Everybody please join me in welcoming p. E. Moskowitz and george ciccariellomaher. [applause] thank you for being here. Im glad to be with you all, to help represent the case against free speech the First Amendment, fascism, and the future of dissent. My pleasure of being here has several aspects. The first is p. E. Moskowitzs wonderful friend, comrade, but also because they are the one of the most acute observers of our contemporary condition. Writing a book that cuts to the heart of things many of us have been grappling with for the past two years. This book is the book that people need to read to think through what has happened since 2016 and what is happening in 201718 thinking about emergence, proliferation of the powerful movements rallying around theresidency of donald trump and reading in 2019, 2020, and thinking about how to fight back, push back on this emergence of fascism and how to break it ultimately. This book is a tool for thinking about the past. It is a historical analysis and a tool for thinking about the future. I should say i am doubly glad to have a conversation about this book because it has affected me on a personal level. I was a professor once and came into the crosshairs of the far right in 2016, precisely the moment the wind was in the sales of the alt right, when they were making ambitious claims to political power in the street in the white house, when they had steve bannon as their most steadfast ally in the halls of power and in which they thought for reasons that p. E. Moskowitz shows will, to target for their wrath. When that happened, in the aftermath of being targeted with death threats, emails, voicemail and administrative measures, i always maintained what happened to me was not a question of free speech. This is the case that for reasons in the chapter on the socalled freespeech crisis, working at private university is simply not a question of free speech but things like academic freedom, a fraud concept, and a question of what it is that we understand to be the role of speech in our society. Many defended me on the grounds of academic freedom. In middlebury which people recall, the white supremacist pseudoscientist to speak at this prestigious liberal arts college. It was about many things, the years of anxiety, suffering, discrimination suffered by people of color at middlebury in the run up, the idea of giving a pseudoscientist, eugenicists whose ideas were discredited by the Scientific Community a platform to be introduced by faculty, to be introduced by the president of the college, the structure of power. This is what p. E. Moskowitz does so well. What i always wanted to drive home and we need to think of when thinking about cases like john eric williams, or tommy curry, the faculty that have been targeted, threatened, harassed, disciplined by the universitys for engaging in speech, for whom the First Amendment the claims of speech doesnt answer the difficult question. What this is about is the materiality of speech. P. E. Moskowitz in the first chapter on charlottesville gets to the point of this. Maybe exaggerating your naivete, i showed up in charlottesville, thought this was going to be about free speech and realize when a car struck a body and the person was killed this was a very material question. And this is what it is. If we are talking universities, the materiality of something in this book, the inroads made by the far right into universities with dark money, with rightwing foundations. Charles murray when he wrote the bell curve was celebrated by the right and the clintons, tht wing of the democratic party, wrote that book entirely funded by ritwing institution mey. Its not an adic book, not an academic argument. The question is what happened to universities on the basis of this . What possibilities does this close off . What students will be criminalized if they stand up and protest against the Charles Murrays of the world, the milo yun up a listes of the world, students using their speech engaging in rowdy speech, conflicted speech. How do we draw these lines between acceptable speech and what isnt, how do we draw lines between what is platforming, elevating someone to an invited platform, the university of california, and how do we engage in these questions . These are fundamentally material questions. The material consequences are clear. The Material Impact is violence. We know that perfectly well. Is the Material Impact of donald trump in the white house is an uptick in white supremacist violence. Armed Training Camps for nazis and fascists forces that need to be defeated physically, material force defeats material force but it is also material in thinking about how these questions are encouraged and thinking in diagnosing and away this book does powerfully, how it is liberalism itself is the problem, how it is that liberalism fantasizes certain kinds of speech, looks away from it, ignores material construction of white supremacist movements, organizations, power, failed to defeat is in the polls and leaves us throwing up our hands and like the aclu defending the right of the clan, defending the right of nazis to speak, to organize to continue to physically threaten people of color across campuses and off campuses. This is a book Everyone Needs to read. I hope there are enough copies because people must read it. It is a historical account, a contemporary account that weaves together union organizing, the history of the aclu, its movement from heavily communist organization that took seriously material reality freespeech as the First Amendment above all other things and it comes to the heart of what we need to be thinking about today. Please join me in welcoming again p. E. Moskowitz. [applause] thanks. I think i forgot george was a much better speaker than i. So maybe i can talk about why i wrote