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Jeff Hess's avatar

When I was an undergraduate at Ohio University in the early '80s, majoring in magazine journalism, I attended the keynote address during Communications Week to hear Lyle Dennison speak. I don't recall what his theme was, but I remember the moment when he said: "Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was wrong. You do have a first amendment right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater and if people panic and start running about without looking for smoke, well. That's on them."

Minors and the mentally challenged should be protected, but the rest of us are responsible for our actions and if someone makes a fool of us because we don't pay attention, well, that's on us.

As a working journalist I've held to one primary maxim: The response to objectionable speech must never be censorship. In any free society--especially one where the freedoms of speech and the press are enshrined in our constitution--the only acceptable response to offensive speech must be more speech.

I think Moore's right, but I'll accept that some disagree with me and if they think they have a case then they should tell the world about why they believe that to be true, not call upon corporate “community reviewers” or “news credibility specialists" to tuck them safely in their beds.

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Future Present's avatar

Unfortunately these knee-jerk calls to ban and censor have become mainstream, even amongst people who really ought to know better.

In the late-80s Noam Chomsky defended a French Holocaust denier’s right to free speech even though he did not agree with the man’s views. When confronted by critics who said he was legitimizing disinformation, he answered “if you believe in free speech only for views you agree with, you don’t believe in free speech.” This used to be the default position of the “liberal left.”

How far we have fallen. Nowadays even people like Naomi Klein support the censoring of views that she does not agree with (one can hardly classify Moore’s film as disinformation even if one does not see eye to eye with him on every issue it raises).

Advocating for the censoring of views you don’t like is silly and immature and, among other negative consequences, further splinters the notoriously sectarian left. Whatever happened to debating contentious issues In good faith?

Censoring Holocaust deniers and other fringe loons or charlatans like Alex Jones actually does them a favour and raises their stock amongst supporters. It gives them the perfect opportunity to say “I speak the truth and this frightens my powerful enemies and, as I predicted, they are now trying to shut me up.”

It is really disconcerting how dumbed down and credulous many intelligent people have become since Trump was elected. It’s like their brains are broken. This new love of censorship is also a disturbing example of how media distributed propaganda stealthily influences even highly literate and university educated people.

These wise intellectuals and their fans ought to take a time out and consider how, without them apparently noticing, they and the mainstream liberal “left” came to embrace the authoritarian anti-free speech position that was perviously associated with the reactionary right. The benefits of self-awareness and a basic understanding of history and human psychology are many.

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