You Can’t Fight Fascism With Fascism, Liberals

Liberals must not let fear turn into censorship

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

~George Orwell

As a free speech advocate and a progressive, I’m constantly having conversations with people on the left about what speech must be protected. Unfortunately, there is a lot of confusion about what the First Amendment covers and what free speech itself means. They’re not the same thing. Furthermore, and more distressingly, I’m constantly having to convince liberals that free speech is worth protecting.

Lately, these conversations often revolve around Trump and his supporters. Liberals are so concerned about the vileness coming from the White House that they want to do anything they can to decimate this ideology. When I take to Twitter to defend the speech rights of people I hate, like Milo Yiannopoulos or Ann Coulter, my liberal followers attack me in droves. They claim I’m encouraging hate speech or that I’m equivalent to a person who defended the rights of brownshirts during the rise of the Nazis. Seriously.

I am no fan of hate speech, but it must be protected. Private citizens like Milo and Coulter should be allowed to say things that I don’t like hearing, and if group of college students invites them to a public university and those speakers agree to the university’s terms, their right to speak is protected by the First Amendment. Public colleges are, after all, funded by the government. A public college that allows them to be censored by angry mobs violates the First Amendment. If you don’t believe me, talk to a First Amendment scholar, because most Americans don’t understand the Constitution half as well as they think they do.

If we start defining certain things as hate speech and then criminalize this kind of speech, then we’re heading down a slippery slope. You may think you have a pragmatic sense of what speech should be acceptable and what shouldn’t, but I can assure you there are many out there who see it differently. With someone like Trump in power, your criticisms of him and your calls for protests against his policies could be labeled hate speech in a world where we let speech be limited like this. You could be jailed for saying these things.

Many have told me that some speech leads to violence, therefore it should be banned. Well, the First Amendment doesn’t protect threats, and arguing that a statement that is not a threat will lead to violence is risky. Someone could easily argue me saying Trump is a petulant bigot will cause violence against him, but I think we can all agree I should be allowed to say that. Saying free speech is too risky to defend is not a good position.

There seems to be a feeling among liberals lately that if you shut down speech, then the ideas go away. If you don’t let it be heard at your campus or in your town, then the concepts have been eliminated. It should be obvious this is not the case. The only way to eliminate an ideology to any extent is to grab it by the horns and wrestle it to the ground. Sweeping it under the rug or pushing it to the side accomplishes nothing, and it infringes on people’s rights. If a controversial speaker doesn’t speak in your city, they’re still going to reach large audiences in other ways, and now you’ve killed the opportunity to present the better idea right in their face. Protest speakers, sure, but let them speak. The protests should show that you have the better message.

Furthermore, sweeping an ideology under the rug is dangerous. Part of the reason the alt-right was so successful at first was that it operated in the shadows. The darkest corners of the internet were filling with frustrated, white basement dwellers who wanted a troll king like Trump. Had we been able to shine a light on them earlier, we might have avoided all of this. You have to be able to identify your enemy and know what they stand for to defeat them. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Beyond just trying to stop certain figures from saying things they don’t want to hear, many liberals seriously want to become thought police. I had a liberal friend tell me the other day he thinks there should be a national speech code that outlaws offensive speech. This was concerning to hear. College students across the country have demanded strict speech codes. This has gone so far that in 2015 the University of California system was considering banning statements like “America is a melting pot.” That’s not a joke. Furthermore, many campuses now have “free speech zones” where people are basically only allowed to really say what they want in a small area. That is clearly against free speech. You see how things can spin out of control.

The point is that you cannot fight fascism with fascism. If you think Trump and many of his supporters are fascists, as I do, you cannot defeat them by trying to impose authoritarian speech codes and by trying to attack the liberties of your fellow citizens. However, I will make one exception.

I do believe that if you are a public official, the rules are a little different. If a group of protesters wants to stop Trump from making a speech, I say more power to them. Why? Because he makes policies that directly affect us, and we must show him that we reject these policies. When you’re writing executive orders and helping push laws through Congress that directly infringe on my civil rights and the rights of those around me, you don’t get the full range of speech protections, in my opinion. I see public officials as separate from private citizens, and therefore I see their speech as different.

Society can only progress with a rich and diverse mix of ideas and minds. No great idea comes out of an echo chamber. If you really think you know the right way to behave and live, then defend your position. Don’t try to stop any other position from being heard. Often the opposing argument gets more attention when people attempt to censor it. You’ll only strengthen your argument by hearing the other side, especially if the other side is basing its argument in ignorance or lack of mental fortitude. If you don’t defend your neighbor’s right to say something controversial today, they won’t defend your right to do it tomorrow.