Trump's victory and the end of walking on eggshells.

Freedom of speech in America (and Australia)

'We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.'

Brendan Carr, 18 November 2024 on X

'We are finding ourselves in a place where we have increasing polarisation everywhere and everything feels binary when it doesn't need to be.  So I think we are going to have to think about a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online, you know, from freedom of speech to the freedom to be, you know, free from online violence.'

Julie Inman Grant, 23 May 2022 speaking at the World Economic Forum, Davos

On Sunday, Donald Trump said he'd nominate Brendan Carr to be Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.  The FCC regulates communications in the United States.  Announcing the nomination, Trump said, 'Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled American's Freedoms, and held back our Economy.'  Following Trump's statement, Carr said on X, 'Thank you, President Trump!  I am humbled and honored to serve as Chairman of the FCC.  Now we get to work.' 

And he went further.  Carr wrote, 'The FCC's most recent budget request said that promoting DEI was the agency's second highest strategic goal.  Starting next year, the FCC will end its promotion of DEI.'  And to top it off he posted a video of Argentine President, Javier Melei, shouting 'afuera' (Spanish for 'out') as he tore from a white board a label with 'Ministry of Women and Gender and Diversity' written on it.  Above the video Carr declared, 'When it comes to the FCC's promotion of DEI, I have just one thing to say: Afuera!'

A few hours ago Carr posted this on X: 'Democrats have been in charge of the Administrative State - the alphabet soup of agencies in DC - for at least 12 of the last 16 years.  Over those 12 years, government control has increased and your freedoms have decreased.  It is time to flip the script in Washington.'

That's what's happening in Trump's America right now.  Meanwhile, in Australia, Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner appointed by the Morrison government to regulate the internet, believes in the 'recalibration' of freedom of speech, as the Albanese government attempts to pass legislation giving the government unprecedented powers to censor 'misinformation' on social media.  Under the proposed law it will be the government itself that decides what is or isn't 'misinformation', and of course, the government and legacy media will be exempt from the new rules.  The Albanese government's motivations are not hard to discern.  Social media is the one platform of public communication not controlled by the left.  When Anthony Albanese claims he's 'regulating Big Tech', he's wrong.  His 'misinformation' law attempts to control what we can say to each other.

Reading the commentary about the American election over the last fortnight, it's been interesting to see the discussion about the impact of American's concerns about freedom of speech on the election outcome.  Freedom of speech was a major theme of Trump's campaign.  Two years ago, long before he was the Republican presidential nominee for 2024, Trump said, 'If we don't have free speech, then we just don't have a free country.  It's as simple as that' and he promised to sign an executive order banning any federal department from collaborating with any other organisation attempting to censor lawful speech.  According to pollsters, the key issue at the election was inflation, but other factors were also at play.  A poll by America's leading organisation campaigning for freedom of speech, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, released a week before the election found this:

FIRE's poll, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, asked 1,022 Americans how important a host of issues were in the context of the upcoming election.  The top answer was inflation, with 68% saying increasing costs was 'very important' and 91 calling it at least 'somewhat important.'  But the next top answer was free speech, with 63% calling it 'very important' and 90% saying it was at least 'somewhat important'.

'Higher prices might be the top concern for Americans, but a very close second is the increasing cost of speaking your mind,' said FIRE Research Fellow Nathan Honeycutt.  'The message is clear: Americans want their free speech rights respected.'

[The top five issues that Americans regarded as 'very important' at the election were, in order, inflation, free speech, health care, abortion, and crime.]

Americans from both parties view free speech as a significant issue, with 91% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats agreeing it's at least 'somewhat important.'  However, Republicans were more likely to rate it 'very important' (70% v 60%), and they were more likely to respond that they were somewhat concerned about their ability to speak freely in the US today (63% v 42%).  Republicans were also more likely to respond that they speak less freely today than four years ago (46% v 21%).

Americans have a different perspective on freedom of speech from Scott Morrison.  In 2017, as a minister in the Turnbull government, Morrison opposed any attempt to amend or repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act because 'I know this issue doesn't create one job.'

On Friday, in my Australian Financial Review column, I said that while Australians like to make fun of America, there's no politician in this country who'd talk for three hours unscripted and unedited as Donald Trump did to Joe Rogan.  The Trump/Rogan conversation has had 50 million views on YouTube and generated more than half a million comments.  When Rogan invited Kamala Harris to appear on his show, her staff imposed so many conditions, including what subjects were off-limits and that the interview could be no longer than one hour, that Rogan declined to talk to her.  A few days before the election, Rogan endorsed Trump.  After the election Rogan spoke about the reaction to his endorsement.

Podcast king Joe Rogan told his audience that artists, musicians, and comedians have thanked him for endorsing Donald Trump because they were afraid to do so for fear of having their careers destroyed.

