The Enablers of Mass Murder
Right-wing pundits already had many pints of blood on their hands, but the May 14 shooting in New York is the clearest example of the dangers of "freedom of speech" in a fascist society.
Nazi iconography in the Buffalo terrorist’s great replacement manifesto
In “Fascists Don’t Need Freedom of Speech” I argued that the common knee-jerk defense of fascist speech—that it may be dangerous and distasteful but should be protected and encouraged in order to protect all speech equally—was self-defeating and overly broad because the fascists in power do not need, and only abuse, high-minded concepts like freedom of speech. In their hands, the right loses its defining characteristic as a bulwark against creeping authoritarianism and becomes twisted, more akin to “freedom of propaganda” or “freedom of hate speech.” As was tragically illustrated yesterday in the New York shooting that left 10 dead in a racially motived massacre, in the hands of a fascist this concept facilitates radicalization in unmoderated communities such as 4chan, where the shooter’s hateful ideology was incubated. The great replacement, a conspiracy theory which holds that the government (or some other shadowy puppetmaster) is in the process of disenfranchising white voters by encouraging immigration and other demographic changes, has been repeatedly touted in mainstream media by voices such as Tucker Carlson:
“Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people—more obedient voters from the third world,” the host said. “But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually. Let’s just say it: That’s true.” At another point he claimed the U.S. government is showing “preference to people who have shown absolute contempt for our customs, our laws, our system itself—and they’re being treated better than American citizens.”
Later on in the segment, Carlson asserted that immigration is part of an effort to “dilute the political power of the people” by changing the country’s makeup. “Every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter,” he said.
To this he added what bordered on a call to action. “I have less political power because they’re importing a brand-new electorate,” he said. “Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American, guaranteed at birth, is one man, one vote, and they’re diluting it. No, they’re not allowed to do that. Why are we putting up with this?”
In a healthy society, anyone on the level of Tucker Carlson would be reduced to shouting on a street corner, but our society is not healthy: in fact fully one third of Americans now believe that “that more immigration is causing U.S.-born Americans to lose their economic, political and cultural influence.” Republicans are more likely to argue for something akin to the great replacement theory, but self-identified Democrats are only slightly less likely to believe in the same racist conspiracy:
After years of heated rhetoric around immigration and its impacts, new data from an AP-NORC poll reveals that two-thirds of Americans feel the country’s diverse population makes the US stronger – less than 10% say diversity weakens the country.
Still, roughly one in three (32%) adults agree that a group of people is trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains. A similar share (29%) also express concern that an increase in immigration is leading to to native-born Americans losing economic, political, and cultural influence. These two key measures tap into the core arguments of Replacement Theory, a decades old idea, which posits that there is a group of powerful people in this country who are trying to permanently alter the culture and voting strength of native-born Americans by bringing in large groups of immigrants – the study indicates about one in five (17%) adults agree with both of these central tenets.
Most Americans cite a lack of economic opportunity (93%), poverty (92%), and violent crime (91%) as motivating factors for why immigrants leave their country, while just two-thirds cite the impacts of climate change.
Democrats endorse this theory both explicitly and implicitly, the latter by validating the political milieu itself and recognizing that their position of power is dependent on the existence of a strong Republican party, whether or not they’d prefer it to be openly fascist. By unduly respecting and empowering their opposition in all its vagaries, the Democrats reveal themselves as only marginally better, reluctant supporters of an ideology whose outcome is inextricably violent and anti-democratic. Violence is indeed the only logical outcome of the idea that the “white” way of life itself is under attack—the government itself is said to be behind the replacement, so it follows that legal methods to address the racists’ complaints would be ineffectual. If the law itself is twisted beyond repair, and the outcome is the death of one’s ingroup, the only possible alternative is the path taken by mass shooters according to true believers. The act of endorsing the right to disseminate this idea and radicalize known mentally unstable individuals is itself an abrogation of free speech: the individuals who will assuredly die as a result of this unchecked encouragement of bloodshed no longer have the right to speak, or any rights at all, and this violence is a compulsory element of the great replacement theory even if its champions occasionally hesitate to support it outright. The day after the shooting, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on social media companies to better monitor their users for signs of possible malicious intentions:
"There has to be vigilance," Pelosi, D-Calif., said on ABC's "This Week." "People have to alert other authorities if they think that someone is on a path to domestic terrorism, to violence of any kind."
