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It's ironic that Emily Bazelon, the author of this essay, is the granddaughter of the late influential federal judge David Bazelon. Judge Bazelon was a well-kno

It's ironic that Emily Bazelon, the author of this essay, is the granddaughter of the late influential federal judge David Bazelon. Judge Bazelon was a well-known progressive and a well-known free speech proponent. Although his granddaughter shares his broadly progressive worldview, her position on this issue is different. The evolution from David to Emily reflects that of the US left as a whole. Most people like to praise free speech as a theory. In practice, it is a tool for those who don't occupy the commanding heights of a culture to push back against those who do. When the New Left was ascendant in the 1960s and 1970s, promotion of free speech was an important component of its rise to cultural power. Now that its intellectual descendants occupy the commanding heights, they view it as a threat rather than an asset.

zozbot234 6y ago
> In practice, it is a tool for those who don't occupy the commanding heights of a culture to push back against those who do. And this is a good thing. The commanding heights of culture should be as contestable as possible; this is what makes for an open society.
- montagg 6y ago
  This quote from the article describes the dynamic in the US pretty accurately, in my opinion. > The conspiracy theories, the lies, the distortions, the overwhelming amount of information, the anger encoded in it — these all serve to create chaos and confusion and make people, even nonpartisans, exhausted, skeptical and cynical about politics. The spewing of falsehoods isn’t meant to win any battle of ideas. Its goal is to prevent the actual battle from being fought, by causing us to simply give up. If that’s what awaits the future “heights of culture,” if that’s how you think people will ultimately get influence in the future, I don’t think there will be much of a culture left to have lofty opinions about freedom or speech.
- lilsoso 6y ago
  The commenter you are quoting is praising free speech. Yes, it is a good thing. To belabor the point, what's ironic is that in the 1990s it was the right, 'the religious right', that wanted to censor free speech -- such as the speech of rap artists. Now it is the left that attacks free speech and wants to censor rap artists. Previously it was the church that wanted to censor free speech. Now it is progressives, who 'f------ love science', who want to censor uncomfortable scientific results. Somehow the teams, and costumes, changed.
  - amiantos 6y ago
    You’re a bit off in characterizing the 90’s assault on free speech as something only the right did. Tipper Gore had quite the problem with Prince...
orangecat 6y ago
Agreed. And I'm concerned about the future if Biden wins, as seems likely. Today many progressives recognize at least the practical value of free speech, because the alternative is Trump and McConnell deciding what you're allowed to say. But if Democrats take Congress and the presidency, it's going to be very tempting for them to try to shut down opposing views. And the first amendment may not be a shield; with control over the courts it can be reinterpreted into irrelevancy.
jbirer 6y ago
This is very similar to Mao imprisoning people for "threatening the revolution". The revolution is good when it serves them but not when it threatens their hold on power. They now want to ban free speech because it is against their power interests.
crazygringo 6y ago
> In practice, it is a tool for those who don't occupy the commanding heights of a culture to push back against those who do. But isn't the article arguing the exact opposite? It warns that those in power now use the shield of "free speech" to push propaganda and lies in order to undermine truth and democracy and thereby attempt to preserve power. Which is not something anyone saw coming, and which deserves to be treated as a serious danger. This is completely and utterly different from using free speech to promote civil rights, transparency, etc. The New Left wasn't weaponizing free speech to spread disinformation, so the two situations would appear to be completely distinct.
- acituan 6y ago
  > It warns that those in power now use the shield of "free speech" to push propaganda and lies in order to undermine truth and democracy and thereby attempt to preserve power. Except with new media no one can really push information, it is mostly up to the recommendation algorithms to propagate the messages, which is optimized for creating more engagement and ad dollars. This, singlehandedly damages more of democratic processes, which depend on healthy discourse, than any questionable content put into it. > now use the shield of "free speech" to push propaganda and lies in order to undermine truth Is there a form of free speech, contents of which you disagree that doesn’t push propaganda or undermine some definition of your truth? In other words, in this version of narrative warfare, every opponent narrative is already “propaganda”, every disagreement is “destroying democracy”. Except truth is hardly an out there objectivity to which propgandic words magically render our eyes blind. It is a process of dialectic; disagreements that can be integrated together and form a more comprehensive picture of our musings in an infinite problem space. It is the false sense of certainty, including utopian ideas of its attainability with likes of “fact checks” and judicious restriction of speech that destroy this process, and with it any hope of integrating opposing worldviews without wanting to hurt those who hold them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago
pessimizer 6y ago
No part of the 60s New Left occupies the commanding heights outside of a few Ramparts Magazine born-again Catholic neocons. This is a fantasy of right-wingers who try to roll the US black civil rights struggle and working-class socialism into a big ball of University Judeo-Bolshevism. edit: That gay people, black people, and women have to be considered now is not left-wing politics, which are about class. That people other than white men have a voice is a rational, liberal outgrowth of the civil rights movement. Other than that, mainstream politics moved aggressively to the right until the bottom fell out of the capitalist utopian theory in 2008.
refurb 6y ago
Matt Taibbi writes about this a lot. Free speech used to be a cornerstone of liberal/progressive values. In only 50 short years that's been abandoned to prevent the "fomenting of discord".
DenisM 6y ago
I came here to express the same sentiment, but you did it first and you did it better. Thank you.

