Last night I saw a post calling freedom of speech a liberal idea, and that as communists we should not believe in it. Overall it got mixed responses, and personally I thought it was a little reductionist :very-smart:. But that’s besides the point. Earlier that same night, I had been thinking about how freedom of speech and censorship exists in the United States. Seeing that original post prompted me to write this down, and here we are.
Freedom of speech is enshrined in the first amendment of the US bill of rights. However, this freedom is and has never been absolute. You’ve probably heard the stereotype of not being able to yell “FIRE” in a crowded theatre, or not being able to say direct threats of violence :pit:. These exceptions are meant to protect people from dangerous speech. However, there are also mechanisms that exist to protect the State from dangerous speech, the speech that we would all like to say openly with our chests :sicko-yes:. This isn’t just in the US either, it applies to all countries to some degree.
So why do American’s specifically believe that freedom of speech is a uniquely absolute thing in America? Why do people wrongly believe that even if the material conditions are becoming worse here, at least we live in a country that guarantees our opinions? This is because while censorship exists in the US, it is often obfuscated from the State, so people do not make the connection. I’ve thought of three levels of censorship in the US, 3 societal mechanisms that allow the State to obfuscate censorship from itself, and I would like to share them. Think of this as one of those iceberg charts that goes from surface level to borderline conspiracy :pepe-silvia:.
In the first level, there is private censorship. Like everything else in the US, even the authority to censor opinion has been privatized. This is something I’m sure all of us are familiar with, given our history with R*ddit. Private companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit are freely and openly allowed to censor whoever they want, and sometimes, if necessary, they have people tell them special opinions of the state of what can and can’t be said :fedposting:. Even when these companies don’t listen to the state and work independently, they are still biased towards capitalist interests, and will privately censor leftist opinions. To the average American, this infringing of free speech is perfectly acceptable because these are private companies, and therefore perfectly falls in line with their liberal ideology :brainworms:. Unless of course they love our big wet orange boy :tromp:.
In the second level, there is something I like to call the “Screaming to the Wind” effect. Basically, it’s when you’re allowed to speak about something, but your voice is so minimized that no real action will come from it. “What freedom of speech does a homeless man have?” I say as I try to remember that one Stalin quote :stalin-approval:. In the same vein, you can have as many Trot newspapers as you could possibly read, but that still won’t change the fact that FOX News :live-tucker-reaction: is the most popular news source in the country. In this level of censorship, you don’t have to directly censor enemies of the state, you just have to dominate the space so that they get no traction. If traditional censorship removes your mouth :gamer-gulag:, this level removes everyone else’s ears.
The third level, which I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for, is traditional, direct, state censorship. This level doesn’t happen as much anymore because of the first two level, but when its needed the State pulls out the heart attack gun :gun-hubris: and gets to work. Let’s say, hypothetically :shapiro-gavel: , someone is able to get around the first two levels. They work around private censorship, and build enough of an audience that they’re no longer screaming to the wind. If the State believes them to be a legitimate threat, they will be censored in some shape or form. Their organization could be infiltrated and neutered :cpusa:, they could be sent to prison for bogus charges :debs:, or they could just be straight up assassinated :fred-hampton:. Often, it is all three, and many more I didn’t bother mentioning. This level is the most direct form of censorship, and in order to maintain its image, the State must use extensive propaganda to limit blowback when it uses it :1984:. Luckily, it has the previous two levels of the censorship iceberg to invent reality and minimize public dissent. And then a week later, everyone will have forgotten, and we move on to the next story.
So, does freedom of speech exist in the United States? I’d say no, or rather, at least not to the degree that its meaningful. Freedom of speech isn’t just something that lets you share cute doggos :swole-doge: and complain about your b*tch ex-wife. It’s something that allows you to voice dissent to the State, with the ultimate expressed goal of the overthrow of the regime. If this change is never allowed to come, just how free was your speech in the first place? Of course, if this is true, then does freedom of speech really exist anywhere?
