Twitter and Trump: Why hate speech isn't free

Twitter did something Friday it should have done long ago: It decided to marginalize Donald J. Trump, imperial wizard of racist America. Some lawmakers made the same decision, and so have other social media sites.

They’re forcing him back to the margins, where a canceled reality show host with delusions of grandeur belongs, and his rabid supporters need to follow him.

Some argue it’s a good thing that Trump brought them out of the woodwork, that he exposed how pervasive bigotry remains in this country.

I beg to differ, because exposure is a bad thing. A very bad thing.

You see, when more people are exposed to a sickness, it spreads just like coronavirus, and it grows more dangerous. Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol showed just how dangerous it has become — not that it should have come as a surprise. Just three months earlier, federal agents thwarted a plot to do exactly the same thing at Michigan’s state capitol, and kidnap the governor in the process.

That plot came to light after Trump tweeted that his followers should “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

Afterward, he focused his anger not on the militia members, but against the governor and those who agreed with her. “Lock ’em all up,” he told rabid supporters at a rally.

Burning it down

This isn’t a case of exposing racism. It’s a case of normalizing it, empowering it, and inviting it to spread. It you see a fire, you don’t just watch it burn to prove a point that it’s a menace. You smother it before it gets out of control, and you end up getting burned.

Speaking of fire, Trump supporters who are castigating Twitter for stifling Trump’s speech, don’t seem to be aware of the Constitution they pretend to hold so dear. If they were, they’d know about a 1919 ruling by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote:

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

This is precisely what Trump did.

He whipped up an angry mob by shouting about a fire that didn’t exist — a “rigged” election whose results had been affirmed time and again. And in doing so, he ignited a fire of a different sort, lighting the fuse with his call to come to Washington and throwing gasoline on the flames by unleashing them on the Capitol.

Incitement

But it wasn’t the first time he’d incited people to hatred and/or violence with his words.

Referring to a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his rallies, he suggested that “maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it.” Pointedly, he not only suggested that a person should be assaulted, but invoked his fans’ displeasure — offering a wink and a nod should any of them choose to act.

He bragged that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Not that he would ever do that himself. Instead, he’d unleash followers on the Capitol to do his bidding by breaking windows, vandalizing offices, chasing lawmakers into hiding, and rampaging through the building. Some were armed with zip ties, and a pickup full of guns and bombs was found outside.

“I’d like to punch him in the face,” he said, referring to a protester at a Las Vegas rally in 2016.

He advocated torture: “They said to me, ‘What do you think of waterboarding?’ I said I think it’s great, but we don’t go far enough. It’s true. We don’t go far enough. We don’t go far enough.”

When a man at one of his rallies punched a Black protester, Trump said the man “deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to kill him.”

Back in May, he tweeted: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

But Twitter didn’t remove it, explaining that even though it had “taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts,” it left Trump’s words in place because “it is important that the public still be able to see the Tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance.”

Good censorship

On the contrary: It is NOT important that the public see words that condone and provoke violence. It’s not healthy. It’s not rational.

In fact, it’s vital that such words be censored.

You heard me right. Censorship of hate speech is a good thing, and it doesn’t violate the Constitution. The First Amendment has nothing to do with conversations between citizens. It applies to GOVERNMENT suppression of speech. Twitter and other private companies are free to make their own judgments, just as I’m free to kick someone out of my house for telling me to F off (or for any other reason) — and to tell strangers to get off my lawn.    

Censorship of hate speech doesn’t violate the “marketplace of ideas” principle. That concept assumes you’re talking about rational ideas, not incitement to hatred and violence. If someone enters a marketplace and starts making false accusations about a vendor and whipping the crowd into such a frenzy he can’t do business — or inciting them to overturn his stand — THAT’S what suppression looks like. That’s REAL censorship.

Respect the office?

And the idea that we should give those words a pass because they’re coming from the president, or some other “important” public figure, isn’t just wrong, it’s the opposite of what we should be doing. We should be holding our elected officials to a higher standard, not because of some noble principle, but because if we don’t, the have the ability to do far more damage than your average Joe or Josephine.

Trump can weaponize hate speech far more effectively than you or I could, which makes him far more dangerous and should subject him to greater scrutiny. Until now, our presidents have typically policed themselves. They’ve never gone around inciting people to violence, so it’s understandable that we were taken off guard when Trump started doing exactly that.

We’ve been brought up to “respect the office of the president,” but that respect was built on the understanding that no president would ever disrespect the office. We’d respect presidents of the opposite party, presidents we might not agree with. But nothing in that social contract ever envisioned or required us to respect a hateful person who happened to use that title as a cudgel to incite violence and insurrection.

I never wanted to see that in a president. And I never wanted to see the kind of bigotry, hatred, and violence that he’s encouraged.

People can change

The idea that it’s best to expose things like this supposes they’re there in the first place. For many people, they are. But it’s a mistake to think that bigots are just bigots and they’ll never change; that they were born that way.

They aren’t.

“People can change” is a cliché that’s commonly invoked to suggest people can change for the better, which they can. But people can change for the worse, too — and you can bet they will when you expose them to an angry mob.

“Those people agree with me about small government and low taxes. They share my religion. They look like me. They seem nice. So... maybe they’ve got a point about women belonging in the kitchen and Black people being violent thugs. Maybe they’re right about the election being rigged and Barack Obama being born in Kenya. Maybe socialists are trying to take over our country, and maybe we should storm the Capitol to keep this from happening.”

White sheets

Hatred is contagious, and it can’t be given an opportunity to thrive. On the contrary, it must be pushed back to the margins, forced to hide under white sheets, and kept from infecting the mainstream.

People wore those white sheets because they know that, if they didn’t, there would be consequences. Or because, on some level, they were still ashamed. But many of the people who would have hidden behind white sheets in the past were taking selfies and shouting obscenities at police in our seat of government this week.

The shame was gone. So were the consequences. And that’s what happens when hate is invited in from the cold for a seat at our table.

Twitter took a necessary step toward showing it the door when it banned Trump’s account. They told the imperial wizard of American hatred to put on his white sheet and leave. They recognized him for what he was: A hateful man who has no place in civil society. And they marginalized him.

It was a necessary step, but it was only a step. Unless he and those who represent us follow suit, the hateful contagion he has unleashed will continue to spread through society. No one will be talking about issues anymore, because we’ll all be afraid of one another. No one will be solving problems, because we’ll be too busy casting blame.

Healing is a noble goal, but it won’t happen if we let the disease fester in our body. It can only come through eradicating it. Twitter finally realized that and acted.

Now, it’s our turn.