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Everyone on the Left should have seen it coming. The Right has successfully exploited the fallout from “the Great Awokening” — the risky tendency among the liberal and “progressive” left to express unbridled enthusiasm for speech policing that has led to censorship, firings, and suppression of dissent.
A very short list of social liberalism’s censorious excesses includes David Shor’s firing from Civis Analytics for tweeting a study on violent protests; Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying resigning under pressure from Evergreen State College after questioning the race-based “Day of Absence,” which urged white students and faculty to stay off campus; and an Ontario school library removing all books, in a fit of confusion, published prior to 2008 as they sought to meet the objectives of a policy aiming for “inclusivity.”
Having primed the inevitable backlash, the liberal left now finds the Right playing the exact same games. For those of us on the Left who oppose undermining free speech, this twist is particularly galling — not only because the instance of turn-about-is-fair-play was predictable, but because the sanctimony alienated swaths of people from the center-left. Worse, by making deplatforming, shadowbanning, canceling, and speech policing central to the new progressivism, the liberal left has effectively handed the Right a license to do the same at the same moment that it seizes political momentum by railing against censorship.
But, of course, the Right — long comfortable with censorship when it serves its interests — will always relish the cudgel of speech repression, no matter how hypocritical that may seem after its years decrying similar behavior. Apart from the libertarian right, twentieth-century conservatism was marked by repeated attempts to suppress dissent, from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) targeting suspected communists to the banning of controversial books and films on moral or religious grounds to the crackdowns on antiwar activists during Vietnam War and, later, after 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. Recent incidents, then, of heavy-handed censorship are less a departure from principle than a return to form.
The Right cannot be trusted as a guarantor of free speech or the broader freedoms — conscience, participation, even mobility — that underpin it. The arrest and jailing of Canadian writer, activist, and occasional Jacobin contributor, Yves Engler in Montreal, charged with harassment and obstruction after social media posts criticizing a woman the Montreal Gazette describes as “an outspoken advocate for Israel and Jewish issues,” makes this abundantly clear — whatever one thinks of his claims.
Engler has faced a barrage of criticism and attacks from the Right for calling the woman a “genocide supporter” and a “fascist,” among other things. While critiques of Engler and his claims are fair game, many of the same people also supported his arrest and imprisonment — despite the Right’s newfound, purported commitment to free expression and debate. Their justification? That Engler’s speech veered into the realm of criminal harassment, as alleged by prosecutors. Engler denies these claims, noting that he’s never met the complainant, “Nor have I messaged or emailed her. Nor have I threatened her. I don’t even follow her on X,” he said. For his supposed trespass, Engler spent five days behind bars.
Set aside the fact that, like anyone else, Engler could face civil defamation proceedings if someone believed he had slandered them. Set aside that social media users can block others. Set aside that platforms have their own remedies, such as bans or post removals. The issue here is the criminalization of criticism — of speech, however stark, however bold, however jarring — and the state’s efforts to lower the bar in what warrants arrest, detention, and prosecution. Anyone who cares about free speech ought to be concerned about what Engler’s case reveals about these rights in Canada, and by the Right’s inconsistency in defending them.
Canada isn’t alone in this regard. In the United States, president Donald Trump exemplifies the contradiction between the Right’s supposed defense of free speech and expression and its willingness to punish speech it dislikes. Trump has threatened to suspend federal funding to colleges for allowing what he deems “illegal” protests — a calculated attempt to preemptively restrict speech and discourage its exercise. The abuse of power should concern anyone who values free speech. And that, ultimately, is what connects Trump’s threats to Engler’s case: power.
The ability to define acceptable speech — and, by extension, to determine the boundaries of public debate and criticism — is a tremendous prerogative. It shapes not just what can be said, but what is politically possible. Free speech maximalists argue that the bar for criminalizing speech should be set extremely high, if it exists at all. The state alone has the legal right to imprison people for their words, to bar them for speaking — and so, if fundamental democratic rights are to mean anything, it must err on the side of liberty. Otherwise, the public sphere risks infection by a climate of fear, devoid of real and meaningful dissent.
In the tradition of free speech defenders such as John Stuart Mill, the value of maximal speech rights lies in a public good shared by both speaker and listener. The speaker has a right to express themselves — a good in itself— while the listener benefits either by reconsidering their views and moving closer to what they see as truth or by reaffirming their prior beliefs with greater conviction. This ongoing process of debate and reflection helps determine how we collectively choose to live together — or apart.
Harassment should be discouraged, and aggravated harassment — where speech becomes a direct threat to safety — ought to be prohibited as it chills expression rather than enabling it. This is similar to the logic of the heckler’s veto: when speech is used to silence others and drive them from the public sphere, it violates the very purpose of free speech protections. But lowering the threshold for what qualifies as harassment, as prosecutors threaten to do in Engler’s case and as Trump threatens in the United States, undermines speech rights rather than protecting them.
Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the US Constitution both enshrine strong free speech protections — at least in theory. But just as important are the political and cultural commitments to free speech that underwrite and preserve these protections. These commitments seem to be crumbling in real time, even as political factions eagerly wield the state against their opponents while demanding exemptions for themselves.
A broad, shared defense of speech rights across the political spectrum would serve everyone far better than this selective weaponization of censorship. Engler’s case should serve as a warning: when the state is empowered to criminalize speech, it rarely stops where its supporters expect — and the consequences can be far-reaching.
Great Job David Moscrop & the Team @ Jacobin Source link for sharing this story.
