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“No Choice but to Consider Limits on Speech”
So argues Eric Posner in Slate, who claims, “Never before in our history have enemies outside the United States been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory in such an effective way.”
Really, Eric?
Well, maybe they have, and maybe they haven’t. But I fully agree that ISIS propaganda’s a menace. I’m not discounting it.
Let’s look at his idea of a solution:
… there is something we can do to protect people like Amin from being infected by the ISIS virus by propagandists, many of whom are anonymous and most of whom live in foreign countries. Consider a law that makes it a crime to access websites that glorify, express support for, or provide encouragement for ISIS or support recruitment by ISIS; to distribute links to those websites or videos, images, or text taken from those websites; or to encourage people to access such websites by supplying them with links or instructions.
Okay.
But once you’ve conceded that foreign propaganda — if genuinely dangerous — requires rolling the First Amendment back to the age before Brandenburg v. Ohio, why stop there?
I agree that the United States is drenched in dangerous foreign propaganda. It’s warping people’s minds in ways I could never have conceived. But it’s hardly limited to ISIS, and ISIS, at least, doesn’t yet have nuclear weapons and the ability to deliver them.
If on national security grounds we should ban access to websites that glorify ISIS (and who defines what “glorifying” is?), it’s absolutely intellectually coherent, and surely more urgent, to ban access to websites that glorify or express support for Vladimir Putin. He is — as of now, and to the best of my knowledge — a far greater threat to a greater number of Americans than ISIS, not least because the Kremlin’s propaganda is so much more sophisticated.
Once we’ve settled on eviscerating the First — and there are good national security grounds for doing it, I agree — how do we deal with the precedent it sets? Most Americans truly have no idea that freedom of expression, as they know it now, really only dates back to 1969. A staggering number of the millennials are actively hostile to the underlying principle:
The Pew Research Center found that millennials were the most likely of any age group to agree that government should have the authority to stop people from saying things that offend minorities, while Democrats were nearly twice as likely as Republicans to favor such bans.
The result comes amid a growing campus movement to ban “microaggressions” and create “safe spaces” free from statements deemed offensive to “marginalized” groups, including racial, ethnic and LGBT minorities.
Thirty-five percent of Democrats supported such bans as opposed to 18 percent of Republicans, along with 27 percent of those in “Generation X,” ages 35-50, 24 percent of Baby Boomers, ages 51-69, and 21 percent of those 70 and older.
If we roll back the First — even a little bit — to keep people from looking at dangerous propaganda, what do you expect this generation to do with that legal precedent?
Posner adds, casually,
One worry about such a law is that it would discourage legitimate ISIS-related research by journalists, academics, private security agencies, and the like. But the law could contain broad exemptions for people who can show that they have a legitimate interest in viewing ISIS websites. Press credentials, a track record of legitimate public commentary on blogs and elsewhere, academic affiliations, employment in a security agency, and the like would serve as adequate proof.
So it sounds as if I could get a licence to look at it pretty easily, right? I guess Posner’s not really suggesting that his First Amendment rights be abridged. Nor mine. As long as you’re a member of a credentialed elite, you’d be able to look at foreign propaganda for yourself to decide whether it’s dangerous.
It’s a hell of a dangerous path. As I argued to my friend Mustafa Akyol in 2011 — in Turkey, a mere four years ago — “Once you begin to set legal boundaries on political speech, there is never an end to it.” That was only four years ago.
Here’s what he’s learned since then.
Andrew Wilson identifies four types of Russian propaganda:
- Propaganda as confusion: “The West’s first point of vulnerability is indeed its immediate judgment (or lack of judgment) of events. Its second point of vulnerability is Attention Deficit Disorder. In modern news cycles there is little time to actually think before the cycle moves on. For the mass audience at least, Russian propaganda only has to work until then.”
