The right’s double standard on free speech

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Today’s topic: free speech.

It’s under siege. The right to protest. The right to publish. The right to speak your mind.

Donald Trump is leading the charge, supported by his army of MAGA quislings. 

Let me put the hypocrisy in context. 

American Nazis and their ilk have long exercised their First Amendment rights.  Remember when the ACLU went to court to defend the rights of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, back in 1977. Or, more recently, the “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. You know, the one where marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us!”

Few people disputed their right to assemble and demonstrate. Trump went so far as to say the Charlottesville marchers included some “very fine people.”

Fast forward to college campuses across the nation last year when students protested against the Israeli war in Gaza. All of a sudden, protest was a bad thing, characterized as anti-Sematic speech supportive of terrorist organizations that needed to be stamped out.

In other words, “Jews will not replace us!” is protected speech but criticism of what a United Nation committee and a number of human rights organizations have termed a  genocide in Gaza is not.

This has not happened by accident.

The New York Times reports the assault on free speech follows a blueprint entitled Project Esther which was authored by the Heritage Foundation, the folks who brought us Project 2025, Trump’s playbook for his authoritarian takeover of the federal government. The Times described Project Esther as “the foundation’s proposal to rapidly dismantle the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States, along with its support at schools and universities, at progressive organizations and in Congress.”

The Times continued:

Drafted in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 and the mounting protests against the war in Gaza, Project Esther outlined an ambitious plan to fight antisemitism by branding a broad range of critics of Israel as “effectively a terrorist support network,” so that they could be deported, defunded, sued, fired, expelled, ostracized and otherwise excluded from what it considered “open society.”

Project Esther’s architects envisioned outcomes that at the time might have seemed far-fetched. Curriculum it believed to be sympathetic to a “Hamas support” narrative would be taken out of schools and universities, and “supporting faculty” would be removed. Social media would be purged of content deemed to be antisemitic. Institutions would lose public funding. Foreign students who pushed for Palestinian rights would have their visas revoked, or be deported.

Sound familiar?

Since the inauguration, the White House and other Republicans have called for actions that appear to mirror more than half of Project Esther’s proposals, a New York Times analysis shows, including threats to withhold billions in federal funding at universities and attempts to deport legal residents.

The Times noted: 

Critics …. say the think tank is exploiting real concerns about antisemitism to advance its broader agenda of radically reshaping higher education and crushing progressive movements more generally.

Project Esther exclusively focuses on antisemitism on the left, ignoring antisemitic harassment and violence from the right. It has drawn criticism from many Jewish organizations. 

Republicans in our state Legislature are acting like mini-mes. 

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Last week they sent out a press release listing the assorted bills they have introduced in the name of anti-semitism. Some are targeted towards suppressing First Amendment rights.

One bill, according to the press release, prohibits funding for SUNY, CUNY or community colleges which, directly or indirectly, permit terrorist organizations on campus.

Another prohibits students from receiving TAP if they engage in antisemitic behavior.

A third enhances penalties for those who obstruct traffic and access to buildings during protests and allow for it to qualify as a hate crime.

Given that the right considers criticism of Israeli war policy as anti-Semetic and supportive of terrorists, the bills if enacted would be used to stifle activity protected by the First Amendment.

The effort to delegitimize pro-Palestinian protest is part of a larger effort to squash First Amendment rights, as evidenced by Trump’s assault on news organizations. The president and his fellow travelers seek to impose Orwellian standards to the press and public discourse.

In an interview with his New York Times, Publisher A.G. Sulzberger, said:

There are two very different types of journalistic repression. The more dangerous and dramatic occurs in places like China and Russia, where journalists have their work overtly censored, or are even jailed or killed over it.

But there is a subtler, more insidious, playbook for going after journalists in democracies. Selectively using investigatory or regulatory powers to punish journalists and news organizations, for example. Filing frivolous lawsuits against them. Targeting their owners’ unrelated business interests.

The goal is to make it harder for journalists to ask questions they don’t want to answer or to make public things they would rather keep secret.

He continued:

The news industry is facing several giant challenges all at the same time. The collapse of the business model. The dominance of the tech giants over how people engage with information. A fractured and distrustful public.

Now, on top of those challenges, we’re facing the most direct assault on the rights and legitimacy of journalists that we’ve seen in at least a century. So it’s the sheer volume of pressures that worries me, especially when so many news organizations, particularly local ones, are vulnerable.

Elsewhere, Margaret Sullivan, in her American Crisis newsletter on Substack, noted that some major news organizations are cowering in the face of Trump’s attacks. They include CBS, where the controlling shareholder of its parent company is considering settling a baseless lawsuit Trump has filed against 60 Minutes in the hopes the Federal Communications Commission, which the president controls, will approve a merger pending before the agency.

Sullivan wrote: 

Some media companies have shown too much willingness to settle lawsuits or change their editorial practices instead of fighting absurd claims about unfair coverage.

That has to stop.

John Oliver chimed in, as well.

I publish this column the day before Memorial Day, which honors the brave soldiers who fought for our freedoms – including those presently under assault.

As the saying goes: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

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