However, the long and seesawing history of free speech demonstrates clearly that free speech depends as much on a civic culture of tolerance as on legal protection. History shows why we must hear from the other side Moreover, many critics – rightly – point out the rank hypocrisy of Republicans and conservatives who complain endlessly about “cancel culture” only to propose and support a tsunami of “education gag-orders” prohibiting the teaching of “divisive” concepts of race, education and gender in schools and colleges. To some the deplatforming of awful but lawful speech is a sign of progress since – they argue – it helps to equalize unequal power relations, which they believe are perpetuated by free speech.

It is also true that younger and more liberal Americans have become significantly less tolerant of speech deemed offensive to minorities over time. This concern is backed up by ample data, such as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s tracking of 283 attempts to get scholars canceled since 2020 alone, many of them successful. However, a closer reading of the editorial makes clear that it also addresses the very real phenomenon of speech being met with “retaliations” such as disciplinary sanctions or loss of livelihood, that has very little to do with the frank exchange of ideas and everything to do with trying to silence specific viewpoints. It is true that one can criticize the editorial for describing the threat to free speech in too imprecise terms, including the right to speak in public without “fear of being shamed or shunned.”Īfter all, free speech must necessarily entail debate and arguments that can cause such feelings.

As if to confirm the NYT’s thesis, a certain segment of progressives simply refuses to acknowledge the concept of “cancel culture” as such and sees no threat to free speech from private attempts to silence “bigots” and the intolerant. However, among many whose opinions would have been deemed “seditious,” “poisonous” and “dangerous to the nation” in 1917, the editorial was met with disbelief and hostility. The Times also argued that American free speech is under threat because “the political left and the right are caught in a destructive loop of condemnation and recrimination around cancel culture.” The left and right are guilty of silencing others

Mchangama free speech