This is the critical argument for why the 1st Amendment is essential to protect minorities, including Jews. But I think what’s often missing from the “free speech” conversation is that civil society must play a role in preventing our universal moral TABOOS against overt hateful bigotry and the endorsement of violence from getting expressed and normalized. And the only way we can do that is with social consequences, which may look like “cancel culture” but must be distinguished as a legitimate and necessary form of social ostracism. This was a crucial lever to marginalize the KKK out of polite society, i.e. we didn’t let unmasked KKK members live normal lives.
Like you and many others, I detest “cancel culture”. What I’m proposing is a principled, non-partisan approach to ostracize those who explicitly and egregiously and unapologetically advocate for violence and discrimination, which doesn’t just assess single actions and allows for forgiveness and redemption for those that choose to moderate themselves and attempt repair for any harm they caused.
I spend all of my time arguing for the restoration of these essential TABOOS, and recently wrote about the nuance missing from the discussion on “stochastic terrorism” - an abused term but a concept we must take very seriously. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. On whether this most extreme hateful bigotry is nearly universally seen as socially unacceptable, whether we can apply a principled approach to ostracize it out of polite society (as we had done up until October 8th), this time without succumbing to the excesses of cancel culture, and what happens if we don’t?
“Polite society”? That’s an awfully quaint concept, and possibly irrelevant in a populist age where distrust of institutions (and therefore the people who uphold them) is frighteningly low. The greatest harm social media has inflicted on us is not so much “misinformation” as mistrust, the assumption that mainstream media and “polite society” are in some ways “enemies of the people.” As long as people outsource their minds to an internet-connected device, “polite society” is going to be circling the drain. The most promising solutions are content-neutral, such as banning smartphones in schools. Perhaps we can create more phone-free spaces, find more ways for people to actually spend time being present with other people. It would be great if we could find a way to ban the algorithms designed to hold people’s attention and keep them on their devices, which are responsible for a lot of the radicalization we’ve seen—instead of trying to regulate content, regulate usage, like we do with cigarettes.
I can certainly empathize with the cynicism, and there's a lot of truth there.
While we certainly can't get "polite society" to agree on much, I do think that the vast majority (>95%) of Americans agree on our core values of liberty and equality, and thus, more specifically, believe that overt, hateful bigotry and the endorsement of political violence are socially unacceptable. There's no shortage of evidence to the contrary, but I don't think our failure to consistently enforce these taboos proves that people are opposed to them, and if pressured to confront that sort of hate, would explicitly reject it and those who espouse and sanitize it.
The bigots are always there. Liberty of expression allows us to know who they are. The extreme left and the extreme right are the same. They use the same methods. I am horrified that our Jewish brothers and sisters are under attack. I am sickened that a nasty and boorish antisemite is mayor of the city of my birth. To be a New Yorker was to be a little bit Jewish in our culture and language. Jerry Seinfeld is like the kid next door who was your best friend.
Sadly, it is worse in Canada now. Still safe in Florida for now.
Truer words have never been written. Censorship is a slippery slope which only picks up speed with time. Thank you for the common sense words of wisdom.
The important principle announced in this article applies with equal force to Muslims. They, too, must advocate for free speech as the best defense against islamophobia.
There's another dynamic contributing to this problem -- one that Yascha surely understands:
One couldn't really expect Barack Obama to declare, "There are no Black Lives, no White Lives -- All Lives Matter" -- but to a lot of people, that very transition (to BLM) started to look like a bait-and-switch.
And as a gay male (age 76) who's fought all my life to advance a recognition that there's nothing "queer" about same-sex attraction... Don't even get me started.
As we've picked each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," the oligarchs have been laughing all the way to the bank.
And that's the real root of the problem -- at which point the danger is that they'll all just end up blaming the Jews.
Maybe, just maybe, your deep concern for the The safety of the Jewish community would be abated by becoming leaders in stopping Israel from wiping out the Palestinians. Advocate for your community you care so deeply for, and insist Israel stop targeting children, women, hospitals and all innocents in their maniacal zeal to occupy the territory of Palestine. Or express some concept of acceptance that the Palestinians deserve to live in peace without the fear of being bombed, starved or have access to clean water. They cannot because they are effectively trapped by Israel in an Israeli outdoor prison. They have no freedom of movement because the world's 7th largest military crushes them under their weight, like an elephant on an egg.
How about you stop the anemic whining about the conditions of your freedom at least and until, you speak up about the brutality the state of Israel employs against a population, who can only dream of the freedom your complaining about?
Being Jewish isn't special. Jewish folk are no more God's chosen than any Palestinian, or anyone else for that matter, on this planet. But Jewish folk, sure have a lot of advantages, they bend a lot of ears with the whining and victimization of their beliefs. Israel sure has enough money and guns and are masters at weaving the narrative to their advantage with this exact kind of talking points about antisemitic treatment. Absent in the narrative ate the talking points of why the global view of your plight might not be met with sympathy or exist in such a simplistic terms you have laid out.
Until Palestinians have the same level of safety, security and right of determination as the Israelis have, your identity whining and "me, me, me, complaints are hollow, and mock the suffering and the pain of the Palestinian people.
This is the critical argument for why the 1st Amendment is essential to protect minorities, including Jews. But I think what’s often missing from the “free speech” conversation is that civil society must play a role in preventing our universal moral TABOOS against overt hateful bigotry and the endorsement of violence from getting expressed and normalized. And the only way we can do that is with social consequences, which may look like “cancel culture” but must be distinguished as a legitimate and necessary form of social ostracism. This was a crucial lever to marginalize the KKK out of polite society, i.e. we didn’t let unmasked KKK members live normal lives.