Investigators are looking at multiple online postings that may be associated with the shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, that include praise for South Carolina church shooter Dylann Roof and the New Zealand mosque shooter Brenton Tarrant, sources told ABC News.
"Obviously you have to balance the free speech issues," Pelosi said. "Freedom is so important to us but that freedom also carries public safety with it and we have to balance that."
As is the usual case with Democratic Party politicians, Pelosi’s calls here are insufficient to truly prevent the kind of mass violence America is becoming increasingly known for. Sites already monitor their users and any imminent attack they become aware of is forwarded to the authorities. What is needed is closer monitoring of specific ideologies (see Germany’s prohibition against Nazism), an unlikely program given that the most dangerous of them are becoming mainstream and are already highly influential the US government. Absent this legal recourse, it falls to the people to more roundly reject racism and the tolerance thereof in all its forms and in all its safe havens online and elsewhere.
Does this path take us down a slippery slope toward the authoritarian monitoring of our very thoughts? It might be argued that any ideology can be similarly twisted by its more extremist adherents. The far right and its facilitators will be quick to remind leftists that some historians attribute many deaths to extremist fervor in the service of communist revolutions, and if we are supportive of violence in one case but not the other, we must be hypocrites and our own beliefs are no better than the great replacement theory we despise. If there are possible violent tendencies on both sides, it follows that rules against it should apply equally to everyone.
But is violence a similarly inextricable part of revolutionary communist ideology? No, the two belief systems are incomparable because violence is unnecessary to achieve communism and is only ever practiced as a defense against those who would use violence to maintain fascism. In a justified communist revolution, those who wish to continue oppressing others would likely attempt to stop the revolution with force (history provides countless examples of this) which could be met with morally permissible self-defense. The difference could not be more stark: in the case of the great replacement theory, violence is preemptive and targeted toward peaceful individuals—in fact the theory is built around weaponizing birthrates in order to twist demographic changes into something violent to justify that preemptive oppression and recast it as a form of self-defense (of the white race). In the case of a communist revolution, any violence is reactive in nature and practiced only as a last resort against those who would stand in the way of justified resource redistribution of goods which were stolen from the working class to begin with. The difference can be illustrated by looking at the case of abortion: if a pregnant woman goes to a clinic but is stopped by violent anti-abortion demonstrators, she would be justified in using force to thwart their attack, and her foreknowledge that she might have to harm the demonstrators as a result of seeking an abortion does not constitute premeditated murder. If it did, any case in which an individual might conceivably be threatened as a result of an innocent action would be tantamount to murder, and in a fascist society this includes any activity under the sun, such as shopping at the supermarket.
Another way to illustrate the difference: in a heavily Republican area, a pro-abortion bumper sticker on an automobile might conceivably draw the ire of another motorist and a confrontation that may well end in bloodshed. Suppose that a radical anti-abortion fascist sees one’s pro-abortion sticker and decides to confront the driver, following them to their destination and accosting them when they get out. The owner of the pro-abortion bumper sticker stands their ground and defends their choice, which angers the anti-abortion motorist to the point that they go back to their car and get their gun, and begin using it to threaten the other driver. Especially given recent events, the threatened motorist has a reasonable fear for their safety and very quickly pulls their own gun, fatally wounding the surprised attacker before they’re able to fire their own weapon. Of course the whole situation is tragic, but the pro-abortion motorist never made an actionable mistake at any point in the process even if they knew their bumper sticker could result in some sort of violent confrontation. The onus throughout the entire process was on the attacker, not the defender. Similarly, the revolutionary forces of communism are surely aware that they will encounter organized resistance in the process of dismantling the deadly capitalist machine, and their potential reaction to that violence will be justified because they neither incepted nor escalated it.
