The U.S. Constitution comprehensively guarantees free speech, including misinformation and hate speech.
Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, talks about free speech
Dillon spoke with USA TODAY columnist Ingrid Jacques about free speech laws.
Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harris’s vice presidential candidate, has been heavily criticized for falsifying details of his military service.
This is definitely worth a closer look, but something else Walz said in an interview in late 2022 also deserves attention.
“There is no guarantee of free speech when it comes to misinformation or hate speech, especially as it relates to our democracy,” he told MSNBC.
Walz is wrong. We have a comprehensive guarantee of free speech in the U.S. Constitution, and that includes misinformation and hate speech. Walz probably didn’t notice the irony, but his misinformation about free speech is protected speech.
While Walz has every right to make misleading comments, it is troubling that a governor and now vice presidential candidate appears to be unaware of the protections of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Unfortunately, Walz is not alone in his views. Many on the left – and some on the right – are turning to the government to regulate (or, in the case of Florida and Texas laws, compel) speech that some find offensive.
This contradicts one of the most important values of this country.
Freedom of speech threatened in Europe
We are already seeing the impact of such intolerance in Europe, with the UK notoriously taking tough action against speech it deems hateful or racist, including on social media.
The public prosecutor’s office recently published the following warning on X: “Think before you post something! Content that incites violence or hatred is not only harmful – it can also be illegal.”
This is no joke. Police arrested a woman this month over a social media post that the government said was “inaccurate.”
In France, Harry Potter author JK Rowling and Tesla founder Elon Musk were named in a criminal complaint filed by Algerian boxer and recent Olympic gold medalist Imane Khelif for alleged “acts of serious cyber harassment.”
Their “crime”? They joined in the discussion about whether it was fair for Khelif to compete against women after he was disqualified from a previous competition due to questions about Khelif’s gender.
Fairness at the Olympics: Olympic boxers deserve compassion. But questions of fairness must not be ignored.
Liberal states want to be thought police
Such harsh measures against freedom of expression are not only found on the other side of the Atlantic. They are also becoming increasingly common in the USA.
Even comedy and satire come into conflict. And that is anything but funny.
Musk, the face of Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) who has become one of the left’s most despised figures, last month reposted a “deepfake” video made by someone else mocking Harris’s presidential bid. It was clearly a joke.
But California Governor Gavin Newsom didn’t find Musk’s repost funny. “Manipulating a vote in an ‘ad’ like this should be illegal,” he said on X and promised to sign a law to that effect.
Californian dream: Harris and Walz are advocates of the Californianization of America. Voters should say: No way, San Jose.
But political satire like the video reposted by Musk is perfectly legal – and Newsom’s attempt to restrict it would not be.
“The First Amendment protects things like satire and parody, which of course are deeply rooted in American history and can be effective forms of political or social criticism,” says Aaron Terr, director of public policy at the Foundation for Individuals Rights and Expression (FIRE). “And that’s especially true when politicians or other public figures are the target of that criticism.”
FIRE is representing plaintiffs, including First Amendment expert and blogger Eugene Volokh, in a lawsuit challenging a New York law targeting “hate speech” that is too broad in its expectations of the actions online platforms should take to combat such offensive speech.
In practice, the law would restrict free speech for fear of retaliation – not unlike the “bias response teams” on public universities that encourage their students to spy on each other and have faced similar legal challenges.
The federal judge in the New York case issued a temporary restraining order to prevent enforcement of the law, but the case is currently under appeal.
Christian satire website The Babylon Bee is among the groups concerned about New York state law and the potential for it to be used to target their content. The Alliance Defending Freedom has filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of The Bee.
“These snitching requirements stifle the free speech of reasonable people by preventing them from making comments that may fall into the category of reportable speech,” the letter says. “The marketplace of ideas and debate becomes a sea of suspicion and retaliation.”
Can satire be offensive? Yes. And that’s OK.
Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, is convinced that the New York law will not withstand judicial scrutiny, but believes it is important to point out its unconstitutionality.
“The law essentially requires platforms to have policies against hate speech, publish the state’s definition of what hate speech is, and then provide a reporting mechanism for that hate speech so that readers on the site can report it,” Dillon told me last week. “This is all extremely problematic.
“When you look at the constitutionality of these things, you know that the government cannot regulate your behavior, your speech, in a way that makes unpopular views unlawful.”
The Babylon Bee has experienced firsthand how intolerant their views are.
He points to articles the Bee has published that have drawn consequences, including “fact-checks” of the obvious satire by news organizations like USA TODAY. My favorite is a fact-check of this Bee headline: “Ninth Circuit Court overturns Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death sentence.”
There were also far more serious consequences.
In early 2022, Twitter banned The Babylon Bee for sharing a headline naming transgender U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine “Man of the Year.” (Levine had recently been named one of USA TODAY’s “Women of the Year.”)
The Babylon Bee remained banned for much of the year and was only reinstated by new owner Musk, who bought Twitter in part because of these anti-speech measures.
Can satire offend or make people uncomfortable? Sure. That’s the point. And subjecting it to government control is a huge problem.
The writer Salman Rushdie, who was assassinated and nearly died because of his views, once said it was crucial to “defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for freedom and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.”
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Americans are losing their love for free speech
The United States has the strongest protections for free speech in the world. I worry about whether we can uphold them.
The Freedom Forum found that about 40 percent of respondents believe that “preventing hate speech is more important than protecting free speech” and that “about the same number believe that hate speech should be illegal.”
And a new FIRE poll found that 53% of Americans think the First Amendment “goes too far in terms of the rights it guarantees.”
Even more alarming, about 40% of respondents have some, a great deal or complete trust in the government to make “fair decisions about what speech is considered” frightening, intimidating, threatening, harassing, annoying, disturbing and indecent.
“Hate speech” and “misinformation” may sound like good things to fight against, but we should never give that power to the government. The definitions of what constitutes offensive speech or misleading information are constantly changing.
For example, during the height of COVID-19, the Biden administration tried to pressure social media companies to silence views it believed were false. at that time. However, much of this “misinformation” turned out to be true, proving that it is not the government’s job to judge the truth.
As Dillon says, “Things we think are false today we may find out to be true tomorrow. But how do we know what is true and what is false if we cannot even participate in the debate because we have already made up our minds?”
“That’s not how truth-seeking works.”
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques.
