Category Archives: Censorship

Austin, TX, 20 hours ago With the support of Governor Greg Abbott, some lawmakers in the Texas legislature want to challenge the ability of big tech companies to censor individuals for posts expressing their beliefs or opinions.

Senate Bill (SB) 12, filed by Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), aims to open the door for censored or deplatformed users to sue social media platforms to be allowed to express their viewpoints.

Hughes says that the legislation threads a needle to work around Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act of 1996, which shields online platforms from liability for censoring user content, especially of an obscene nature.

These sites need to moderate content like violent or overtly sexual posts. However, they cannot deny you participation based on your viewpoint, including your political preferences or religion, said Hughes in the bills analysis.

Instead of broadly banning all censorship, SB 12 specifically prohibits the censorship of a user, a users expression, or a users ability to receive the expression of another person based on [. . .] the viewpoint of the user or another person.

The prohibition also applies to censorship based on the viewpoint of a post or on a users geographic location in any part of Texas.

Though a user can sue to be allowed back on the platform and cover the cost of attorneys fees, the bill stops short of allowing courts to fine companies for the censorship because of the liability shield in Section 230.

The bill was heard in the Senate State Affairs Committee, chaired by Hughes, on Monday.

At that time, a committee substitute was accepted that defines social media platform, and creates a new section that would require platforms to have a clearly established process of investigating complaints of censorship violations within 24 hours of a users complaint.

Remarkably, these tech giants will reflexively bend the knee to woke-ism and even the Chinese Communist Party, yet they cannot muster the courage to tolerate online speech that questions their narrow and misguided world view, said Hughes in a press release. Big Tech is about to learn that Texans are a free and independent people, and we are not accustomed to yielding to bullies.

Texas is not the first state with lawmakers aiming to push back against social media companies for censorship that culminated in January with the mass deplatforming of then-President Donald Trump near the end of his term.

At the beginning of February, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis alongside his states top lawmakers announced support for similar legislation that aims to stop censorship.

At a press conference in Tyler last week, Abbott touted the legislation.

With SB 12, Senator Hughes is taking a stand against Big Techs political censorship and protecting Texans right to freedom of expression. I look forward to working with Senator Hughes to sign this bill into law and protect free speech in Texas, said the governor.

Both Abbott and Hughes have likened social media platforms to a modern public square, different from other private businesses.

But opponents of the legislation contend that it is precisely because social media platforms are private businesses that Hughes legislation is doomed to failure in the courts.

Steve DelBianco, the president and CEO of tech lobbying firm NetChoice, appeared at the hearing on Monday to testify against the legislation.

NetChoice members include a wide range of big-name tech companies, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and TikTok.

DelBianco disputed the town square argument and contended that tech companies greater defense against increased regulatory checks on censorship was not with Section 230, but with the First Amendment.

He pointed to a recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a lawsuit from the conservative non-profit media organization Prager University against YouTube, which concluded that despite YouTubes ubiquity and its role as a public facing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment.

[W]hile almost all speech is protected from governmental censorship, private digital spaces that host public speech present a novel challenge, said Hughes in the bills analysis. Although these sites are privately owned, the nearly universal adoption of a few sites has created a need for protection from speech selection by social media companies.

In addition to Hughes, the bill has seven other joint authors: Sens. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels), Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham), Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound), Charles Perry (R-Lubbock), Charles Schwertner (R-Georgetown), and Drew Springer (R-Muenster).

A companion bill has not yet been filed in the Texas House of Representatives.

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Texas Governor, Lawmakers Push for Big Tech Censorship Regulations - The Texan

Rodger Whitney| New Bern

I was wrong about censorship being just one step lower than murder. It is worse than murder.

The destruction of an idea or body of work that could potentially live for centuries is unacceptable. Now, those who would rewrite history, hide what we were, hide the attitudes that have brought us to this point in time so they do not have to look at the good, the bad and the ugly of humankind's existence have attacked Dr. Seuss.

Over time, attacks on Mark Twain and other classic writers as well as artists and statues have been tolerated. We cannot allow censorship, the greatest threat to a free America, to continue.

Whether by social media persuading people not to view or use products and images and books, or by the removal of artworks, statues or books from a library, Censorship threatens truth...and the ability to learn from the mistakes of the past.

Slavery was a mistake. It is a mistake that has existed with Whites owning Whites, Whites owning other races, Africans owning Africans...a mistake that continues now with sex trades and other equally bad situations. We cannot learn from these mistakes if we do not know them.

We cannot learn about our country if we do not know, acknowledge and understand the struggles of the Civil War, the good of those who tried to end domestic slavery.

We cannot learn about music, art, literature and freedom of the press if censorship is allowed.

Write or e-mail your state and federal legislators. Write and email the business giants that threaten free expression...and contact the publishers of Dr. Seuss and let them know that knuckling under pressure sends a very bad message.

A free country cannot be without uncensored free expression.

Rodger Whitney

New Bern

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Letter to the editor: Censorship threatens the truth - New Bern Sun Journal

Editors note: The death of Rush Limbaugh, the growth of Newsmax and charges of censorship by Amazon and other book sellers are among the forces shaking up conservative media companies. In this three-part series, the Deseret News examines the challenges facing radio, television and book publishing, and how those challenges might affect the companies and you: the reader, listener and viewer.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley lost a book deal. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling lost fans. And now, even as a prospective merger of two large publishing houses in the U.S. is rattling the industry, Amazon is deleting content it deems offensive from the worlds largest platform for book sales.

In this tumultuous landscape, can conservative authors still continue to speak freely and sell books?

Yes, publishers say, but they may have to change the way they do business in a culture newly cognizant of the power to cancel people with unpopular opinions.

We dont let it directly determine what we publish, but the fact is, with every book, there is always fear that the book is going to be pulled. The authors feel very vulnerable, said David Bernstein, publisher of Bombardier Books, a conservative imprint of Post Hill Press.

