Beauchamp: Free Speech Has Not Been “Canceled”—Noted
Ken White calls this “the problem of the preferred first speaker“. Whose is the speech that needs to be responded to with norms of respect, deference, and civility? Whose is the speech that should be cut short when it tries to exceed its time, and hooted out to make space for somebody wh would otherwise not have their voice heard? How does one move from the fringe to the center of the public sphere and of public reason? Those who cloak themselves in “civility“ and “free speech“ these days seem in many cases to be bad or thoughtless actors: people who want to hold on to places of centrality, power, and wealth of which they may well not be worthy.
But anyone who says that these issues are not hard ones is grifting you:
Zack Beauchamp: Free Speech Has Not Been “Canceled” https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/7/22/21325942/free-speech-harpers-letter-bari-weiss-andrew-sullivan: ‘Abstract appeals to “free speech” and “liberal values” obscure the fact that what’s being debated is not anyone’s right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times without fear of social backlash...
...Yet virtually everyone agrees that certain speakers—neo-Nazis, for example—do not deserve a column in the paper of record. The real debate here is [about:]... hat sorts of speakers should be excluded from major platforms? When can giving a platform to one kind of person actually make it harder for other people to speak their minds freely? And what kinds of social sanctions, like public shaming or firing, are justified responses to violations of these social norms?...
Debates over speech’s boundaries are the kinds of difficult conversations that every liberal society (maybe even every society) grapples with all the time.... Advocates can and have overreached, and should be criticized when they do. But on the whole, their work is aimed not at restricting freedom but at expanding it—making historically marginalized voices feel comfortable enough in the public square to be their authentic selves, to exist honestly and speak their own truths.
This is not a debate over the value of liberalism and free speech. Liberalism requires placing some boundaries on acceptable speech to function; there is a reason out-and-out racists like Richard Spencer weren’t asked to be signatories on the Harper’s letter. Instead, this is a debate within liberalism over who gets to define the boundaries... and where these boundaries ought to be set if American society is to follow through on its liberal promise....
I’ve seen precious few cases of academics and journalists “proudly” rejecting the value of free speech, and [Yascha] Mounk does not cite any.... The objection here is... that a silent majority of conventionally liberal journalists are being silenced by radicals. You see both of these arguments on display in Weiss’s resignation letter. “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor”...
.#noted #2020-07-30
https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/article-beauchamp-free-speech.pdf