this book and to be honest it was confusing to me. I didnt know why i wanted to write it when i first started writing it except i was angry at everything i was seeing related to free speech. My first book was about gentrification and i kept thinking how could i jump topics so much, i realized they came out of the same desire to go deeper than what we are currently presented whether it is through the media or academia but gentrification and freespeech were platitudes, ways of thinking that turn out to be more propaganda than truth and turn out to be the narratives that are material histories that influence our thinking and prevent us making change in the world. I wanted to go beyond the headlines, i know that is cliche, but go beyond them and find out what freespeech means if anything and why everyone is so angry about it right now. Everyone from the far right to liberals and some on the left too. In order to do that i did a few things, obviously did a bunch of research, i read what little philosophy there is on freespeech, given something we think is the most important thing in this country oftentimes there are few critical books written about the concept of free speech or even the legal history of the First Amendment. I wanted to dig into that and analyze it. I am a reporter. Thats what i do. I cant write without reporting. I ended up going to a bunch of flash points about freespeech in the last few years. I was in charlottesville, i went to middlebury college, Charles Murray was invited to speak, i went to Evergreen College in oregon and read college and went to dc and talked to jay 20 protesters and Standing Rock and talked to people who had been arrested and put in prison for protesting there. And i guess to put it bluntly what i found out his freespeech means pretty much nothing at all. We think of freespeech as a value that we uphold that no matter what our politics are beyond freespeech that it is the thing we can agree on, the classic quote that doesnt come from anyone, people attribute to hold hair about i disagree with what you say but i will defend to my death your right to say it. I feel like that is what 95 of americans think. As it turns out that is a lot more complicated and speech doesnt mean speech in a society where some are so much more able to speak and equally as importantly, be heard. When i found his speech like Everything Else in this country falls on the predictable lines of race, class, gender and every other form of oppression and most people have no significant right to free speech and i would argue no significant right to actual liberatory freedom. That is the First Amendment in particular but the discourse of freespeech allows us those stark and scary facts. We live in a superracist country. This is why people are attracted from the right and liberals because it is much easier to fall back on the concept of freespeech and universal values than it is to contend with what is actually happening in this country. I think College Campuses are a good place to talk about that. Part of me didnt want to spend much time on College Campuses in this book because i think they are overfocused on them in the media because college kids are media targets and you can laugh at them from afar or whatever. College campuses are how we understand freespeech in this country a lot of times because the Mainstream Media has hard on them so much in the last few years but when you go to these campuses, you find students arent simply protesting Charles Murray or when evergreen when they voluntarily asked them to leave campus so students of color could discuss things among themselves. That is not what is about, the words freespeech are never uttered in those conversations. And life and death issues of race, gender, Sexual Assault on campus, feeling like they are completely unseen and unheard, and they are hostile environments and they are not learning the things that will be useful for them in their lives. What ends up happening when you apply freespeech is it completely erases all of that. Again is why we are attracted to it. We think of freespeech the way we do because of a specific history of how it has been turned into this propaganda tool. It didnt just happen by accident. Freespeech as we think of it today has not always been the same. Obviously back when the First Amendment was passed, slavery, black people couldnt vote, there is a hypocrisy, the kind of founding of supposedly freespeech in this country but all throughout us history we see freespeech being trampled on especially people of color and in general, it is only until the 1970 numplaps1980s and onward that we start to get this very in my mind peculiar version of freespeech which means we are not allowed to argue with someone when they speak of they are a campus speaker or if we protest someone or use violence to protect ourselves against nazis that we are becoming the fascists. People just think this is how freespeech has always worked as a universal value but it wasnt until the 70s, 80s, and 90s that that definition came into play. Not to lay everything on the koch brothers, but it is their fault. If you go back to the 70s, talk about gentrification, under nixon and reagan, the industries were deregulated, tax rates were slashed, the wealthiest americans and in the case of gentrification, pushed for this horrible real estate grab that led to gentrification. In the cas freespeech a lot of money to do whatever they wanted and came up with a plan. The koch brothers, he was there political advisor for 30 years. Lower xes, deregulation, and those are terrible things. It is more universal and soothing to the average american and free speech discourse came into play. And the strategy of investing in raw materials, buying processorship and colleges or schools within universities, to quote one