Or, to take a more topical example: in certain areas of the country, interracial relationships might trigger a violent reaction which could similarly end in bloodshed. We wouldn’t for a moment place any of the blame on the couple, who have no responsibility to forego their relationship just because some in their community oppose it in a violent way. Likewise, LGBTQ+ should not be asked to hide who they are just because they might have to defend themselves at some point as a result.
To place any of the onus on those seeking equal rights, representation or respect instead of the oppressive power holders is to side with the fascists. The same holds true for speech as it does for instances of conflict.
Tucker Carlson preaches an ideology of proactive violence, not self-defense. In his case, Carlson’s awareness that his actions will directly lead to unnecessary violence does justify the immediate cancellation of his show and the deplatforming of anyone who preaches a similar form of violent hate. There are those who certainly knew of the shooter’s imminent attack and encouraged it or said nothing, and their share of the blame is even greater, tantamount to a criminal conspiracy. Carlson likely had no such knowledge, but the outcome of his hate speech is no longer in question. His employers can no longer hide behind plausible deniability of the deadly ramifications of giving far right ideologues a platform.
In the article I linked above, I concluded that the power holders in our society don’t need freedom of speech, they have it by default and allowing them carte blanche to abuse it only twists it into propaganda and the stifling of dissent. The facilitators of the great replacement theory are no better than charlatans hawking ineffective treatments for cancer or Covid or any other malady, and the laws governing medical claims and misinformation (lacking as they are) should be applied as a kind of revived Fairness Doctrine to far right conspiracy theory peddlers online and in print media or cable news. Of course, Carlson’s employer Fox News wouldn’t have been bound by the original Fairness Doctrine, and in court Tucker Carlson’s lawyer successfully argued that no one should take him seriously as a newscaster anyway:
Now comes the claim that you can't expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth. And that assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics. It's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News's own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. It worked, by the way.
Just read U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil's opinion, leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers: The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' "
She wrote: "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
Vyskocil, an appointee of President Trump's, added, "Whether the Court frames Mr. Carlson's statements as 'exaggeration,' 'non-literal commentary,' or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same — the statements are not actionable."
Vyskocil's ruling last week, dismissing a slander lawsuit filed against Carlson, was a win for Fox, First Amendment principles and the media more generally, as Fox News itself maintains. As a legal matter, the judge ruled that Karen McDougal, the woman suing Carlson, failed to surmount the challenge.
Vyskocil's ruling last week, dismissing a slander lawsuit filed against Carlson, was a win for Fox, First Amendment principles and the media more generally, as Fox News itself maintains. As a legal matter, the judge ruled that Karen McDougal, the woman suing Carlson, failed to surmount the challenge.
But in the process of saving the Fox star, the network's attorneys raised the journalistic question: Just what level of fact-checking does Fox News expect, or subject its opinion shows to?
If Carlson is just a useful idiot or a scapegoat for forces he doesn’t understand, why is his freedom to promulgate such rank idiocy worth protecting if there is no value to it and the ramifications are so often deadly? If he can commit slander because he knows not what he does, can he also exhort impressionable potential terrorists to kill for their cause simply because he thinks it would be a lark to do so?
Why is it important for any other similarly unserious clown to have their ideas freely disseminated, considered, and laboriously rejected each time they are put forth, dragging the discourse down and forever muddying the waters as the stakes grow ever higher for the most vulnerable among us (climate change threatens our very civilization, for example)? Should we similarly excuse Ted Nugent, who at a recent Trump rally said “So I love you people madly but I’d love you more if you went forward and just went berserk on the skulls of the Democrats and the Marxists and the communists”? If Nugent is joking, his statements do not require protection; if he isn’t, he is inciting violence and is legally responsible for whatever happens as a result.
The rightists in power do not take their own “freedom of speech” seriously, nor should they. Fascists do not value it, and the left should stop bending over backwards to value it for them.