Conservative fears were realized this month when the book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, by Catholic scholar Ryan T. Anderson, vanished from the Amazon website three years after it was published.

Four Republican senators, including Utahs Mike Lee, called the action political censorship, saying in a letter to CEO Jeff Bezos that Amazon has openly signaled to conservative Americans that their views are not welcome on its platforms.

But the controversy over Andersons book is only the latest action troubling conservative writers and publishers. Others include the cancellation of a forthcoming Hawley book critical of technology companies by Simon & Schuster, protests against a new book by Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, and an open letter signed by people in the publishing industry who say no one affiliated with former President Donald Trumps administration should get a book contract.

The tremors shaking book publishing usually go undetected by the public, since the average reader only pays attention to the book, its content and the author, not the company that publishes a book, said Thomas Spence, who became president and publisher of Regnery Publishing a year ago.

Regnery, founded in 1947, has published books by Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Malkin and Dennis Prager, among other conservatives well acquainted with controversy. Regnerys success was a major reason that the largest publishing houses in the U.S. established their own conservative imprints, publishing insiders say.

But the outcry against authors who express unpopular beliefs is growing louder in the environment known as cancel culture, and some writers are warning that recent events will effectively muzzle conservatives. The backlash to Amazons decision, however, suggests that the outlook for conservative publishing is still bright. Heres why.

Andersons book, described by author Rod Dreher as a well-written, scientifically informed critique of gender ideology by a leading Catholic public intellectual, is still for sale on the website of the publisher, Encounter Books, as well as on the Barnes & Noble website and other places online.

Anderson, who recently became president of the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., told Dreher, writing for The American Conservative, that he has sold a couple of thousand books in the past week, adding this is unheard of for a three-year-old book.

He noted that Amazons action came at the same time Congress was considering the Equality Act and suggested that Amazons action has a silver lining, which is this could be (the) further catalyst thatll interrupt the libertarian slumber of many conservatives and prompt them to think critically about what, for example, the natural law says about both the justification of and limits to economic liberties.

Author Abigail Shrier is not as optimistic. Shrier, a journalist whose book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, has been removed twice from the Target website, wrote that the Amazon case is dangerous because of the outsized influence the company wields in publishing.

As a direct result of Amazons action, many outstanding books will now go unwritten; they will not be commissioned whenever Amazons distribution is the slightest bit in doubt. As I write this, authors are being dropped by agents or politely refused representation, based on what the agents now know Amazon will not carry, Shrier wrote.

Shriers book, however, is still listed on Amazon, as is God and the Transgender Debate, an examination of what the Bible has to say about gender by Southern Baptist theologian Andrew T. Walker.

So is a take on Andersons book, Let Harry Become Sally, an e-book by Kelly R. Novak that Amazon billed last week as a #1 best seller.

Amazon has not given a specific reason for removing Andersons book, saying only that the company reserves the right to delist content that violates its standards.

In an email, Anderson said this could be a moment that determines how the company will operate going forward. If Amazon hears from enough people, perhaps that will lead it to reconsider its decision and not just on me, but also preventing future de-platforming. If Amazon gets away with this, itll likely lead to more de-platforming in the future.

While Anderson can only speculate about the reasons his book is no longer on Amazon, Hawley, the Missouri senator, knows why Simon & Schuster canceled his book contract because the company put out a statement. Without giving specifics, the publisher said that Hawley, a Trump supporter who was the first senator to say he would challenge the 2020 election results, had a role in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints; at the same time, we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom, the statement said.

Hawleys book deal was canceled the day after the riot. The next week, more than 250 authors, editors, agents and other workers in publishing signed an open letter that said no companies should publish work by anyone who incited, suborned, instigated or otherwise supported the riot, or who was a participant in the Trump administration. The number of signers is now approaching 600.

But within two weeks, Hawley had another publisher in Regnery, and Spence explained the decision in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, in which he said cancel culture is more appropriately described as blacklisting.

Not so long ago, publishing professionals would have been horrified to be accused of it. Today they compete to see who can proclaim his blacklist with the fiercest invective, Spence wrote.

So far, Amazon hasnt been inclined to cancel Hawleys book; its accepting pre-orders for The Tyranny of Big Tech and gives a release date of May 4.

Spence said hed been following Hawleys career knew he was a Yale Law School graduate and was a former Supreme Court clerk and had thought it would be nice to have a book from him before this one essentially landed in his lap. A lot of people have sent me emails saying, Oh, youre so courageous, thanks for taking a stand and taking this book, and I have to blush. I think I did the right thing, but I dont know that it was particularly courageous in this case, he said.

Getting canceled by Simon & Schuster has raised the profile of the book a lot, he added.

That has happened before, said Bernstein of Bombardier Books. When Simon & Schuster canceled a book by Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017, the far-right commentator self-published Dangerous and sold upwards of 100,000 copies, Bernstein said.

Donald Trump Jr. also self-published his second book, Liberal Privilege.

Bernstein said that conservative imprints such as Center Street at Hachette Book Group or Sentinel at Penguin are ghettos within the largest publishing houses, which he said skew young and liberal. The problem with conservative books within the large publishing houses is that theyre not going to support you if there is any controversy. The first whiff of controversy, Josh Hawley gets his book canceled. The first whiff of controversy, (Florida GOP Congressman) Matt Gaetz gets his book canceled. The editors get fired or get shifted around. Or the imprint gets closed. All of these things are happening at an increasing pace right now.

The New York Times recently reported that longtime editor Kate Hartson, editorial director at Center Street, had been let go and that Hartson told colleagues she thought her termination was because of her political beliefs. She had published books by Donald Trump Jr., Newt Gingrich, radio host Michael Savage and Rand Paul, among others. Her most recent book was reported to be Unmasked: Inside Antifas Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, by Andy Ngo.

Not every objection to an author results in a book being canceled. When Penguin Random House Canada announced that it was publishing Jordan Petersons Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, the company had to hold a town-hall style meeting for employees who were upset about the decision. It was published anyway. (In the U.S., the book was released March 2 under Penguins Portfolio imprint.)