'There's a lot of people that don't speak their mind,' Rogan said at the outset of his discussion on free speech.  'So you know how many artists that have reached out to me that are like fucking hippies, man!  Like artists, like musicians, comedians, that thanked me for endorsing Trump because they can't do it.'

'They said they want to but they don't want to get attacked,' the nation's most popular podcaster continued.  'They can't say it.  They think the country's going in the wrong direction.  They think that this control of social media by the government which we would have pretty much fully it if wasn't for Elon Musk being Twitter.'

'This whole thing is nuts,' he exclaimed.  'And it's a dangerous path that we are on.  We were on that path.  Trump has vowed to have free speech become a very important part of what he's standing for.  And that this censoring of information needs to stop.  And that we need to stop all government influence in what people have to say.'

On cue, as if to prove the truth of what Rogan said, this news story appeared in Australia last week.

MELBOURNE SINGER SPEAKS OUT AFTER BEING 'CANCELLED' FOR WEARING MAGA HAT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Melbourne-based singer and songwriter Hayley Mary has spoken out after being 'cancelled' for wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat and speaking about Labor's proposed misinformation bill on a social media post.

The lead singer of the band 'The Jezabels' told Tom Elliott she's been cancelled by friends, band and crew members, with even some family members going silent since her Instagram post. 

'I personally think that this topic is just more important to me than my career,' Ms Mary said on 3AW Mornings.  'I sort of brought it upon myself, but did it on purpose,' she said.

The singer also stated how the music industry is very critical of musicians enacting their freedom of speech on social media.  'That's exactly the kind of thing you cannot do, or you will be cancelled,' she said.

(You can click here to hear Hayley Mary's radio interview with Tom Elliott here, and this is her discussion on Sky News with Andrew Bolt.)

Free speech campaigner Michael Shellenberger is in Australia this week as a guest of the Institute of Public Affairs.  He'll be in Canberra briefing MPs on the dangers of Labor's misinformation legislation.  Last week, on his Substack account, he wrote about a post on X that the actress and filmmaker Justine Bateman (from 'Family Ties) put up after the US election.  He quoted the first few lines from it, and I thought they were so good I went to read the whole post. I've copied it all out for you below.  Bateman is writing about America, but she may as well be talking about Australia.  Shellenberger said this about Bateman.

There is nothing about Bateman or her career that indicates that she is a particularly conservative person.  In fact, what Bateman writes is - like so much of the rest of the reaction to the intolerant Wokeism that rampaged through American society over the last decade - more liberal than conservative.

The only demographic in America to vote, in the majority, for President-elect Donald Trump was Generation X [aged 45-64], to which Bateman belongs.  And at 54% to 44%, according to exit polls, it wasn't a small margin.  Even though Generation X is a smaller generation than both the Baby Boomers and Millennials who surround us, it was the vote of us Generation Xers that tipped the balance to Trump.

I'd suggest two reasons why 54% of Generation Xers voted for Trump compared to 43% of 18-29-year-olds who supported him.  Generation Xers have seen more of the world, and they remember a time when you didn't need to walk on eggshells.

This is Justine Bateman's post in full.

Decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years.

I have found the last four years to be an almost intolerable period.  A very un-American period in that any questioning, any opinions, any likes or dislikes were held up to a very limited list of 'permitted positions' in order to assess acceptability.

I've never in my life known that to be an American environment.  It's an environment I have encountered in smaller groupings (a church, a private club, a clique), but never before as a national blanket.  It has been suffocating.  Common sense was discarded, intellectual discussion was demonized.  Only 'permitted position' behaviour and speech was 'allowed'. 

Complete intolerance became almost a religion and one's professional and social life was threatened almost constantly.  Those that spoke otherwise were ruined as a warning to others.  Their destruction was displayed in the 'town square' of social media for all to see.  This was the #MeMeMeMeToo moment, where every effort was made to divert attention to oneself, instead of recognizing how one contributes to the whole.

This was the era of trying to exercise control over those who did not want to follow the crowd and had their own ideas about what they needed to do.  This dampened our culture and innovation, bringing people to even think that generative #AI, a regurgitation of the past, was actually our cultural future.

When you starve a society of those called to be independent thinkers and cultural and intellectual innovators, you rob that society of any forward movement.  Those that tried to impose that control maintained a kind of 'hall monitor' position by threatening others with damning labels like 'Sexist', 'racist', 'homophobic,' etc when the free-thinking and questioning was nothing of the sort.  However, the mob mentality that followed caused these social convictions when there was often no evidence to support them.  (See Charles McKay's 1841 book, 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.'

I am neither one extreme or the other, but am one of the millions of people who believe in common sense, and that everyone should be free to live their lives however they want, unless that freedom interferes with someone else's freedom to live their own life.

That's it.

Thank you for your support.

kind regards John