- Nudge effects: “The second type of Russian propaganda is less about creating confusion and is more about “nudge effects.” It works by finding parties, politicians, and points-of-view that are already sure of their world-view rather than confused, and giving them a nudge—so long as these views are usefully anti-systemic. For this type of Russian propaganda there is no such thing as strange bedfellows. Left or right, nationalist or separatist, jihadist or Islamophobic— all have featured on RT.”
- Propaganda at Home: Mobilizing the Putin Majority: “Russia’s propaganda is Janus-faced; though a metaphor closer to home might be the double-headed Russian eagle. If the point of pluralistic propaganda abroad is to nudge or confuse, domestic propaganda is monopolistic.”
- Alternative realities: “In the world between Russia and the West, not surprisingly perhaps, there is a fourth, hybrid type of propaganda. 89% unanimity is beyond Russia’s reach, there is relative freedom of speech, and rival narratives, both pro-Western and loyalist, already exist. So the purpose of Russian propaganda in the ‘near abroad’ is to create parallel alternative realities. Not just an alternative message, but an alternative reality, with a cast of supporting characters to deliver it. In Russia, the supporting cast is less important, the media itself is now the main event. In the West, Russian propaganda may “nudge” key actors, but it doesn’t create them. In the “near abroad” of other former Soviet states, however, the media message is accompanied by a virtual chorus of pro-Russian parties, politicians, NGOs, and even Churches.”
Number three isn’t our problem, one might argue, but 1-4 really are. Can you think of a better strategy for countering this than rolling back the First?
Published in General
I’m not quite sure what you mean about Snowden. Do I think he has a special relationship with Putin or has turned over everything he has to him? I don’t know, and the YouTube clip didn’t inform me.
Why do you think this is just about Ukraine?
Ukraine is certainly one aspect of it, but US-Russian relations are as bad as they were during the Cold War — and as dangerous, which is incredibly dangerous. We got through that by luck.
Ukraine is certainly significant, in that when the Soviet Union dissolved, we jointly dismantled 8,000 nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union and in the United States and jointly agreed to honor Ukraine’s boundaries. That Russia violated the agreement on Ukraine is a deeply, deeply sinister thing.
But Russia has also threatened its neighbors and the US with nuclear weapons: They’ve threatened to turn the US into “radioactive ash.”
Russia’s rejected its former policy of “no first use” in favor of an policy that proclaims that if threatened, nuclear weapons will be their weapon of choice. To back it up, they’ve embarked on a major buildup of their nuclear arsenal. A whole new generation of carriers—ICBMs, cruise missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines. It seems likely that they’re developing new bombs with new characteristics. Their designers believe they need a new round of tests for these new weapons. So Putin could decide to test, using the excuse that we never ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. And especially alarming is Putin’s emphasis on tactical nuclear weapons.
It’s true that he’s playing from a weak hand: a serious demographic problem, Russia’s well-known alcoholism problem, an extractive economy run by mafiosi. But this makes Russia more dangerous, not less. Putin derives his legitimacy from the Russian economy — a weak economy threatens his regime. If he can’t fix the economy, and he very likely can’t, he’ll divert attention by playing the war card — which is exactly what he’s done in Syria, to our immense strategic detriment. And somehow many Americans, and even more Europeans, sincerely believe he’s taking on ISIS — when in fact he’s doing nothing of the sort. It’s not too paranoid to speculate that he’s exacerbating and prolonging the war deliberately, using the refugees as a tool to create chaos in Europe — and thus bring Russia-aligned parties to power.
There huge danger is that he might overplay his hand — or that, particularly in response to another terrorist attack, we might — and blunder into a shooting war. It’s one that Russia would lose unless they used nuclear weapons — which is exactly what they say they will do. I don’t know why it’s considered deeply naive to fail to take Islamists at their word when they say they want to kill us, but not to take Russia at their word when they say they want to kill us, particularly since unlike ISIS or al Qaeda — at least so far, to our knowledge — Russia can. It’s not a hypothetical nightmare, it’s just a fact.