And some authors, like J.K. Rowling, have the benefit of being too successful to be truly canceled, Bernstein said. Her position in publishing is kind of untouchable. When you make up that much of a companys bottom line shes like a line item of her own on their balance sheet no company is going to release her and give up that revenue.

For many conservative authors, however, the fear of being de-platformed is real, whether it be on a sales platform or social media.

Frankly, the number of books that get pulled off of Amazon is infinitesimal, but these stories get magnified and people are rightly concerned, because the number of people being de-platformed on Twitter started off being very small, too, Bernstein said.

Small conservative imprints such as Bombardier may benefit from the current environment if authors seek publishers who share their views. But so may Regnery, whose namesake, the late Henry Regnery, published Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher in 1979.

Spence, whose conservative views were shaped when he read The Conservative Mind by the late Russell Kirk, welcomes the business, although he realizes that this may be a particularly vulnerable moment for conservative publishers.

Certain big players in the publishing world have the power to make our business very difficult if they want to. Thats Amazon and Google, all the people targeted by Josh Hawleys book, and maybe Im stupid to be publishing a book punching them in the nose, Spence said.

If we couldnt sell our books on Amazon, that would be a pretty serious blow. We sell most of our books on Amazon. What they have done on rare occasions is make it more difficult for people to find our books. He cited Shriers book, which Regnery published. The company wanted to buy ads that would make the book more prominent in searches, but Spence said that Amazon would not let them buy ads for that book.

Spence is also cognizant of the power of Facebook and Twitter, and that social media platforms could also take action to block promotion of one of his authors or books.

Theres a lot of potential hazards on the road ahead, he said. But its also good times for Regnery, because theres no such thing as bad publicity. Controversy is good.

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Is Amazon allowed to censor conservative books? - Deseret News

Yangon, Myanmar Hours after the Myanmar military seized power in a coup on February 1, it cut the internet. The blackout stalled the spread of information, as people in Myanmar and around the world slowly learned that the military had declared a one-year state of emergency and overthrown the civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

Far from an emergency measure, however, internet restrictions have become a hallmark of the generals short tenure in power.

Every night for more than two weeks, the military has imposed an internet blackout from 1am (18:30 GMT) to 9am (02:30 GMT) across the country. At the same time, it has also moved to grant itself sweeping powers to censor and arrest online dissenters. The regime has also banned access to websites, including popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The first overnight internet shutdown was imposed on February 6, the same day as the first mass protest.

Thousands took to the streets while misinformation spread via text messages, much of it seemingly designed to suppress protesters from gathering. One commonly shared message falsely claimed that the protesters were hired by the military to justify a harsher crackdown on the general population. Another falsely reported that Aung San Suu Kyi had been released.

But it was not until February 15 at 1am that the military government began its coordinated, nightly shutdowns. By then, mass protests were becoming increasingly common across the country, unhindered by the slowdown of information. Theories abound as to why the military has persisted with the blackouts.

James Griffiths, the author of The Great Firewall of China, said the decision to ban Facebook and Twitter was not surprising but the overnight internet shutdowns were a lot stranger.

Such blocks are relatively easy to achieve, especially when the government controls ISPs [internet service providers] which in the case of a military junta we must assume they do physically even if they dont legally, he said about the social media censorship.

Griffiths said there does seem to be some merit to the idea that the nightly shutdowns are related to installing new tech. Even then, however, it is slightly confusing, given that internet systems, including internet backbones, are upgraded periodically around the world without this type of outage, he continued.

Soldiers have used increasing force against protesters with some 50 people killed since the coup took place a month ago, according to the UN [File: Lynn Bo Bo/EPA]Human rights groups and international business organisations came together to condemn the military governments moves to legally restrict the internet via a draft Cybersecurity Bill and a series of amendments to the Electronic Transactions Law.

The proposed cyber-law would require that all online service providers keep all user data inside Myanmar and provide the government with the unrestricted authority to censor content or access user data, an onerous requirement for the providers and an enormous threat to human rights.

As currently drafted, it requires internet service providers to disclose user information to the authorities at any point in time without justifiable reasons, said a February 15 statement signed by eight chambers of commerce including the US, UK and Europe.

The draft cybersecurity law would hand a military that just staged a coup and is notorious for jailing critics almost unlimited power to access user data, putting anyone who speaks out at risk, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Amid the public outcry, the military government quietly amended the Electronic Transactions Law on February 15, adding some provisions that had originally been planned for the Cybersecurity Bill.

According to the non-government organisation Free Expression Myanmar, the copied amendments include jail time for spreading false information and giving the authorities broad powers to intercept user data. It is not clear if the military government still plans to move forward with the Cybersecurity Bill, or if it is content with the provisions in the Electronic Transactions Law.

A regional telecommunications expert, who asked to comment anonymously due to the political sensitivity of the issue, said it was possible the internet shutdowns were related to a new censorship regime.

No one outside the junta knows for sure, [but] it is possible that the government is shutting parts of the network at night to install hardware to implement strict censorship protocols and this would be permitted under their new cybersecurity law, the expert said.

Another theory is that the shutdown was part of the militarys effort to monitor the web for threats.

What I think may be happening is the government is trying to reduce the overall data traffic volume in order to monitor that traffic for any perceived threats while allowing companies to stay online during business hours, he said.

The expert said if the shutdowns were related to plans for a Myanmar firewall, this would raise existential questions about the future of investments in Myanmar.

Griffiths says he believes the generals would prefer an outright blackout but were reluctant to make such a move due to the massive economic costs.

The military has already deployed this blanket method in western Myanmar, where it cut off the internet in eight townships for more than two years while it engaged in a brutal war with the Arakan Army.

An internet blackout would also fully alienate the type of middle-class Burmese who could be the greatest threat to the new regime, and upon whom the junta will rely on to get the economy going again, he said.

