Two Views: Extreme inequality is the real threat to free speech – The Sun Chronicle

I was a student in the late 2000s when I had my first brush with cancel culture. A campus group had invited Nick Griffin a racist Holocaust denier and leader of a fascist British political party, among other charming things to speak.

Many shocked students, including me, called Griffins views vile and warned that violent extremists might come to support him. Eventually, the group rethought the invitation and canceled the event. Thank heavens.

No ones speech had been denied. Others exercised their own.

Yet, a few short years later, campus protests like these became a bete noire for right-wing politicians, who produced countless diatribes against woke mobs and the free speech crisis on campus. Then, with ample backing from well-heeled donors, they launched an actual war on speech on campus and beyond.

Protests have never been a threat to speech it is free speech. What weve learned is that the real danger is inequality.

Consider this springs campus protests against Israels war on Gaza and U.S. support for it.

Conservative politicians whod thrown fits over free speech on campus cheered as police officers roughed up and arrested student protesters. Some even called to deploy the National Guard, which infamously murdered four Kent State students during the Vietnam War era.

Meanwhile, billionaire CEOs like Bill Ackman led campaigns to out students whod participated in the protests and blacklist them from employment.

Cynically casting these often Jewish-led protests as antisemitic, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. who has a history of embracing antisemitic conspiracy theories hauled several university presidents before Congress to answer for why the protests hadnt been shut down more brutally.

When University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill feebly defended the First Amendment, a $100 million donor complained and Magill was compelled to resign. Under similar donor pressure, Harvard President Claudine Gay followed suit. And Stefanik? She raked in campaign cash.

Of course, high-end donors are also shaping what can and cant be said inside the classroom.

Corporate and billionaire-backed groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council and Of The People have poured enormous sums into backing laws that ban books, restrict what history can and cant be taught, and severely curtail classroom instruction on race, gender or sexuality.

Many public libraries and universities face defunding for carrying materials these billionaire-backed politicians dont like. And in some red states, teachers and school librarians may now face felony charges for running afoul of state censors.

In other cases, the public square itself is falling under sustained assault from extreme wealth. For example, after spending a fortune to buy Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk proclaimed himself a free speech absolutist and promptly eliminated nearly all content moderation.

But perhaps absolutist was a relative term.

As threats and hate speech predictably flooded the platform, Musk threatened a thermonuclear lawsuit against a watchdog group that cataloged the growing trend. He also appeared to suspend journalists who covered him critically and otherwise censored users who espoused causes he didnt care for, like LGBTQ rights or racial justice.

A parallel problem has played out more quietly in local news, with beleaguered American newspapers now outnumbered by dark money pink slime news sites, which peddle misinformation while posing as local news outlets.

Lying, of course, is usually protected speech. But when its backed by big money and linked to a sustained, state-backed assault on speech to the contrary, then weve badly warped the field on which free speech is supposed to play out.

Similarly, when the Supreme Court rules that cash payments even bribes are free speech, those of us with less cash have less free speech.

Extreme inequality threatens our First Amendment right not only to speak freely but to assemble together and petition our representatives.

Alongside real campaign finance reform and anti-corruption laws, higher taxes on billionaires and corporations would leave them with less money to spend warping our politics, classrooms and public squares.

So would stronger unions that can win pay raises and social movements that protect their communities from retribution.

If we want equal rights to speech, we need a more equal country.

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Two Views: Extreme inequality is the real threat to free speech - The Sun Chronicle