As for the success of his propaganda? Look, the man who’s now the Republican frontrunner says he’s thrilled that Putin praised him, calls him a “strong leader,” and says that he’d probably “get along very well” with him. He seems genuinely to have no idea how sinister Putin is: “He’s got a tremendous popularity in Russia, they love what he’s doing, they love what he represents … I was over in Moscow two years ago and I will tell you — you can get along with those people and get along with them well. You can make deals with those people. Obama can’t.”
He seems to have no idea that Putin kills opposition figures and journalists: “If he has killed reporters, I think that’s terrible. But this isn’t like somebody that’s stood with a gun and he’s, you know, taken the blame or he’s admitted that he’s killed. He’s always denied it.”
These comments didn’t harm him in the polls. Not a bit. This clearly means that a very substantial number of Americans have been taken in by Russian propaganda — including, most frighteningly, the Republican frontrunner.
I think he was targeted and recruited, yes. And while the video isn’t proof, it certainly makes it clear that they’re utterly gleeful about the whole business — and not even trying to hide it: They’re selling it to their own public as a Russian intelligence triumph.
Edward Lucas is quite good on the subject, if you haven’t read him already.
Well, there’s much here to discuss—just not able to right now. Suffice it to say, I’m every bit as mistrustful of the KGB Colonel as are you. It’s shameful that the President sought Putin’s favor rather than quickly building missile defenses and shoring up nervous East European & Baltic allies. Although I grant Obama can rationalize any sort of appeasement, launching nukes at us will result in Russia’s destruction. Unlike with ISIS, death is not considered an unvarnished success at the Kremlin.
I have 2+ questions: (1) How long does Putin’s crime syndicate last with oil below $40 per barrel? (2) With our “old” Europe allies (as Rumsfeld would say) busy impaling themselves with millions of military age Muslims, how long can we go on pretending they are of any use to us in terms of national security? Related: Would Europe’s elites take their own security more seriously if we stopped being a seemingly bottomless body pool of free mercenaries for them?
The remedy for speech is more speech. If we’re upset about ISIS websites, then maybe we should be more aggressive about publicizing the strengths of our culture and the shortcomings of theirs. We’ve been awfully polite about 12th Century mores. At the same time, we’ll need to distance ourselves from the fictional “reality” culture, the Kardashianism that we export to other countries. We needn’t censor anything, but we do need to let the rest of the world know: real people don’t live like this. It’s a TV show.
Finally, the time has come to silence Eric Posner. He should renounce any right to speak or write publicly as an example to the rest of us. “It’s the right thing to do; it’s cowardly and empty to hide behind the First Amendment; insert your cliché here.”
I invite your attention to my comment #47 above.
How would you articulate the “strengths or our culture and the shortcomings of theirs” in a way that would be persuasive to a devoted, but not jahadi, Muslim?
Convince them, not me, that we have something that they ought to want.
If I had two Ricochet accounts I could like this twice! And it would cost less than a Thatcher membership.
No, I haven’t read that. I don’t need to read the book to think that Snowden is more like a saboteur than a whistleblower (using the words in the blurb). And Putin is definitely using him for propaganda purposes. Also, I don’t think what he did was entirely bad.
[:-) The fact that you can’t convince your spouse to go makes my point rather nicely.
Her main objection is the money. I tell her that we should spend it before Bernanke/Yellen steal it.
She does enjoy watching Russian movies with me when they have English subtitles. And she has her favorites, though she doesn’t watch them over and over like I do. And I sometimes join her in watching Big Ten football and basketball, so long as it doesn’t interfere with a good bicycle ride. If Dick Vitale is announcing, we both prefer the sound turned off.
I try to keep track of Russian film people and their careers. She keeps track of college athletes, injury reports, recruiting prospects, etc.
Hear, hear!
The KGB targeted Martin Luther King, during the Cold War (less successfully, ultimately to the point that they became so frustrated that they tried to discredit him). I think we’d all agree that King was not entirely bad. Indeed, he was a very great figure in American history. But that is how they work: They look for people who genuinely expose some aspect of the story Americans tell themselves and the world as a hypocrisy, and they exploit it. That’s how good propaganda works.