But the nightly shutdowns are already frustrating the business community, foreign and domestic.

A local businessman in the IT industry, who asked to comment anonymously for safety reasons, said many actvities were being disrupted, including schools that were holding virtual lessons starting before 9am.

Telenor made a name for itself as Myanmars most transparent telco. Shortly after the coup it said it was no longer possible to share the directives it was receiving from the authorities [File: Lynn Bo Bo/EPA]Those lessons had to be rescheduled. And as telcos [telecommunications companies] struggled to provide seamless data service, teachers and students losing access to some online services such as Google drive and Amazon cloud, disrupted the flow, he said in an email.

He said the cuts would be quite disruptive for any IT company offering offshore development in foreign countries.

Quite a few developers like to burn the midnight oil and work till 3-4am, before turning in. They prefer the silence and disruption-free nature of night-time coding. Now thats become impossible, he added.

Tatum Albertine, the executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar, says the group has received no explanation from the military about the shutdowns, which have also caused problems for foreign businesses.

Albertine says the blackouts are a nuisance to companies that rely on the internet to communicate with headquarters and regional offices, financial institutions, suppliers, and customers who work across time zones around the world.

Lack of access to telecommunications systems is concerning for the continuity of business operations. Regularly not having access to the internet will likely be a key area that foreign investors will consider when looking at Myanmar, Albertine said.

Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor made a name for itself as the only transparent telecommunications company in Myanmar, providing regular updates on orders and directives it received from authorities, even ones it disagreed with.

On February 14, hours before the internet shutdown, that came to an end.

It is currently not possible for Telenor to disclose the directives we receive from the authorities, Telenor said in a statement, adding it was gravely concerned by this development.

The military response to the continuing demonstrations has become more violent, but protesters are not deterred [Lynn Bo Bo/EPA]In an email to Al Jazeera, Telenor spokesperson Cathrine Stang Lund said the company continues to publicly emphasise that peoples basic right to freedom of expression and access to information should be upheld and has protested against the proposed cybersecurity law.

When asked if the company would consider pulling out of Myanmar given the recent developments, Lund said it was evaluating the situation, and was committed to safeguarding the safety of its employees and providing services to its customers.

We are worried about the situation in Myanmar. We have seen the difference access to communication technology can make in reducing inequalities and contributing to inclusive growth, and we want to contribute to the countrys progress, she said.

If the military was hoping the internet blackout and censorship would help conceal its increasing brutality towards the citizens who have taken to the streets in support of their elected government that has not happened.

On Wednesday, as the blackout continued for an 18th night, graphic videos and photos were shared around the world, depicting violent attacks on protesters, and the use of live ammunition. At least 38 people were killed, according to the UNs special envoy in Myanmar.

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Why is Myanmars military blocking the internet? - Al Jazeera English

I know a lot of people who live in fear of saying what they really think. In red America and in blue America and, perhaps more so, on the red internet and the blue internet we are in the grip of an epidemic of self-silencing. What you censor, of course, depends on where you sit.

My liberal friends who live in red America confess to avoiding discussions of masks, Dominion, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, the 2020 election and Donald Trump, to name just a few. When those who disagree with the surrounding majority speak their mind, they suffer the consequences. I think here of my friend, the conservative writer David French, who for four years endured an avalanche of horrific attacks against himself and his family for criticizing the Trump administration that ultimately required the intervention of the FBI.

But there are two illiberal cultures swallowing up the country. I know because I live in blue America, in a world awash in NPR tote bags and front lawn signs proclaiming the social justice bonafides of the family inside.

In my America, the people who keep quiet dont fear the wrath of Trump supporters. They fear the illiberal left.

They are feminists who believe there are biological differences between men and women. Journalists who believe their job is to tell the truth about the world, even when its inconvenient. Doctors whose only creed is science. Lawyers who will not compromise on the principle of equal treatment under the law. Professors who seek the freedom to write and research without fear of being smeared. In short, they are centrists, libertarians, liberals and progressives who do not ascribe to every single aspect of the new far-left orthodoxy.

After I resigned from The New York Times over the summer for their hostility to free speech and open inquiry, I began to hear almost daily from such people. Their notes to me sound like missives smuggled out of a totalitarian society.

I realize that may sound hysterical. So Id ask you to consider a few recent examples from my inbox:

I never thought Id practice the kind of self-censorship I now do when pitching editors, but these days I have almost no power to do otherwise, a young journalist writes. For woke-skeptical young writers, banishment and rejection awaits if you attempt to depart, even in minor ways, from the sacred ideology of wokeness.

Self-censorship is the norm, not the exception, a student at one of the top law schools in the country wrote from his personal email because he was worried about sending it from his official school account. I self-censor even when talking to some of my best friends for fear of word getting around. Practically all of the faculty subscribe to the same ideology, the student went on. And so, he confessed, I try to write exam answers that mirror their world view rather than presenting the best arguments I see.

We live in the freest society in the history of the world. There is no gulag here, as there was in the Soviet Union. There is no formal social credit system, as there is today in China. And yet the words that we associate with closed societies dissidents, double thinkers, blacklists are exactly the ones that come to mind when I read the notes above.

The liberal worldview that we took for granted in the West from the end of the Cold War until only a few years ago is under siege. It is under siege on the right by the rapid spread of internet cults and conspiracy theories. One need look no further than Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, an unabashed QAnon believer just elected to Congress.

On the left, liberalism is under siege by a new, illiberal orthodoxy that has taken root all around, including in the very institutions meant to uphold the liberal order. And cancellation is this ideologys most effective weapon. It uses cancellation the way ancient societies used witch burnings: to strike fear into the hearts of everyone watching. The point is the assertion of power. By showing the rest of us that we could be next, it compels us to conform and obey, either by remaining silent, or, perhaps, offering up our own kindling.