zozbot234 6y ago

> In practice, it is a tool for those who don't occupy the commanding heights of a culture to push back against those who do. And this is a good thing. The commanding heights of culture should be as contestable as possible; this is what makes for an open society.

montagg 6y ago
This quote from the article describes the dynamic in the US pretty accurately, in my opinion. > The conspiracy theories, the lies, the distortions, the overwhelming amount of information, the anger encoded in it — these all serve to create chaos and confusion and make people, even nonpartisans, exhausted, skeptical and cynical about politics. The spewing of falsehoods isn’t meant to win any battle of ideas. Its goal is to prevent the actual battle from being fought, by causing us to simply give up. If that’s what awaits the future “heights of culture,” if that’s how you think people will ultimately get influence in the future, I don’t think there will be much of a culture left to have lofty opinions about freedom or speech.
lilsoso 6y ago
The commenter you are quoting is praising free speech. Yes, it is a good thing. To belabor the point, what's ironic is that in the 1990s it was the right, 'the religious right', that wanted to censor free speech -- such as the speech of rap artists. Now it is the left that attacks free speech and wants to censor rap artists. Previously it was the church that wanted to censor free speech. Now it is progressives, who 'f------ love science', who want to censor uncomfortable scientific results. Somehow the teams, and costumes, changed.
- amiantos 6y ago
  You’re a bit off in characterizing the 90’s assault on free speech as something only the right did. Tipper Gore had quite the problem with Prince...

orangecat 6y ago

Agreed. And I'm concerned about the future if Biden wins, as seems likely. Today many progressives recognize at least the practical value of free speech, because the alternative is Trump and McConnell deciding what you're allowed to say. But if Democrats take Congress and the presidency, it's going to be very tempting for them to try to shut down opposing views. And the first amendment may not be a shield; with control over the courts it can be reinterpreted into irrelevancy.

jbirer 6y ago

This is very similar to Mao imprisoning people for "threatening the revolution". The revolution is good when it serves them but not when it threatens their hold on power. They now want to ban free speech because it is against their power interests.

crazygringo 6y ago

> In practice, it is a tool for those who don't occupy the commanding heights of a culture to push back against those who do. But isn't the article arguing the exact opposite? It warns that those in power now use the shield of "free speech" to push propaganda and lies in order to undermine truth and democracy and thereby attempt to preserve power. Which is not something anyone saw coming, and which deserves to be treated as a serious danger. This is completely and utterly different from using free speech to promote civil rights, transparency, etc. The New Left wasn't weaponizing free speech to spread disinformation, so the two situations would appear to be completely distinct.

acituan 6y ago
> It warns that those in power now use the shield of "free speech" to push propaganda and lies in order to undermine truth and democracy and thereby attempt to preserve power. Except with new media no one can really push information, it is mostly up to the recommendation algorithms to propagate the messages, which is optimized for creating more engagement and ad dollars. This, singlehandedly damages more of democratic processes, which depend on healthy discourse, than any questionable content put into it. > now use the shield of "free speech" to push propaganda and lies in order to undermine truth Is there a form of free speech, contents of which you disagree that doesn’t push propaganda or undermine some definition of your truth? In other words, in this version of narrative warfare, every opponent narrative is already “propaganda”, every disagreement is “destroying democracy”. Except truth is hardly an out there objectivity to which propgandic words magically render our eyes blind. It is a process of dialectic; disagreements that can be integrated together and form a more comprehensive picture of our musings in an infinite problem space. It is the false sense of certainty, including utopian ideas of its attainability with likes of “fact checks” and judicious restriction of speech that destroy this process, and with it any hope of integrating opposing worldviews without wanting to hurt those who hold them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- UncleOxidant 6y ago

pessimizer 6y ago

No part of the 60s New Left occupies the commanding heights outside of a few Ramparts Magazine born-again Catholic neocons. This is a fantasy of right-wingers who try to roll the US black civil rights struggle and working-class socialism into a big ball of University Judeo-Bolshevism. edit: That gay people, black people, and women have to be considered now is not left-wing politics, which are about class. That people other than white men have a voice is a rational, liberal outgrowth of the civil rights movement. Other than that, mainstream politics moved aggressively to the right until the bottom fell out of the capitalist utopian theory in 2008.

refurb 6y ago

Matt Taibbi writes about this a lot. Free speech used to be a cornerstone of liberal/progressive values. In only 50 short years that's been abandoned to prevent the "fomenting of discord".

DenisM 6y ago

I came here to express the same sentiment, but you did it first and you did it better. Thank you.