Let's Talk About Censorship
My argument that it is not an "either/or" concept
Today I learned that Substack will remove (has removed?) some pro-Nazi newsletters from the platform. Is this good? Is this bad?
Those that focus on me asking if censorship is good may think I am:
A Nazi-sympathizer
An idiot that doesn’t understand this country was built on free-speech
Someone legitimately concerned about censorship
Those that focus on me asking if censorship is bad may think I am:
One of those “free speech” fanatics (dare I say free speech Nazi?")
One of those “slippery slope nuts” running around shouting “The sky is falling!” (Is it wrong of me to think people may not know this story and so link to it here?)
Someone legitimately concerned about censorship
The problem is, once you put quill to parchment and let your thoughts loose in the wild, you release control. People will think what they will about what you crafted and there is not much you can do about that. All I can do is try to be clear, and hope people actually read past the first sentence. And ask for that initial charity without which dialog is impossible.
So, is censorship bad?
The nuanced answer is that it can be. Some things to consider:
What is being censored?
Who is doing the censoring?
How is it being done? (like killing the author, or destroying their life, or asking them to stop in the name of all that is decent?)
What recourse does a person being censored have? Can they argue their case? Ask for reconsideration?
I read a very interesting article about “liquid” topics. I am pretty sure it was from a writer on Substack, but I cannot find the article. It referenced the topic of the “Nazi bar”, and drew a comparison with it and pornography. The short version is that a man saw a potential patron kicked out of a bar. The reason? Wearing “iron crosses and stuff”. The bartender feared if he let the person stay, his bar would turn into a biker bar.
The author whose name I cannot remember referred to this as a “liquid” problem. Something flows in through the gaps or chinks and fills up space and doesn’t leave. If bikers start showing up, eventually other patrons don’t feel comfortable and quit coming, and you lose a desirable trade, i.e., one that doesn’t cause fights and destroy property. Meanwhile, more bikers flow in and don’t leave and you now run a biker bar.
I have no idea how realistic this is but it sounds plausible on its face. The person commented that Tumblr had become a porn-site in the same way. They stood by a “no censorship” policy and then when they decided to crack down they lost nearly 30% of their users. They did not set out to become a porn site, but had become one.
Why did Tumblr decide to crack down? Well, credit card companies have a no child sexual abuse/trafficking policy and will cut off companies from access to their networks. And Apple pulled them off their platform (for a time) for the same reasons. This is styled as these companies being “anti-porn.”
But look how that is presented in this article:
“Credit card companies are anti-porn,” he says, citing how both Visa and Mastercard stopped accepting payments on Pornhub after the adult video site was found hosting child sexual abuse videos. - PC Mag
And this one:
Tumblr has suffered a massive drop in traffic since banning porn late last year.
In November 2018, Tumblr's iOS app was pulled from the Apple App Store because the site identified child pornography on the platform. - Yahoo! News
So here’s a question.
Is it bad to ban porn? Is it OK for companies to make money off porn?
Here’s another. Is it OK for companies to provide a platform for publishing child rape videos? To profit from the abuse of children and the infliction of permanent, serious psychological damage to the most vulnerable?
Is censorship bad?
I go back to my opening which I will repeat here:
The nuanced answer is that it can be. Some things to consider:
What is being censored?
Who is doing the censoring?
How is it being done? (like killing the author, or destroying their life, or asking them to stop in the name of all that is decent?)
What recourse does a person have when being censored? Can they argue their case? Ask for reconsideration?
And all of that indicates that there can be times when censorship is good, even necessary.
So, when I hear Pro-Nazi site, I have to say, I’m not sure what that is. How is it possible that I say that? Because I have never spent any time on a Pro-Nazi site.
Are Pro-Nazi groups simply white supremacist groups consisting of a bunch of middle school drop-out skin-heads that have adopted Nazi symbolism because they think it looks cool? A place where they can hang out with other like minded folk and talk bad about people that aren’t them? Sort of a “let’s get drunk and talk shit about the Negro while we clean our guns” group?
Or are pro-Nazi sites run by people that are truly engaged in politics and find that Fascism is the style of government that scratches their itch. They adhere to a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology, and actively want to replace our representative democracy with Fascism?
Or, all of the above and everything on that spectrum?
I don’t know, you tell me.
Meanwhile, do they need to be censored? And by who and to what end? And how do you decide when some conservative nationalist has crossed over to “Nazi”?
Is a bigoted white guy a Nazi? And I mean the kind of bigoted white guys that died in Normandy.
Is a guy that starts a fashion newsletter and has an article about how cool all the WWII German military uniforms were when compared with French uniforms a Nazi sympathizer?
Someone trying to build a following may assert that it is.
See, that is part of the problem.
Who decides, and based on what? It’s pretty clear that there is no truly and generally recognized moral authority in this country. Which may be why so many feel comfortable deciding that they are that moral authority.
Some things should be censored. What is my criteria? If it is malicious to an individual or a group, there is no place for it in the public square. Let’s look at that word malicious.
The word comes from the root “malice”. Building off the Latin “mal” we have this:
word-forming element of Latin origin meaning "bad, badly, ill, poorly, wrong, wrongly,"
That takes us to “malice”:
c. 1300, "desire to hurt another, propensity to inflict injury or suffering, active ill-will," from Old French malice "ill will, spite, sinfulness, wickedness" (12c.), from Latin malitia "badness, ill will, spite," from malus "bad, unpleasant" (see mal-). In legal use, "a design or intention of doing mischief to another without justification or excuse" (1540s).
Note that last sentence: a design or intention of doing mischief to another without justification or excuse.
I could run through all the other dictionary definitions of justification or excuse, and believe me I would love to. But I hope anyone reading this can reason to my conclusion which is this:
The concept of “Freedom of Speech” should not protect malice as defined above. Malicious sites can and generally should be censored by the platforms that carry them as they promote or commit violence against the innocent.
And we should all be opposed to violence against the innocent. That’s my reasoned opinion.
A couple of items to note:
Free speech is protected by the Bill of Rights - protected FROM government censorship.
Free speech on Substack is not protected by the Bill of Rights as Substack is not the US Government.
If Substack decides that some sites promote violence against the innocent, I support their decision to remove those sites. If someone arbitrarily decides a site is “Pro-Nazi” but Substack finds that it does not promote malice and so they don’t want to shut it down, I support that as well.
I am a librarian with over 30 years of experience working with controversial topics. I both hate and love conversations about censorship. Basically, its never a good idea. I'm not talking about pornography or malicious intent, but about the suppression of ideas.
Anyone can have their world rocked by things they read or view. As you say, an author writes and everyone might interpret it differently. But some authors and publishers do have agendas. It is getting harder and harder to buy books for my school library because explicit sex has made its way into YA fiction. Of interest, is that strong language and violence do not seem to raise the hackles of watch-dog groups. Only sex. My concern is that sex is the gateway topic to more censorship.
I don't want someone telling me to remove the Communist Manifesto from my library any more than I want the Bible to be challenged. People need to read with discernment. We need to verify our sources and validate information in more than 2 places. Part of intellectual growth is the challenge of long held beliefs and exposure to new ideas and an awareness that our way isn't the only way. We need to read and we need to think. For ourselves.
Before social media, the public ignored offensive speech. If someone spoke too maliciously about anyone, people (maybe the police) would confront the speaker. They couldn’t hide behind the internet.
I wish all social media put “down” vote options on posts. A certain number, or percentage of, down votes, and the post is deleted.