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I read something today which I have long thought deep down, but hadn’t really seen spelled out elsewhere.
Namely, the censoring done by the liberal left, while there, is rather mild in the scheme of things and is probably much less than the same left would be censored by the people it currently censors if that group was in power.
The quote that brought it to my mind was from here, on Richard Hannania’s substack. After a post discussing being banned by Twitter, he drops this at the end of the article.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/saying-goodbye-to-twitter
The attitude of censoring opponents seemed to have crystallized for the left around 2016, where I distinctly remember the conversation centering around the limits of tolerating intolerant ideologies. (Which seems to have become fully settled by now, interesting to observe an ideological movement update in real time in that way).
Does Hannania have a point here? Is the issue that the right takes offense with censorship itself, or would the right if it actually gained back power censor in a much more strict and comprehensive way?
For my part, I don't identify as right-wing, but a 'muscular liberal'. I genuinely believe in free speech as a good in its own right. Part of that might be self-interest, since I'm incorrigibly contrarian and enjoy playing around with outrageous ideas, but I would be happy to defend it as being in the broader interests of the polis on broadly the same grounds that Mill laid out in On Liberty. I find myself here temporarily allied with rightists, both enjoying talking with them and selectively agreeing with them on topics as my conscience demands. I suspect a lot of the most ardent defenders of free speech are broadly on the same team.
I think there are limits to free speech. If the free speakers are convincing society that other freedoms should be restricted, in a way which violates property or self ownership rights, then such speach should be shut down because it is dangerous, however, if it convinces people to live differently but leave other people alone, that is fine.
I'm not sure that it works that way so much. If a group is influential and powerful so as to be a risk of taking control and imposing authoritarian control they are less likely to be effectively censored. Its easier to shut up the weak.
If the though is that some day way down the line some toxic authoritarian ideas which are weak now might eventually take hold if we don't nip them in the bud, it seems to me that depriving them of free speech might backfire on more than one level.
1 - That people are trying to shut up claims can be taken by those adjacent to those clams as evidence that there is truth in what they are saying, and that the powerful are trying to suppress the truth.
2 - If you drive people with hateful ideas in to the shadows you don't recognize the people who have those ideas as much.
3 - Also when driven to the sidelines and shadows they face no opposition and contradiction in those shadows.
4 - The move to censor ideas is directly itself a deprivation of rights and and make society less free.
5 - The fact that people can shut up speech that is called authoritarian or that supposedly puts rights at risk creates and incentive to give more and more speech and ideas the label of "authoritarian" or "dangerous to our rights", making problem 4 worse and potentially creating a situation where existing competing political blocks that aren't' on the far fringes, to label each other as falling under those categories.
6 - The general acceptance that people and ideas can reasonably be shut up by force sets a precedent that empowers authoritarians should they take power.
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It's an interesting question just what territory you need to defend to defend free speech. Property and transaction rights are obviously important for free speech:
"Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a website if you are unable to pay for DDOS protection?"
If you've got people campaigning to centralize the political system or otherwise get the tools needed to remove freedom of speech, then that's a problem, as you say. Yet this sort of 'paradox of intolerance' argument has its own problems. Who is a fair arbiter to discern the genuinely threatening authoritarians from people who get labelled authoritarian?
Authoritarians denying rights and non threatening speech being suppressed as threatening are both problems, the best you can do is hope that whoever is in charge of enforcing free speech does not falter either way. I would say its pretty easy to tell whats threatening and whats not, if they are promoting anger and disgust toward people who engage in innocent activities, that is probably a threat, but if they are convincing people that said activities are bad for them and they should stop for their own sake, that is no worry.
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