It's great to welcome to the program today,
P E Moscowitz, the author of the case against
free speech,
the first amendment fascism and the future
of descent. Also author of how to kill a city,
gentrification, inequality, and the fight
for the neighborhood. Uh, so great to have
you on today. I appreciate it. Thanks for
having me. So to start with, I think most
of us have some concept of the idea of free
speech, even if it's not directly from the
law of the constitution, the first amendment
or what is, uh, existing in precedent and
court decisions. Where do you think that our
general concept of free speech comes from
at this point in time? Is it more social and
cultural rather than a legal framework? [inaudible]
I think that we have of kind of very convoluted
understanding of what free speech actually
means and what the first amendment actually
means. Um, and you know, it's kind of drilled
into us very early. Uh, we learn about the
first amendment obviously in school, uh, from
a very early, but the, the kind of rhetoric
of free speech and, and uh, yeah, this culture
of, of freedom of expression, um, is used
again and again by, uh, you know, you see
it on TV, you see it a politician saying,
Oh, this is what makes America the greatest
country on earth. Uh, and you just hear these
kind of platitudes over and over again, um,
all the time. I mean, and once you start noticing
how much you hear it, uh, then you'll realize
it. It's happening all the time. But I, I
think there, that's a diff, there's a difference
between hearing this, this kind of platitude
about we have freedom of speech, uh, every
single day of your life versus actually learning
what it means or, or whether we actually have
it.
Is there a particular distortion or incorrect
understanding about what we mean when we say
free speech that is affecting the political
discourse right now that you can identify?
I think there are a couple of them. The first
would be that people think freedom of speech
applies to kind of everything they want it
to. Um, and uh, you know, in the, in the framers
of the constitution and the amendments mines,
it just applied to the government. Um, being
able to, uh, stop your speech or not being
able to stop your speech. So, you know, people
will always, you know, you see this on college
campuses for example, someone will get disinvited
from a college and people will say, Oh, that's
a violation of freedom of speech. No, it's
not. Cause the government was not involved
in any way. You weren't being arrested for
speaking or anything like that. Um, and that
you see it all. It's, you know, if someone
gets banned from Twitter, people will claim
that's a violation of freedom of speech, put
Twitter as a private company and can do whatever
it wants. Um, that the other, uh, the other
misconception I think people have is that
we have universal free speech in this country,
which we just simply don't, I mean, I can't
wander into your house and say whatever I
want in some States you could shoot me if
I do that, if we're going to stand your ground
state. Um,
although I guess arguably to steel man, that
argument, it wouldn't be necessarily the same
of something in someone's house, but the fact
that you entered on invited, I guess that
would, you know, opened the door to a self
defense shooting. Right?
Sure. Yeah. Um, but that kind of proves that
we've add value, some things over freedom
of speech, I. E. private property and, and,
uh, uh, privacy. Um, and you know, same thing,
if I go into a Walmart, they can kick me out
for protesting on their store grounds. Um,
because we value the idea of private property
over the idea of freedom of speech. So when
we talk about freedom of speech, what we're
talking about is speech that isn't, uh, impinged
by the government is on public property or
your own private property. Doesn't violate
copyright laws, um, doesn't, uh, threaten
anyone. Um, and you know, even in, uh, once
you tick all those boxes, you can still be
arrested for protesting. You can still be,
uh, you know, denied a permit to protest the
government. The idea that we have universal
freedom of speech, uh, once you start looking
into it, just, it kind of, it, it strikes
me as ridiculous that we even have universal
freedoms.
It's also sort of become a proxy to other
political battles in a sense. I mean, a lot
of the questions around the right to refuse
baking a cake for someone on the basis of
where, what kind of an event the cake will
be used at the idea of being able to wear
political clothing while working at a particular
corporation. For example. A lot of these,
I guess I, I, let me ask it to you, are a
lot of these really issues of speech? Are
they issues of something else where we're
free speech is being used as a proxy to try
to make a political statement?
I think that freedom of speech can end up
kind of, uh, you know, mucking up what's actually
happening a lot of the times. Um, and yeah,
you see this with, uh, you know, uh, Nazis
marching on the streets of the United States,
for example, and, uh, liberals saying, well,
we have to defend their right to March, um,
because of freedom of speech because of the
first amendment. Um, and, and there are a
couple of things I would say to refute that.
One, every other Western democracy doesn't
have a first amendment and gets along fine
in terms of freedom of expression. They recognize
that there's no Universalists kind of platitude,
uh, that they can, uh, that they need to use
in order to guarantee democracy. They recognize
that some things like hate speech based on
race or gender and those kinds of things,
um, might end up doing more harm than good
if spoken, uh, without being challenged.
Um, and you know, I don't think anyone would
consider Canada, for example, uh, any more
of a failing democracy than the United States
is. Um, and they, they do that without the
first amendment. Um, and the other thing is,
yeah, I mean, I think we can use freedom of
speech to allied these much stickier issues
if we say well as defend Nazis, right to March
because of freedom of speech. We ended up
not asking why are there Nazis marching on
our streets? Um, we ended up not asking why
are people denying a baking cakes for gay
people? Um, it's a way to kind of live and
let live with the Israeli, uh, terrible issues
that we shouldn't live and let live. We should
be asking, why are there Nazis on our streets?
