Thread by @tzimmer_history

The NYT editorial board thinks “America Has a Free Speech Problem” – and presents a purely mythical idea of what “free speech” is, an a-historical tale of the country’s past, and a narrative that is detached from the current reality of the political conflict.

Some thoughts: 1/

First of all, the editorial perpetuates a misleading myth of what “free speech” is. They initially define it as the right of the people “to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.” Such a right has never existed anywhere. 2/

Deep into the piece, the editorial board acknowledges that this is actually not what “free speech” means, and that the Constitution defines it, in their words, as “freedom from government restrictions on expression.” 3/

But the editorial board simply pivots away from that acknowledgment with a strikingly nonchalant “Yet…” – choosing to frame the issue along the lines of what they say is a “popular conception” of free speech: that anyone can say whatever they want and never face consequences. 4/

But this has obviously never been the case anywhere in the world. Public speech is always regulated, there are always boundaries to what is considered acceptable and what is not. And everyone agrees that certain transgressions should be met with shaming or shunning. 5/

The problem with the “cancel culture” discourse is that it ignores and obscures the fact that there are always norms of what is and what is not acceptable as public speech, and that it has traditionally been the prerogative of elite white men to determine those boundaries. 6/

And the “cancel culture” discourse deliberately obscures the fact that the amount of pushback as well as the level of sanctions one has to expect for deviating depends on who does the deviating – with the results always being worse for traditionally marginalized groups. 7/

The next problem with the editorial is that it’s completely a-historical. It presents a narrative of decline: “something has been lost,” it says – but when, exactly, was that golden age of free speech when all Americans were free to speak their minds at all times? 8/

Unless we are talking about white Christian men only, it makes absolutely no sense to construct a version of U.S. history in which the past was characterized by free speech for all Americans, in which the very recent past has been marked by a loss of free speech. 9/

It is true that white elite men face a little more scrutiny today than in the past. This has caused quite a bit of anxiety, which is what is really animating much of the “cancel culture” moral panic. That seems to be the overriding perspective of the editorial board. 10/

Finally, the “free speech” crisis presented in this editorial is utterly detached from the reality of the current political conflict. This not only obscures the actual struggle, but privileges a reactionary political project that is all about restricting speech. 11/

In the concrete reality of American life, we are experiencing a struggle between two competing narratives about what the actual threat to civil rights and civic freedoms is: the rightwing assault on multiracial, pluralistic democracy - or illiberal leftwing cancel culture. 12/

These two narratives are not equally plausible. The evidence for a rightwing assault on democracy, an all-out campaign to roll back civil rights on the state level is overwhelming – it comes in the form of hundreds of Republican bills and actual legislation, day after day. 13/

What about leftwing “cancel culture” though? I implore you to watch this fantastic video by @RottenInDenmark, a thorough debunking of the idea of widespread “cancellations,” based on an actual assessment of the available empirical evidence: 14/

Crucially, the editorial itself is proof of this, uhm, imbalance of empirical evidence – it cites the state-level Republican assault and never comes up with anything from the “Left” that would be remotely equivalent. But that has no influence on how the problem is framed. 15/

In fact, the editorial actively obscures the threat from the Right, assuring us that, unlike in Russia, actual government censorship is “not the kind of threat to freedom of expression that Americans face.” Then what are all these state-level GOP education bills about? 16/

The education sector does come up – in what is a really stunning inversion of the political reality. First, an elderly man from San Antonio is cited who is “alarmed by scenes of parents being silenced at school board meetings” – he means *conservative* parents. 17/

Then, an elderly woman is given room to describe her dismay at “woke” college kids “doing us so much harm” on the campus. Ah yes, as Republicans are literally installing an authoritarian white nationalist education system, these are the voices that need to be elevated… 18/

In the specific context of America’s current political and cultural conflict, emphasizing the “cancel culture” narrative in this way has a clear political valence and purpose: to delegitimize the claims of traditionally marginalized groups for equal rights and respect. 19/

So, why this editorial? As I outlined in the thread below, the “cancel culture” narrative not only benefits from the reactionary centrist ideological inclinations of white elites, but also from mainstream journalism’s eternal quest for “neutrality” and “balanced” coverage: 20/

Unfortunately, this editorial matters. People don’t shrug this off as “Just one editorial” – they read it as “the NYT says…” And with that, the idea that America is facing a free speech crisis, that cancel culture is real, and that *both sides* are at fault becomes dogma. /end

Addendum: I’ll be on @1a tomorrow at 10am to discuss my critique of the NYT editorial board’s idea that we’re experiencing a “free speech crisis” and why we need to pay attention to the reactionary political project that has co-opted the “cancel culture” discourse. @NPR