Trump, Free Speech Hypocrisy, and the Streisand Effect
Just before inauguration day I wrote a post about the state of the world, saying in part:
To a large extent, US moral and intellection leadership post WWII on free speech and free trade has been critical to keeping these concepts alive around the world against the headwinds of authoritarianism. Now, with a breakdown of support in the US for both, one wonders what future they have.
I held out some small hope that while it was depressing to consider that Trump was likely to further trash the notion of free trade (and he has certainly delivered on this bad promise), Republicans — after years in the wilderness rightly complaining about government censorship and growing opposition on the Left to free speech — might, just might, do something to make things a bit better. I thought JD Vance calling out Europe on its deteriorating free speech environment in his Munich speech was great. But its easy to call out other countries on this topic, much harder to remain disciplined in one’s own country. It takes a lot of backbone to respect speech from people you really dislike and disagree with. And apparently this administration lacks such a backbone:
It’s been three days since the government arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil for deportation. This afternoon, the administration finally stated the basis for its actions. Its explanation threatens the free speech of millions of people.
Yesterday, an administration official told The Free Press, “The allegation here is not that [Khalil] was breaking the law.” This was confirmed today by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who announced Khalil is being targeted under a law that she characterized as allowing the secretary of state to personally deem individuals “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America.”
WTF? Is that really a law? Some holdover from the Alien and Sedition acts? I can’t believe it would stand up to First Amendment scrutiny and as a minimum any court should demand a LOT more due process before a green card holder was kicked out of the country. Heck had the Biden Administration dug up this particular chestnut they likely would have slapped the label on Trump.
The administration is wielding this standard — deportation for people whose activities could cause “serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” — to arrest and detain an individual graduate student. In explaining how he met this standard, the administration did not allege Khalil committed a crime. But it did explicitly cite the content of his speech, characterizing it as “anti-American” and “pro-Hamas.” Protesting government policy is protected by the First Amendment, as is rhetorical support for a terrorist group (if not directly coordinated with it, which the government has not alleged here).
Disrupting college classes and harassing students is not protected expression, to be sure, and Leavitt stated that Khalil organized protests that may have done so. But the administration has not detailed Khalil’s specific actions with respect to those protests, so it remains unclear whether Khalil himself violated any campus rules against discriminatory harassment. Whether any such violation justifies detention and deportation is a separate question. In either adjudication, Khalil must be afforded due process.
Congrats to the Trump Administration for taking a random asshole — who few have heard of and many would disagree with and probably dislike — and making him famous and likely far more effective in the future. Its like they never even heard of the Streisand Effect.
So my thin hopes that this Administration might have some positive effect on free speech are likely dashed. But that is no surprise. As I wrote in the article linked a the top:
I am not a Pollyanna — I see threats and worrying trends in every direction, and will be writing about them. For example, tomorrow we trade a President with an immense set of flaws for another with an immense set of entirely different flaws. Perhaps I am not as disappointed as some by recent trends because I have always treated politicians and the media and academia with immense skepticism, so I am less surprised by their obvious failings. I have always expected people in power — government, corporations, wherever — to abuse their power and believe the trick is to wire the system in a way that they cannot do too much damage. In preparation for blogging again, and looking back over my old writing, one consistent theme I see is a disdain for solutions that boil down to “if only we replace their people with our people.” That’s a hopeless approach. We have flip-flopped the Coke and Pepsi parties in power more times in the last 50 years than we did in 100+ years before that, and its not making things better. If anything its escalating a tit for tat power grab as each new administration pushes the precedent frontier forward more toward Presidential authoritarian power. This is not a secret: Trump is bragging about it.
