The war on free speech is about to get a lot uglier

The awful events of January 6 accelerated trends in left-of-center circles, particularly within media and technology companies. Shocked at the sight of a violent mob lending street muscle to a lame-duck president’s conspiracy theory, journalists, academics, and social media companies seemed at once to agree on a two-pronged strategy: using the most maximally negative adjectives to describe the country’s still sizable Trump rump and banishing that bloc’s most deplorable figures from every platform within reach.

First it was the sitting president who was sent to social-media Siberia. Soon, the Twitter-for-right-wingers site Parler found itself without web hosting services after Amazon, Apple, and Google severed all business ties within a 48-hour span. The day after the House impeached Trump for a second time, the journalistic chattering classes redirected their outrage toward Politico inviting conservative commentator Ben Shapiro to be a single-day guest editor of its flagship email newsletter…

Among the trial balloons taking flight in this fraught moment was a national commission. Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch suggested a South African–style Truth and Reconciliation process “to address the lies and the anti-democratic policies of the Trump years.” It would be “a chance for finding a common national story, for amnesty and a new beginning,” Bunch argued, adding ominously, “I’d be shocked if this happened, but I don’t know any other peaceful path forward.”