With Dissent Now Criminalized, Free Speech Faces a Big Chill

The Department of Justice in Washington on Jan. 14, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Commentary

Americans’ right to think and speak freely has for years been under heavy assault.

The propagators of political correctness slowly but surely chipped away at open discourse, pressuring dissenters from prevailing ruling class orthodoxy to speak in euphemism and self-censor lest they be branded uncouth, if not bigoted.

Apparently not content with the results of this “soft power” campaign, illiberals in recent years resorted to more coercive methods to compel ideological conformity, or at minimum, submission.

Speech police entered the scene, deputized under something of a society-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) administrative state fixated on imposing “woke-ism,” and a mass public-private censorship regime that suppressed unauthorized opinions and their holders at scale.

Now, censorship and cancellation are giving way to criminalization.

The War on Wrongthink has escalated to the point that authorities are literally prosecuting Wrongthink—bludgeoning the First Amendment.

We would appear to be in for a big chill in the United States, and with incalculably terrible consequences.

Consider recent Rubicon-crossing events and the logical conclusions to which they lead us.

While President Donald Trump was being indicted in Manhattan, over in Brooklyn, “social media influencer” Douglass Mackey was being convicted over his posting of obviously satirical memes—facing a long stint in prison for literal thought crimes.

Mackey, who went by the name “Ricky Vaughn” on Twitter, a reference to Charlie Sheen’s character in the “Major League” series, jokingly tweeted out to followers days before the 2016 election that they could text their vote for Hillary Clinton to a fictitious number, with the hashtag #ImWithHer.

At least 4,900 people texted that number on or around Election Day. We don’t know how many of them were eligible voters, whether they were legitimately trying to vote, or whether they would have ever seen the offending tweet had the media not given it extensive coverage.

Regardless, the government cast the tweet, and a similar one that followed it, as parts of a dangerous disinformation campaign—as a fraud—though it didn’t charge Mackey accordingly. Instead, it convicted him of “Conspiracy Against Rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.”

He faces up to 10 years in prison under a law that punishes people who “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” others—that is, who engage in actual aggression against people—in ways that violate or threaten to violate their rights, not for sending facetious memes.

To think the tweets are criminal is anything but a laughing matter.

As former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Andrew McCarthy put it, the case was a “three-fer: the prosecutorial creation of a crime Congress has not prescribed, the trivialization of civil-rights law, and the intrusion of government as a monitor of political speech.”

Mackey, often characterized as a “white nationalist,” has reportedly said some appalling things. But even if he is the most detestable person on Earth, with the most indefensible of views, it’s no excuse for torturing the law to criminalize speech, imperiling the rights of everyone. Practically, of course, such punitive efforts always start with the least sympathetic figures and quickly move to anyone disfavored by those in power.

So today, you must think twice about even posting jokes on social media, at least should they touch on elections—this despite the fact that political speech is core to the First Amendment.

What about the state of the right to peaceably assemble and petition government for a redress of grievances—that is, to protest?

The government’s response to Jan. 6, whereby scores of individuals have been held for months or longer in pretrial detention in reportedly abhorrent conditions, slapped with felony charges never before leveled in an analogous situation, and generally pursued like domestic terrorists, has put an end to such expressions of dissent, at least if you’re on the right.

The muted response to former President Donald Trump’s call for supporters to protest in the wake of the announcement that he would be indicted in New York spoke volumes. The reply from many MAGA pundits and activists on social media was essentially this: “The case against Trump is a travesty, but why would I want to risk ending up in the gulag like the Capitol protesters?”

What’s more, many expressed concerns that federal authorities would be seeking to infiltrate protests and provoke participants into acting badly as a justification to engage in a further crackdown on conservatives.

The takeaway: Conservatives expect to be punished if they publicly oppose the authorities and would rather avoid that risk by keeping their mouths shut.

The same likely goes for those who would challenge their local school boards. As the House Weaponization Subcommittee has clearly demonstrated, the FBI targeted concerned parents, baselessly, as domestic terrorists. So be careful about questioning what your kids are being taught in school.

Pro-lifers, who face FBI raids and the wrath of the Biden Justice Department should they protest at abortion clinics, no matter how peacefully, no doubt feel the same chill.

What of the state of another core aspect of the First Amendment—the ability to freely exercise one’s religion?

Well, now we have learned that at least in the Richmond, Virginia, area, the FBI was targeting “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology.” The bureau’s field office, relying on at least one source, pursued local religious organizations as “new avenues for tripwire and source development.”

So be careful about where and how you worship too.

In short, our ruling class has eviscerated the First Amendment in pursuit of those who would dissent from that class’s orthodoxy. Consequently, Americans are going to speak less and less about an ever-growing list of highly subjective, contentious, and critical issues—including the most fundamental ones of church and state.

If you wanted to stifle any and all progress, choking off the marketplace of ideas would be precisely the place where you would start.

What could possibly go wrong?

As for the marketplace in leaders who might seek to remedy this situation, well, consider the sham Trump indictment, which lacks an underlying crime.

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution marks the beginning of the culminating effort in the perpetual coup against Trump. It aims to lock him up, since Trump will not leave the political realm, demerits of the “case” against the former president be damned.

This perpetual coup, plus the legal, political, and personal attacks that myriad people in and around Trump have faced, no doubt serve as deterrents of their own for those who might otherwise consider entering the political fray to combat the tyranny at hand.

Will decent, intelligent, patriotic people be willing to risk it all in pursuit of what is right?

The fate of the republic hinges on such courage.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.