Is 2022 the Year of Censorship?

It’s a general maxim that book burnings are unpopular and tend to backfire, but one wouldn’t know it watching the news. The year 2022 is still young but, already, there has been a flurry of censorship efforts from both left and right, attempting to remove books from schools or student reading lists or de-platform folks who stray off message from whatever is politically correct.

Not a few years ago, the right began to criticize creeping authoritarianism on the left, with its cancel culture and struggle-session forced apologies (which were, in the main, rejected anyway no matter how much people promised to “do better.”) Given a long history of censorship on the right, people may have been surprised by this sudden embrace of free speech by conservatives and folks were correct to be skeptical. The past months have seen attempts to ban books, particularly from schools, in red states such as Utah and Texas. Most recently, controversy has focused on the removal of the book Maus from a school reading list in Tennessee ostensibly due to objectionable words and content. Republicans have also sought to stifle dissent among their own ranks using censures on Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for participating in investigations of the January 2021 Capitol riot.

Suddenly rediscovering free speech, those on the left have criticized these authoritarian moves. Yet they seem far less concerned regarding censorship efforts on their own side, whether their own book bannings (poor To Kill a Mockingbird, once hailed as a progressive novel on race is now loathed by both sides) or weaselly efforts to “de-platform” (i.e., de facto censorship) people they don’t like such as Joe Rogan while pretending this isn’t really censorship.

Cancel culture attempts at socially shaming and life-destroying those who cross the increasingly complex, murky, yet aggressive moral etiquette on acceptable speech continue on both sides. Sometimes, such as with Whoopi Goldberg’s clumsy statements on the Holocaust as white on white violence and not due to race, the cancelation is bipartisan. Goldberg’s statements are a prime example of how things have gone wrong. Giving her view on a show called The View, her statements are certainly inelegant, but might generously be understood as a facet of our current and confused sense of what “race” means. This can certainly stoke constructive even passionate debate but as Bill Maher noted, sending her off to a two-week time-out to think about what she did seems overly fragile. This should not be mistaken for my supporting Goldberg’s statements (I don’t, no more than I do Rogan’s or, for that matter, far-left academics who conservatives would like to see fired). But bad speech, medical misinformation, misguided opinions, etc., are best challenged with more speech, not censorship.

Part of the current cycle is clear myside bias, a psychological construct that notes it’s easier to see bad behavior among one’s foes than among one’s allies. This is why I think we observe people passionately condemning censorship from the “other side” yet paradoxically equally defending censorship among one’s allies. Typically, individuals try to excuse their censorship as not really censorship… school boards have the right to set pedagogy (true, they do), or the censorship is coming from private companies, not the government (true, the First Amendment isn’t concerned with even massive tech companies’ control of speech).

Maybe books are cut from reading lists, but still be available in the library. Or people will argue speech should only be free when used “responsibly” (which is subjective and even if it weren’t the “responsibility” argument is entirely anathema to “free”). But that doesn’t make it not censorship, which need not only come from government, and urges to protect people from “wrongthink” should be regarded with suspicion, whatever the circumstances.

Sure, absolutism on free speech can reach into the absurd, but its limitations should be kept narrow and divorced from partisan influence. Current efforts have clearly moved beyond those narrow limits, and we need to remember it’s always easy for partisans to argue why their desire to limit speech counts as a pressing social need. But we need to return to our basic civics lessons and recall that limits on speech, whether from the government or from the mob are poison to science and a society that is democratic and data-based in solving problems.