We should be asking, uh, you know, why is
there discrimination against gay people? And
instead we just say, well, they can say whatever
they want.
Yeah, I mean, I think that, so there's a couple
of things that are mixed in here. One is obviously
the idea that, Oh, the fact that someone may
not necessarily deserve being proactively
stopped from speaking doesn't mean we need
to go number one out of our way to make sure
that there are no consequences to their speech.
Free speech when it exists also is not, does
not entail freedom, have consequences to that
speech. Right. But to make a more practical,
I mean, so, okay. With the straight pride
parade that we had in Boston a couple months
ago, I talked about this cause we shoot out
of Boston. Um, I said that without even getting
into should the permit or have been granted
or not because you can sort of take different,
uh, positions on that. To me, the ideal thing
would have been that just no one pays attention
that the 60 marchers or whatever show up and
they do their thing, but it doesn't look like
no one cares and it's just kind of a waste
of their time. I thought it might be a way
where we don't even have to have the argument
about free speech, but that's not everybody's
approach. I mean, what, what would, how do
you think those types of events should be
handled?
I think that there, I mean, there are a couple
of ways you can look at that. I agree that
maybe no one should pay attention. But in
that case, I think that also, um, you know,
the government shouldn't pay attention to
them either. I E dedicate many resources like
cops and, uh, you know, barricades and all
of this. I mean, I've been to, you know, as
a reporter and as an activist, I've been to
many, uh, far right marches where it's five,
you know, neo-Nazis or whatever it may be,
and then drink cops surrounding them. And,
uh, if you, even if you listen to like people
in the far left to, you know, want to punch
those Nazis in the face or whatever, they're
not saying, uh, don't let them Nazis March.
They're not saying the government should arrest
them or something. They're just saying, why
is the government spending thousands and thousands
and thousands of dollars, uh, protecting them
when, you know, if I go, if I go out on the
street and say some ridiculous stuff, I, I
don't, uh, have police protection guaranteed.
Um, and so, yeah, with the straight pride
people, I think there would be a lot less
people marching in the streets. Uh, spouting
white supremacists or anti-trans or whatever
slogans, if they didn't know that a a thousand
cops would be there protecting them.
That's true. And I mean, so, so this is where
it's sort of like a chicken egg thing because
I agree 110% with what you're saying. And
yet if it wasn't known that there would be
more protestors than marchers or whatever,
there probably would not be resources mobilized.
And that's not a defensive anything by the
way too. Just to be clear, it sort of becomes
this self perpetuating thing where if no one
paid attention, you probably wouldn't really
need resources cause it'd be 40 people walking
down the street and then going, you know,
to Chick-fil-A and getting chicken sandwiches
and going home or whatever the case may be.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I agree and disagree.
I think for one, the internet in general has
made us all closer in this bad way. I think
we need to respond to everything. Um, you
know, like Nazis were still organizing before
Twitter existed, but now I just see them organizing
all the time. Right. So, um, so I think that's
given us this sense of immediacy that's not
really healthy. Like, Oh, we need to be there.
We need to be counteracting this at every
single moment. That being said, you don't
want, you know, Nazis to go unchecked on your
streets. Uh, I think if you allow 20 to March,
then there's nothing to say that, uh, in,
you know, six months, a hundred Nazis won't
be marching on your streets and so on and
so on. I think there's an argument to be made
that, um, the less you protest these things,
even if it is just five people, um, you know,
protesting some ridiculous cause the, the
less you protest them, the more you kind of
allow people to think they're socially acceptable,
um, and allowed that to grow unchecked. So,
so yes, I understand not, um, not responding
to every single one of these ridiculous protests,
um, and kind of fanning the flames. But at
the same time, I think that sometimes it is
important to show that this is not a socially
acceptable thing to do.
Yeah, it's a, it's sort of a, I mean it's
the same decision I make when I decide is
this particular extremist art, am I better
off ignoring them or are there ideas becoming
mainstream enough that it's actually worth
responsibly challenging them? And there is
no sort of like guide necessarily. Sometimes
it's a judgment call,
right? There is no hard and fast rule and
I think that's really important to recognize,
you know, a lot of the book. Um, and I should
say this isn't just like a think piece of
a book. Like this is a reported book. I go
to Charlottesville, I go to Washington DC,
I go to standing rock. I go to like five different
college campuses to interview people about,
um, you know, blocking conservative speakers
there. Um, and when I was on those college
campuses, I think, you know, these students
get this totally unfair representation of,
Oh, they just want to, uh, cancel all speech
that they hate, but they're thinking about
this tactically to their, you know, when it
comes to Charles Murray, the guy who invented
the bell curve and it's kind of like a modern
day Ray scientists, they thought that he specifically
was worth protesting because he was taking
these far right racist, uh, concepts and pushing
them.
Oh man. A very, uh, important conversation
with P E Moskowitz. That is, um, someone doesn't
want it to happen because we are having significant,
uh, connection issues with PE. Um, that may
be as far as we can get with it. Um, so I
will remind you that we've been speaking with
PE Moscow, it's author of the case against
free speech, the first amendment fascism and
the future of dissent. Um, we will, uh, do
what we can, uh, to try to get PE back, but
certainly something going on with our connection
today causing a [inaudible]
major, major issue for which I can only apologize.
We will take a quick break and be back with
much more right after the
