[Official] Censorship from governmental actors thread

guess that's for the courts to decide, eh?

 

this probably actually deserves its own thread

A Casualty of War
Conflating dissent with disloyalty

https://theusfreespeechunion.substack.com/p/a-casualty-of-warl

fairly long, here's an excerpt:

During the Cold War they were called comsymps, or were accused of being fellow travelers or fifth columnists or maybe just useful idiots—i.e., those who weren’t full-throated enough in their opposition to all things Soviet and whose opinions dared deviate to whatever degree from official American consensus. Senator Joseph McCarthy even referred to them as the “prancing minions of the Moscow party line,” and their deviations from consensus could—and in some cases did—get them accused of treason.

This habit of calling into question the patriotism and loyalty of those who buck consensus is back with full force, only instead of coming from the reactionary right (the likes of Senator McCarthy), such calls are coming from those in the prestige media, academe, and the current White House and State Department—much more liberal players who are merely availing themselves of McCarthyite tactics.

Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson has come in for particular abuse in this area. For questioning the wisdom of America’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict (given a lack of vital national interests to the United States), and for validating Russian concerns about proposed NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia (both former Soviet republics), Carlson has been called “America’s Most Watched Kremlin Propagandist” by Slate contributor William Saletan; has been accused of flirting with treason by Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor (emeritus) and former judicial advisor to President Barack Obama; and has been charged by those too numerous to count with parroting, echoing, repeating, mouthing, and so on “Putin’s talking points.” So plentiful is talk of Carlson being on Team Kremlin that one could be forgiven for thinking the slur has become something of a talking point itself.

Professor Tribe’s comments, made in a since deleted tweet posted on Monday, February 21, were especially regrettable, coming as they did from a person of his position and training. That tweet read:

One is tempted to joke, à la Mary McCarthy, that every word of that tweet is untrue, including and and the. Russia, whatever our prevailing national opinion on it, is not a declared enemy with whom we are at war even now, post-invasion. Ukraine, whatever our prevailing national sentiments toward it, is not an official ally. Domestic deviation from prevailing national sentiments and opinions—however wrong or absurd many might find that deviation—does not come anywhere near the definition of “aid and comfort” as laid out in Article III of the Constitution.

David French—former U.S. Army major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, Iraq War veteran, Bronze Star recipient, and outspoken critic of the Trump wing of the GOP—had this to say in direct response to Professor Tribe’s tweet: “This is completely false. Constitutional text, history, and precedent say this is false. It’s not even in the same ballpark as the truth.” In his tweet, French linked to a page at the National Constitution Center site, where two of the center’s scholars elucidate the treason clause, Article III:

Yet just this past Friday, February 25, former New York Senator, former Secretary of State, and former Democratic nominee for the Presidency, Hillary Clinton, was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe parroting Professor Tribe’s flimsy accusations. We need to call out “those people who are giving aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin,” Secretary Clinton thuggishly remonstrated. She criticized those who question the received foreign-policy wisdom, “who are unfortunately being broadcast by Russian media not only inside Russia but in Europe to demonstrate the division within our own country.” (Our diversity is our strength—except, apparently, when it’s not.) “We have to be much more united,” Secretary Clinton admonished us, because our national divisiveness “plays right into the ambitions” of those who would “divide and conquer the west without ever invading us but by setting us against each other.”

Those whom Secretary Clinton excoriated have very different views from hers about America’s role in the world and the motivations behind Russia’s conduct toward Ukraine. Certainly, she should strenuously challenge those views. Instead, however, she attempted to quash debate by pronouncing that her opponents’ views approximate treachery against the nation because, as she reckons, their dissent objectively—an adverb Stalinists were wont to deploy—supports the ambitions of a country she has defined as America’s enemy. This tactic used to be called red-baiting.

Secretary Clinton did bring up a good point, even if she did so unwittingly. Our national divisions have long been exploited by clever and ambitious propagandists from the Soviet Union and then from the Russian Federation. Civil Rights marchers protesting the status quo in the Jim Crow South made for great footage that highlighted American divisions and hypocrisies for Soviet Bloc audiences, all the more so when—with Gandhian sangfroid—the marchers put themselves in circumstances where they were sure to be attacked by the reactionary forces of the status quo. Would that make Martin Luther King a useful idiot or a fifth columnist? (Some on the reactionary right tried to paint him thus. And remember, this all happened during the height of the Cold War, when the great powers were competing globally for potential client states, not least among the newly independent and predominantly brown-skinned nations of the once-colonial Global South.) More recently, Russian propagandists have availed themselves of the words and actions of groups ranging from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter, words and actions that have brought to light further divisions within America—economic divisions, racial divisions, etc. Are members of groups like these culpable for the uses to which their (domestic) social and political critiques are put by foreign propaganda mills? Are they to stifle such critiques for fear of finding themselves accused, like Tucker Carlson, of flirting with treason?
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more at the link

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Brian Leiter

https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2022/03/dissent-is-not-treason.html

 

good news is, it's only Canada

 

https://reason.com/2022/04/21/dont-criminalize-election-lies/

Don't Criminalize Election Lies
The damage caused by election lies is not worth abandoning free speech traditions.
C.J. CIARAMELLA | FROM THE MAY 2022 ISSUE

On the first anniversary of the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced legislation that would make lying about election results a crime in the Evergreen State.

Inslee, a Democrat, said the bill is necessary to protect democracy from "an ongoing coup attempt" fueled by former President Donald Trump's false claims about the 2020 presidential election. "The defeated president as recently as an hour ago is yelling fire in the crowded theater of democracy," Inslee said in January, invoking every censor's favorite analogy.

