Government

'Free Speech' Means Stifling Protestors: DOJ Leadership Reveals True Colors

The DOJ thinks free speech demands that we punish free speech.

By  
on

Only the most naïve didn’t see this coming.

When avowed white supremacist Richard Spencer, and cherry-picking pseudoscientist Charles Murray, and… whatever the hell Milo is, became obsessed with traveling the college circuit and trying to provoke protests, old guard lawyers fell into line. Free speech, after all, requires defending vile points of view — which is true — none of these guys should be stifled by government censorship.

But progressive civil libertarians couldn’t leave it at that. No, they had to carry water for these yahoos by siding with the speakers and scolding protestors for “lacking civility.” The condescension is bad enough, but that subtle aspersion about civility, leveled primarily at black and brown students responding to racially provocative speakers, is just an added cherry on top ripped from the respectability politics hornbook. Others willingly played into the hysteria that these people wanted all along by claiming to be victims of censorship when they didn’t plan their event with enough lead time.

The easiest mark in the world is someone with an absolute, bedrock principle they can’t interrogate critically.

But even if the conservative strategy kicked off slowly, sometime before Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a cloistered, invite-only event to declare his commitment to free and open speech, most of us caught on to the game. The hackers had come for the Constitution.

First came a shotgun effort to put podiums in front of reprehensible people across America and watch the progressive defenders of civil liberties do the dirty work of providing security and crowd control. If they were lucky, some reasonable dean or university president would even speak platitudes about the importance of an open airing of all ideas, doling out the imprimatur of legitimacy to a trolling stunt.

And then phase two. The meaning of “speech” would begin to twist. The invited speakers, making a living on speaking fees and shadowy contributions, were the “real” speakers. They deserved the full-throated support of any defender of free speech. The protestors, on the other hand, were an unruly mob. Bonus points if that term could be foisted upon an image of mostly minorities. At the end of the day, anyone without a podium and a microphone must embrace their role as a docile bulls**t receptacle because “protest” just isn’t protected speech anymore.

Sponsored

If that doesn’t sound plausible, consider how many headlines discuss the efforts of civil libertarians to protect the rights of students ejected from the publicity stunt events. The attention is lopsided in one direction for a reason.

Now the DOJ is coming right out and admitting it. Late last week, Jesse Panuccio, principal deputy associate attorney general, spoke at the Symposium on Free Speech and Campus Violence and Disruption at Northwestern University, explaining that colleges should be doing more to deal with and punish students who protest.

Panuccio then turned his attention to what he called the “most dangerous” and “most visible” threat to speech on campuses: the “heckler’s veto,” which he described as speech that is silenced when a college prohibits it in advance or when a speaker is shouted down. His remarks relied heavily on a Brookings Institution study that drew fire from researchers for its methodology.

Well done, aging hippies. Your sanctimonious faith in the principles underlying the counterculture gave the government cover to ban student protest.

The fact that we live in an age where people begrudgingly defend Richard Spencer getting a podium at a major state-run school because “he has a right to speak his mind” while equally begrudgingly looking the other way while Colin Kaepernick is blackballed should clue everyone in that the zeitgeist has abandoned an even-handed approach to free speech.

Sponsored

The hackers are here and they will always have the upper hand because they have nothing to lose. If they successfully port their retrograde definition of free speech into the rightfully revered space of the First Amendment, they win. If they fail and undermine any workable, fixed understanding of the First Amendment, they win too.

There may not be an easy fix for the DOJ’s mischief, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt if more people just called it out for what it is.

Top Official at Justice Dept. Says More Colleges Should Punish Hecklers [Chronicle of Higher Education]

Earlier: Law School Snowflakes Demand Safe Space Over Jeff Sessions Talk
Yale Students Demolish Dean’s Dumb Argument
This Story About Dershowitz Getting ‘Blocked’ At Berkeley Seems Way Overblown

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

Topics

, , , , , , ,