Anika Collier Navaroli: Free Speech is Bad

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   First, we have to admit that some speech is bad. Case in point: the role of RTLM and e.g. Georges Ruggiu in promoting the Rwandan genocide. There are also cases in which the USA has restricted expression and was plausibly justified in doing so. Case in point: restrictions on expression in Germany associated with de-Nazification after WWII.

   I don't deny that there are difficult cases, nor that restrictions on expression can sometimes--apparently--be justified.

   I'll limit myself to just one argument against Navaroli's post: perhaps the most obvious problem with her position is that the progressive left advocates restrictions on expression that are far, far too broad. It's no exaggeration--or not much of one--to say that the progressive left has argued for the suppression of virtually every position, argument and proposition with which it disagrees. Virtually any speech contrary to the sacred cows of progressivism is said to be "hate speech," "dangerous speech," racism, misogyny, homophobia, "transphobia," etc. They assert that such speech causes violence (with no proof of such claims), or, even more outlandishly, constitutes violence. It advocates shouting down opposing speech, and "punching Nazis"...where virtually anyone to the right of Mao is categorized as a Nazi. "Cancel culture" is an informal way of bullying people into silence. Other Western democracies, including even the UK and Canada, unprotected by analogs of the First Amendment, have formalized such restrictions. The progressive orthodoxy is that even stating the traditional, true, justified view that all women are female constitutes violence against those who consider themselves "transgender." It has even been suggested that certain types of research should be illegal--e.g. research into racial differences, and research that questions climate apocalypticism. There have even been suggestions that the latter should be grounds for imprisonment...

   Those who oppose sweeping, leftist restrictions on speech are, as Navaroli describes Elon Musk, free speech "absolutists." As if that were a bad thing...and as if trying to eke out some space for the free exchange of ideas is "absolutism"...

   If we were only talking about genuinely hard cases of genuinely dangerous speech, this might be an interesting discussion. But we're really talking about leftist totalitarianism vs. a fairly ordinary variety of liberalism. The contemporary left is Marcusian, when it comes right down to it. 

   And I'll go ahead and add that much of Navaroli's ire is clearly directed at Musk, and related to losing her job as professional censor at Twitter... Yes, that's an ad hominem. But not an obviously invalid one...