conservative from back then funding grants and more grants, books, books, and more books and when investing in raw materials, you end up kind of generating a discourse that is hard to argue with because for 20 years youve been creating a scholarship you can fall back on that no one is aware exists until we are in our present moment. Once the funding stream started, hundreds of campus groups were created from the money of the koch brothers, the family of betsy devos, the current secretary of education and a few other billionaires and they created hundreds, 313 schools within universities backed by the koch brothers, they did the grants for more books and all of a sudden you could see a direct correlation when the funding starts, the pc crisis of the early 1990s. If you go to the early 1990s all of a sudden all these books are coming out from people like Dennis Desousa and other far right provocative is not only claiming market freedom, the freedom of billionaires to do whever they want is the ultimate freedom but also claiming that students, liberals and the left and everyone else who disagrees with that is antifreespeech and profascism. In 1990 you get the closing of the American Mind to the claims College Students were essentially the new fascists and they didnt want anyone on campus who disagrees with them. You get illiberal education and other books, not surprisingly the Mainstream Media had a cover story about the new fascists on College Campuses, the New York Times did several stories and reviewed alan blunts book glowingly and new york magazine, the new republic and many other places just agreed with all of this supposedly works of scholarship directly funded by these billionaires and today we are living with the consequences of that conservative revolution where they convinced the american public, schools, students through funding, to adhere to this very particular definition of what freespeech is, where if you disagree with conservatives or dont want them to speak that is a violation of freespeech even if you are not the government and you can see many of the organizations, like and coulter and all those terrible people keep pushing that strategy where they fund a controversial book, th fund e controversial campus tour, students protest because they dont want terrible racist trends phobic people on their campuses, that makes conservatives latch onto that and use it as an example of how they are oppressed and the left is really fascists. The saddest part to me as many liberals have kind of had the wall pulled over their eyes. They see this is a true intellectual debate about freespeech and our fundamental rights and they dont see it as a purposeful strategy to essentially infiltrate College Campuses and American Society at large with super fascist dick thoughts and beliefs and policies. I feel like i talked for a long time so i dont know if there are any questions or anything you might want to add. I have been superglowing towards the majority but you pointed out you want this book you spoke to a lot of people in different contextss on a lot of subjects, you spoke to a young organizer in san antonio who was deported at two years of age because they were organizing with abolish ice in antonio and it was through social media speech and political speech that this young organizer was deported to mexico. You dealt with questions surrounding the Jewish Population of skokie and the 70s and an interesting moment where you expressed almost sympathy for the Jewish Defense league which is rightwing direct action jewish group but willing to break some nazi skulls. This is to give a flavor of interviews and themes this wideranging book touches on but i am sure that moment in particular were there other moment in the course of speaking with people, interviews and doing this research that struck you or made you think about things a different way . That is one of the biggest things for me. People dont know skokie and illinois outside chicago but often associated with this march that never happened in skokie, a local neonazi group tried to march in skokie. It was majority jewish and many of the people there were Holocaust Survivors and they said hell no but because of supposedly laws about freespeech, government officials kept trying to figure out a way to weasel it in or let them come in. But they had to require tons of insurance so they couldnt afford it or whatever and what happened wasor the first time, the aclu defend the nazis which is a strategy they continue today on the ground that by not allowing nazis to march through a town full of Holocaust Survivors we are denying their freespeech so that was a big flipping point for the aclu. What also happens, this group, the Jewish Defense league, known for reprehensible, racist group, nonetheless was some effective at bashing nazi heads and if you ask them, many people of skokie bear the reason, not only them but other people not in that group who got their guns kind of armed up, people who just live in skokie and threaten the nazis with violence if they ever came. Reporting on that was interesting to me because it showed how far our debate has shifted. If you look at news clippings from back then everyone almost was on the side of the skokie residents and no one on the side of the nazis. People were willing, normal people, not activists, jews in their homes were willing to take up arms to fight against them. Fast forward to now and what does every newspaper article say . What does every oped say . What does every pundit say on tv . Basically defending nazis marching through the streets even if it leads to violence like it did in charlottesville and has other problems in our country. It shows once again the purposeful conservative strategy of how we frame freespeech today and how much the liberal establishment, the