I’ve been mulling over Marco Rubio’s latest salvo in the Trump administration’s assault on the Censorship-Industrial Complex. The US Secretary of State has announced he’ll impose visa bans on foreign nationals judged to be censoring US citizens or US tech companies. And according to one news report, the ban will apply to their family members too.
So who might be on this blacklist? Rubio hasn’t named names, but I can think of a few candidates. Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH)would be hard-pressed to deny his pro-censorship lobby group targets US citizens and US tech companies, because ‘Centre’ is spelt C-E-N-T-E-R, though the company was set up in the UK. To underline this, the Disinformation Chronicle published what purported to be a leaked internal CCDH document last year declaring that its strategic priority was to ‘kill Musk’s Twitter’. Ahmed, a British citizen, lives in Washington DC. Awkward.
What about Morgan McSweeney? Sir Keir’s chief of staff was the founder of the CCDH and only resigned in April 2020 after the organisation had launched a campaign against the spread of ‘online misinformation’ about Covid-19. Prior to that, it published a ‘Don’t Feed the Trolls’ report, endorsed by Gary Lineker. (Isn’t he a troll?) It recommended reporting ‘trolls’ to the social media companies that publish their posts, which sounds awfully like encouraging censorship, bearing in mind the CCDH’s definition of a ‘troll’ is pretty broad.
‘They don’t want to “win” or “lose” an argument; they just want their ideas to be heard by as many potential converts as possible,’ said the report. And what might these dangerous ideas be? Last year, the CCDH published some research identifying ‘climate deniers’ as purveyors of online hate and ‘disinformation’ – precisely the ‘trolls’ social media platforms should ban. Would these include Donald ‘Drill, baby, drill’ Trump? Presumably.
It’s tempting to suggest other people the US State Department should take a look at, but I have qualms about this method of winning the argument. Yes, we want to persuade zealots like Ahmed to stop brow-beating social media platforms to ban anyone who challenges the nostrums of radical progressive ideology, but we don’t want to force them to self-censor for fear of not being able to set foot in the US. There’s something a bit McCarthyite about it: ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Center for Countering Digital Hate?’
‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Center for Countering Digital Hate?’
That said, the CCDH has no hesitation about naming names. In its report on climate-denying ‘trolls’, it identifies Jordan Peterson as a dangerous propagandist and urges YouTube to ‘de-amplify’ videos in which he expresses scepticism about man-made global warming. Isn’t it time they had a taste of their own medicine?
What it boils down to is whether the defenders of free speech are prepared to stoop to the tactics of their enemies to win this particular battle. As the founder of the Free Speech Union, I’ve always thought the way to prevail is to take the high ground, i.e. win the argument by engaging in open debate in the public square and not try to ‘cancel’ the cancellers. But if they refuse to debate their ideological opponents – including free speech advocates like me – and instead keep trying to ruin our livelihoods, isn’t it time to take the gloves off?
One argument for not drawing up blacklists is that it won’t help us persuade the younger generation to embrace the free speech cause. We should be modelling the best way to win arguments, not mimicking the left-wing authoritarians. Aren’t we in danger of looking like hypocrites? That’s particularly true of the Trump administration, which has few inhibitions about punishing students and universities that show too much enthusiasm for the Palestinian cause. For consistency’s sake, Rubio should stick his own boss on the ‘no fly’ list.
On the other hand, perhaps I’m being too charitable to Gen Z in thinking they’ll be won over by displays of principle. Brutal displays of power, such as revoking Imran Ahmed’s visa, may be the way to their hearts. The entire board of the Global Disinformation Index – another UK-based pro-censorship lobby group – being refused entry to the United States on their way to a Miami conference might be just the thing to persuade young people that they’re yesterday’s men and women. As Lord Varys says in Game of Thrones, power resides where people believe it resides. It’s a trick. What better way to denude the woke commissars of their cultural clout than to publicly humiliate them? But meting out the same punishment to their families seems a step too far.
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