Why ‘free speech’ needs a new definition in the age of the internet and Trump tweets
Peter Ives does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The day following the storming of Capitol Hill by Trump supporters, whose use of the Confederate flag signalled a white supremacist insurrection, Simon & Schuster announced that it was cancelling the publication of Sen. Josh Hawley’s book, The Tyranny of Big Tech. Simon & Schuster justified their decision based on Hawley’s involvement in challenging the election results and helping incite the violence.
Hawley replied with an angry tweet about how this was an affront to the First Amendment and he would see them in court. Of course Hawley, a graduate of Yale Law School, is fully aware that a publisher cancelling a book contract has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Simon & Schuster is a private company that acts in its own interests and this depends only on the fine print of the book contract.
Hawley’s anger is not just folly or misplaced disappointment, but the continuation of a long-term strategy that American historian Joan Wallach Scott has termed the “weaponizing of free speech” by the right wing, or the deliberate misrepresentation of the very idea of free speech.
