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| Trump's Social Media Summit |
Always brilliant at setting the agenda, President Donald Trump redefined free speech as speech that is not free, while redefining “fake news” to mean news reports that he doesn’t like. Conservatives often protest, seemingly with little reason, that the mainstream is censoring them. Free speech becomes very important to conservativism. Unfortunately, conservative commitment to free speech seems to begin and end with their own freedom. However, denying free speech to others too often seems OK to them.
A few days ago, President Donald Trump spoke to the Presidential Social Media Summit to discuss the Internet’s social and ethical implications. Did he invite representatives of Facebook, Google or Twitter? No, the featured participants included conspiracy theorists and fraud artists. Vanity Fair called the summit a “far-right troll convention.” That sounds about right. Attendees included QAnon conspiracy theorist Bill Mitchell, James O’Keefe of Project Veritas, which has conducted ethically questionable stings featuring deceptively edited videos, and Representative Matt Gaetz. Not a qualified expert in the bunch.
Trump’s speech to the Summit redefined free speech in the same way that George Orwell warned us about in his novel 1984:
“And we don’t want to stifle anything. We certainly don’t want to stifle free speech, but that’s no longer free speech. See, I don’t think that the mainstream media is free speech either because it’s so crooked. It’s so dishonest.
“So, to me, free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad. To me, that’s very dangerous speech and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech. Somebody came to my office — and I won’t say who, but a very big person. And I said, “Okay, you don’t like the term ‘fake news’” — which I think I get credit for, but I’m sure that, if I said I get credit, they’ll say, “Thirteen years ago, somebody came up with the terms ‘fake.’” (Laughter.) I think I’d get credit. I’d be very proud to take it. But I think I’d get credit.”
That passage used several fascinating and very sophisticated language tricks:
First, Trump began by reaffirming the traditional American value of free speech: “we don’t want to stifle anything. We certainly don’t want to stifle free speech.” Saying that, Trump placed himself firmly in line with the American libertarian tradition. So far, so good, but…
Second, Trump gave a new definition of free speech. Almost all of us think that free speech means that you can say what you want within very broad guidelines. That is not what Trump said: “I don’t think that the mainstream media is free speech either because it’s so crooked. It’s so dishonest.” By Trump’s definition, only favorable speech counts as free. But if politicians get to define what is honest and suppress what they think is not honest, we no longer have free speech at all.
Third, Trump made his new definition of free speech personal: “So, to me, free speech is not when you see something good and then you purposely write bad. To me, that’s very dangerous speech and you become angry at it. But that’s not free speech.” To him, speech that makes him look bad is not free speech. He implied – almost stated outright – speech speech should only be free if it makes him look good.
Fourth, Trump’s definition excluded negative stories about him. Negative stories were, to Trump, not free speech by definition: “That’s not free speech.”
Fifth, Trump continued with his long-term practice of redefining fake news. “Fake news” properly applies to news agencies like the now-defunct National Report that made stories up with no research, typically knowing that they were untrue. Fake news organizations don’t employ reporters or fact checkers because they are making no effort to gather information. United States intelligence agencies confirmed that many fake news agencies strongly supported Trump during the 2016 campaign. They also found that the Russian government sponsored or operated many of these fake news agencies. By redefining fake news, Trump turned what was a negative for them into a positive: use the term “fake news” for mainstream news reports that, however accurate or carefully researched, made him look bad.
Americans value free speech. No true conservative will oppose free speech. Instead, President Trump changed the definitions. Critical stories – the exact kinds of stories that the First Amendment is designed to protect – are, in Trump’s view, no longer defined as free speech. He still supports something that he calls "free speech," but what he calls "free speech" is "oppressed speech" by another name.
But free speech is what makes democracy great. In his First Inaugural Address, Thomas Jefferson referred to “the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, if reason is left free to combat it.” That statement was inscribed at the entrance to the library when I was working toward my bachelor’s degree at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. I have never forgotten what Jefferson said. I wish that President Trump understood it.
If you control definitions, you can control the world.
P.S.: If you want to understand people like the personalities who Trump invited to the Social Media Summit, the
best source by far is Ryan Holiday's book Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of Media Manipulator.
Highly recommended. Everyone should read it.
P.P.S.: Is anybody really censoring conservatives on social
media? I doubt it. You usually have to say something really revolting before
social media publishers will stop you. Conservatives who work on social media
instead whine about “shadow banning,” which refers to arcane complaints that
they lose followers whenever Twitter sweeps automated accounts like the ones
that the Russian government generated in 2016. More legitimate controversy does
arise when social media publishers remove unusually disgusting or threatening
posts. Do they have a right to censor sickening or dangerous comments? What do
you think? Feel free to post a comment.
Image: White House YouTube channel
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