I don’t believe Snowden had no choice but to flee to Russia. I do think he was right to blow the whistle on what he was seeing, but I don’t believe he did it out of patriotism. Patriots don’t hide in the Kremlin’s skirt.
Good points. I don’t disagree with any of that.
It also reminds me of the story of Ned Cobb alias Nate Shaw. He was a black sharecropper-made-good in the south, and in the 30s accepted the help of the American Communist Party in protecting his private property rights. It wasn’t that the Communists were great defenders of private property, but this was a great opportunity for them to expose some American hypocrisy.
I read Theodore Rosengarten’s compilation of Cobb’s oral history, and then in spring 2006 decided I had to go by bicycle to see some of the Alabama places he had told about.
The book is a great one to read or listen to on audio. The narrator is excellent. I got my father into it, and he liked it as much as I did.
One million refugees — not all of whom are military-age Muslims — is not sufficient to “impale” a population of 800 million. I’d worry much more about anti-Americanism among the Visograd Four, which is in good measure the result of Putin’s assiduous propaganda campaign.
Russia is nowhere near as threatening and relations with it are not nearly as dangerous as when the Soviet Union existed. (BTW – not to nitpick, but evidently you’ve been in Europe too long . . . during the Cold War it was US-Soviet relations . . . our European friends never did stop referring to it as Russia, however. [:-)
Russia seldom deploys military forces outside Russia proper, whereas they had huge numbers of troops and ready-for-war equipment throughout central Europe and in the Far East during the Cold War. Russia isn’t implacably hostile to everything non-Soviet. Russia isn’t fomenting revolution in every corner of the globe, just its “near abroad.” And on and on.
And it was not luck that won the Cold War! It was at first a bipartisan commitment to containment and then the fortuitous leadership of Reagan and Thatcher (when the rest of the West started going wobbly). It was steadfastness and strategic patience: confidence in Western principles of small ‘l’ liberalism and confidence in our analysis that the Soviet command economy would eventually be buried by an alliance of powerful democratic states.
Russia is a real problem, to be sure, but it’s ahistorical to suggest it rises to the level of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Claire – as for the rest of your arguments @ comment #64, the short answer is “Yes, you’re correct that Barack and Hillary were a pathetic twosome on the international stage.” Everything you cite as dangerous Russian policy initiatives are attributable to the sheer lunacy of their Russia “Reset” and subsequent sins of omission and commission by that dynamic duo (ably assisted by John Kerry).
If we can’t contain Putin’s ambitions with this disparity in defense spending . . .
. . . then for God’s sake let’s just hang up our spurs!
Leaders more competent than Clinton-Obama-Kerry can manage what they’ve so visibly failed at doing. There’s no reason to panic over Putin’s antics . . . we just need to elect competent leaders.
For maybe the only time in its history, this country managed to play the long game, even though half the team quit during the fourth quarter.
I’m surprised—given that you live in a city which learned twice in 2015 what a handful of jihadists (some of whom were part of the recent Syrian exodus!) can accomplish in a half-hour or so—that you seem relatively unconcerned about a million+ Muslims descending upon Europe. It’s about context, as you know. Europe cannot manage the problem it already has with un-assimilating Muslims. The security services are overwhelmed. (That I should write this to the author of ““Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too” is strange and cheeky.)
I’d say the frightening details here are an important part of the context for this Muslim horde: Paris Attacks Highlight Jihadists’ Easy Path Between Europe and ISIS Territory.
Old Europe cannot get its mind around the threat already present in Brussels, Paris, et. al. You would have us believe the misgivings of four NATO allies is a larger security problem than the potential for dozens of Charlie Hebdo and Friday the 13th attacks in European capitals? Sorry, I’m not comprehending your argument.
Please – they actively abetted the enemy starting in the 3rd Quarter. Implored the enemy for aid in winning the Presidential election late in the 4th Quarter – and were never punished for their treason.
We won despite them.