Grassroots/Hank Kalet

Corporate Censorship is Still Censorship

Perhaps we can call this “One Billboard in Union, N.J.,” even if the fate of the anti-Trump billboard erected along a main thoroughfare in Central Jersey community bears little relationship to the fictional Missouri billboards at the center of the award-winning Hollywood film.

The billboard, ostensibly an advertisement for a film called “Our Leader the Idiot,” created a stir in Union, with residents complaining to the Township Council that it was disrespectful of the office. The council passed a resolution denouncing the billboard, which is owned by a private company and was rented by New York activist/filmmaker Neil Harrison. It was removed the next day.

“I really wanted to set a precedence so more activists would do the same in their towns and area and get out there,” Harrison told Patch.

Instead, he underscored a concern I’ve had about the flawed arguments some on the left have been making about free speech — namely, that it’s perfectly OK for corporations to impose restrictions when the speech being squashed comes from right-wing troglodytes and racists.

I’m not defending these speakers. The kind of racist and homophobia nonsense spewed by the likes of Roseanne, Phil Robertson, Ann Coulter, Milo Yiannopolous, and Alex Jones is truly revolting. And their suspensions, firings, and banning from the corporate platforms they spoke from was no more a violation of their First Amendment rights than the decision by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to part ways with liberal cartoonist Rob Rogers.

But its effect is potentially no less chilling.

Shortly after Roseanne was fired I pointed out that there remains a danger in allowing corporations, which are concerned only about money, to use their power to police speech, especially because their power in many ways is much greater than that of government. Ideas that are outside the mainstream can easily be pushed out beyond the margins.

That’s what happened in the years immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Voices opposed to the impending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were essentially banned from the major network and cable news shows. The boundary of acceptable debate was limited to pro-war voices. Bill Maher was fired over an inartful remark about the hijackings, the Dixie Chicks were banned from country radio for comments made about President Bush by frontwoman Natalie Maines, and so on. Patriotism — or, more accurately, a know-nothing nationalism — dictated what was acceptable. This was not accomplished through government mandate, but by corporate fiat.

That was a decade and a half ago and, with Barack Obama’s election, appeared a thing of the past. It wasn’t, and the collusion that has kept Colin Kaepernick off the football field, the firing of Rob Rogers, and the refusal by ABC to air a “Black-ish” episode on the NFL protests, and even the billboard flap in Union offer powerful evidence of the what happens when we empower the censor.

As Geoffrey R. Stone, law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, told Dahlia Lithwick on Slate’s Amicus podcast, “The practical reality is that censorship is generally a tool for the majority, and if minorities legitimate censorship they are opening the door for others to censor them down the road.”

Hank Kalet is a poet and journalist in New Jersey. Email grassroots@comcast.net; Twitter @kaletjournalism.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2018

Populist.com