Freedom of speech

Russian original paper "Свобода слова"

As Karl Marx would have said: "The struggle for freedom of speech in the capitalist world intensifies as it approaches its demise." And he would have been absolutely right: the demise is imminent, and the freedom of speech needs to be saved urgently. For the socialist world, Marx did not plan this freedom because it was not needed there and is inherently harmful. After the Declaration of Independence of America in 1776 and the adoption of the Constitution, the founding fathers quickly realized that the fundamental law required amendments. In 1791, they passed the Bill of Rights, containing a total of ten amendments, perhaps in analogy to the Ten Commandments. The very first one is about this freedom: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

All amendments are stated as succinctly as if they had to be carved on stone tablets or scribed on parchment. Consequently, they require interpretations for ordinary people. For example, can the passage about religion be understood as the separation of religion from the state? Or is it a prohibition on establishing a state religion, such as Christianity? One can speculate on what is meant by "peaceably to assemble": with the weapons allowed by the Second Amendment or without? Another example, on January 6th, representatives of the people peacefully entered the Capitol with specific concerns about voting, did not kill anyone, although elected officials hid, and later the "intruders" received serious sentences for rebellion, according to the decision of Congress's special commission. Perhaps this committee violated the constitutional rights of the people to express their grievances? On the other hand, it is worth noting that while guaranteeing freedom of speech, the Constitution nowhere specifies that one can speak with impunity.

But in this case, let's focus on freedom of speech and the press, and here the matter of clarity is only slightly better. Congress has not passed any laws restricting freedom of speech, meaning it has not violated the American Constitution. However, the Supreme Court has made dozens of decisions allowing or prohibiting certain topics of conversation: adult pornography is allowed, while child pornography is prohibited; violating copyright on intellectual property is not allowed, but burning the national flag is allowed, and there is no end to special decrees and interpretations. It is noteworthy that somehow freedom of speech includes visual arts (pornography is images, not conversations), actions like espionage, and manipulations with the financing of political campaigns – O, no, they cannot be restricted! So, if you want to challenge the freedom of something, turn to the Supreme Court and demand an interpretation of why your intentions do not violate the First Amendment. You are confused? So am I. Let's explore through examples.

Here's a very "hot potato" - the case of Hunter B.'s laptop. For those who haven't heard, you can familiarize yourself with the plot on Wikipedia. In brief: the son of the vice president, running for president, left his laptop for repairs in a small workshop and didn't pick it up for six months, and of course, he didn't pay either. The workshop owner read the contents and, suspecting state treason, handed the computer over to the FBI as an honest person and patriot. Apparently knowing whom he was dealing with, he also gave another copy of the hard drive to Rudy Giuliani, Trump's lawyer. Giuliani shared this information with the New York Post, which published an article incriminating the presidential candidate. "So what?" Alexander Lukashenko would ask, "They can publish whatever they want! Freedom of speech and the press is inviolable!"

The specialist on human rights from Belarus reacted with rightful indignation, but there are two to three weeks left until the presidential elections, and the problem needs to be solved, or who knows how people will vote. And here's the FBI - a government agency - giving instructions to all major media outlets: Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others, to block the spread of the harmful article. They also instructed to disconnect the NY Post from the internet as a distributor of Russian propaganda, claiming that Putin personally fabricated Hunter Biden's laptop and planted it in that workshop. The hypothesis looked so flimsy that 51 high-ranking FBI officials, both serving and retired, signed a collective letter confirming the Russian origin of both the computer and all the information on it. The signature of a knowingly false letter can be interpreted as freedom of speech, and as for the Ninth Commandment "Do not bear false witness," people working in law enforcement prefer not to know, in any country. The fact that it is also stupid, because the origin of any email found on a computer can be traced by analyzing mail servers storing emails of subscriber-partners, did not bother anyone – they just had to hold out until November 8th – the day of the elections, and then figure it out somehow.

And what about the First Amendment? - Complete chaos! The state organization FBI, that is, the state, restricted the freedom of the press - the NY Post - and removed its article from circulation, meaning Removing Words (a lot of them). "Yet Congress had passed no law explicitly allowing this," you would say, "and did not violate freedom of speech." Exactly, but then it means that by definition, no one and nothing except Congress can infringe it, and there's nothing to talk about.

