There’s been an interesting argument going on the past couple of days between Vox’s Sean Illing and Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). It started with a piece at Vox titled “What the 2020 debate over free speech missed.” As with many Vox pieces, this one is framed as a correction to some consensus view, usually on the right, that Vox wants to challenge. Not every Vox piece falls into this well worn “Ackshually…” framework but this one does.

2020 was an especially rancorous year, and among the many things we fought about was the state of free speech in America. There’s a rising contingent of heterodox thinkers — on the left and right — who argue that a culture of censoriousness has enveloped intellectual life and curtailedfree speech.

Illing then walks through a list of examples, from the battle at the NY Times over Sen. Cotton’s op-ed, to Bari Weiss quitting the Times, to Andrew Sullivan being pushed out by New York magazine, to Glenn Greenwald leaving the Intercept and even including Matt Yglesias recent departure from Vox.

And the common complaint, if there is one, is that public discourse is being stifled. As Greenwald lamented, “how imperiled, across all societal sectors, this indispensable value of free discourse has become.”

Greenwald’s critique of cancel culture is right and wrong at the same time. The boundaries of speech are being contested, on different fronts and for various reasons. But that has always been the case. What’s genuinely new about this moment is the number of voices in the discourse. We’re living in what is unquestionably the freest and most open information space in human history. So all of the challenges to speech are occurring alongside an explosion of … speech.

It’s pretty hard to argue with that. I got into this in the era of blogs about 15 years ago, around the same time Matt Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan got into it. Blogs democratized speech to a new degree. And then social media came along and now it’s even easier to share your opinion than ever. And to his credit, Illing does acknowledge that there’s something censorious happening on the left right now.

But in a truly free society, everything is up for grabs. The left, at this moment, is exerting a lot of cultural power and forcing mainstream media institutions to bend to new and shifting ideological standards. Whether that is, ultimately, good for leftist political movements is a separate conversation. What’s clear is that the digital media environment doesn’t privilege the same voices and attitudes that prevailed in the pre-digital world. It’s too competitive and fragmented now. That’s a major shift in how we think and communicate and it’s producing massive conflict.

Again, I think he makes a fair point. The only reason we’re hearing from so many petty tyrants on the left is because they have the ability to be so vocal now. Their calls to silence “hate speech” and whatever else offends them in a given day probably couldn’t exist without social media. That said I do want to return to that first sentence in the paragraph above because I think that’s where he loses me.

But before we get to that, Greg Lukianoff of FIRE put together an large thread on Twitter arguing that free speech is in worse shape than Illing seems ready to admit.

It’s important to address this because there’s been a trend in “nothing to see here,” thinly sourced stories claiming that nobody should really worry about free speech, Cancel Culture, or any of these themes. (2/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

Within its first few hours, Hong Kong’s "snitch hotline" received over 1,000 calls of residents reporting potential violators—presenting an opportunity to target people with opposing political views. https://t.co/tkoWFGyJtS (5/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

He has more to say about Hong Kong but let’s skip ahead:

And I could write dozens of tweets on #censorship in Turkey alone, but here’s one: in Turkey over the last six years, over 900 minors, between ages 12 and 17, have faced trial for insulting President Erdogan:https://t.co/sSAhgGNGgS (11/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

India is continuing what some critics have called its "digital apartheid" policy in Kashmir, where high-speed internet is banned and all connections are highly regulated: https://t.co/tbtg50PA1S (13/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

France’s recently proposed "global security bill" prohibits the publishing of images of on-duty police officers which could result in a year in prison and a €45,000 fine: https://t.co/0vdYNvFsFM (17/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

The big picture seems to suggest things are getting worse this year:

According to @pressfreedom: "The number of journalists jailed globally because of their work hit a new high in 2020…" https://t.co/oKj9JpDXg8 (20/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

Skipping ahead, Lukianoff eventually comes back to what’s happening on American college campuses:

.@theFIREorg we've seen a dramatic increase in submissions from students and faculty seeking help. By early Sept, we’d already broken our all-time record. At 1,461 submissions for the year and counting, it’s been our busiest year:https://t.co/XGlEl2IJPT (35/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

Or the student at @JonesCollege_ who had to defend his rights in court for asking his peers their opinion on marijuana policies? https://t.co/HglHG1BEgF (37/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

Or another @HaskellU student kicked out of campus housing for saying a campus employee was "being an asshole" for threatening to tow his car? (He slept in his car after being kicked out during a pandemic/stay-at-home order!) https://t.co/t38iLHgFUe (39/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

He offers lots more examples and then gets to a survey of 20,000 students FIRE did this year.

