The censor-morons are loose, and they’re attacking the small targets so their totalitarian masters can expend their energy on big ones like the internet. – “The Return of the Censor”
Censorship, once condemned by all ethical people, has now become almost universally popular. From the most totalitarian of governments down to the youngest of adults, it seems everybody without a functional moral compass (which is to say, the great majority) wants to impose their ideas of “right” thinking and “correct” speech on everyone else. China, of course, is leading the way, with a new Maoist-type campaign to purge schools and libraries of books deemed insufficiently pure, but the West isn’t far behind. In the UK, cops are knocking on doors to intimidate people who made statements online that the cops didn’t like, and early this month a woman in Melbourne was actually arrested for posting on Facebook about a protest against totalitarian “lockdown” orders imposed by the Victorian government. In the US, the pandemic is only one of many popular excuses for censorship; others include “hate speech”, criticizing the police, and (for social media platforms) either engaging in censorship on their own or not censoring often enough for the tastes of censors. I know that last is confusing, so let me state it a different way: Some politicians and other control freaks want to censor Facebook, Twitter, et al for engaging in censorship themselves, while others want to censor the same entities for not censoring enough. Yes, it’s complete lunacy, and it isn’t limited to the internet; culture warriors in academia, Hollywood, and even corporate America are firing,expelling, or otherwise ostracizing people for engaging in wrongthink, or even for failing to chant approved party slogans with sufficient enthusiasm.
When I was a librarian, Banned Books Week was little more than an academic exercise; censorship was an intermittent and generally impotent threat proceeding from small numbers of narrow-minded busybodies, which was easily defeated by librarians and other guardians of our shared cultural heritage. But that was a generation ago, and would-be censors have become numerous, aggressive, well-organized and (most concerningly) popular. Few of those under 30 even understand what free speech is or why it’s important, and the majority or those over that age imagine all sorts of exceptions that they believe should be reasons to violently suppress speech, ranging from “it hurt my feelings”, to “it was said or written by a dead person who did things considered normal then, but which are now mortal sins”, to “it contains ‘bad’ words”, to the ever-popular “But SEX!” As I wrote last year, the censor-morons (a term coined by D.H. Lawrence, one of many writers now considered “problematic”) are loose; furthermore, they are multiplying like bacteria and have already infested all the centers of power. For now, the courts are mostly still defending the rights of those with enough money, resources, and patience to fight “cancellation” through official channels. But if you will take the time to read all of my essays for this occasion starting in 2012, and working your way up a year at a time to the present, I think you’ll see a very frightening trend. We are watching the advent of a new dark age, and in such times no light is entirely safe from being snuffed out by zealots, speech-cops and bureaucrats whose ideal model for human society is the anthill.
As you know, The Bill of Rights was not written in a random order. When a person was were born tracks nicely with it’s destruction.
For those like me raised in the 80’s and 90’s, the 5th through 10th amendments breathed their last gasps under war on drugs and drunk driving. I came of age in the 00’s to see the 2nd, 3rd and 4th amendments damaged beyond repair during the war on terror. Now I have a front row seat to the 1st amendment going down hard in the war on sex by what may be the softest generation of American’s we have ever produced. We have always had an authoritarian illiberal streak in society, but there are no longer any guardians at the gate to stop them as we become an open police state.
Anyone who reads political theorists and historians like Polybius and Thucydides knew this was coming. Minority protections have a short shelf life in a democracy. But I was a coward. I knew the Bill of Rights was on it’s way out, but hoped to live long enough that it’s loss would not affect me. I assumed I would at least outlive the loss of the 1st amendment. I was wrong.
For those under 30 or 40, it’s impossible to understand how sacred the 1st amendment was to us, especially during the cold war. My teachers (and librarians) who are long gone warned me the only thing separating the US from what we believed was wrong with Soviet Union was the Bill of Rights. We now have as few rights at they do and beat them on incarceration (a measure of intolerance) by 100 miles.
I’m glad my teachers did not live to see what is happening to the 1st amendment. I’m saddened at how this country has become an insult to their memory.
Well said, and like you, I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, but in the middle of the former. (1985, to be exact.) I used to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but realized that we weren’t going to win around ’06-’07. I also used to support the US-Mexico border wall, only to find out that the cost of building it will exceed the benefits, and said money will be coming from American taxpayers. (This isn’t factoring in maintenance costs and illegal immigration going into reverse during Obama’s second term.)
I grew up in the ’70s, love. I was at university in the mid-’80s and teaching by the late ’80s. I was definitely all growed up by 1991, when I was working as a librarian and bought my first house.
It appears we made some of the same mistakes (support for the war in Afghanistan and in my case endless war generally).
It would be hubris to imagine our civil rights were lost during my lifetime. Maggie and I are roughly the same age and I’m no Constitutional expert, but her observation about the first amendment (which I believe is accurate) began in earnest with an attack on the Commerce Clause by progressives over 100 years ago. It simply took them this long to work their way up to evicerating free speech. Where people once looked at speech and asked “how is that illegal?” poeple increasingly look at speech (particularly online and when it comes to sex) and instead ask “how is that legal?”
Still, I have lived long enough to see the attacks on the 2nd through 6th amendment really accelerate under the war on drugs and war on terror. The attack on the first amendment kicked into high gear over the past 10 during the war on sex.
Politicians now routinely ignore the first amendment with little push back from the public and open applause from a media that once considered itself guardians of free speech.
Come to find out, it was only the part about “the press” and their press specifically they wanted protected as the attacks on Julian Assange and Section 230 confirm.
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Luckily technology has provided antidotes to the censors which they’ll have a very hard time overcoming. Yes, the mainstream apps, Facebook, Twitter, etc. heavily censor, but rivals have popped up to buck the trend. And if it comes down to it, anyone can host his own server to spread his ideas. If free speech is actually outlawed, it will become harder, but I don’t think the government can squelch expression no matter how hard it tries. If all else fails, one can print words on paper and leave a stack to be found by others, White Rose Society style.
Also I think there’s a long-overdue backlash coming against the ‘woke” types who are most heavily pushing censorship.
By that time, far more than free speech in the USA will be long gone, and considerably more courage would be necessary than is needed today. Yet so few have the courage to speak out today.
Sophie Scholl and other members of the White Rose were executed, convicted of treason by the infamous judge Roland Freisler, before most who are reading this blog were born.
By that time, far more than free speech in the USA will be long gone, and considerably more courage would be necessary than is needed today. Yet so few have the courage to speak out today.”
We have given the least evolved members of our government incomprehensible weapons of cruelty that make the death penalty almost superflous due to their ability to drive their enemies to suicide without oversight and without consequence beyond the occasional puff peace celebrating them as heroes for carrying out these extra-judicial executions. Under such conditions, the bravery you rightly cite is often in short supply.
“Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”
–Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, 1978 Speech at Harvard.
Fighting censorship is always worthwhile. Censorship is always a very bad sign. It is an accelerator of the decline and an impediment to recovery. And it means some always present unsavory characters that desire nothing more than complete control over others have gotten way too much power.