Maybe you are among this self-silencing majority. There is a good chance that you are if the biologist Bret Weinstein is right when he observes that the population is composed of four groups: the few who actually hunt witches, a large group that goes along and a larger group that remains silent. Theres also a tiny group that opposes the hunt. And that final group as if by magic become witches.

I speak on behalf of this latter category. In this essay, allow me the opportunity to try to convince you that everything that makes America exceptional, everything that makes civilization worthy of that name, depends on your willingness to pick up a broomstick.

I was born in 1984, which puts me among the last generation born into America before the phrase cancel culture existed. That world I was born into was liberal. I dont mean that in the partisan sense, but in the classical and therefore the most capacious sense of that word. It was a liberal consensus shared by liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats.

The consensus view relied on a few foundational truths that seemed as obvious as the blue of the sky: the belief that everyone is created in the image of God; the belief that everyone is equal because of it; the presumption of innocence; a revulsion to mob justice; a commitment to pluralism and free speech, and to liberty of thought and of faith.

As Ive observed elsewhere, this worldview recognized that there were whole realms of human life located outside the province of politics, like friendships, art, music, family and love. It was possible for Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be the best of friends, because, as Scalia once said, some things are more important than votes.

Most importantly, this worldview insisted that what bound us together was not blood or soil, but a commitment to a shared set of ideas. Even with all of its failings, the thing that makes America exceptional is that it is a departure from the notion, still prevalent in so many other places, that biology, birthplace, class, rank, gender, race are destiny. Our second founding fathers, abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, were living testimonies to that truth.

This old consensus every single aspect of it has been run over by the new illiberal orthodoxy. Because this ideology cloaks itself in the language of progress, many understandably fall for its self-branding. Dont. It promises revolutionary justice, but it threatens to drag us back into the mean of history, in which we are pitted against one another according to tribe.

The primary mode of this ideological movement is not building or renewing or reforming, but tearing down. Persuasion is replaced with public shaming. Forgiveness is replaced with punishment. Mercy is replaced with vengeance. Pluralism with conformity; debate with de-platforming; facts with feelings; ideas with identity.

According to the new illiberalism, the past cannot be understood on its own terms, but must be judged through the morals and mores of the present. Education, according to this ideology, is not about teaching people how to think, its about telling them what to think. All of this is why William Peris, a UCLA lecturer and an Air Force veteran, was investigated because he read Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter from Birmingham Jail out loud in class. It is why statues of Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln were torn down last summer. It is why a school district in California has banned Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and John Steinbecks Of Mice and Men. Its why the San Francisco School Board just voted to rename 44 schools, including ones named for George Washington, Paul Revere and Dianne Feinstein you read that right for various sins.

In this ideology, if you do not tweet the right tweet or share the right slogan or post the right motto and visual on Instagram, your whole life can be ruined. If you think Im exaggerating, you might look up Tiffany Riley, the Vermont public school principal fired this fall because she said she supports Black lives but not the organization Black Lives Matter.

In this ideology, intent doesnt matter a whit. Just ask Greg Patton. This fall, the professor of business communication at USC was teaching a class on filler words like um and like and so forth for his masters-level course. In China, he noted, the common pause word is that that that. So in China it might be he then went on to pronounce a Chinese word that sounded like an English racial slur.

Some students were offended and they wrote a letter to the dean of the business school accusing their professor of negligence and disregard. They added: We should not be made to fight for our sense of peace and mental well-being at school.

Rather than telling them that their assertions were lunacy, the dean of the school capitulated to the madness: It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students. Patton was suspended from teaching the course and the increasingly elastic notion of safety was wielded, once again, into a powerful weapon.

Victimhood, in this ideology, confers morality. I think therefore I am is replaced with: I am therefore I know, and I know therefore I am right.

In this ideology, you are guilty for the sins of your father. In other words: you are not you. You are only a mere avatar of your race or your religion. And racism is no longer about discrimination based on the color of someones skin. Racism is any system that allows for disparate outcomes between racial groups. That is why the cities of Seattle and San Francisco have recast algebra as racist. Or why a Smithsonian institution this summer declared that hard work, individualism and the nuclear family are white characteristics.

In this totalizing ideology, you can be guilty by proximity. A Palestinian business owner in Milwaukee, Majdi Wadi, was nearly wiped out this summer because of racist and anti-Semitic tweets his daughter wrote as a teenager. A professional soccer player was fired because of the posts of his wife. There are hundreds of similar examples. The enlightenment, as the critic Ed Rothstein has put it, has been replaced by the exorcism.

Perhaps most importantly, in this ideology, speech the way that we resolve conflict in a civilized society can be violence, yet violence, when carried out by the right people in pursuit of a just cause, is not violence at all.

That is how, in June, more than 800 of my former colleagues at The New York Times claimed that an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton put them in danger, while the most celebrated journalist at the paper the most recent winner of a Pulitzer Prize publicly insisted that looting and rioting are not violence. That journalist, the creator of the 1619 project, continues to be lionized. In the meantime, the editors who published the op-ed were publicly humiliated and then pushed out of the paper.

One can disagree with the argument waged by Tom Cotton he advocated for the National Guard to put down violent rioting over the summer and believe, as I do, that you cannot call yourself the paper of record and ignore the views of half of the country.

I resigned a few weeks after that shameful episode, convinced that it wasnt possible to take intellectual risks at a newspaper that folded like a tent in the face of a mob. As I wrote in my resignation letter, All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what theyll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and youll be hung out to dry.

The skeptical reader will rightly point out that cultures have always had taboos. That there have always been behaviors or words that put people beyond the pale. Ostracism has been with us since the Hebrew Bible, and public shaming has long been a way for tribes and cultures to maintain important social mores.

All true. But what we call cancel culture is a departure from traditional taboos in two ways.

The first is technology. Sins once confined to the public square or the town hall are now available for the entire world for eternity. In our era of Big Tech there is no possibility of moving to a new town and starting fresh because the cloud of all of your posts and likes hangs over your head forever.

