Free speech reciprocity doesn't exist, episode 5000
Two incidents from the last month make it clear that it's time to abandon our free speech illusions.
If you want to know how dangerous the right’s censorship regime has become, look no further than the case of Mahmoud Khalil — a permanent resident of the US who faces deportation for criticizing Israel. The case against him has no legal merit, but even if Khalil escapes prosecution this attack has already succeeded in two of its obvious objectives: scaring the hell out of dissidents and normalizing draconian retaliation against them. The very lawlessness of his arrest sends that message. Activists have to understand at this point that their opponents see themselves as above the law and that it will not necessarily protect them even from extreme outcomes like deportation.
That’s how dangerous the censorious right has become — but if you want to see just how petty it has become, and how ambitious in their pettyness, you have to go back a few more weeks. That’s when left Twitter veteran Allahliker posted this:
In ordinary times this post would have earned a couple thousand likes from other leftists and then disappeared into memory. Today, however, we live in an era when even the most trivial insults from the most obscure Americans can’t pass without a hundred-plus word rebuttal from the sitting Vice President of the United States.
I can imagine them doing a lot of embarrassing things, but I cannot imagine Kamala Harris, or Mike Pence, or Joe Biden, or even Dick Cheney throwing away their dignity like this for the sake of a whiny clap-back at the trolls. Predictably, Vance calling out Allahliker like this sent a horde of followers to the original tweet — and since Allahliker knew he was in for a lot of attention, he did the sensible thing and changed his display name from “Jeff Computers” to…
Changing your display name to something that will embarrass the guy trying to draw unwanted attention to you is a classic poster’s move. The only thing unusual here is that instead of doing it to a rando with a name like weeddog4ever, he did it to the Vice President of the United States. And that’s why what happened next is profoundly bizarre:
We’ll presumably never know whether or not Vance personally asked for this, but since Twitter is owned by Elon Musk — a major official in the same administration — why would it matter? The bottom line is that Trump controlled social media is censoring even the most innocuous criticism from extremely minor critics. Allahliker is a popular and well-liked figure, but he does not even have followers in the six figures, he is not verified, and he does not work for a major media outlet (though he does have a podcast). That Vance acknowledged his existence at all is crazy, right out the gate. That this ended in Allahliker getting shadowbanned is a surreal confirmation of just how radically opposed to any unwanted criticism these people are.
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Look at these two incidents together and you get a very clear picture of what we’re dealing with. The modern American right, and Trump in particular, has no actual commitment to free speech. They oppose even minor expressions of dissent and given the opportunity they will not only censor it but punish it as aggressively as possible. They will call for free speech when it is politically convenient, but with zero intention whatsoever of reciprocally extending it back to their political opponents.
The free speech deal, in other words, is dead. I doubt it ever existed in the first place, but even if it did it is clearly gone today. The right does not believe in free speech for the left — in fact, they violently oppose it. If you have some principled reason to nevertheless defend free speech for the right, knock yourself out I guess; but don’t do it because you expect them to return the favor.
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