We're policing speech with the literal police.
Why is the NYPD investigating student social media posts (instead of solving crime)?
In the culture war battles over “wokeness,” critics of “cancel culture” often compared what they saw as attacks on free speech to repression in authoritarian regimes. It was both eye-roll stupid and offensive to victims of historical violence.
“Media [is] filled with ‘Stasi-like’ millennials who seek power ‘to dominate, to repress,” Glenn Greenwald declared in 2021. No, millennial journalists did not put listening devices in people’s homes and commit extrajudicial murders (as far as I know … looking at you, Brian Stelter). Elon Musk also latched onto the Stasi analogy.
Matt Taibbi decried, “The Sovietization of the American Press.” I guess The New York Times is as stupid as Pravda, but Americans don’t risk imprisonment to trade underground samizdat. They can go on Substack (where they can become paid subscribers to this one! Freedom isn’t free!).
In addition to overwrought historical analogies, cancel culture obsessives regularly invoked carceral language. “Policing” speech, etc. That too made me want to scream. You know who’s actually “canceled” fuckers? The dude who’s been in solitary for two decades. You know whose speech is actually censored? Inmates in lockdown whose right to free speech —a.k.a speaking to their own children on the phone — is taken away on a guard’s whim.
Taibbi and Greenwald did rightly warn that overzealousness over speech would inevitably flip and turn against left causes. And that it would more likely than not occur over Israel-Palestine. It’s happening, and it’s nuclear. Knee-jerk firings. Doxing. Rich guys swinging their sacks of donation cash around to get professors, programs, classes, canceled. An Israeli ambassador asked Bard’s professor to drop a class about apartheid taught by a Jewish professor living in Israel. And we’re starting to police speech with the literal police.
The President of Queens College, Frank Wu, recently sent out a letter warned students about “disinformation” singling out the social media posts of a campus group.
“It has been brought to our attention that there were social media posts yesterday by a QC student organization, “QCMSA,” that deny the brutal actions and atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and excuse the kidnapping of civilians, including children, the elderly, women, and men,” Wu said. “Queens College strongly denounces such obviously false and misleading posts that in no way represent the views of Queens College. This behavior is contrary to our community values.”
The post is offensive. It claims that there’s no evidence that the attackers targeted women and children. This is incorrect. The rest of it just cautions against accepting information from the Israeli foreign ministry uncritically. This is correct.
Let’s flip it around. A U.S. lawmaker just screamed “All of them!” when another lawmaker asked how many Palestinians have to die. On Twitter, large accounts (including Israeli officials) are spreading the meme of “Pallywood”—the idea that Palestinians stage fake atrocities to gain the world’s sympathy. This is literally no different than Alex Jones claiming the butchered kids at Sandy Hook were crisis actors. In this context, an Instagram post by a Muslim group at Queens college doesn’t strike me as a dire public safety threat.
The letter continues:
“The Office of Compliance & Diversity is conducting a thorough review and investigation of these matters. Following findings, those who are found to be in violation of policy may be subject to sanction and/or disciplinary action. We have contacted and will continue to cooperate with the NYPD regarding these incidents.”
Excuse me? An investigation? That will continue to cooperate with the NYPD? How? The post does not contain anything that could be construed as a threat of a crime. What does the NYPD have to do with this? Call me crazy but I’d rather have them work a little harder raising their abysmal clearance rates for homicide and rape.
Yesterday, a video circulated online showing NYPD arresting two young people for tearing down posters of the kidnapped Israeli civilians. I disagree with tearing down posters, it’s disrespectful and counterproductive. But it’s also a form of protest—political speech—and I’m beyond confused about what law they were breaking.
Last night, Ron DeSantis demanded President Biden send the Department of Justice to college campuses. Anything DeSantis says about federal policy is tinged with sick hilarity because of how much he’s unlikely to ever be President. Except that Biden does, in fact, have a program in the works that will send the DoJ to college campuses.
The departments of Justice and Homeland Security are partnering with campus law enforcement to track hate-related threats and provide federal resources to schools, according to the plan, which was shared exclusively with NBC News.
Say goodbye to Middle Eastern studies departments! Because the metric for “hate-related threats” has become meaningless. The top story in The New York Times today reports on Jewish students experiencing anti-semitism on college campuses. I 100% believe this is happening. But the two incidents highlighted in the lede show that it’s also dangerous to expand the meaning of hate speech beyond any logic—and then throw federal and city cops at the problem.
Walking into his dorm, he was startled to see a poster calling Gaza a “modern-day concentration camp” pinned to a bulletin board next to Halloween ghosts and pumpkins.
At a pro-Palestinian rally, he heard students shouting, “Hey, Schill, what do you say, how many kids did you kill today,” an echo of a chant from the anti-Vietnam War movement, now directed at Northwestern’s president, Michael H. Schill, who is Jewish.
The first one sounds jarring—like they’re comparing Gaza to the Nazi death camps. You shouldn’t compare anything to the Nazi death camps. But “concentration camp,” in historical literature, encompasses regimes like the Stalin-era gulags. They were concentration camps and they were deadly, but they were not explicitly designed to mass murder.
The second example does not even register. I literally have no idea how any anti-war chant harkening back to LBJ can be construed as anti-Semitic.
Sounds like something we should throw the cops at!
Jesus H. are we seriously standing on a knife’s edge right in this very moment or is that a lib-silly hopeful-ass fantasy because we’re already SO past FUCKED?
🖤