Powerful Elite Colleges Refuse to Consider the Damage They Do Regarding Cancelation and Censorship

At The Free Press, Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott explore how it came to be that so many American Colleges have come to embrace canceling and censorship rather than free speech. Here is an excerpt from "How American Colleges Gave Birth to Cancel Culture: A new book shows how universities first embraced a system of social punishment that now pervades our everyday lives":

The First Amendment wasn’t created to protect the interests of the rich and powerful. After all, the moneyed and influential have historically been protected by their wealth and power. And the United States didn’t need a special right to protect the will of a majority—that’s what democratic votes are for.

In the end, the First Amendment is primarily needed to protect minority views, unpopular opinions, and the expression of those who clash with the ruling elite.

But on campus today, you’re likely to hear this argument turned entirely on its head—as if championing free speech is somehow doing the bidding of the powerful. But that’s only because academia doesn’t like to admit that it actually is extremely wealthy and influential itself, or that those who defend the status quo are defending an extraordinarily powerful American industry. . .

From a purely financial perspective, the higher education apparatus is among the wealthiest and most influential institutions in the world. But you wouldn’t know that from the way many in academia try to position themselves. Colleges and universities are far from the humble academic hubs they claim to be, but many in higher education have a hard time admitting it’s been a long while since they were the underdogs.

Academia’s free speech skepticism is part of a long history of powerful people undercutting the First Amendment. Given that elites seldom like limitations on their power (and particularly on their power to censor), it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the First Amendment was limited by judges and politicians from the very moment of its inception.

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Massaging the News

"Palestinian" is a different category than "Hamas" (even though there is overlap). "Israeli" is a different category than "Jew" (even though there is overlap). The BBC is refusing to report what is happening. Instead, they are telling us what they want us to think. When someone tells you who they are, a good default is to believe them.

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Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi Deliver the Latest Update Regarding Censorship in the US

I highly recommend this video if you'd like to get up to speed on many of the new and sophisticated ways your government is trying to regulate how you communicate with your fellow citizens. Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have been intensely covering the "censorship industrial complex" for years. This is merely the latest chapter of a disturbing series of stories they have broken.

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Censorship Doesn’t Fix “Bad” Ideas. It Merely Shoves the Discussion Underground

Greg Lukianoff explains that censorship, no matter how well intended it is, drives conversation into the shadows, where it festers. It isolates viewpoints away from the mainstream, detached from any interaction with opposing views, where participants experience a false consensus.  Where their reach on important topics exceeds their grasp.  Those who advocate for censorship to cure "bad" ideas, always makes the situation worse by emboldening the "bad" ideas. This is one of the ideas why censorship never works. 

[C]ensorship on one platform may lead to an increase in the amount of similar content on other platforms. This is the unintended consequence of heavy-handed moderation policies.

Social media censorship creates new ecosystems that are ripe for group polarization. As Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein explains in an essay on group polarization: “People who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion [with each other], to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm.”

For a vivid portrayal of how exclusion makes polarization, paranoia, and radicalism far worse, we highly recommend Andrew Callaghan’s documentary This Place Rules, which highlights some of the protests and personalities that played large or small roles in the run-up to, and day of, the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Callaghan has a grave warning about how badly attempts to censor can backfire: “When you take someone who talks about a deep state conspiracy to silence him and his followers and then you silence him and his followers it only really adds to his credibility,” he says in the film. When you’re dealing with people who believe there’s a conspiracy to shut them up, do absolutely nothing that looks anything like a conspiracy to shut them up.

Simply put, censorship doesn’t change people’s opinions. It encourages them to speak with people they already agree with, which makes political polarization even worse.

Continue ReadingCensorship Doesn’t Fix “Bad” Ideas. It Merely Shoves the Discussion Underground