How did free speech become a right-wing value?

In early May, I explored the left’s reaction to billionaire Elon Musk potentially buying Twitter and his vow to make it a free speech platform again. Since then, Musk and his vision have repeatedly been portrayed as “right-wing.”

It’s the damndest thing.

Canadian Conservative politician Andrew Scheer picked up on this strange phenomenon back in April, saying that that the corporate media framing free speech as a “right wing value” was just plain weird. As though to drive home the point, Twitch’s Zachary Ryan called Musk a right-winger on Monday. And over the weekend, entrepreneur Samir Tabar had a question for a whiny Robert Reich:

Stop using Musk as your punching bag. Twitter was full of people who had opinions before Musk was around. What you label as ‘misinformation” are just views you don’t like. Deal with it. Since when is free speech a right wing value?

— Samir (Sam) Tabar (@SamirTabar) December 11, 2022

Answer: since, well, now.

The evolution of this trend is not new. It was less than three years ago that the American Civil Liberties Union — which for decades was committed to an absolutist vision of free speech — signaled that it was no longer interested in defending the speech of those who don’t share the organization’s values.

Former ACLU head Ira Glasser has been vocal in opposing this shift not just at his old place of employment but among the left at large. As Spiked reported back in February 2020 (emphasis added), “This idea, Glasser laments, is alien to a lot of young people today, who see the ‘First Amendment as an antagonist to social justice’. Indeed, on US campuses ‘progressives’ constantly agitate for right-wing speakers, from Charles Murray to Ben Shapiro, to be banned or forcibly shut them down. ‘Hate speech is not free speech’ is a common refrain.”

That last sentence is key.

The ACLU, which in 1978 famously defended arguably the worst hate speech there is — Nazi speech — is now following the left-wing trend of labeling things it doesn’t like, and even Musk’s dedication to free speech, as promoting hate speech.

Human rights groups including the ACLU and Amnesty International raised concerns about hate speech on Twitter and the power that Elon Musk, a self-described 'free speech absolutist,' would have after his acquisition https://t.co/U3h2usxiKp pic.twitter.com/mlhwzzF9OJ

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 25, 2022

It’s safe to assume the ACLU didn’t share the values of the Nazis they defended four decades ago. But then the old left considered even hateful rhetoric the price of free speech. Today’s left, by and large, is more concerned with stopping the spread of “hate speech” and “misinformation” than the principle and practice of free speech. You see it time and again in leftists’ identity-based lexicon and woke rituals.

This means that by default, free speech has become a right-wing value.

It’s worth noting that no right-winger of any consequence has pushed to redefine free speech in the way that progressives have. Most conservatives just want to have a voice in the exchange of ideas, and while the First Amendment protects right-leaning thinkers in the public sphere (we think?) most would have preferred to have it on major private platforms as well. This has put them in the position of defending everyone’s freedom of speech so as to protect that freedom for themselves.

There is a small number of progressives, like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Michael Tracey, Bill Maher and others, who retain the old liberal values of civil liberties and speech protection, and they do push back against the larger illiberal trend. So now the left is calling them “right-wing” too:

Thousands of people died in those ‘red states’ for no good reason but Maher thinks they’re a ‘joy’. Tell that to the families of the dead in Florida.

For anyone who ridiculously still thinks Bill Maher is a liberal or on the left and not a rightwing reactionary, here you go: https://t.co/hBiIhVAbau

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) October 30, 2021

It’s where we are. Free speech is now a right-wing value. Let’s just hope conservatives are able to protect it.