By David Harsanyi
Thursday, April 1, 2022
On the news of “free speech absolutist” Elon
Musk’s hostile takeover bid of Twitter, the Washington Post’s Max
Boot took
to social media, along with many others, to claim that the threat of
unregulated speech undermines “democracy”:
First of all, who is “we”? There is no grand “we” in a
pluralistic open society engaged in debate. He wants content
moderation. And maybe the inability, or refusal, to comprehend this obvious
fact is the root philosophical problem with all those who say they are
“frightened” by unmoderated political speech. If “democracy” meant small-l
liberalism, then Boot would be defending free expression, as a neutral value,
not just a principle upheld by law. But these days, “democracy” often amounts
to little more than majoritarian bullying. And “content moderation” is little
more than an effort to control political discourse.
For those like Boot, democracy’s future is always hanging
in the balance; it depends on shutting down dissent, or holding on to
unilateral one-party rule, or ensuring an ideological monopoly over major
cultural institutions. For democracy to survive, Democrats must federalize
elections, Democrats are the only ones allowed to gerrymander, and elected
Republicans must be stopped from implementing curricula in schools. For
democracy to survive, we must squash any deviation from the dominant view.
“Orwellian” is such an overused term, but what word better
sums up the “democracy” defender’s view of speech? In an unpublished
introduction to his greatest work, Animal Farm, Orwell argued that
the oppressive cultural environment that inhibits discourse is just corrosive
to freedom as state censorship. “The chief danger to freedom of thought and
speech,” he wrote, is self-censorship, not because people are “frightened of
prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion.”
The progressives who are having a tantrum over Musk’s bid
(and I’m skeptical much will change on social media, since it’s run and staffed
by the same kinds of people, no matter who owns it) aren’t primarily anxious
about the potential uptick in violent threats or doxing. They are “frightened”
of stories that undercut their power. Boot, for
instance, claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop story, obviously a
threat to the Biden family and Democrats and therefore widely censored by
private industry, was “quite possibly part of a Russian disinformation
campaign.” One Rolling Stone writer said today
that Musk “seems intent on turning the social media platform into a cesspool of
hate speech, misinformation, and abuse.” But progressives act as if
virtually all dissent from their positions is tantamount to
hate speech and misinformation. It’s a neat trick.
Boot’s comment that we need more content moderation also
reminds me of Robert Reich’s recent insane
claim that “the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and
modern-day robber baron on Earth” is unregulated speech on the Internet.
Indeed, Musk is like Putin, according to Reich, because he has “tweeted
reckless things” and is openly “contemptuous of the SEC,” if you can imagine
such horrors. Or take the incomparably preposterous Jeff Jarvis, who tweeted
today, referring to Musk’s move, “It feels like the last evening in a Berlin
nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.”
Reich and Jarvis are, of course, correct that many
authoritarians roam our digital spaces. They themselves just happen to be two
of them. Yet even their right to speech should be defended — while mocked,
debunked, ignored, and debated. Twitter allows users to curate their
experiences. Boot, who doesn’t like debating his critics, blocks me and many
others, for instance. That’s his right. The problem is he wants a way to
limit other users’ experiences as well.
Axios says that
Musk is “increasingly behaving like a movie supervillain.” An accusation you
probably won’t hear leveled at billionaire Carlos Slim, the New York
Times’ largest shareholder, or Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of
the Washington Post.
If Musk takes over Twitter, and you never know how a
hostile bid will work out, the Left’s cherished belief in the right of
privately owned social-media companies to make their own decisions regarding
speech, a position I agree with no matter who runs the company, will quickly
dissipate, as it has in every other economic sector. Those who believe it’s
okay to compel Americans to buy state-mandated insurance, who want to dictate
how corporations compensate their employees, who want to tell you what energy
you must use or what car you can drive, who want to force nuns to buy
abortifacients, are not, it goes without saying, reliable champions of property
rights.
Until now, society’s most powerful information gatekeepers have either allied themselves with progressives or been cowed into submission. Now that a single billionaire, a man whose main business is building electric cars to help mitigate climate change, has decided to enter the fray and create a platform that honors erstwhile liberal ideals about speech, democracy is again teetering on the precipice.
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