGov poll, over two in five now think protecting people from offensive remarks is more important than protecting free speech. Even under Tory rule, the state has been putting people in jail for provocative social media posts. During the pandemic, the BBC, as well as Facebook and Google, worked with the government to squelch dissenting views on COVID.
It was also under the Tories that Brexit campaigner and persistent critic Nigel Farage found that his bank tried to close his account because of his “problematic” views. While the U.K.’s then-Conservative government publicly denounced the practice of debanking, it quietly pushed for the state to monitor bank accounts. In Scotland, the leftist SNP is adopting a law that encourages people to report disliked speech to the police.
Read the rest of this piece at American Mind.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz via Flickr.