The second is that in the past, societal taboos were generally reached through a cultural consensus. Todays taboos, on the other hand, are often fringe ideas pushed by a zealous cabal trying to redefine what is acceptable and what should be shunned. It is a group that has control of nearly all of the institutions that produce American cultural and intellectual life: media, to be sure, but also higher education, museums, publishing houses, marketing and advertising outfits, Hollywood, K-12 education, technology companies and, increasingly, corporate human resource departments.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that a recent national study from the Cato Institute found that 62% of Americans say they self-censor. The more conservative a group is, the more likely they are to hide their views: 52% of Democrats confess to self-censoring compared with 77% of Republicans.

And of course they are afraid. In an era when people are smeared for petty things, small grievances and differences of opinion in a supposedly liberal and tolerant environment, who would dare share that they voted for a Republican?

But no one joins things to make themselves feel bad. People join things that make them feel good, that give them meaning, that provide them with a sense of belonging. Which is why so many people of my generation and younger have been drawn to this ideology. I do not believe it is because they lack intellect or because they are snowflakes.

The rise of this movement has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; the loss of faith in meritocracy; the arrogance of our elites; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt; the death of trust. It has taken place against the backdrop in which the American dream has felt like a punchline, the inequalities of our supposedly fair, liberal meritocracy are clearly rigged in favor of some people and against others.

I became converted because I was ripe for it and lived in a disintegrating society thirsting for faith. That was Arthur Koestler writing in 1949 about his love affair with communism. The same can be said of this new, revolutionary faith.

If we want our bright young minds to reject this worldview, we must face these problems because without these maladies we would have had neither Donald Trump nor the cultural revolutionaries now transforming Americas most important institutions from within.

But we must start somewhere, and the only place we can start is an appeal to courage and duty.

It is our duty to resist the crowd in this age of mob thinking. It is our duty to speak truth in an age of lies. It is our duty to think freely in an age of conformity.

Or, as the great American judge Learned Hand once put it so perfectly, Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.

Keeping the spirit of liberty alive in an age of creeping illiberalism is nothing less than our moral obligation. Everything depends on it.

Bari Weiss is the author of How to Fight Anti-Semitism, which won a 2019 National Jewish Book Award. From 2017 to 2020 Weiss was an opinion writer and editor at The New York Times. Before that she was an op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal and a senior editor at Tablet Magazine.

This story appears in the March issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.

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Bari Weiss on cancel culture, leaving The New York Times and self-censorship - Deseret News

In 1833 Lydia Maria Child was probably the best-known female writer in the United States. Then her radical abolitionistbook Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, in which she called for immediate emancipation, was published. It was not well received. In fact, as scholar Carolyn L. Karcher writes, Child sacrificed her literary career to abolitionism.

Born in 1802, Child rocketed to fame with Hobomok, a historical novel first published anonymously (By an American) in 1824. The book, writes Karcher, scandalized and titillated her contemporaries with its double violation of the taboos against miscegenation and divorce. In the novel, Child imagined a sexual relationship between a Native American man and an English woman during the early colonial period. This initially raised eyebrows in Boston, the heart of the literary scene, but the novel grew in reputation (and sales) and Child was celebrated. She was one of Nathaniel Hawthornes damned mob of scribbling women, who sold more books than he did.

In her nonfictional Appeal, however, she went beyond the limits of debate, even defending the right of men and women to marry regardless of race. Boston was not so appreciative this time. Sales of all her books plummeted; she was shunned in the street; subscriptions to her magazine for children were canceled.

The publication of the Appeal coincided with the peak of the anti-abolitionist movement in the North. Congressmen, attorneys general, judges, mayors, bankers, financiers, merchants, and manufacturers led mobs attacking abolitionists, writes Karcher. One abolitionist newspaper editor was killed. The militia was called in to suppress the week-long New York City anti-abolition riot in July 1834. Child herself experienced the fury of anti-abolitionist mobs at least twice, and wrote memorable accounts of them, according to Karcher. And in 1836, the Gag Rule muzzled any debate over slavery in Congress.

It was in this climate that Child struggled to get back into mainstream publishing. Her next major work was a collection of her columns from the National Anti-Slavery Standard, written between 1841 and 1843. The original abolitionist columns, however, were too radical for the uncommitted public.

If Child wanted a commercial publisher to sponsor the book and a large body of readers to buy it, she would have to censor it, writes Karcher. Thus she found herself facing a difficult moral problem: how could she regain her popularity without betraying her principles.

Not printing some of her more radical pieces and replacing the word abolition with reform in others, Child blunted her politics in Letters from New-York (1843). The book, Karcher judges, retained a strong reformist cast, but only the faintest tinge of abolitionism.

As Karcher notes, government censorship, while not unknown, has been fairly rare in America. But there has long been what she calls censorship American style. This is a varying mix of market forceswhat the public will buy, or what gatekeepers think the public will buyand conformist opinion about legitimate topics for discussion. Ostracized by respectable opinion and threatened by violent anti-abolitionists, Lydia Maria Child felt she had to censor herself to get her message out to a wider audience.

The chief victims of these informal pressures to conform, concludes Karcher, are not the writers whose freedom it limits, but rather the public they are seeking to educate by disseminating ideas and information that run counter to prevailing orthodoxy.

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The North American Review, Vol. 41, No. 88 (Jul., 1835), pp. 170-193

University of Northern Iowa

By: Carolyn L. Karcher

Studies in the American Renaissance, Studies in the American Renaissance (1986), pp. 283-303

Joel Myerson

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Lydia Maria Child and the American Way of Censorship - JSTOR Daily

The future of the Merc with a Mouth in the MCU has been the subject of some debate in recent months, with Deadpool 3 looking likely to receive a stronger rating than other projects from Marvel Studios. While star Ryan Reynolds hasnt really shown any frustration with the developing movie so far, a new report today from GeekTyrant is suggesting that the actor may not be happy with Disney and specifically, with how theyre potentially censoring the future film.

