This post is a signal boost for Ada Palmer’s very interesting John Nuveen Lecture on censorship at the University of Chicago Divinity School. A lot of you reading this blog may know her better from her songs and the group Sassafrass, but she’s amazingly knowledgeable about a lot of things.
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Cancel culture is a prominent, ugly feature of public discourse today, yet many claim it doesn’t exist. They say there are only “consequences,” which amounts to saying that if you’re subjected to abuse because you said something controversial, what else did you expect?
Gangs of goons shout speakers down and claim that doing so is part of the right of “free speech.” By their logic, DDoS attacks on websites and jamming of radio communications are free speech. They shout “Shame! Shame!” as if anyone besides themselves were acting shamefully. They have only one standard: their authority to command others and demand silence from anyone who doesn’t think as they do.
It wasn’t always this way. Threats and demands for punishment of heretics have always been around, and some periods in American history have been full of open violence against opposing views, but the present levels of hostility are the worst in decades. In The Cnceling of the American Mind, Greg Lukanioff and Rikki Schlott document how frequently people on both the right and the left have come to regard anyone who disagrees as an inherently evil person, an enemy to be brought down.
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Two articles which I wrote for Liberty Fund are up in their Banned Books Week series, which runs all through October. My articles are on Caron de Beaumarchais’s two well-known “Figaro” plays, both of which got him in trouble with the censors.
Take a look at the rest of the articles if you have time; there’s a lot of interesting material.
The World Uyghur Congress has announced an online panel discussion on October 17, 2023. This date was chosen as the day before the 2023 Worldcon opens in Chengdu.
The press release quotes science fiction writer Andrew Gillsmith as saying:
The Chinese government wants to use Worldcon as a sort of Potemkin Village in order to showcase how futuristic and technologically advanced the country has become. Meanwhile, they are interning people in concentration camps, forcibly separating children from their families, conscripting Uyghurs into slave labour schemes, and implementing the most comprehensive and technologically sophisticated surveillance regime in history. Science fiction writers and fans have a longstanding tradition of standing for human rights. This is in the spirit of that tradition.
I wish I had the time to write a proper article about the outrageous police raid on the offices of the Marion County Record and the home of its owner, Eric Meyer. Currently, though, I’m putting all my efforts into getting the revised edition of Tomorrow’s Songs Today ready for final review. Just as I thought it was ready to go, I discovered some omissions that had me sending out emails yesterday, and I got the first reply this morning.
So I’ll settle for links and short comments.
AP News. The official justification for the raid has not been made public. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation has said it was asked to assist in “allegations of illegal access and dissemination of confidential criminal justice information.” This could be justification for such a raid in some cases, such as breaking into law enforcement databases, but at present there’s no indication any such thing was involved. Most of the news articles I’ve seen follow the theory that the motivation was the Record‘s reporting on a local restaurant owner.
New York Post. The Post reports that Meyer’s mother, aged 98, died shortly after the raid on his home, and Meyer attributes her death to the stress of the raid. It says that the search warrant (which has not been publicly disclosed) “seems to violate federal law” and that normal procedure under the law is to subpoena materials.
Washington Post. The other Post mentions that “the Record had been actively investigating Police Chief Gideon Cody at the time of the raid after receiving tips that he had left his previous job in Kansas City, Mo., to avoid repercussions for alleged sexual misconduct charges.”
Read the articles. Find additional information for yourself. Comment if you think I’m missing something important.
A language gripe which I haven’t mentioned lately is the treatment of “media” as a singular. I’ve given it up as a lost cause, but it damages discourse. People often think of “the media” as one thing. Obviously there are many media. This blog is a medium for information, no less than CNN is. But in common use, you don’t qualify as a medium unless either you’re a big corporation or a fortune-teller. Similarly, there’s a tendency to count people as “journalists” only if they work for a “medium” (or is it “a media”)? This leads to the idea that freedom of the press applies only to properly credentialed and accredited journalists and media.
This trend appears in Article 17 of the EU’s proposed Media Freedom Act, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation has strongly criticized.
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The first article I came across on the Supreme Court’s 303 Creative LLC decision was an outright lie, claiming the Court had ruled businesses can now refuse service to same-sex couples. Creating panic is what a lot of news sites do best, and lots of people on social media are helping to spread the misinformation. What it actually ruled was this:
The First Amendment’s protections belong to all, not just to speakers whose motives the government finds worthy. In this case, Colorado
seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance. In the
past, other States in Barnette, Hurley, and Dale have similarly tested the First Amendment’s boundaries by seeking to compel speech they
thought vital at the time. But abiding the Constitution’s commitment to the freedom of speech means all will encounter ideas that are “misguided, or even hurtful.” Hurley, 515 U. S., at 574. Consistent with the First Amendment, the Nation’s answer is tolerance, not coercion. The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands. Colorado cannot deny that promise consistent with the First Amendment.
The Chengdu Worldcon is collapsing from lack of organization, likely made worse by the need to satisfy the governmental authorities. A bid for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has fortunately been withdrawn. It’s hard to say whether China or Saudi Arabia is worse on human rights, but Saudi Arabia holds a clear edge in sheer brutality. Replacing the JeddahCon bid is one for PharaohCon in Cairo.
You don’t have to be a flaming libertarian to recognize that every country in the world has human rights issues. The question is how serious they are and how they would affect people attending the convention. Egypt isn’t as bad as Saudi Arabia or China, nor as good as the United States or Canada. How concerned should potential supporters be about what it is doing and might do?
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A law recently passed by the New York State Legislature poses a serious threat to online speech. FIRE is already challenging this outrageous law, which I doubt can survive a legal battle, but in the meantime, it poses a threat to anyone running a site that’s read in New York and allows user input.
The law applies to the ill-defined category of “social media networks.” That doesn’t just mean Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It could apply to anyone who runs a Mastodon instance or even runs a blog that allows comments. FIRE says:
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People in the United States enjoy some of the strongest legal protections on their speech and writing in the world. Saying some things is illegal, though, and others open you to getting sued. There’s a lot of misinformation around on what is and isn’t considered free speech. Here’s a quick rundown of some common claims. 
Standard disclaimer: This isn’t legal advice. It’s my best understanding. See a lawyer when in doubt. In some cases, I’ve cited court cases you can look up and study.
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