[rayiner]

I’m not referring to the concept that there shouldn’t be social repercussions for speech people find distasteful. Of course there should be—shaming and ostracism are powerful tools for enforcing morality, deeper and more fundamental than law. I’m talking about folks using “speech is violence” as a pretext for regulating speech through the government. (This tends to come to a head in the campus context, because when public colleges “deplatform” people, that is government action subject to the first amendment.)

Conservatives tried this too, recruiting the aid of the government to fight against obscenity, Communism, etc. And they lost that battle in the end.

[tptacek]

Is this a phenomenon that occurs outside of college campuses?

(I assume you follow FIRE, and know that this problem isn't contained to the "speech is violence" people; there are numerous right-wing attempts at suppression on campus as well.)

[rayiner]

So far, I haven’t really seen it outside campuses, but there is a strong push to have private companies deplatform people, and government action is always a tool in the toolchest that people might invoke.

As to your second point, FIRE tends to advocate for free speech on campus generally, including private schools. A lot of the right-wing attempts at suppressing speech happen at places like private religious schools (Duquensque and Georgetown are two top posts in the FIRE website). I tend to stop short of that—I think private schools are free to restrict speech in ways public schools are not. But, as I said in my post, attempts to suppress speech have historically been a right wing phenomenon.

[tptacek]

But private companies deplatforming people is exactly the thing you were speaking approvingly of earlier; that's simple freedom of association, articulated through commercial pressure.

[rayiner]

I think private companies doing that based on commercial pressure is fine. I don’t trust, however, that it will stay that way. Many of the same people who approve of those efforts also see government intervention is a key tool to achieve social policy. (Which is also something I don’t necessarily oppose.) I just worried about what could happen when those two lines of thinking collide. Deplatforming hate speech based on commercial pressure is a temporary alliance between progressives and liberalitarians. It wouldn’t be the first time, however, where such alliances have broken down as progressives pushed harder.

[tptacek]

That makes sense. The last Make No Law episode covers some of this in detail as well.