Six in 10 students reported that they could not express an opinion because of how students, a professor, or their administration would respond. This number is highest among “strong Republicans” (73%) and lowest among “strong Democrats” (at a still not great 52%). (51/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

87% of students reported that @SenSanders should be allowed to share his views on campus, but only 69% said the same for @realDonaldTrump and 78% for @JoeBiden. (53/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

37% of Ivy League students say that shouting down a speaker is “always” or “sometimes” acceptable, compared to 26% of students not enrolled at Ivy League colleges. When it comes to removing flyers, the figures are 37% to 28%. (55/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

And here’s Lukianoff’s counter-argument:

I know left-leaning people & others don’t like the term "Cancel Culture" because right-leaning people & Trump have glommed onto it. But others have seen it, too, including Pres. Obama, the Harper's Letter signatories, & many journalists.https://t.co/ga6xEC1fsi (59/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

And I researched and wrote about its ancestor, “call-out culture,” with the great @JonHaidt in "The Coddling of the American Mind" which I've been updating here: https://t.co/L5zGgcbmNO (61/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

BUT if Cancel Culture is not your cup of tea, can journos/academics at least help out the cause of free speech, in ANY of these trends? There is great harm in diminishing free speech in 2020 when threats abound.

We & the cause of #freespeech could really use your help! (65/65)

— Greg Lukianoff (@glukianoff) December 23, 2020

To try to sum up this long thread, Lukianoff is saying that yes we have a lot more access to speech thanks to technology but we also seem to have a growing number of would-be censors and while the former is good news, the latter has the potential to undo a lot of that, either legally as in Hong Kong or culturally as on American campuses and social media.

For his part, Sean Illing felt he was being misunderstood:

Did not say and do not believe free speech isn’t worth worrying about. In fact, the whole point is that explosions in speech can undermine the very conditions that make free speech possible. That’s the central point. Did say that there are perhaps more pressing immediate threats.

— Sean Illing (@seanilling) December 23, 2020

My own take on this argument is that Illing is correct that, in general, we have more voices in the conversation than ever. So that’s a big win for free speech and he’s right that we shouldn’t skip over that. But I think he’s far too quick to skip over the fact that there seems to be a small but quickly growing consensus on the left in favor of dumping liberalism and free speech in favor of cancel culture. It’s not live and let live or even I hate what you’re saying but I’ll defend you’re right to say it. What’s been building over the last 6 years or so is closer to ‘Shup up or else!’ Cancel culture doesn’t want to argue it wants to dominate and punish disagreement. Censorship isn’t a bug it’s a feature of woke thinking.

As I pointed out above, Illing does mention this in passing and even allows that it may not be a good idea for the left to pursue it. But ultimately he seems strangely blase about where that might lead. That’s why the line I highlighted above bothers me: “But in a truly free society, everything is up for grabs.” Well, no, it’s not. In a truly free society, freedom itself is defended and is not up for grabs. Sure, there may be people who think it’s up for grabs and who act or speak as if it is, but those people should be quickly shown the error of their ways by those of us who know better. Not to defend a particular partisan outcome but to defend free speech itself.

Illing doesn’t seem engaged in that effort. His argument boils down to this: Arguments for censorship have always been around and are a natural part of free speech, so let’s not panic. What I think he’s missing is the urgency that Lukianoff has precisely because he’s on the front lines of these battles. He sees people getting run over by the censors and he sees it’s a growing trend. What matters is stopping the censors in their tracks before they gain credence and claim more victims.

Maybe Sean Illing does care about that but you don’t really get the sense that he does from his piece which sounds more like a justification for letting things play out, i.e. “in a truly free society, everything is up for grabs.” But free speech is not up for grabs. The fact that we have a lot more of it now than 20 years ago doesn’t mean we can take it for granted and wink at the petty tyrants trying to cancel people they disagree with.