aclu which essentially is the liberal establishment when it comes to freespeech has shifted their focus and in my opinion lost ground in the freespeech fight. You show at the beginning of the book the distinction between speech and action is untenable. We like to think theres a distinction between speech and action but every day we are reminded the two, there is no way to keep them apart. For me, one of the striking reminders is el paso which is direct evidence. If we needed more evidence. Many of us have in saying this for years, direct evidence that the narrative not only of the white house, but the narrative of the socalled group replacement, the White House White people are victims being replaced by people of color, low birth rates. The idea this is detachable and inseparable from violence is unsustainable when people are going into christchurch in new zealand and massacre, people go to el paso, people they perceive to be mexicans, on the basis of these ideas and we see it happening over and over again. It has been happening for years. There is an uptick but there has been this ostrich approach by mainstream liberals who say we have to defend speech and we have to act as though it is not causing violence on the ever. Is a weird turning point even when trump said there is good people on both sides. For moment the media seem to want to say now. There is a real distinction here and then they retreated on that and now maybe el paso, the confluence of el paso, the synagogue shooting and other things have begun to create a sense, are you optimistic people will question speech and interrogate the question of speech . Know. Kind of. One of the infuriating things to me is people confuse what the meaning of the First Amendment is and who it applies to. The first is Congress Creating no law to impinge your speech and nothing about facebook or any of these places banning nazis or whatever you want. Im heartened, the christchurch shooter dylan roof, the el paso shooter all using eight channels organize, it was only after the last shooting that may be this is bad. The companies that support it stopped supporting it like people who do the web services that make it run. Before the last shooting the ground was this is a freespeech issue when it is clearly not. Because there are private entities, they can do whatever they want. It gets them hopeful in the chance that changes a little bit, people are more willing to take the stand and say this cant happen on our platform. We are so convinced that we have a responsibility to the most vile people in our societies, to give them a platform whenever they want. I feel like there was something else. Charlottesville was a perfect example of how that line between speech and action is completely untenable. He is political, being influenced by people with power. I interview people who posted on facebook that supposedly threaten their exwives and one of them was jailed for five years because it crossed the line between speech and action. But not the, means of cars ramming into protesters, black lives splatter, is not crossing the line between speech and action. I dont have a sense what should be what should be action and i dont think anyone does but it is telling to look where the line stands, who is allowed to be on the speech side and who gets put on the action side of it. For example the j 20 protesters are standing around being a broken window near the inauguration protest was enough to put you on the action side of the line between speech and action whereas holding an ak47s at charlottesville and wearing nazi insignias all over your shirt was not enough to put you over the line between speech and action. That line is always political and we need to recognize that if we are going to claim freespeech and free expression. Another thing, one of the things i was heartened to find in the book is freespeech used to be a leftist concept. In the 1920s and earlier than that, 19001940, first of all the aclu was a very only verily pro union, not openly communist but led by a bunch of communists. They descended a union worker who bombed the los angeles times, the most antiunion paper at the time. Whatever you think of that the aclu defended those people in court showing how radical the organization they were. Interesting to me about speech back then in the eyes of the left was they acknowledged there was no line between speech and action. Their definition of speech was it has to mean something in reality for it to be a good thing. If you can Say Something but it doesnt get you anywhere, if you can push for revolution or better wages but you cant realize those desires been speech means absolutely nothing. I like the definition of speech because if use speak it falls on deaf ears, what is the point of speech . That was the most heartened i was in the book to see how leftists captured the meaning of the First Amendment and shows you we could take it out of the hands of the far right and liberal media establishment. Before long i want to open up to the audience, questions people may have been holding onto this whole time. A reminder the questions should go into the microphone so that those recording are able to capture them and continue the discussion. Thanks very much to both of you. I just want to say i am a little concerned. There is a general acknowledgment of the failure of policing in charlottesville. Im not completely clear but concerned that you seem to imply, which is that private citizens should have pitched battles in the streets according to their political views. That doesnt really seem to be a good outcome, gangs fighting each other on both sides. I also am glad you went back to the 20s and 30s because it isnt just the left that has made you so free speech, but the use it is made is in very important, you have the Supreme Court