Now that Josh Hawley has earned a spot in one of America’s largest newspapers to bemoan the way he’s been muzzled, it’s a good time to re-up this piece by Ilya Somin, about Hawley’s total misunderstanding of what “free speech” means.
Or maybe he does understand it, and doesn’t care. There’s a lot of that going around lately.
It is rooted in a broader worldview under which government should have vastly expanded power to control the private sector and thereby restrict constitutional rights. That vision is widespread on the right, among “national conservatives.” But it also has close analogues on the left. Both variants are menaces to liberty.
The link between Hawley’s complaint about the contract termination and his broader ideology is evident in the very book Simon & Schuster chose not to publish, "The Tyranny of Big Tech." In the book (most likely) and in many previous statements, Hawley argues that the government should use regulation to pressure social media providers and other tech firms to end supposed discrimination against right-wingers, thereby forcing them to host speech they disapprove of.
Hawley and other national conservatives claim that Big Tech firms wield too much influence over the marketplace for political speech, and thus can be pressured into posting material they object to. The government, of course, would have to decide what qualified as appropriate nondiscrimination. This line of argument is similar to progressive claims that the influence of tech firms on political discourse justifies breaking them up (as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others advocate), or forcing them to exclude political expression governments deem to be inaccurate, “hate speech” or otherwise dangerous. Here too, the government would have to decide what qualified as a firm so big that its influence must be curbed, and what qualified as speech too inaccurate or prejudicial to permit on social media.
Both left and right versions of this argument rely on the assumption that constitutional rights can be circumvented by focusing regulation on the economic activities and property rights of commercial entities. The emerging nationalist right, of which Hawley has been a leader, holds that government should have a free hand to constrain economic liberties and property rights when it concludes that doing so might advance the common good.
This emerging trend on the right is similar to longstanding views of some on the left, who likewise seek to curb corporate influence, holding that government can constrain property rights as it wishes, because it — supposedly — created those property rights in the first place. Many progressives have also argued that government can restrict political speech by corporations because corporate status is likewise a creation of the state.
In their zeal to counter supposedly dangerous concentrations of corporate influence, both right and left have gone astray. Giving government control over online speech and economic activity does not reduce the concentration of power. It increases it. Instead of a marketplace, however flawed, with competing firms, we end up with a single power center — the federal government — deciding what qualifies as equal treatment of speech (Hawley), what qualifies as misleading or “hate speech" deserving of suppression (the left-wing approach), and which private actors have supposedly excessive influence that must be curbed (both). Moreover, the monopoly regulator in question is far from a neutral umpire. The party in power has obvious incentives to favor its supporters’ speech and repress that of opponents.
When the chips are down, pretty much everyone is in favor of free speech - even compelled speech - for their own side, and a crackdown against the bad people on the other team.
As for Hawley’s piece, he makes a few decent points here and there. His strongest argument is that big tech companies like Amazon Web Services, who shut down Parler after the storming of the Capitol, are putting up roadblocks to people who’ve been deplatformed from mainstream social media networks and are trying to set up their own alternative sites:
…if ever our political organizing were impeded by censorship — say, by the big tech giants — we could build our own platforms.
But the left and the corporations are challenging all of this now. Your “conservative” social platform isn’t worth much when Amazon can shut it down. Your vote may still be yours, but if your party is denied the means to effectively organize by corporate monopolies, it’s not going to win.
In response, I’d say that Amazon Web Services is not a monopoly. With around 33% of the market they’re the biggest dog on the block, but one-third is not even close to a monopoly in any sense of the word. Also, the company argues that Parler was warned about violating its terms of service.
Still, there is a discussion to be had about the power of companies that backstop the internet by providing hosting and payment services, even though I’m not sure what governments could or even should do about it.
