As private companies, Facebook and Twitter have the right to restrict President Trump from their platforms. Still, from the perspective of national interests, it is a mistake for them to do so.
Following Wednesday’s chaos at the Capitol, YouTube has deleted Trump’s last video, and Twitter has deleted Trump’s two last tweets, also restricting the president’s account until Thursday afternoon. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has locked Trump’s Facebook account until at least midday on Jan. 20. Each of these companies has justified its decision on the basis of public interest. Zuckerberg says, “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.” This is attributed to Trump’s “use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”
Herein is the key problem: interpretation. Trump’s actions on Wednesday were disgraceful, but the question of whether Trump incited violent insurrection or mass protest is a point of debate. Regardless, in the same statement, Zuckerberg added a passing line on why Facebook has allowed Trump’s account to stand until now. It is, he said, to ensure that Facebook users have the “broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech.”
This belief that even highly controversial speech is due deference is a critical one.
It speaks to a particular U.S. legal tradition entailing the protection of speech that is hateful, hurtful, and designed to be so. Born of the Constitution and subsequent case law, this tradition rests on the understanding of a murky borderline between offensive speech and contemplative thought. That, where lawmakers attempt to draw the border against offensive speech, they risk undermining democratic participation and creative thinking. Where people are told they cannot say something, those people might come to believe they are no longer valued members of society. They may detach from that society and take new forms of action to undermine it.
As Chief Justice John Roberts explained in his 2010 Snyder v. Phelps opinion, “Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.” This legal understanding stands in stark contrast with those of many other democracies. In many European nations, for example, speech is restricted even if it might, but is not intended to, offend.
Again, I recognize that Facebook and Twitter have the right to restrict Trump’s account. But is their doing so in the public interest?
Yes, much of the media, Democrats, and others are nodding their heads in approval at what they believe to be an overdue constraint of Trump’s excesses. But what lesson will Trump’s most fervent supporters take?
I suggest it will be one that carries little assistance for national unity. Little support, that is, for the ideal of building bridges between people, rather than allowing new ramparts to drive us apart. Many Trump supporters believe the president’s assertions that he is the victim of a conspiracy against his political being. They see a conspiracy that began with Russiagate, was sustained by media bias, was advanced with impeachment, and has now culminated with a stolen election.
At the margin of greater national unity, it does not matter that these perceptions are not entirely, or in some cases even slightly, vested in fact. What matters is that these perceptions exist in resolute form. And if held widely or passionately enough, perceptions of political reality drive other political realities.
Trump’s supporters see themselves as people whose democratic rights have been suborned to orthodoxy. That they are now less American than others. In many ways, this understanding is similar to that of the Black Lives Matter protesters who took to the streets calling for racial justice in 2020. Those people believe that the nation’s law enforcement has treated them as second class citizens for hundreds of years. They are angry. We should not ignore them, even if some of those protesters crossed the line. So also, we should not ignore the fact that many of Trump’s supporters are angry for reasons that run deeper than Trump’s more inflammatory tweets and words. And that the vast, overwhelming majority of Trump supporters were not at the Capitol yesterday.
If we truly care about building bridges, the imprisonment of Trump’s social media accounts is not going to be helpful. It will send a message to those people who voted for Trump that their elected leader must be vanquished from existence and that their own views deserve a similar fate. History teaches us that this is not a good recipe for social harmony.
