The Trouble with Free Speech
The line between censorship and freedom may be different than you think
On June 30th, 1918, presidential candidate, union member, and lifelong socialist Eugene Debs was arrested by federal law enforcement and charged with ten counts of sedition. His crime? Giving a speech against US involvement in the first world war. In his address to the court, Debs did not grovel nor equivocate. He stood proudly in defiance of unjust laws, steadied by his “kinship with all mankind.”
Debs told the judge:
Your Honor, I ask no mercy and I plead for no immunity. I realize that finally the right must prevail. I never so clearly comprehended as now the great struggle between the powers of greed and exploitation on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of industrial freedom and social justice.
He was imprisoned for three years, and was denied a pardon by President Wilson in spite of his deteriorating health. Debs was banned from voting for the remainder of his life.
On June 24, 1978, a group of neo-nazis marched down the streets of Skokie Illinois, protected by police escort, and with the express goal of spewing genocidal hatred at the city’s population of holocaust survivors. Despite a years long attempt by the local government to ban the march, the United States Supreme Court ultimately decided the right to speech and assembly not only required the city to permit the march, but also entitled the Nazis to state protection from counter protests which might have interrupted or ceased their despicable attempts to intimidate an already traumatized Jewish community.
To this day, far-right activists advocating genocide from Charlottesville to Portland can expect help from state and federal police. On January 3rd, 2021, Donald Trump used the same principle established in Skokie to instruct the US military to “do anything necessary” to protect the right of his anti-democratic supporters to protest the election results — the protesters who eventually invaded the capital and attempted to attack lawmakers.
Discussion around free speech in the United States is almost always argued in the abstract. The kind of overt government suppression used against Debs (and regularly against the left) is rarely mentioned, nor is the fact that the same government is willing to protect rightist speech with lethal police forces if necessary.
It may be worthwhile to consider whether, in an ideal world, the role governments, corporations, or individuals should have in regulating or protecting speech. In that debate, regarding the abstract idea of free speech, there are a few popular positions.
“Free speech absolutists” insist that all people, businesses, and especially governments have a moral duty to never impede or infringe speech in any way. On the flip side, Germany has a slew of laws against Nazi speech, while many corporations use their status as private businesses to control speech on their platforms. Between these groups, some individuals opposed to hate speech have rallied behind the refrain “freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences” — in other words, you can say whatever you want, but don’t be surprised if you get mocked, ostracized, or punched in the teeth.
This last suggestion — that free speech is not freedom from consequences — is interesting because of how effectively it cuts through the ideals and hypotheticals. Whether or not we should give each other space to say anything and everything, the reality of human life is that certain statements will offend while others ingratiate. After all, it would be difficult to argue that ending a friendship because you were insulted constitutes a breach of free speech, and yet in that case you would be using your social power to punish another person’s speech.
Of course, most conversations about free speech center on institutional repression rather than individual action; however, even drawing a line between the individual and the institutional does little to clarify the situation.
Is it a violation of free speech, for example, to deny a speaker use of a public theater for their event? How about a private one? Can a township create “free speech zones” outside of which penalties can apply? And, perhaps most crucially, are we entitled to state protection if or when our free speech is likely to incite violent reprisal from others?
Only free speech absolutists have a simple answer to these questions — namely, that the idea of free speech demands no repression of any kind (be it social, corporate, or governmental) be undertaken against the people of a free society. If that means protecting fascists while they walk by the homes of holocaust survivors, so be it.
Because this is such a simple answer to such a complicated question, it can be persuasive. However, taken in a different light, the position of the free speech absolutist becomes much more fraught.
Rather than imagining the Nazi march from the perspective of the fascists trying to exercise their “free speech,” let’s instead try to view it from the perspective of the community they’re marching through. Imagine you are part of a Jewish household along the route of the march. Imagine that you’ve spent years organizing to prevent such a march from terrifying and re-traumatizing your family members. Imagine that the government has responded not only by insisting you allow the Nazis to march by, but the government has also provided them with an armed guard while doing so. Any attempts you make to prevent their march — or even to nonviolently protest it! — will be done in the face of lethally armed state agents. In essence, the government has cooperated with a group of Nazis to project their hateful ideology into your community, and you are both legally and physically unable to stop it.
Would the high ideal of “free speech,” enshrined by long-dead slave owners, matter to you then?
When Eugene Debs was imprisoned for his nonviolent speech, the government had no trouble separating the ideal from the practical. In their (malevolent) calculation, the abstract good of protecting Debs’ right to free speech was overshadowed by the very real threat to the war effort that Debs’ speech and organization represented.
And, in that light, the question of free speech becomes much easier to comprehend. Although we can debate the abstract concept until we’re blue in the face, when it comes to actual speeches being given by real people, the ruling classes will simply act in their best interest. When there is nothing at stake except the well-being of relatively powerless minority communities, absolute free speech prevails. But if you dare attempt the kind of speech that the ruling classes actually fear — the kind of speech that questions their authority, right to rule, or worse yet, inspires disloyalty — the ruling classes will gleefully deny you speaking venues, exclude you from cable TV, imprison you, or even assassinate you.
100 years ago it was Debs. Last year it was Chelsea Manning and BDS activists. Tomorrow it could be you. So long as the left pushes for progress, they will face censorship — regardless of the high-minded Liberal posturing around “free speech.”
Marx once wrote: “between equal rights, force decides.” In the case of free speech, as in the case of all Liberal “rights,” their existence is not really contingent on abstract morality, social constructs, nor the interventions of Gods. Rather, a right only exists if any when there is force behind it. A socialist and a nazi might, under the constitution, have equal rights to speech, but when push comes to shove, one was imprisoned while the other enjoyed an armed guard.
