On Cancel Culture and the Implosion of The Civic Religion of Freedom of Speech

Debates about free speech on American campuses today suggest that the rival concepts of isegoria and parrhesia are alive and well. When student protesters claim that they are silencing certain voices—via no-platforming, social pressure, or outright censorship—in the name of free speech itself, it may be tempting to dismiss them as insincere, or at best confused. As I witnessed at an event at Kenyon College in September, when confronted with such arguments the response from gray-bearded free-speech fundamentalists like myself is to continue to preach to the converted about the First Amendment, but with an undercurrent of solidaristic despair about “kids these days” and their failure to understand the fundamentals of liberal democracy.

No wonder the “kids” are unpersuaded. While trigger warnings, safe spaces, and no-platforming grab headlines, poll after poll suggests that a more subtle, shift in mores is afoot. To a generation convinced that hateful speech is itself a form of violence or “silencing,” pleading the First Amendment is to miss the point. Most of these students do not see themselves as standing against free speech at all. What they care about is the equal right to speech, and equal access to a public forum in which the historically marginalized and excluded can be heard and count equally with the privileged. This is a claim to isegoria, and once one recognizes it as such, much else becomes clear—including the contrasting appeal to parrhesia by their opponents, who sometimes seem determined to reduce “free speech” to a license to offend.--Teresa Bejan "The Two Clashing Meanings of 'Free Speech" (2017) The Atlantic,

The present critics and defenders of cancel culture are the children of a relatively recent civic religion that valorized an expansive conception of freedom of speech under the first amendment Stateside. A century ago (e.g., Timlan Act of 1907), the US banned all monetary campaign contributions. About half a century ago, campaign contributions were normalized, and in a string of legislation and judicial rulings, corporations gained the right of pretty much unlimited political spending under the first amendment. Until about thirty years ago, using Texas vs Johnson (1989) as baseline, flag burning (or desecrating) was illegal in nearly all US states. Until about half a century ago, using Miller vs California (1973) as a landmark, much pornography was de facto illegal. 

One of the gravest political right under a regime devoted to liberty, to speak against war, was denied by the Espionage Act of 1917, and was upheld by the Supreme Court after the war had finished. (The ruling -- applying a "clear and present danger" doctrine to an argument against the use of force! -- was penned by Oliver Wendell Holmes.) Thankfully it was repealed. For every era in which the pentagon papers can be published there are many more where each and every war brings a new curtailment of speech.

Eighty years ago Bertrand Russell never got to teach at CUNY; he was prevented from doing so by a court, in part, because he was taken to hold immoral views regarding sexuality. This is a good reminder that the relatively robust, but at times quite fragile, defense of academic freedom in the US itself is a relatively recent phenomenon dating back to that era, in part a consequence of changing views promoted by Dewey as a response to this case. 

Undoubtedly the expansive understanding of the first amendment was a consequence of the experience of the McCarthy era, increasing religious diversity, the needs of modern capitalism with proliferating technologies and platforms, and a better educated and increasingly heterogeneous population. Feel free to offer other intellectual and sociological explanations.

I believe the expansive understanding of the first amendment only developed in the 1960s. Since it became a kind of civic religion taught in schools and presumably sincerely believed and promoted by its own high priests (lawyers, judges, professors, etc.), including crucially businesses. It provides a social glue in a country that has a dynamic form of capitalism and many latent political conflicts. This civic religion also become, itself, a steady source of profit and influence.

As a depressing aside, arguably the Supreme Court started to develop a more expansive conception of freedom of speech in 1969 not to protect civil rights protestors, or Vietnam protestors, but when it allowed that the Klan's advocacy of violence was protected speech (under the first amendment) because the speech did not call for “imminent lawless action” (Brandenburg v. Ohio.; see also Virginia v. Black (2003)) Perhaps, it is smart politics to protect everybody's rights by protecting the racists first.