Trump's mendacity continues to have a negative impact on our political system. Polls indicate that many of his supporters still believe the election was "stolen" by Democrats. But Inslee's bill would create an even bigger problem: a government empowered to punish opposition candidates for political speech.

The legislation would make it a gross misdemeanor for candidates or elected officials to "knowingly, recklessly, or maliciously" make false statements about election results. Violators would face up to a year in jail, a maximum $5,000 fine, or both. They also could be removed from office upon conviction.

To violate the law, statements must be intended to "incite or produce imminent lawless action" and have that effect; be made for the purpose of undermining "the election process or election results"; or falsely claim entitlement to an office after legal challenges have been resolved and the results have been certified.

That first criterion is based on a test that the Supreme Court established in the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio, which said speech is not protected by the First Amendment when it is "directed" at inciting "imminent lawless action" and "likely" to have that result. The other criteria, however, aim to protect the reputation of government agencies, a more dubious constitutional rationale. In the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court, quoting the Illinois Supreme Court, noted that "no court of last resort in this country has ever held, or even suggested, that prosecutions for libel on government have any place in the American system of jurisprudence."

The bill contradicts an important free speech principle: It's not the government's job to police the veracity of political statements. The potential chilling effect of such a law is easy to envision. Imagine a genuinely disputed election where the party in power can prosecute the other side for complaining too much.

Even if Inslee's proposed bill survived constitutional scrutiny, the damage caused by election lies is not worth abandoning free speech traditions. A bad lie is easier to fight than a bad law.
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Europe Escalates the Threat to Online Free Speech
While Americans debate what should be allowed on social media, the EU wants government to decide.

https://reason.com/2022/04/29/europe-escalates-the-threat-to-online-free-speech/

 

Turley

“Before it’s too Late”: Democrats Shift From Corporate Censorship to State Censorship






https://jonathanturley.org/2022/04/...rship-to-good-old-fashioned-state-censorship/

 

Sen. Warren's Asking Amazon to Stop Carrying Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s COVID Book Likely Not Unconstitutional
So a federal judge held yesterday.

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/05/1...-jr-s-covid-book-likely-not-unconstitutional/

Maybe we can sic the Dept of Homeland Security on him next

 

WHO chief censored on China's internet after calling zero-Covid unsustainable

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/11/china/who-china-zero-covid-unsustainable-intl-hnk/index.html

 

“Silence the Voices of Hatred”: N.Y. Governor Hochul Uses the Buffalo Massacre to Renew Calls for Censorship of Social Media
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/05/...o-renew-calls-for-censorship-of-social-media/

excerpt:

Now, Hochul is trying to rally voters to the cause of censorship in the wake of the Buffalo tragedy. To defend free speech in response to such a call is to risk being denounced as supporting violent extremists or dishonoring the fallen.
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more at the link

 

related

https://reason.com/2022/05/16/buffa...res-to-combat-domestic-terrorism-says-pelosi/

Buffalo Shooting Will Prompt Measures 'To Combat Domestic Terrorism,' Says Pelosi
ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN | 5.16.2022 10:11 AM

On Saturday, 18-year-old Payton Gendron opened fire in and around a Tops supermarket, killing 10 people and wounding three others in a racially motivated act of violence that he broadcast live on Twitch. Gendron was taken into police custody, has been charged with murder, and pleaded not guilty.

Gendron apparently wrote a manifesto, and it's rife with white supremacist and antisemitic rhetoric, including heavy endorsement of the "replacement" theory. The idea guiding this conspiracy theory is that "many different kinds of social change are connected to a plot by a cabal of elites to eradicate the white race," as University of Chicago history professor Kathleen Belew described it to The New Yorker. "It connects things such as abortion, immigration, gay rights, feminism, residential integration—all of these are seen as part of a series of threats to the white birth rate."

While many are remembering and mourning the victims of Gendron's assault, some politicians and activists have been using the incident to score cheap political points and social media engagement. For instance:

• "In his manifesto, the white supremacist mass shooter…reveals that he was motivated to do so by the 'white replacement theory' that has been pushed by Trump. RT TO EXPOSE TRUMP!" tweeted the political action group Occupy Democrats. It was one of several similar tweets from them.
• "If, when a white supremacist commits a mass shooting or a constitutional right is taken away or an innocent black person is killed by a cop or a book is banned, you say, 'This is not who we are,' remember--this is exactly who the Republicans want us to be," tweeted Mary Trump, a niece of the former president who has been critical of him.
  
• "Our family is praying for the victims & families of the shootings this weekend and the severe mental health crisis in America," tweeted Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—before quickly adding that America "should only be investing in our own people and our own problems."

Statements like these are extremely crass. But what's not just crass but dangerous are the attempts to use this tragedy to expand federal power.

In Washington, some Democrats are using the Buffalo shooting to push a counterterrorism agenda they had previously been connecting to the January 6 riot. Notably, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) said Congress would "consider additional measures to strengthen efforts to combat domestic terrorism."

"Pelosi offered no specifics," notes The New York Times. "But in April, Democrats on the House Judiciary passed a bill that would create permanent offices within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and FBI 'to monitor, investigate and prosecute cases of domestic terrorism.' The proposal would also increase training of local police forces to detect, deter and investigate homegrown terrorism."

In a vacuum, none of that may sound too bad. But the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies have a long history of using terrorism—domestic or otherwise—to push heightened surveillance of activists, to justify mass spying on Americans, to increase censorship, and generally to serve as a reason to ignore civil liberties.

What Gendron did is abhorrent. But "violent acts are already illegal under existing law," as J.D. Tuccille noted during last year's push for a domestic terror laws. "New 'anti-terrorism' tools will inevitably be deployed against those who annoy whoever is currently in office."
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