Fellow progressives, it's time to have a talk: We are being played for utter suckers by the right on this campus "free speech" issue. Conservatives, who don't really care about free speech, are ginning up controversies to troll liberals and normalize repugnant ideas about white supremacy and male dominance. Like chumps, the left falls for it every single time, getting sucked into a go-nowhere debate about imaginary threats to free speech that allow the right to push rancid ideas without offering the necessary pushback.
The good news is we have the power to make it stop. So I offer my plea to the entire spectrum of progressives, from the hyped-up socialist brigade to the pearl-clutching center-left: Let's stop falling for right-wing tricks and end this stupid, fake "free speech" debate once and for all.
This ridiculous controversy got another steroid injection when pretending-not-to-be-right-wing-but-totally-right-wing New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss wrote a sloppy article accusing campus leftists of being authoritarian censors. Beyond conflating protest with censorship, the article made a number of factual errors, including citing a fake Twitter account as evidence of leftist intolerance and calling Christina Hoff Sommers a "self-identified feminist" without noting that Sommers makes a living as a professional anti-feminist.
The incident that fueled Weiss' slapped-together concern trolling article was an incident at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, where Sommers, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, was invited by a right-wing student group to speak on campus. Some left-leaning campus groups demanded that the university bar her from speaking, correctly noting that she's a bigot who makes a living propping up misogynist myths. When the university declined to do that, student groups protested the speech in a disruptive manner, blocking the doors and booing so vigorously that the event was cut short.
The whole thing fits into what has become a predictable pattern — and a deliberate one, on the part of the right:
- Right-wing student group finds some terrible person who hates huge swaths of humanity for arbitrary reasons to give speech that presumably will be chock-full of bigotry masquerading as intellectual discourse.
- Student groups, understandably finding this whole situation gross, demand that the speaker not be allowed on campus and/or organize protests that are disruptive.
- Conservatives whine about liberal "fascism" and accuse the left of Stalinist suppression of free thought
- Well-meaning liberals wring their hands about how youth these days has lost its way and get into lengthy, pointless debates about the legitimacy of "no platforming."
This process of conservative trolling with these college speaking events benefits the right in two ways. First, it creates a wedge issue on the left, causing internal fights that sow bad blood but don't result in any productive momentum. Secondly, it allows some of the most repugnant figures in right-wing politics to look like martyrs, creating sympathy for their arguments while reducing meaningful criticism.
We see how this works in the Sommers case. I read a number of articles about the speech, and not one of them, in the conservative or mainstream press, mentioned a single thing that Sommers said during her talk. Which is no doubt exactly how she and her supporters like it. They can portray her arguments as so scintillating and dangerous that they have to be suppressed, without having to talk about what her ideas are, thereby shielding Sommers from meaningful criticism.
Let's be clear: Right-wing groups on campus invite people like her not because they want a rigorous debate, but to avoid one. They're trying to provoke "no platforming" demands and disruptive protests, so people end up debating "free speech" rather than the ideas that the right is actually peddling.
Progressives on all sides share the blame for this situation. The no-platform crowd is to blame, of course, for giving the right-wing trolls exactly the reaction they want when they book someone like Christina Hoff Sommers in the first place. But the free-speech liberals are also to blame for taking the bait every single time something like this happens, and focusing their energy on castigating fellow progressives for their protests instead of calling out the right for using these trolling tactics to avoid serious debate. And everyone is to blame for getting sucked into a debate over whether bigots have a right to speak, rather than focusing on the admittedly more boring and stressful work of debunking bigoted arguments.
But I bring good news to progressives on both sides of the free speech debate: We have the power, starting today, to stop the madness. Remember this mantra: The way you win the game is to refuse to play.
For the no-platform folks: I agree with you that it's ridiculous that people like Sommers get to enjoy the trappings of academia to make their dumb arguments seem smarter. Unfortunately, the more you try to stop that from happening, the more credibility those dumb arguments get. Instead, try counterprogramming. Table outside such events, peacefully, and chat with people about why your views are the right ones. Bring literature. Make it the debate conservatives pretend to want.
For the free-speech liberals: I agree with you that freedom of speech covers ideas we don't like as much as ones we do like. But you also know these right-wing events aren't legitimate efforts to promote the free exchange of ideas, but cheap political stunts meant to promote bigotry while shielding it from criticism. So prove your love of free and flowing discourse, and instead of digging into a fake debate over "free speech," focus your energy on debating the actual ideas the right is putting forward. Here's some model language: "Yes, Christina Hoff Sommers has a legal right to speak, but she uses that right to spread misinformation and hate. Here's what her arguments are, and why they're wrong."
Both sides: We need to stop taking these right-wing stunts seriously and instead talk about them as exercises in obvious trolling. Practice rolling your eyes in the mirror to get into the proper mindset needed when discussing this nonsense.
I believe progressives can disentangle ourselves from this terrible trap that the right has set for us. Look to the University of California at Berkeley, which managed to derail Milo Yiannopoulos' efforts to play the victim of left-wing censorship by employing the methods I described. No one tried to stop Yiannopoulos from holding his event, and liberals refused to take his efforts to play the victim of censorship seriously. The result was that his event was boring, barely anyone showed up, and Yiannopoulos himself got bored and left early.
We can do this. We just have to agree to come together enough to stop acting out a script that our political opponents wrote for us.
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