Well, we've reached a dead end, and we'll have to backtrack. What is the purpose of words anyway? To convey something, to transmit information, and thus freedom of speech is the freedom to convey and disseminate information or knowledge. And knowledge is power and an advantage: legend has it that Nathan Rothschild learned about Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo before anyone else, receiving a note from his pigeon-keeping agent, and bought a large amount of valuable securities at a low price, which later brought him tremendous profit.

In ancient times, the carrier of words was exclusively humans, excluding talking parrots. When letters appeared, the transmission of information was mostly private - from one person to another. Of course, there were books, but due to the slow pace of their creation, they could convey important but not current information. Only in the last two hundred years has the development of communication made several qualitative leaps and ultimately led to the almost complete alienation of information-words from humans. First newspapers, telegraph, telephone, radio, and now the internet and its offspring - various messengers - have made the transmission of information truly massive and almost instantaneous. Those who control these corporations are the real rulers of the world. By blocking the electronic distribution of the New York Post, and since almost no one reads the paper version, the owners of Twitter and Facebook likely influenced the election of the president of a country like America, thereby altering the destinies of millions of people on the planet.

And talking about freedom of speech here is meaningless - no one will voluntarily give up such power, and without watching your mouth, aka censorship, this power cannot be held. A presidential candidate publicly declared on camera that he blackmailed a foreign state of Ukraine and succeeded in displacing a prosecutor Shokhin. "Does it smell bad?" - "Oh, nothing to worry about, let's call Google, the owner of YouTube, and this video clip will be removed from everywhere." - "But many have already seen it." - "Well, let's flood the network with testimonies from the most honest journalists and politicians that, firstly, it never happened, secondly, it's a conspiracy theory spread by Russian agents, and thirdly, it was actually done by another candidate whose name starts with a T."

- But this is wrong!  In a free society, it should be possible to live without censorship. After all, there must be freedom of speech, right? - Of course! - So, everyone can write any message? - Of course! - And what if it spreads falsehood, fake news? For example, Russian agents fabricated Hunter B.'s suitcase and stuffed it with all sorts of nastiness. Or it claims that vaccines are not adequately tested and this causes financial damage to companies like Politzer or Moderata? – Same answer, man, under no circumstances, especially if they are telling the truth or presenting facts, but no censorship, never! Clear? - N...no...not…

The word "censorship" itself is illegal; one should talk about content moderation. If someone writes something without thinking about any fake elections, for example in Brazil, and associations may arise incorrectly - such things cannot be broadcast, so what do we do? - Right, we moderate, replace the fake with the honest, and everything is fine. - Many moderators are already employed, but even more, instructors-educators are needed to guide the moderators and explain how to act in complex cases. What if it turns out that Hunter's laptop is still real, can information tarnishing a good family be published from there now? – Oy vey, - the seasoned party instructor chuckled - they don't teach creative thinking at Stanford: - Surely not, sweetie, block that user and send him an explanation that his information was obtained dishonestly, so it should not be disclosed.

To respectfully conclude our discussion, our media company is private and conducts its policy based on its understanding of freedom, truth, and benefit. If you don't like it, close your account and go gossip somewhere else where they take the First Amendment seriously. And there are some good places like the Harvard University campus where the open calls to genocide of Jews and elimination of the State of Israel do not constitute hate speech. Everything depends on interpretation; if you disagree with Harvard's president – go to the Supreme Court.

Elon Musk hadn't even finished buying Twitter, firing moderators and lawyers - FBI instructors, when he faced the dilemma of moderating content himself and closing accounts of those who were providing accurate but illegal information about his personal whereabouts. It serves him right, but this is just the prelude - the fairy tale is ahead. What will he say about freedom of speech when, through his now-owned Twitter, calls for a rebellion or a strike at the Tesla factory to begin? It's very convenient to inform participants in real-time: what to bring, where to gather, and the signals for "friend-foe." It's also suitable for pogroms.

© Dimus, December 2022

English translation - December 2023