But despite this expansive understanding of freedom of speech, there is negligible freedom of speech in the workplace to this day. And, in fact, even during the golden age of expansive freedom of speech, there was considerable restraint and self-censorship not to mention regulated speech in the mass media. One reason to watch Public-access television channels on cable back in the day (1980s), before the rise of the internet, was that it was one of the few places one could encounter genuine viewpoint diversity in the mass media (in addition to assorted goofballs, etc.). Bernie Sanders' recent political campaign renewed interest in that era.

Unfortunately, the cumulative effect of the golden age of freedom of speech is not only a marvelous diversity of speech, but also the empowerment of corporate, rent-seeking interests; and with the growth of the internet menacing racists/supremacists and would-be-fascists have found ways to circumvent all the self-censorship and gate-keeping of the mass media. After the implosion of the local newspaper/radio/tv monopolies, the racists and fascists, and the anger they provoke (cf. the rise of Breitbart, the dark web) are inevitably copied by the rest of corporate media. Feeding on anger is the prevailing business model.

With the rise of President Trump, it is no surprise that the myths that support the expansive free speech civic religion receive new scrutiny and in some cases have become perceived to be rank superstition. It is not unusual to hear advocates of freedom of speech claim that only exposure and argument can defeat evil ideas--no empirical evidence is ever offered for that. There is a persistent tendency among free speech defenders to minimize or belittle the whole range of harms that come from spreading of incitement, political propaganda, as well as microaggression, political gaslighting, testimonial injustice, etc. 

It is no surprise at all that people of good will come to think that (a) if they are not protected by freedom of speech in the workplace, and (b) if those with concentrated economic power and those with malicious intent are protected to spread their lies and hatred, then freedom of speech merely stacks the decks against all kinds of other important political ends. It is no surprise at all that the internet is being used as a means to mobilize and generate countervailing powers that restrict the range of speech (from many political ends).

Contemporary  freedom of speech fundamentalists may well lament most of the restrictions I have mentioned, and perhaps even the outcomes that have strengthened corporations and would-be-fascists. But that they personally welcome caustic counter-speech from all quarters makes them folk of high integrity. It does not address the crumbling of the ramshackle edifice that is today's liberalism.

That we're in the realm of a decaying civic religion is clear from the fact that those among the high priests of our intellectual elite that defend it can't recognize the emptiness of their own incantations and their refusal to engage with their critics with minimal good faith: they claim sincerely and without evidence that any restriction on debate is supposed to end up in harming the most vulnerable; yet no restrictions may also (and does) harm the most vulnerable.* One can hold in equally good faith, even find empirical support for, the idea that some restrictions on speech may well be the condition of possibility of reasoned debate. As Teresa Bejan, who has anticipated much of my claims here, taught me: one way to understand cancel culture is, in fact, as an imperfect mechanism for equal speech.

One may well misinterpret me as defending cancel culture (this happened to me to my surprise after a recent post) or that I somehow willfully miss all the bad effects of cancel culture (these are very real). In fact, our civic and educational institutions have an obligation to defend scholars' and artists' ability to think and speak freely and to experiment in all kinds of forms of creative lives. 

Let me close: defenders of the decaying civic religion often accuse its critics of illiberalism. And undoubtedly there are illiberal critics of freedom of speech who cheer on cancel culture. But it is not illiberal to learn from experience and to worry about the political and civil harms that follow from experiments in freedom. We have had a half-century trial in relatively expansive freedom of speech. I lament the demise of that culture's assumptions. But it is not illiberal to take stock of the effects of policy, and to wish to correct for known harms.

The great political insight of liberalism as a creed is that our destiny is uncertain and surprising. And that as our great project unfolds we emphasize different means and different ends to face the political problems of the moment. What's urgently needed is that the eloquent and creative defenders of the old civic religion set their minds to the task of helping the young devise new norms and institutions that can promote human emancipation, equality, justice, and, yes, a bit wiser freedom for the next half century. 

 

 

*As the near universal ban on child pornography in the most liberal of liberal democracies shows, no polity treats the freedom of speech as absolute and defending the most vulnerable is a justification of such bans.