Sunday, May 5, 2024

Jews Must Not Let Politicians Curtail Free Speech

 Either everyone is free to say what they want, no matter how noxious others find it, in order to create and sustain the free market of ideas-or else speech isn't free.

Institutions that curtail speech-that make people's social media postings grounds for expulsion, that ban or suppress speakers they disagree with, that penalize dissenting opinions in classrooms and workplaces with bad grades and HR reports-should not be allowed to then turn around and invoke the principles of free speech to defend problematic speech with which they happen to agree, let alone disruptive or illegal behavior.

Huge swaths of often innocent speech by the former is deemed out of bounds, even criminal, whereas any speech coming out of the mouth of someone with a claim to victim status-including speech that actively incites violence-is considered sacrosanct.

In a world in which people with minority opinions are increasingly subject to the full force of "The whole of government" or "The whole of society" being brought against them by a narrow group of powerful people, we have an existential interest as a people in supporting free speech and constitutional rights for others-on the historically sound principle that they will soon be coming for us.

After using their administrative powers to scrub free speech and open debate from their own campuses and curricula by imposing extra-constitutional categories like "Hate speech" and claiming that "Words are violence," their attempt to hide behind principles that they have spent the past three decades gleefully and purposefully shredding is the height of hypocrisy.

The Ivies especially have, almost to a one, become cesspools of hate, teaching garbage to their students, celebrating and hosting terrorists on their campuses, and subjecting Jewish students to vile propaganda and physical attacks-all while suppressing free speech and free inquiry at every chance they could get.

As a people whose secular and religious culture has been founded in the idea of open, often-contentious debate for thousands of years, and as a tiny minority in a pluralistic and increasingly fractious society, Jews have a special-we argue necessary-attachment to free speech. 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/not-in-our-name

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