In the wake of the chaos at the Capitol, the private sector has taken steps to hold the responsible parties accountable. Most recently, publisher Simon & Schuster announced it would pull Sen. Josh Hawley’s forthcoming book due to his role in the Electoral College challenge.
However wrong Hawley’s actions might have been, silencing him is not the solution. Aside from the fact that they would not do this to a Democrat (Barbara Boxer faced no consequences for her similar stunt), this is an excellent candidate for the Streisand effect. Quashing dissent will only make it louder, especially when the dissenting parties have attracted enormous followings over their concerns about censorship.
They’re making Hawley a martyr. He is already out with a statement blasting Simon & Schuster for waging a “direct assault on the First Amendment.” “Only approved speech can now be published,” he said. “This is the Left looking to cancel everyone they don’t approve of. I will fight this cancel culture with everything I have. We’ll see you in court.”
It doesn’t matter that Hawley is wrong. Simon & Schuster is a private company and can choose to publish or not publish whomever it so chooses. Perhaps he has a contractual right to sue, but that doesn’t make this a First Amendment issue. But millions of people concerned about cancel culture and the Left’s attempts to silence conservative voices will disagree and argue that Simon & Schuster’s sudden retraction is an attack on free speech. They will rally behind Hawley, and he will develop even more of a following because his primary concern, about which the book is written — the Left is seeking to drive out conservatives from the public and private squares — will have been proven right.
Attempts to remove information often backfire. We saw this a few months ago when Twitter banned a story by the New York Post about Hunter Biden’s shady foreign business deals. Removing the story from its platform did not stop people from reading it. In fact, it doubled the attention the story received.
The same will happen with Hawley. He will spend the next few months riding the wave of the free legal publicity Simon & Schuster has given him, and tens of thousands more will purchase his book because they were told not to.
However, what is more important is the principle at stake here. I disagree with Hawley’s actions as much as anyone, but pulling his book retroactively is wrong. His book has nothing to do with the Electoral College’s certification or the presidential election; it’s a book about Big Tech. In fact, the publishing company doesn’t seem to have a problem with the content of Hawley’s book at all because its statement only refers to Hawley’s role in the Electoral College challenge, which means this is merely a reprisal, and not even a relevant reprisal. If reputable publishers were to refuse to publish books by opponents of the First Amendment, they could at least claim they were making a point. This, on the other hand, is punishment for an unrelated political decision by a politician. What next? Will they punish lawmakers for voting the wrong way on bills?
Regardless of what you might think about Hawley’s Electoral College objections, every time we cheer this kind of vindictive behavior by the private sector or act like it doesn’t matter, we encourage it by default. As a result, the viewpoints deemed unacceptable begin to grow louder, and the number of “cancellations” that follow grow as well. At some point, we have to recognize that illiberalism of this nature is damaging to our society.
Hawley should be held accountable, but this is not the way to do it. The proper forum is the one given to people by the Constitution when an elected lawmaker missteps: Vote him out. If Republicans in the Senate want to go further, they can strip Hawley of his committee assignments, expel him from conference, or even have him impeached. Political conduct is governed by political remedies left to lawmakers and voters. Let’s not encourage corporate illiberalism, lest it grows into something we cannot control.
