We're Not Like Them - Pump the Breaks on Doxing Bad Takes
Celebrating political violence that killed and injured innocent civilians is reprehensible - but must be tolerated in free speech culture.
The best way to respond to bad takes is to call them out for polluting public discourse while also acknowledging the speaker’s free speech right to be wrong. (The next best way is to ignore them.)
To enjoy any possibility of being right, we must tolerate the inevitability of being wrong. This is the essence of free speech culture, and is as true for ethical reasoning as it is for empirical reasoning.
The true test of our allegiance to free speech culture is not our defense of speech we agree with, but our defense of speech we find reprehensible.1
We know that cancel culture undermines free speech culture—both by punishing people for their expressions, and by cloaking free expression in a shroud of self-censorship.
Many who claim to be the targets of cancel culture are now taking up the mantle of cancellation, doxing fellow citizens for their bad takes on the failed assassination attempt against a former president and now presidential nominee which left at least one rally attendee dead and injured others. Perhaps no one has amassed more trophies in this contest than Chaya Raichik, the woman beyond
and herself a target of doxing. Many people are losing their jobs—including public sector workers whose private speech is presumably protected by the First Amendment—over bad hot takes.Don’t get me wrong—I understand the impulse. My tribalist lizard brain would like nothing more to than to see my ideological foes impaled by their own [s]words; unlike revenge, schadenfreude is best served seared and rare.
But I’ve been training my forebrain to spot vulnerabilities in free speech culture, even where I’d rather not find them, and canceling people for speech I don’t like is a glaring one. We can’t forfeit these free speech skirmishes if we want to win the principled high ground for free speech culture.
Like conservative political organizer Jessica Anderson, many have observed the distinct lack of rioting and looting in the wake of this political violence:
You have not seen anyone on the right burn down buildings, disrupt, have protests, destroy businesses. You actually see a call for unity, peace, strength, coming together to protect America, not destroy it.
We must carry this same restraint from the brick-and-mortar world into the metaphysical realm. I’ll never tire of saying that the answer to bad speech is counterspeech. The best way to respond to bad takes is to call them out for polluting public discourse while also acknowledging the speaker’s free speech right to be wrong. (The next best way is to ignore them.)
Channeling Evelyn Hall’s characterization of Voltaire, Vivek Ramaswamy articulated this vision of free speech culture in concluding his address to the Republican National Convention:
If you’re at home, and you disagree with everything I just said, our message to you is this: We will still defend to the death your right to say it, because that is who we are as Americans. We are the country where we can disagree like hell and still get together at the dinner table at the end of it.
We’re not like them. It’s more important to be for free expression than to punish violent rhetoric and other reprehensible speech. It’s time to pump the breaks on doxing bad takes.
Sarah Hartman-Caverly is an associate librarian with Penn State University Libraries at Penn State Berks. Her scholarship examines the compatibility of human and machine autonomy from the perspective of intellectual freedom.
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Note: There are narrow exceptions to First Amendment protections for freedom of speech in the US, including incitement and true threats, as outlined in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)’s Unprotected Speech Synopsis.
I agree with all of the points made here, in general, about maintaining a free speech culture even when individuals say transgressive, foolish, and ridiculous things, and even celebrate violence. Our First Amendment guarantees a very wide swath of free expression short of First Amendment violations of true threats, defamations/slander, and incitements to immediate violence.
However, I probably have a few 'bad takes' here, given that you've cited Vivek Ramaswamy, who's not my reliable guide to free speech or much of anything else, and who's only recently shown much interest in civics or politics or working with divergent perspectives--seems to be a trend with some of the technology entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley who've suddenly discovered a taste for populism. A reliable guide for me would be anyone at FIRE or someone working with civic institutions like Eboo Patel of the Interfaith Alliance. But that's just my take on Ramaswamy and my perception of his new-found interest in free speech.
Also, good to see that conservative commentator Jessica Anderson is celebrating that "the right" isn't engaging in violence of any kind in response to the assassination attempt on the former President and current Presidential candidate. I applaud that lack of violence, while noting the many conspiracy theories hatched (by both sides) immediately upon the events of last Saturday, including some prominent conservatives, especially the VP nominee of the Republican Party. Did Jessica Anderson also comment at any point about her perspective on the events of January 6, 2021, which most definitely involved political violence?
My more general concern about preserving free speech culture even in extreme circumstances and even when individuals, factions, or notable figures in the political or cultural realm use violent language is this: how to maintain free speech culture in a climate of that rhetoric and intimidation? Many believe that the former President and current Presidential candidate has had at least some part creating that climate, which has had serious detriments in preserving civil discourse and making institutions viable?
Journalist Cathy Young presents a telling inventory of the violent language used by that prominent figure over the past eight years. I'd think this matters in the overall climate for free speech and civil discourse. And not for a second does it justify what happened last Saturday, but it surely presents a larger context for understanding the challenges for maintaining free expression in the current political climate.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-trump-violent-rhetoric-catalogue
FIRE sponsored a podcast on Political Violence and Speech that is worth listening to, featuring Nadine Strossen, Jacob Mchangama, and Flemming Rose. I highly recommend it.
https://www.thefire.org/news/podcasts/so-speak-free-speech-podcast/political-violence-and-speech