The case against free speech The First Amendment, fascism, and the future of dissent

In this incisive treatise, journalist Moskowitz (How to Kill a City) argues that the concept of free speech has been distorted as a cover for maintaining existing systems of power. The author examines the 2017 Charlottesville far-right "free speech rally" that escalated into a neo-Nazi parade culminating in the murder of a progressive activist. Moskowitz then analyzes recent incidents on college campuses that have inflamed the right, including the cancellation of a 2017 speaking engagement by conservative author Charles Murray after protests at Middlebury College and demonstrations at Reed College calling for a more inclusive curriculum. The term free speech, Moskowitz claims, has been co-opted by conservative activists as a means to spread their ideology to college campuses. Moskowitz recounts a long history of conservatives censoring the left while claiming their own speech rights are being violated, noting examples of jailed socialist dissidents and union members during WWII, as well as present-day campaigns of harassment orchestrated by conservative organizations against professors and students critical of Israel or right-wing causes. Moskowitz asserts that the true free speech "crisis" is that only the wealthiest (and whitest) American voices have real influence and that "massively overhauling our government" is the only way to change that. The analysis here is keen, complex, and well-organized. It probably won't convince right-wing readers, but others will appreciate it. (Aug.)

Forget about shouting "fire" in a crowded theaterfree speech, by this account, is anything but free.As former Al Jazeera America staffer Moskowitz (How To Kill a City: Gentrification, Inequality, and the Fight for the Neighborhood, 2017) writes, the doctrine of freedom of speech is constantly in opposition to other rights that often supersede it. For instance, if you wished to rename yourself Google as an expression of some political view or another, you would likely face down some very powerful corporate attorneys. On another score, argues the author, people like Charles Murray or Steve Bannon may widely be accounted undesirable and are therefore banned or disinvited from speaking on campuses, leading to conservative outcries about supposed censorship, but the national news such banning brings is disproportionate to the silencing of activists on the other side: "Their rights eclipse the rights of so many others in mainstream discourse: Dakota Access Pipeline protestors, or J20 defendants, or Black Lives Matter activists." The freedom of speech of the alt-right demonstrators in Charlottesville, Moskowitz urges, clearly superseded other presumably superior rights, whipping up the violence that led to the murder of a counterprotester. Indeed, the argument continues, a scenario in which many of the alt-right participants were armed was sanctioned by police while, one imagines, a similar demonstration of armed Black Lives Matter marchers would not be. As A.J. Liebling noted, just as freedom of the press belongs to the person who owns the press, true freedom of speech belongs to those who wield political power. Although the argument is sometimes diffuse, Moskowitz does valuable work in connecting dotsnoting, for example, that a professor censured at Evergreen College under supposed PC censorship who became a cause clbre was the brother of the managing director of a firm owned by Peter Thiel, "a right-wing billionaire who has helped fund lawsuits to shut down the left-leaning media site Gawker."A provocation for First Amendment absolutists, who may be surprised at all the hidden constraints that bind free expression. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.