Free speech hypocrites

Photo by palesa

It seems like free speech discourse has finally hit the mainstream media. And this time it isn’t about how racist everyone who is advocating for it is. Now that Trump’s administration is deporting individuals ostensibly for their views, a chorus of voices has risen overnight in defense of speech rights. But forgive me if I don’t quite buy their sudden enlightenment.

You see, my memory might not be so great, but it hasn’t been so long that I’ve forgotten how professors were fired or quietly pushed out for their opinions. How students were hounded and harrassed for theirs. How guest speakers on university campuses were shouted down, or had their events canceled because university administrators preferred appeasement of the mobs over principle. Or how simply defending free speech—once the hallmark of progressive academia—was recast as a right-wing tell, a reason for social exile.

I also recall all the people who had lost their jobs, their businesses, even their lives—not for breaking laws, but for breaking with orthodoxy. I spoke to many of them. Heck, I was one of them. I even wrote a book about it

And you know what? Many of the same voices who’ve now reinvented themselves as proponents of free speech were once more than eager to shut it down for other people. But, now, they’ll have you believe that they embrace it. They don’t. And neither does the media who now has guests on to discuss how terrible this oppression by the Trump administration is.

Their outrage isn’t about principle—it’s about power. They’re not upset that speech is being suppressed; they’re upset that their speech is being suppressed. It’s not the censorship that bothers them, but the fact that it’s no longer under their control in the way it was previously.