Censorship Grows on Ground Prepared by the “Free Speech” Right

A Kansas library under threat from conservative lawmakers serves as one of many examples of how open government censorship has grown after years of bad-faith defenses of free speech.

by Evan Urquhart

If you’ve followed US political controversies at all in the past five years you’ve been exposed to the right wing’s self-presentation as free speech absolutists. Conservatives have proclaimed an absolute right to speak at any university they please, to have social media accounts unfettered by expectations of civility, and to offend without criticism. Not only are restrictions on where offensive speech can be published a threat to freedom, we’ve been repeatedly told, but even criticisms—which one might imagine would be protected speech themselves—are out of bounds.

In a world that had silver linings to its clouds there might be a little light in all this performative valorizing of the ideals of free expression. We would expect, at least, that speech from marginalized groups would be defended by conservatives merely to avoid the appearance of gross hypocrisy if nothing else. But we don’t live in a world like that. We live in hell.

Government bans on LGBTQ books in libraries, government bans on mentioning transgender people or same-sex parents in schools, even proposed government bans on family friendly drag shows have arisen in the wake of the conservative declaration that free speech absolutism was a bedrock principle. This is not a coincidence. The insistence that free speech meant the freedom to offend and that only conservative speech was legitimate was a tactic from the far right which has now, inevitably, born fruit. The “brand” of free speech has become synonymous with racists, slurs, transphobia, and the right to offend, while the right to criticize such speech has been eroded by an insistence that speech from the left isn’t really speech at all.

Banning books that conservatives don’t like is a natural outgrowth of a definition of free speech that presents conservatives as oppressed by the existence of people with whom they disagree. In the most extreme version of this thinking, only once trans people are banned can the right be free of having to think about us, see us, or be criticized for their bigotry towards us. It’s a rigged game, and the mainstream media played it to lose. As a result “speech” now means offensive speech, and “freedom” means the freedom of conservatives to oppress marginalized groups. So, congratulations, handwringers. You did it! You ushered in a new era of freedom from consequences for bigots of all strips. I hope you’re very proud.