deciding early in the century that very gradually, but defending dissidents of world war i on the basis of free speech and then the 30s, the Labor Union Movement organizing depended enormously on the First Amendment and that made possible unions and all kinds of strikes and protests and so forth. Dont forget the Civil Rights Movement where the freedom riders and protests, all of those things depended on the First Amendment which the courts recognized and those are all enormous contributions of the First Amendment to progressive causes in the united states. So the fact that the right has decided that they can make use of the First Amendment does not in any way vitiate the power of the left to do so as well and you also seem to be in some ways not really rejecting the distinction between speech and action so much as not liking the inconsistency of its application which is a different kind of solution. That is a good point. Thank you. In terms of the policing thing it is up to every individual to decide what they will and wont do. But i dont think the police are an adequate way to prevent violence on the streets considering they are often the ones because it. In charlottesville and other nazi marches they were found to be organizing with the far right, with nazis, protecting them at all costs, arresting leftists. The history of policing in the us in the history of arresting black people and other people of color, anyone who wants to foment change that is good for most people in the united states. I dont think whatever you think of direct action on the streets, i dont think relying on the police is an adequate way to work out an issue of disagreement, they are on the side of fascist government. Any other questions . Following up on that, the distinction between speech and action is a central part of the analytic. How do we make sense of the fact what the Supreme Court has been concerned with in a wide range of cases, always back to the First Amendment immediately. What do you make of that and moreover what you are thinking about what you think the left should do about that . It goes to a larger problem of the structure of the us government, kind of ridiculous that we refer back to this hundreds ofyearold document to decide our laws especially when that document legalized slavery and many other terrible things. The reverence for this very old document made by many terrible people doesnt make any sense to me to start with. That being said im not antiFirst Amendment necessarily. The spirit of the First Amendment is a fine one but even if you believe in western democratic capitalism, any western capitalist country has gone along fine without a First Amendment and in my view probably has less restrictive environment when it comes to freespeech than this country does. I think dont know if it is the purpose but the effect of the First Amendment has more to do with power as a propaganda tool than it does to actually change laws or prevent justice in this country. Your last question, what leftists should do, i dont want to speak to the entire left, that is something we have to decide, whether we want to reclaim its power as a propaganda tool as people did in the early 1900s and the aclu was fond of doing then or just disregard it and say free speech doesnt exist and move that way. I dont have the answer to that. Do you have any thoughts . I am sort of agreeing in the sense that one of the dangers of embracing it is how is it you embrace it . Mainstream liberalism embraces it in a very uncritical way that has to do with the actual First Amendment, that applies as you put it when you push even academic writers who have written books on academic freedom, they will admit, to government action, it is the broader principle that matters. This idea that broader principles have been the guiding thread of us history which is absurd. It has actually been as you put it in the service of and structured by powerful interests, materially, racially and otherwise. Then it begs the question of how. What you are suggesting in looking back to what you say we reclaim it as a material phenomenon. You point out that when we tal about mainstream questions of Richard Spencers speech being denied on campus, what about trans people or people of color who were threatened directly by his presence and what about their speech against the platform speaker, in the case of Charles Murray and read their statements in reply. How is we negotiate these questions . If you think of campus supposedly the issues is an important issue, it is telling that weve been convinced this is such an important freespeech issue, there is virtually no discourse about the prison population being a freespeech issue, the fact that tens of millions of americans are locked up and cant talk to people he freespeech issue or migrants disappear and their families cant find them, isnt that a bigger freespeech issue than Charles Murray talking on campus . That shows how skewed our perspective has become. We want to reclaim freespeech, it would have to be in that material way that is tied to reality. Three more questions. On that last point, maybe the aspect of discourse do have some substance in empirical evidence and that helped get to the point at which we can decide what affect material speech and what is a value and that is what we are talking about, the ways the media mishandled the Climate Change debate may help us understand that a little better. Somebody in thminority comes as a denier, Mainstream Media has a platform for half an hour with the host of the only other counterbalance. If one person representing that side of the argument should be there than the evidence indicates that should be other 99 people on the other side lending appropriate weight. If somebody wants to come on campus and affect that kind of discourse it