Overall, though, Hawley mostly whines about what grave injustices have been done to him:
They tried to reprimand me this month because I didn’t. On behalf of the voters of my state, I raised a challenge to the presidential electors from Pennsylvania after that state conducted the election in violation of the state constitution. Maybe you agree with me. Maybe you don’t. But whatever your view, corporate America’s rush to cancel those it dislikes should trouble you.
In my case, it started with leftist politicians demanding I resign from office for representing the views of my constituents and leading a democratic debate on the floor of the Senate.
Taking that cue, a corporate publishing house then canceled a book it had asked me to write. Ironically enough, the book is about political censorship by the most powerful corporations in America. (And will be published by an independent publishing house.) Now corporate America is canceling my political events, because two parties are apparently one too many for their taste.
It will get worse. The tech titans have already booted dozens of conservatives off social media, and if they have their way, half the House Republican conference will be expelled from Congress. The corporate titans seem to believe that the only way to get a democracy to their liking is to eliminate all threats to the Democratic Party’s unified control of government.[…]
I for one am not going to back down. My book will be published, and I will continue to represent the people of my state without fear or favor, whatever the left or the corporations say.
Hawley is a United States Senator - unless he resigns or in the unlikely event he’s expelled from the Senate, he’s safe until 2024 - who’s been given space in one of the country’s largest newspapers. He’s still on Twitter, with over 570,000 followers. He’ll be fine.
If anything, he’s getting off remarkably easy.
The problem with “cancel culture” isn’t powerful and prominent people being cancelled. They can bounce back. The problem is when people who aren’t powerful are brought down by the mob.
But for Hawley, it’s all about him. And the people who insist that cancel culture isn’t a thing (which usually lasts until its weaponized against someone they like) will use him as Exhibit A.
Yesterday I wrote about some state Republican parties flying off the rails, and one of the examples I used was the Hawaii GOP posting some tweets about finding common ground with QAnon supporters. I did leave a little bit of room for doubt about whether they’ve gone as far into cloud-cuckoo land as their colleagues in Texas and Arizona:
To be fair to the Hawaii Republicans, there’s a bit more context to their controversial Tweets about QAnon followers. They say they don’t think Q is real, and argue that ridiculing supporters of the movement might just make them dig in further.
Well, maybe. But there’s a fine line between trying to understand supporters of a radical movement, and actively making excuses for it. And the past few years have given me no reason to think Republicans at any level can successfully walk that rightrope.
I totally meant to type “rightrope,” I really did.
In any event, it looks like I gave the Hawaii Republican Party more credit than they deserved:
From William F. Buckley, Jr. and George Will to this.
Just a normal political party, doing normal political party things. At least the esteemed Mr. @Styx666Official isn’t a Holocaust denier oh hey guess what?
Tarl Warwick built his audience as a blogger and author who focused on subjects surrounding religion and the occult. These days, his YouTube channel is filled with commentary railing against Big Tech censorship, Democrats, and the "woke cult." His commentary resonated so much with the Hawaii GOP that they felt the need to promote him in a tweet this Saturday.
[…]
In an older video resurfaced by Twitter user Wild Geerters, Warwick regurgitates all the classic Holocaust denier rhetoric, questioning the Holocaust death toll and the true intent of the gas chambers.
"The famous Auschwitz shower was quite literally a showering station -- they've got like swimming pools at these places," Warwick says. "I believe that there were death camps -- of course there were -- however, what's not clear is if this was a deliberate extermination effort on a grand scale or whether they were primarily focused on eliminating criminals and the sick."
And now the Oregon GOP is getting in on the fun:
It’s mind-boggling to think these guys might not be the craziest people in Oregon.
Kick out the crazies before they’ve overrun you. Don’t wait another minute. It’s too late for the Republican Party, but there’s still time for right-of-center parties in other countries - especially the Conservative Party of Canada - to save themselves.
Bernie Sanders: “I’m the subject of the biggest, most beloved meme in the world right now. Surely I am the coolest Senator from Vermont.”
Pat Leahy: