Thread by @glukianoff

I’m happy to be in @Reason debating with my good friend @Popehat on #cancelculture. I argue that “free speech culture” is MORE important than the First Amendment law. 1/33

reason.com/2020/08/04/wha…

Free speech culture gave birth to the First Amendment in the 18th century, kept free speech alive through the 19th, & reinvigorated it in the 20th, as modern First Amendment case law was born. 2/33

Judge Learned Hand: "I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws & upon courts… Liberty lies in the hearts of men & women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it." 3/33
thefire.org/first-amendmen…

Free speech culture is perhaps best typified by common idioms like “to each his own,” “everyone’s entitled to his own opinion,” & “different strokes for different folks.” 4/33

Each of those idioms is enshrined in First Amendment law. Take "Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much," from West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette or "one man's vulgarity is another's lyric" from Cohen v. California 5/33
thefire.org/first-amendmen…

Free speech culture started to erode at colleges & universities in the 1980s, when “repressive tolerance” started to gain popularity, i.e. the idea that protection of minority speech & opinion is not enough, hateful speech must be censored by authorities. 6/33

Lawyers & judges educated before the rise of “repressive tolerance” often zealously protect free speech, but we kid ourselves to believe legal freedoms will survive if our free speech culture is undermined by the institutions that educate future leaders, lawyers, & judges. 7/33

The idea of #freespeech culture will always be frustrating to lawyers because it doesn't have the specificity of law. Of course, free speech law is more specific than free speech culture; law is about rules, while culture is about norms. 8/33

While some think the law is barely influenced by culture, take for one example gay marriage? It only became legal after broad cultural acceptance — an unimagined development 50 years ago. 9/33

So what does free speech culture look like? A high tolerance for difference; a general presumption that, for most of us, our personal opinions don't matter all that much for our jobs: Those with "terrible" opinions can still be amazing lawyers, artists, scientists. 10/33

The idea that “bad” people can be beneficial to society, & “good” people might be useless, is something that seems heretical in the context of #cancelculture, which deems nasty things said in tweets 10 years ago relevant. 11/33

Cancel culture is unchecked instinct. Free speech must be learned. Cancel culture comes from our natural instinct to silence dissent. The desire for compliance & conformity is reflected in most of human history. It's deeply ingrained in all of us. 12/33

We did not have to learn to censor others, we had to learn to be tolerant of nonconformity. We had to learn not to burn the heretic. #Cancelculture is a useful term for delineating the social media era expression of the ancient desire for conformity. 13/33

Pervasive social media means that things that might have previously been ignored––angry letters sent to The New York Times––are now potentially successful efforts to mobilize a sufficient number of people to ruin lives. 14/33

Early attempts to describe the new phenomena are instructive, including my own short book Freedom From Speech (2014), the documentary @CanWeTakeaJoke? (2015), & @jonronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed (2015). 15/33 amzn.to/32XoDW3

So how would I define cancel culture? Broadly & tentatively, of course. How about: 16/33

"Cancel culture" is a term to refer to a relatively recent uptick in ideological efforts to get individuals fired or cast out of acceptable society for non-conforming speech that would have once might’ve been considered trivial, private, or unrelated to someone's job. 17/33

Cancel culture is tightly related to the rise in social media which allows for unparalleled group policing of norms & the comparative ease of creating outrage mobs.

It is the progeny of campus callout culture that @JonHaidt & I explore in Coddling. 18/33

amzn.to/3jCMLU9

Some characteristics of campus “callout culture” looks similar to cancel culture, including: 1) conflation of expressions of opinion with physical violence, 2) use of ad hominem rhetorical tactics to delegitimize the person & soften or ignore the substance of the argument 19/33

3) the elimination of concern for the intent of targeted speech, relying solely on its claimed effect, 4) a high reliance on guilt by association & theories of "moral pollution" (a concept well explained by my colleague @PamelaParesky) 20/33
quillette.com/2018/10/14/mor…

5) appeals to authority to punish or remove the targeted speaker (also known as moral dependency).

None of these criteria are required to be part of cancel culture, but some or all of these characteristics often are. 21/33

Cancel culture often utilizes speech that is already unprotected under First Amendment law including threats of bodily harm & harassment. In other cases, cancel culture demands behavior from others that would be unconstitutional or unlawful. 22/33

For example, if a public university were to act on demands that a professor be fired for constitutionally protect speech, it would violate the law, plain & simple. 23/33

thefire.org/lecturers-anti…

The forces of conformity are very strong in humans, & we've given them superpowers in recent days. It must be opposed. 24/33

https://twitter.com/glukianoff/status/1276506207352750081

Diversity of opinion, the right to individual conscience, the power of thought experimentation & devil's advocacy are important for a free & innovative society. 25/33

What does a culture look like that has a strong free speech culture, but not favorable law? France in the 18th century is a good example. It was one of the greatest philosophical periods in human history. 26/33

It featured thinkers like Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Montesquieu, & Émilie du Châtelet, as well as salons, like those of Baron d'Holbach, attended by thinkers like David Hume, Adam Smith, & Benjamin Franklin. 27/33

Sometimes these thinkers had to flee France to avoid arrest. And they were arrested, but the cultural norm of open discussion was so strong they kept writing, innovating, and challenging norms. 28/33

(For more, read A Wicked Company by Phillipp Blom!)
amzn.to/2ZYLMWu

What does a country look like that has no free speech culture, but good free speech law? Consider the following guarantees of free speech, from other countries' constitutions:

"Everyone shall be guaranteed freedom of thought & speech…" 29/33

"Citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, the press, assembly, demonstration & association."

"Everyone has the right to express & disseminate his/her thoughts & opinions by speech, in writing or in pictures or through other media, individually or collectively." 30/33

Each of these sounds similar to our own First Amendment's speech promise. & if you want to know how they are working out, you can visit Russia, North Korea, & Turkey, respectively.

(Follow @sarahemclaugh to learn more about how bad things can be in those countries.) 31/33

Free speech is even under threat in the nominally "free world," including in Spain, Britain, & France, where people have been imprisoned for rap lyrics saying the wrong thing, reading the wrong thing, or having the wrong reaction in a Facebook post. 32/33
economist.com/open-future/20…

That's where we could be headed if we don't remember that free speech culture is more important than free speech law. A free speech culture can exist without protective law, but not the other way around—at least not for very long. 33/33

EPILOGUE: I would like to thank @AdGo and @RynoWeiss for their help putting all this together, and my good friend @Popehat for his thoughtful counterpoints.