should be met appropriately and only in that context, not as a standalone kind of bully pulpit aspect. I agree with that and that is something middlebury students in particular point out to me. Middlebury would never invite a climate denier to the campus because it goes against their academic values, giving students truth. They would never invite a climate denier or someone but denies evolutionary science or whatever so why are they inviting someone whos belief in iq is on race when that is equally debunked scientific theory and their point is that makes it not a freespeech issue because you are fine with closing the doors to people who dont believe in climate science, it just shows you still think the debate is out on race science. Thats how they framed it and it doesnt have much to do with freespeech and more has to do with people in power. Being scared not to give powerful interests their attention because there are consequences to that. If you are a Media Organization you can lose advertisers. If youre a College Administrator you dont want to be evergreen or middlebury which have problems with admission because of these protests. There are real material consequences to standing up for what is right and it has less to do with freespeech and more to do with people being scared of the consequences. There are real material consequences. Public universities like values see system to deny milo a platform. Administrators there were scared because of the First Amendment on some level does apply. It is more complex one. Lets settle this. The administration is more scared because they are funded publicly, partially 10 billion to go there. But colleges are some of the most restrictive speech environments on the planet to start out with. The admissions process, is that a freespeech violation, charging 50,000 a year to speak on your campus a freespeech violation, is hiring some professors over others a freespeech violation . Is creating a freespeech violation because you are valuing something over other things, is putting a book on your syllabus and not another set it is frankly, i know i am being recorded. I will say malarkey. It is ridiculous. They are superrestrictive, the idea that they are not allowing one person with a really abhorrent point of view to speak they are violating freespeech. If you want to view it that way you have to consider most crises of freespeech in the world because they are restricting speech so much. More questions. There was a movie that came out in 1980 that brings the issue to mind. It was called cruising. Out pacino was in it. It was about a serial killer in the gay bars of new york, very graphic. He would go to the bars, bring men home and viciously kill them. They filled it in my neighborhood. They wanted to film in gay bars. The community decided to disrupt the filming of that movie. Showed up with whistles, we had glitter on the roof and throw it and the light would catch it and they would stop filming. A huge debate. Artistic expression, freedom to make a movie versus our community recognizing this as a material threat and it was a moment and looking back on that and curious how you read that now. You did that, i agree with the activism against something that is materially threatening to the community. We see the same thing, the artist dana shultz who painted a painting of a dead black person and put it in the museum. And there were protests over and that this is materially affecting to the way artists representing this in a voyeuristic way. They kept it up because freespeech even though, doing free speech, curating what goes on at every moment. It is the same debate that continues, it is awesome. End it there. If there are no more questions please join me in thanking p. E. Moskowitz. Please get the book and have it signed. We thank our author. George will be signing his book too. [applause] we have copies of the book up here. The black hills of solid dakota is a sacred area. At one time or another there is a piece of the rest of the world here somewhere. We are inhe epicenter of sometimes testy relations between native and nonnative. This weekend the cspan cities tour takes you to rapid city, south dakota. Come downtown to see the selection of lifesized statues of every american president and visit the museum for the complex history of this area. Looking at the custer expedition, the big picture take away is that is the game changer. We would go to the nearby Black Hills National Forest to see mount rushmore. The states top Tourist Destination and we will visit the crazy horse memorial and other places in the black hills as we explore the life of this lakota war leader and learn more about this land. Join us this saturday at noon eastern on booktv and sunday at 2 00 on American History tv as the cspan cities tour takes you to rapid city, south dakota as we explore the american story. Live thursday on cspan a discussion about the diversity of federal judges hosted by the center for American Progress at 11 family a. M. Eastern. At 4 00 samantha power, former Us Ambassador to the United Nations followed by a townhall meeting with congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in queens, new york and poverty and federal benefits. At 5 4 05 pm. On cspan2 at 9 00 am, general david berger, the commandant of the Us Marine Corps discusses military priorities for the indo pacific region. That a look at libel laws in the media hosted by the heritage foundation. On cspan3 former Federal Reserve chairs janet yellen and ben been a key discuss the impact of inflation on Monetary Policy at 9 405 am eastern. Next a discussion on us china relations with virginia senator mark warner, vice chair of the senate diligently, from the us institute of peace, this is an hour and 10 minutes
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.