According to the story, Reynolds has fallen out with the Mouse House in a major way, with GeekTyrant noting:

According to a source that works on the Fox Studios lot, Reynolds has had it with Disney and doesnt want to have anything to do with them. So, what did Disney do to possibly get on Reynolds bad side? Well, from what Ive been told Reynolds is tired of the Disney censorship bullshit and that hes saying enough is enough.

If true, this development would go against what weve previously been hearing from Kevin Feige and Reynolds regarding the ambitious plans for Deadpool. As such, for now, wed advise taking this report with a grain of salt. That being said, GeekTyrant stresses that the actors issue is specifically with the Mouse House and not Marvel Studios, so things may indeed still be fine between him and Feige.

In any case, Reynolds has a lot invested personally in Wade Wilson and will surely be protective over any new directions taken with the material. Assuming that an R-rating is almost certain for Deadpool 3, though, itd be a surprise if there was more pressure for cuts to content, or that thered be internal problems with the Merc with a Mouth laying into the Avengers and similar properties, given thats something that the in-development picture is being tipped to indulge in.

Theres also no reason to worry just yet, as we heard earlier today that Reynolds is very impressed with Marvel Studios (again, not Disney) approach to date with Deadpool 3. And with the pic probably not reaching screens until 2023, theres still plenty of time for things to change behind the scenes.

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Ryan Reynolds Reportedly Unhappy With Disneys Censorship Of Deadpool 3 - We Got This Covered

As social media and internet giants have banned political figures and platforms, some wonder how far their reach is

On Jan. 8, 2021, Twitter permanently suspended former President Donald Trumps Twitter account. This was done primarily because of Trumps alleged involvement with the Jan. 6 Capitol riots that left five people dead.

In addition, following the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Amazon, Apple and Google removed Parler, the social media platform popular among far-right extremist groups, due to the backlash it received for being among the networks used to organize the Capitol riots.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even TikTok have since instituted some form of censorship or ban on Trump.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Censorship [is the] suppression of words, images, or ideas that are offensive, [and] happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others.

In other words, censorship is the process by which offensive ideas are purposefully prevented by private entities or the government. However, when the U.S. government attempts to engage in censorship, it leads to issues with the First Amendment.

Private companies are non-governmental agencies who are permitted to use censorship, through banning or suspending accounts, ideas or things, because they are not subjected to the First Amendments decree that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Simply put, the U.S. government shall not pass laws that undermine the constitutionally-outlined freedoms afforded to American citizens, notably in regards to free speech and press.

Freedom Houses annual Freedom on the Net report found that 86.6% of respondents were in support of social media companies such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook having power to engage in censorship.

Other interesting findings include that 60.4% of respondents were in favor of the censorship of content encouraging violence, 54.3% for racist content and only 18.7% for conspiracy theories.

The censorship of Trump and Parler are potential examples of censorship used to protect American society as these two entities have often been engaged in dangerous online behavior.

The fear that often arises is that social media platforms are private entities capable of easily censoring or removing anyone from their platforms, even arguably one of the most powerful people in the worlda sitting President of the U.S.

Social media platforms main objective is usually to allow organic, unobstructed communication and sharing of varied ideas and content. However, by being able to easily censor such an influential goliath as a president, how much protection does the average user have? Furthermore, who is the rider of the moral high horse that gets to decide what is and is not worth censoring?

As Americans who often value individual freedoms, it is troubling to some that the social media sites we use everyday are private corporations that can legally dim and censor our voices. However, when the content being published for millions of people to see can lead to immense danger, censorship may be necessary.

Written by: Muhammad Tariq arts@theaggie.org

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Who gets to censor what is on our social media platforms? - The Aggie

In short, we do not need good laws to restrain bad men. We need good men to restrain bad laws. G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Why do people in power try to silence speech with which they disagree?

Last week produced news about the suppression of speech on university campuses.

There, the suppression usually occurs through the power of intimidation before the speech is given. Yet, most public lectures on college campuses are public accommodations, meaning the landowner the university cannot bar the entry of audience members because of their political views, nor can it silence the speakers because of theirs.

Ordinarily, the owner of private property can impose whatever regulations he wishes upon those who voluntarily come upon his land. But in our era of ubiquitous government, state legislatures have enacted laws that require that if you invite the public, you must take whoever shows up. And if you accept money from the state or the feds and there are only a handful of colleges and universities that do not you must abide the same First Amendment standards as the government.

In the latter case, since the government cannot discriminate on the basis of ideas, then colleges or universities that accept funds from the government likewise cannot. The theory here is that the governments funds dollars taken from taxpayers or money the government has borrowed, to be repaid by future taxpayers ought not be used indirectly in ways that the Constitution bars the government from using directly.

But the First Amendment is rarely enforced on college campuses today because colleges have largely become places of left-wing orthodoxy where it is acceptable to cajole or intimidate into silence speakers who are at odds with that orthodoxy.

The usual excuse is the speaker will outrage the audience and that would threaten public safety.

Yet, under the First Amendment, where the audience is voluntary, free speech trumps public safety. This clash happens when people come to public lectures not because they like the lecturers ideas but because they hate them.

A famous Chicago case put to rest the concept of freedom of speech versus public safety. The issue was the hecklers veto, which takes place when audience members are so intentionally disruptive that they effectively prevent the speaker from speaking.

Here is what happened. On Feb. 7, 1946, Fr. Arthur Terminiello, a Roman Catholic priest who was an outspoken opponent of the Truman administration, gave an incendiary speech in a hall in Chicago, which the sponsors of the speech had rented for that purpose.

The sponsors had obtained the required permits from the Chicago police.

The hall was on private property.The speech delighted Terminiellos supporters and antagonized his opponents.

The opponents numbered about 1,600 people and the supporters about 800.

When it became apparent that violence might break out, the police ordered Terminiello to stop speaking and to leave the venue.

When he disregarded their instructions, they arrested him and charged him with breach of the peace.

