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What if—and I know this is wacky—it was THE PEOPLE WHO PORTRAYED THEM AS FREE SPEECH MARTYRS, not the people who rejected that framing, who allowed them to pose as free speech martyrs?
Remember when Milo announced an appearance at Berkeley without doing the paperwork, claimed a bunch of people were coming who he hadn't even spoken to, and then claimed he was a free speech martyr when the event didn't happen? Man, I sure do.
Chait's position here is that deplatforming is a bad tactic even when it doesn't violate anyone's free speech rights, because it'll allow the person who was deplatformed to CLAIM that their free speech rights were violated.
But of course when deplatforming doesn't violate anyone's free speech rights, it is itself a speech act protected by the first amendment, and thus worthy of defense by civil liberties types.
But there's something about a Nazi that just seems to bring the amateur civil libertarians out of the woodwork, isn't there?
But this is all academic, isn't it? Because Milo went away. He was deplatformed, and he went away. Just like Richard Spencer. Deplatforming works, it turns out.
BTW, lots of people in my mentions arguing (wrongly, I think) that being deplatformed helped Milo. Nobody making that argument for Richard Spencer.
(Because it’s, you know, obviously, inarguably false.)
