Responding to a horrific evil, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown proposed countermeasures that would make matters much worse. He proposed an outright ban on broad swaths of speech. On top of murder, he would add repression.
Regrettably, CNN host Anderson Cooper did not challenge Mayor Brown’s suggestion. But everybody in public life should challenge it.
Brown is understandably upset. The racially motivated May 14 slaughter in Buffalo was heinous. And it is true that the killer had latched on to the noxious “great replacement theory” promulgated by some elements of the Trumpian Right.
On the other hand, the killer had a history of mental health problems. It is ludicrous to assert that the mass shooting is a sign that American society as a whole is racist or that Republicans or conservatives in general are responsible for the deaths. Indeed, the killer’s online manifesto made clear that he hates conservatives and Republicans.
Moreover, one can justifiably believe elements of various voter replacement theories divorced from ethnic considerations. It is undeniably true that the self-styled “progressive” Left wants the votes of illegal immigrants to cancel out, or “replace,” the votes of U.S. citizens. Americans can and should oppose that agenda even if they want to expand legal immigration of any and all ethnicities vastly.
Such nuances provide context that helps show in real-world terms why Brown’s embrace of censorship was way out of bounds.
Brown was responding to Cooper’s question about whether public figures who push “great replacement theory” are “complicit in these murders.”
“I think one way accountability looks is to ban that kind of hate speech, that kind of misinformation on public airwaves, in social media, on the internet,” Brown answered. “It should not be allowed. False information, hateful information, attempts to indoctrinate people in different forms of hate and violence on the internet and on the airwaves of this nation should just absolutely be banned.”
Obviously, such a ban would run afoul of First Amendment speech protections as they have historically been understood. Speech that is hateful but does not facially incite violence is absolutely protected by the Constitution. Every idiot has the right to say, “I hate short people,” all day long without government stopping him — unless he indicates that the hatred should manifest itself in violence.
I, myself, detest communists, and I have every right to try to impress upon young people the necessity of opposing communism. Under Mayor Brown’s definition, would those attempts of mine amount to “hateful information [and] attempts to indoctrinate people”? Who decides? And who has the right to decide where the line should be drawn between identifying (and opposing) “progressive” attempts to fill voter rolls with illegal aliens, on one hand, and, on the other hand, the citation of ethnic voting patterns as a reason to oppose mass immigration? As noted above, the language of “replacement” might be used in both circumstances, but with profoundly different motives.
Should some bureaucrat somewhere be tasked with policing such nuances of speech? Should a sheriff or an FBI agent? Of course not.
Thomas Jefferson was right to assert that wise people “are not afraid … to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.” Perhaps those spreading such error should be ostracized and ignored because of that advocacy, but that is another question for other people to decide, not lawmakers creating speech codes. Decency and reason can combat bad ideas without any resort to the repressive power of the state.