That’s the end of my little spiel, hope you liked it. This wasn’t based on any specific theory, so all of this is probably already in a book written by someone smarter than me, but thanks for reading my forum post instead of actual theory. People like it when they can make clean, concise universal models of things, and I’m no exception, but reality’s a lot messier than political scientists want it to be, so there’s probably something somewhere I forgot about. If you’ve got anything to add, feel free to share.
To paraphrase a quote from a 20th century communist author from my country: Of course we have freedom of speech here! Everyone is free to buy the majority of the shares of the Washington Post.
When it comes to discussions on individual freedoms (like free speech), I like to remember two things:
First, any notion of individual freedom is wiped away the second you enter your workplace. So for half of a worker’s waking hours, they effectively live under a dictatorship that strips them of any freedom. And this is done without the voluntary consent of the worker unless they actually own the means of production.
Second, individual freedoms mean nothing so long as they are incapable of driving change. A homeless person can freely speak and a hungry person can freely practice their religion, but neither person can materially impact their society.
negative rights are a deception because they are enforced by a state controlled by the bourgeoisie
There is no such thing as a negative right. The implications of our biological, chemical, and physical state of being involve a wide range of requirements to be able to do just about anything.
too wasted and don’t understand it that clearly in the first place, I’ll just say “rights” from now on
I agree that there isn’t proper freedom of speech in most western countries. What I find is that most people mean “at least here we have freedom of speech” in a self-centered sort of way. What they really mean is “all of my own political views are acceptable to have in this country.” They might find private censorship and people not caring to be annoying and may even cry about freeze peach when it happens, but violations that the state makes to freedom of speech - whenever it happens - they conveniently happen to the guys who had it coming.
The American liberal, faced with this reality, tends to concede that truth is in fact drowned out by a relentless tide of spin and propaganda. Their next move is always predictable, however. It’s another lesson dutifully drilled into them in their youth: “At least we can dissent, however unpopular and ineffectual!” The reality, of course, is that such dissent is tolerated to the extent that it is unpopular.
Big-shot TV host Phil Donahue demonstrated that challenging imperial marching orders in the context of the invasion of Iraq was career suicide, when a leaked memo clearly explained he was fired in 2003 because he’d be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” [5] The fate of journalists unprotected by such wealth or celebrity is darker and sadder. Ramsey Orta, whose footage of Eric Garner pleading “I can’t breathe!” to NYPD cops choking him to death went viral, was rewarded for his impactful citizen journalism by having his family targeted by the cops, fast-tracked to prison for unrelated crimes, and fed rat poison while in there. [6] The only casualty of the spectacular “Panama Papers” leak was Daphne Caruana Galizia, the journalist who led the investigation, who was assassinated with a car-bomb near her home in Malta. [7] Then there’s the well-publicized cases of Assange, Snowden, Manning, etc. That said, I tend think to such lists are somewhat unnecessary since, ultimately, most honest people confess that they self-censor on social media for fear of consequences. (Do you?)
In other words, the status quo in the West is basically as follows: you can say whatever you want, so long as it doesn’t actually have any effect.
You’ve probably heard the stereotype of not being able to yell “FIRE” in a crowded theatre, or not being able to say direct threats of violence . These exceptions are meant to protect people from dangerous speech. However, there are also mechanisms that exist to protect the State from dangerous speech,
“Yelling ‘fire!’ in a crowded theatre.” This widely familiar turn of phrase originates from the 1919 Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States, which upheld the prosecution of two Philidelphia socialists for distributing anti-draft literature in the middle of a historically unprecedented outbreak of industrial scale ultraviolence and megadeath. It was called ‘The Great War,’ because no other war compared to the incomprehensible scale of destruction which took place. There actually was a god damn fire in that theatre. The people shouting ‘Fire!’ were doing it because of all the fucking smoke in the air.