They did not arrest any of the audience members who broke chairs, smashed windows and stormed the stage. Only the priest who gave the speech was arrested.Terminiello was convicted in a trial court and his conviction was upheld by state appellate courts. He appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed his conviction.

In doing so, the court moved First Amendment jurisprudence significantly closer to where it is today a near absolute protection for public political speech.

The court held that the government cannot silence a speaker because it fears his words or the audience. It also held that it is the duty of the government to respect and protect the freedom of speech, not to nullify or avoid it.

The decision was 5 to 4, and Justice Robert Jackson wrote a misguided dissent with a memorable one-liner. He argued that freedom of speech does not tolerate violence and permits the government to silence a speaker who may be prone to inciting violence beforehe speaks. Jackson lamented that in the post-World War II era, liberty and governmental order are often adversaries.

He warned that if the courts regularly side with liberty, they will convert the Constitution and the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact. But the First Amendment and the natural right to say what you think compel the court to side with liberty, no matter how odious is the speech.

Jackson who had just returned to the court from a leave of absence as Americas chief prosecutor at Nuremberg was naive in his lament about liberty and governmental order being 20th-century adversaries.

They have always been and will always be adversaries.

The essence of humanity is personal liberty. And the essence of government is the negation of liberty. Jackson rejected the very values underlying the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; namely, that freedom is the default position because it is integral to our nature.

And the Supreme Court rejected Jacksons arguments.

Prior to this case, nearly all the Supreme Courts 20th-century First Amendment rulings sided with the government.

The Terminiello case is a landmark because, since it and from it, the Supreme Court has consistently sided with First Amendment freedoms.

It arguably gave birth to the famous 1969 Brandenburg case, where the court unanimously held that all innocuous speech is absolutely protected and all speech is innocuous when there is time for more speech to challenge it.

Which is the greater threat to personal liberty, a speaker who harangues a crowd that came to be harangued or a government that fears free speech and issues edicts about what to say and when to say it?

Will colleges and universities take note of this? Dont hold your breath.

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Notre Dame Law School, was the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of New Jersey. He sat on the bench from 1987 to 1995. He taught constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School for 11 years, and he returned to private practice in 1995. Judge Napolitano began television work in the same year. He is Fox News senior judicial analyst on the Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network. He is the host of Freedom Watch on the Fox Business Network. Napolitano also lectures nationally on the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, civil liberties in wartime, and human freedom. He has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. He is the author of five books on the U.S. Constitution. Read Judge Andrew P. Napolitanos Reports More Here.

Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Where Are the Good People to Restrain Censorship? - KMJ Now

With lawmakers across the nation introducing legislation to change the practices of tech companies, the battle over social media and online speech has come to the states. Though they often have slight differences, the basis of the various state proposals is forcing companies to keep up user accounts and content while minimizing the use of artificial intelligence to display or remove content. Prominent examples include legislation introduced in Oklahoma and Kentucky that would fine companies that censor political or religious speech to the tune of $75,000 per deletion.

Such legislation has not typically been the prerogative of conservative lawmakers. These proposals put government directly in the center of how certain businesses must be run rather than letting consumers decide what platforms they want to spend their time on.

These bills also violate another tenant of conservative principles federalism. This principle is often misunderstood as the lowest level of government addressing a problem. Correctly understood, its the proper level of government addressing a specific issue. Local governments shouldnt be in charge of national defense, for example. For issues involving internet companies that are interstate, the federal government is often the proper level to address them. Otherwise, states like California end up passing laws that affect consumers in all 50 states.

Adding to the problems is the important fact that all of these proposals likely violate the First Amendment since they involve government dictating to private entities what speech they are forced to carry. If the same standards in these bills applied to news websites, it becomes immediately obvious that First Amendment protections are likely violated.

But even putting aside long=standing conservative principles and constitutional issues, if the legislation was enacted, would it actually solve the problem lawmakers are trying to address?

While legislators no doubt have companies like Twitter in mind when writing this legislation, their definition of what constitutes a social media company is far more engrossing. Platforms like Twitch, which hosts streams of people playing video games and allowing viewers to interact in a live chat section, would also be affected. The same goes for Reddit, a website that allows for subreddits, or communities based around a single subject.

These websites function by empowering those hosting the subreddit or stream to moderate the content as they deem fit. Run the New Orleans Saints subreddit and want to ban annoying Atlanta Falcons fans? Not a problem. Want to stop a commenter from spamming Vermin Supreme 2024 while you are streaming Fortnite? Your stream, your rules.

But many of these proposals would force every channel operator or part-time moderator to determine if any one of their moderating decisions would run afoul of a state law and potentially incur large fines. Websites that host user-generated content, the very thing that makes the internet the powerful tool it is today, would be forced into two terrible choices.

They could either stop creators and moderators from having control over their own space, allowing spam and speech containing profanity and racial slurs to explode. Or, they could only allow far fewer content creators on websites, limiting the very kind diverse content and interaction people go online to enjoy.

Herein lies the heart of the proposals to rein in tech platforms in the defense of free speech. Speech flourishes online when private organizations and groups can set the rules for discussion. Forcing websites into an all-or-nothing approach will silence the very kind of voices and discourse they set out to promote.

Lawmakers may be rightly worried about a free speech culture and the ability of certain companies to silence voices, but government intervention fails to solve the problem. These state legislative proposals not only violate important conservative principles of co-opting private businesses for political expediency, but they also fail in what they aim to achieve. The internet that allows for so many people to reach an audience and express themselves will either cease as we know it today, or it will be quickly overrun by spam and other vile content.

If the point of these bills is to try to punish or scare Silicon Valley, they might succeed. But if lawmakers are interested in having an open internet where users can actually hear conservative voices, this approach will certainly fail.

Eric Peterson is the director of the Pelican Center for Technology and Innovation at the Pelican Institute for Public Policy.

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Op-Ed: State bills won't solve political censorship, but they will create other problems - The Center Square