Like you and many others, I detest “cancel culture”. What I’m proposing is a principled, non-partisan approach to ostracize those who explicitly and egregiously and unapologetically advocate for violence and discrimination, which doesn’t just assess single actions and allows for forgiveness and redemption for those that choose to moderate themselves and attempt repair for any harm they caused.
I spend all of my time arguing for the restoration of these essential TABOOS, and recently wrote about the nuance missing from the discussion on “stochastic terrorism” - an abused term but a concept we must take very seriously. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. On whether this most extreme hateful bigotry is nearly universally seen as socially unacceptable, whether we can apply a principled approach to ostracize it out of polite society (as we had done up until October 8th), this time without succumbing to the excesses of cancel culture, and what happens if we don’t?
https://elevin11.substack.com/p/dismantling-stochastic-terrorism
“Polite society”? That’s an awfully quaint concept, and possibly irrelevant in a populist age where distrust of institutions (and therefore the people who uphold them) is frighteningly low. The greatest harm social media has inflicted on us is not so much “misinformation” as mistrust, the assumption that mainstream media and “polite society” are in some ways “enemies of the people.” As long as people outsource their minds to an internet-connected device, “polite society” is going to be circling the drain. The most promising solutions are content-neutral, such as banning smartphones in schools. Perhaps we can create more phone-free spaces, find more ways for people to actually spend time being present with other people. It would be great if we could find a way to ban the algorithms designed to hold people’s attention and keep them on their devices, which are responsible for a lot of the radicalization we’ve seen—instead of trying to regulate content, regulate usage, like we do with cigarettes.
I can certainly empathize with the cynicism, and there's a lot of truth there.
While we certainly can't get "polite society" to agree on much, I do think that the vast majority (>95%) of Americans agree on our core values of liberty and equality, and thus, more specifically, believe that overt, hateful bigotry and the endorsement of political violence are socially unacceptable. There's no shortage of evidence to the contrary, but I don't think our failure to consistently enforce these taboos proves that people are opposed to them, and if pressured to confront that sort of hate, would explicitly reject it and those who espouse and sanitize it.
If you're curious, what inspired me to pursue this project was what I saw happen when Charlie Kirk was killed, which I wrote about here: https://elevin11.substack.com/p/the-kirk-test-how-a-political-assassination Feedback and pushback is welcome!
The bigots are always there. Liberty of expression allows us to know who they are. The extreme left and the extreme right are the same. They use the same methods. I am horrified that our Jewish brothers and sisters are under attack. I am sickened that a nasty and boorish antisemite is mayor of the city of my birth. To be a New Yorker was to be a little bit Jewish in our culture and language. Jerry Seinfeld is like the kid next door who was your best friend.
Sadly, it is worse in Canada now. Still safe in Florida for now.
Great essay!
Beautifully argued! Thank you.
Truer words have never been written. Censorship is a slippery slope which only picks up speed with time. Thank you for the common sense words of wisdom.
The problem is that now free speech has become free harassement.
But they sure haven’t always benefited from demonstrating morality and virtue.
Many Jews are embracing the second amendment as well. The organization Jews for the preservation of firearms ownership has a website at jfpo.org.
The important principle announced in this article applies with equal force to Muslims. They, too, must advocate for free speech as the best defense against islamophobia.
There's another dynamic contributing to this problem -- one that Yascha surely understands:
One couldn't really expect Barack Obama to declare, "There are no Black Lives, no White Lives -- All Lives Matter" -- but to a lot of people, that very transition (to BLM) started to look like a bait-and-switch.
And as a gay male (age 76) who's fought all my life to advance a recognition that there's nothing "queer" about same-sex attraction... Don't even get me started.
As we've picked each other to pieces over "pronouns" and "privilege," the oligarchs have been laughing all the way to the bank.
And that's the real root of the problem -- at which point the danger is that they'll all just end up blaming the Jews.
I suppose this is a side point, but most historians these days believe that the story about the Jews being slaves in Egypt never happened.
Maybe, just maybe, your deep concern for the The safety of the Jewish community would be abated by becoming leaders in stopping Israel from wiping out the Palestinians. Advocate for your community you care so deeply for, and insist Israel stop targeting children, women, hospitals and all innocents in their maniacal zeal to occupy the territory of Palestine. Or express some concept of acceptance that the Palestinians deserve to live in peace without the fear of being bombed, starved or have access to clean water. They cannot because they are effectively trapped by Israel in an Israeli outdoor prison. They have no freedom of movement because the world's 7th largest military crushes them under their weight, like an elephant on an egg.
How about you stop the anemic whining about the conditions of your freedom at least and until, you speak up about the brutality the state of Israel employs against a population, who can only dream of the freedom your complaining about?
Being Jewish isn't special. Jewish folk are no more God's chosen than any Palestinian, or anyone else for that matter, on this planet. But Jewish folk, sure have a lot of advantages, they bend a lot of ears with the whining and victimization of their beliefs. Israel sure has enough money and guns and are masters at weaving the narrative to their advantage with this exact kind of talking points about antisemitic treatment. Absent in the narrative ate the talking points of why the global view of your plight might not be met with sympathy or exist in such a simplistic terms you have laid out.
Until Palestinians have the same level of safety, security and right of determination as the Israelis have, your identity whining and "me, me, me, complaints are hollow, and mock the suffering and the pain of the Palestinian people.