Over the weekend, WUWT posted an announcement that the Free Speech Union is online, accompanied by a long-winded 10-minute video introduction featuring the new union’s founder, Toby Young. Young rants and raves about the “self-appointed morality cops” and “digital McCarthyism” that seek to no-platform people with whom they disagree, and promises that the Union will behave in exactly the same way they decry. If someone launches a petition against you, or bullies you, or emails your boss to complain, the new Free Speech Union will do that against them. (Apparently, attacks on free speech only go one direction.)
After five minutes of scaremongering about how the digital mobs can cancel anyone, Young reveals his origin story. It wasn’t outcry over his editor position at phrenology-defending Quillette, or any of the homophobia, misogyny, anti-disabled bigotry, anti-LGBT comments he’s made that caused him distress. Nor was it the time he apparently wore a wig to a gay bar to try and trick women into kissing him, or even his appearance at a conference alongside someone who supports the idea of pedophiles having sex with sleeping children that triggered his supposedly unwarrented cancelation.
Instead, this issue was a column in 2001 in which Young praised a TV show featuring topless women and fast cars. Because the editor was a friend of Young’s, he explains, they jokingly made the headline of his review “Confessions of a porn addict.” That headline was screenshotted and went viral, apparently costing Young an unpaid public office position.
Now, we would make fun of Young for featuring his own hilarious embarrassment as a rallying cry, but there’s no need to kink-shame either porn addicts or those like Young who seemingly find pleasure in public humiliation, when there is something quite serious to say about climate denial and free speech.
As we’ve discussed before, free speech is being used as a shield against any legitimate criticism of hate speech or lies, for example Exxon’s denial, but somehow these same voices don’t seem to mind when Koch money allows them to pull the strings at the universities they fund.
Just so we’re clear, free speech isn’t the freedom to say anything at all, with zero repercussions. It means you can’t get arrested just for saying something true or offensive.
It doesn’t mean you can’t get publicly shamed for saying and doing things that are shameful, like attacking trans women. It doesn’t mean that you should be able to spread conspiracy theories about vaccines that lead to the resurgence of preventable diseases. It doesn’t mean that you can falsely advertise a product you know to be dangerous as a safe climate solution. At least, it doesn’t mean you can do these things without facing the social consequences.
It turns out that conservatives with outdated and hateful beliefs aren’t the only ones who have free speech. Everyone else has it too. And if the public is using its free speech to call for you to be fired for how you’ve chosen to use your free speech to hurt marginalized people, that’s not tyranny. That’s social progress.
The question remains, though: how many climate deniers will cast their lot in with Young, to build a coalition of the anti-LGBT, anti-Muslim, anti-disabled, and anti-climate science communities?
By the look of WUWT’s comment section, plenty.
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