WHY I SIGNED THE PRO-FREE SPEECH LETTER ON SUBSTACK
This is About Democracy
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Recently, there was an attack piece about Substack written in The Atlantic. The claim was that there are supposedly “Nazis” all over the platform. This is pushing some on the Left on Substack to make calls for removing certain “problematic” voices, aka writers who identify as Nazis, from the platform.
This, in turn, allowed many of us—including some very prominent writers, such as Ted Gioia, Glenn Loury, Freddie DeBoer, Ben Dreyfus, Bridget Phetasy, Matthew Taibbi, Richard Dawkins, and others—the opportunity to sign a pro-free speech letter written by Elle Griffin.
Many on the Left have claimed over the past half decade or so that free speech only affects public institutions, as far as the first amendment is concerned. Private companies, they say, have the right to do whatever they want on their platform. This is technically true, of course. But at the end of the day is there really any meaningful difference between a lack of true public free speech and a private company creating a censorious environment?
Not really.
Look at X—formerly Twitter—and Facebook the past five years. We’ve seen an incredible amount of censoriousness, from shadow-banning to full on removal and deplatforming, etc. It seems to be the case that 99% of the time the people being censored and removed are on the political Right. There has been a clear and obvious bias. (Read my piece here on book banning coming from both political sides.)
The problems here are easy to identify. First off: Who gets to decide what is “OK” and “moral” and “worthy” versus the opposite? Certainly not “the people.” It’s these private corporations who basically own some version of the [digital] town square. And we know where they lie politically; their bias is clear. Add to that the self-censorship of many social media users in order to avoid being next on the chopping block, and the continual cancelling of authors who the Left doesn’t like, and you’ve got a truly major problem. (And of course you’ve also got that idiot in Florida banning books in libraries. Equally stupid.)
In addition you’ve got this ethical and moral quagmire: There is a lot of overt hypocrisy. Many on the Left pushed for people making “untrue” Covid claims (and there was a lot of conspiracy theory and propaganda going around) to be banned and removed from social media channels in 2020, 2021, 2022. But when it turned out that many of the claims on the Left were proved untrue and unfounded…suddenly we heard crickets.
We see this in virtually every facet of society now. Look no further than the terrible and complex Israel/Palestine conflict raging right now. We’re seeing an unprecedented amount of [primarily young/Woke/progressive] antisemitism. Lefties chanting “gas the Jews,” and making sick, contradictory statements about women, rape, terrorism and Hamas, etc. And yet these racist, antisemitic confused voices are somehow allowed to flourish.
And yet I support these voices’ right to be heard!
The Atlantic article claims there are an abundance of Nazis on the platform. I’ve encountered maybe two, white-power imbeciles who were probably dropped on their heads a lot as kids. But frankly, the only “neo-Nazi-like” voices I hear and writing I see on Substack lately are from the radical progressive Left. The antisemitism from many on this side has been absolutely despicable.
But again: I support their right to free speech.
The only way for a free and open Democratic society to succeed is for ALL voices to be allowed and heard. Do I like Nazis? No. Of course not. Nazis—rare as they are—are the scourge of the country. Here’s a piece I wrote recently about my anti-Nazi anti-hate activist client whose memoir, White American Youth, I edited. I also edited his second book, Breaking Hate, which for a while became an MSNBC TV series. I am proud of my client’s work. He actively pulls people out of hate groups, particularly neo-Nazi white-power groups.
But I support Nazis’ right to speak.
Back in the day, when the ACLU was actually unbiased and genuinely supported free speech, they defended Nazis’ right to march in Skokie, Illinois in the mid-1970s, a town full of Holocaust survivors. Now the ACLU has fallen prey—like so many other formerly-honest institutions—to the Woke fringe mob ideology and can no longer be trusted. Enter the new ACLU: FIRE: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. They, thankfully, have picked up where the ACLU fell off.
Whether it’s the government, social media or any other institution or public/private organization, you have to be honest, neutral and consistent. You can’t pick and choose who gets a voice and who doesn’t. Unless, of course, someone is using “fighting words” and/or directly calling for violence against a certain group. You can’t ever fully eradicate the ideas you or your tribe/group don’t like. All you’ll do is push those people/groups underground, where they’ll get stronger and only grow. Worse, they won’t be speaking to people they disagree with anymore, and they won’t have their ideas challenged publicly in the open market. They’ll only be talking to themselves, amongst each other, which will and always has fanned the flames of bigotry, not quelled them.
Everyone gets and deserves a voice in America. I don’t care who you are. If someone says something atrocious: Write something against it, dismantling the idea or ideology. The wise—and Democratic—thing to do is to dialogue and argue (sometimes heatedly), not to silence the voices you don’t like. If you do this, it’s a guarantee that one day the stifling of speech will come to your own doorstep.
Substack already has a great model: Each individual writer on the platform can block, mute, report, etc. That’s the best, most Democratic way to handle it. We shouldn’t, like some are calling for, have Substack itself moderate which voices get to be heard and which don’t. Doing so has a distinctly authoritarian flare.
I also think, on a simpler, more capitalistic level, many media companies from The New York Times to The Atlantic to Vox and many more, are angry about the rise of Substack because, let’s face it, the new platform is eating into their dwindling subscriber base/readership. People are sick of being told what to think. The masses more and more seek a platform where free speech thrives and we can all write exactly what we want and communicate directly with readers. The days of rich, white, highly educated but also highly indoctrinated progressives or bitter conservatives are slowly, thankfully, ending.
Trump’s MAGA tag was stupid, if only because Trump cares only about one thing: Trump. He doesn’t give much of a shit about America one way or another.
I myself identify as a center-Left Democrat, but I have all kinds of nuanced, complex views on many things which cross the political divides. But for context: I voted for Obama twice, and for Biden, and am definitely anti-Trump. That said: Free Speech isn’t actually about politics. It’s about a Democratic principle. Either you believe in everyone’s right to express their views, or you don’t. This isn’t a Left/Right binary. It’s a Democratic principle all open and free societies must uphold.
I prefer Mr. AWGA: MAKE READING and WRITING GREAT AGAIN.
(And, preferably, critical thinking!)
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Michael Mohr