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A discussion about independent media and ownership, censorship, self-censorship in media and a discussion about hate speech laws.

This interview was originally published by Plebity.

• Transcript

Jyotishman Mudiar

Hello and welcome. I am Jyotishman. I am the host of India and Global Left moderating

this conversation between Freddy and Paul as part of Plebity’s Free Speech and Left Conference.

We are joined today by independent journalists Paul Jay and Freddy deBoer for a conversation

on independent media censorship and hate speech laws. 

Paul Jay is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is the founder, editor-in-chief, and host of theAnalysis.news, a site of political commentary and interviews. He is currently working on a documentary with Daniel Ellsberg titled How to Stop a Nuclear War, which is based on Ellsberg’s book The Doomsday Machine. 

Freddy deBoer is an independent journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of ‘The Cult of Smart How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice’ and his newest book is ‘How Elites Aid the Social Justice Movement’. Freddy is a self-styled old-school Marxist and writes regularly on his subtext about politics, Marxism, education, police reform, and other topics. 

Welcome Freddy and Paul. I wanted to start with you, Freddy, on hate speech and hate speech laws. I read your article where you have argued that hate speech laws don’t work. So why don’t we start with your opening statement on that and then Paul respond to that?

Freddie deBoer

Sure. I mean, I think the first thing to say is always to point out that there is no such thing as a hate speech exemption to the First Amendment in the United States. One of my frustrations is that very often when liberals and leftists are talking about the concept of hate speech, they often talk as though there is such a thing as an already existing statute of hate speech, what it is legally in the United States. There is no such category as hate speech in the United States. You can say this is hate speech in a sense that you think is descriptively true, but there is no legal category of hate speech. And I also think that it’s almost entirely pointless to talk about the creation of one. 

In order for there to be a hate speech provision for the United States, you would have to make an amendment to the Constitution to create that exception to the First Amendment. And among other things, an amendment to the Constitution requires three-quarters of the state legislatures of the United States to go along with something, which is just totally fanciful under current political conditions. 

I think that Republicans would rightfully feel that any kind of a hate speech code written into the United States Constitution would be used primarily as a cudgel against them. I mean, I guess you can sort of theoretically define an idea of like a partisanly neutral, ideologically neutral hate speech code, but in practice, it would almost certainly be used more against conservatives than against liberals and the state legislatures of Republican countries, of Republican states, excuse me, we’re not going to get on board with that. 

Hate speech laws don’t work because I think we have very good evidence that they don’t. The most obvious examples are ...

On the occasion of the death of Daniel Ellsberg, we republish our interview with historian Peter Kuznick who looks at the significance of Ellsberg’s fight against America’s insane nuclear war strategy, his exposure of the lies of the Vietnam War and his continuing fight against the American war machine.