Opinion: When free speech becomes a weapon
Freedom in general, and freedom of speech in particular, is deeply embedded in American identity. In the age of social media, which enables the mass dissemination of false information, freedom of speech is also being dangerously weaponized by the far right.
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This freedom took on an almost sacred dimension in the United States with the adoption of the First Amendment in 1791. It reads: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.'
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This sentence helped make the young Republic one of the freest countries in the world. Even today, across political lines, it remains a point of national pride for Americans.
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However, the media landscape has changed profoundly since 1791. Some social media platform owners now exploit freedom of speech for both ideological and financial reasons, claiming to defend it against supposed censorship imposed by progressive forces.
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In the 19th century, British philosopher John Stuart Mill saw the free marketplace of ideas — in other words, the absence of restrictions on speech — as the very condition for truth in a democracy. In On Liberty, he argued that truth emerges through the clash of opinions, as falsehoods are gradually pushed aside.
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This vision of free speech eventually became dominant in the United States. The far right seized on it, using the First Amendment to defend some of its most abhorrent ideas in the name of this fundamental right. One of the most well-known examples took place in Skokie, a suburb of Chicago, where the city tried to ban a Nazi march. In 1977, citing the First Amendment, the Illinois Supreme Court — and then the U.S. Supreme Court, by refusing to intervene — ruled in favour of the neo-Nazi group, although the rally ultimately never happened.
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There is reason to ask whether social media, capable of both protecting and undermining free speech, has changed the equation. In 2012, a massacre took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars claimed the massacre was staged to justify greater gun control.
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Sued for defamation by the parents of children killed in the shooting, Jones defended himself by invoking freedom of speech and the First Amendment, wielding them as a shield against any attempt at regulation or sanction — or rather, as a weapon in the service of lies and violence. In 2022, he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to the Sandy Hook families for defamation.
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Yet, even after that ruling, he continued to portray himself as a victim of censorship, illustrating the dangers of an absolutist interpretation of free speech.
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In recent years, freedom of speech and social media have been put to the test by two major crises. The first was the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the accompanying flood of disinformation. The second was the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, triggered by false claims that the presidential election had been 'stolen.'
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CBC
27 minutes ago
- CBC
How characters from Alison Bechdel's past shook her out of her memoir-writing kick
Nearly 20 years after her breakout memoir, Fun Home, American cartoonist Alison Bechdel is still unearthing new truths about that period of her life. But this time, she's taking a look at her personal story through fiction, with her new comic novel, Spent. In Spent, she explores the life of a cartoonist, also named Alison Bechdel, who grapples with her complicated relationship with capitalism, community and activism after the success of her memoir and its subsequent TV adaptation. "When I was younger, I did lead a more communal life," Bechdel said on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "I lived in a communal house. I went out and did political activities and was involved in my community. Over time, I really stopped doing that — and it's a bunch of factors. Part of it's getting older, part of it is being in a relationship, but a big part of it was that I was living very much on the edge until I was in my 40s, until Fun Home came out, and slowly saved my financial bacon." "Then I started making a lot of money, which was a very weird experience for someone who had formed their sense of self as an outsider and especially as a poor outsider." Bechdel, who is also known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and books Are You My Mother? and The Secret to Superhuman Strength, joined Roach to revisit her debut memoir and how it shaped her return to fiction. Mattea Roach: You published your memoir, Fun Home, almost 20 years ago when you were 45. Now you're in your 60s. How has your relationship with the text evolved over the past nearly two decades? Alison Bechdel: It's funny to have this thing, this record of my life that is unchanging, like it's cast in stone. Even though I have found out lots of interesting information about various people or scenes in the book that would change the story if I were to write it now, it's done. This is the record and it's very odd to have to be constantly talking about it. The book was published almost 20 years ago, but I'm still talking about it as if it's a new thing to people. So that's a funny activity to get one's head around. How did it come about that you learned new information about some of the stuff that's depicted in the book? Was it a situation where people you knew read the book and said that's not actually how it was? I'll tell you one example of that, which is that I learned from my mother's best friend, that on the day that my father died, she had decided to not divorce him. Wow. Your dad died when he was hit by a truck and that was two weeks after your mom had asked for a divorce. And then there's some significant suggestion that it might have actually been intentional on his part. In this tumultuous time around between when I came out to my parents and when he died, which was just a couple of months, my mother had asked him for a divorce. And now I find out that she had been going to call that off. It just just casts her whole story into this really different light. It was already quite a tragic story, but now it's even worse, you know? Fun Home was made into this Broadway musical in 2015 and it won five Tonys. It's a very different work despite being adapted from your memoir. How did it feel to hand over a project that was so personal to be adopted for another medium? I didn't really know what I was doing. I knew I had sort of sidestepped an offer to option it for a film by asking for more money than they were willing to pay me. Which was a great relief. But then this offer came up for a musical and I didn't really have a connection to musicals. I've seen musicals, but I'm not like a big musical person. Somehow it seemed like it was different enough that I wouldn't mind if someone made a really bad musical out of my book — and the way that I would mind if it were a really bad film adaptation. I don't know what I was thinking now, but fortunately, that didn't happen. The people who made it did a very good job. It's a really good adaptation, but I always sort of think, "Wow, that was lucky." In my new book Spent, I explore what it would be like to really lose control of a creative project. Why did you want to explore this alternate path that you're grateful, in your real life, to not have gone down? Well, partly because once you become a writer in this world, everyone expects you to then somehow do something for TV or the great triumph is to get your book turned into a TV show and that just always strikes me as funny. Why can't we just make comic books that are comic books? I guess, obviously, because you make more money, but it's also just a cultural phenomenon. You know that if you're a writer, you have to grapple with this. Why did you want to revisit these characters from your weekly comic strips Dykes to Watch Out For who are now in late middle-age but are still living together in a communal housing situation? This book, Spent, was going to be another memoir. That's what I started doing after my comic strip. I retired the comic strip and began writing books about my life. And I thought that's what I was going to do forever because I really liked writing about actual life. Occasionally, someone would ask me, do you ever think you'll do fiction again? And I would just go blank. Fiction? How do you do that? And I couldn't even remember that I had actually done this fictional comic strip. But I realized early on in the work for this book that doing it as a memoir was going to be really boring. I just somehow didn't want to write about my actual life or actually read Marx or all the things I would have to do to intelligently discuss money or capitalism. In the moment that I threw that idea away, this other idea came in. What would really be funny is if I wrote about a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel who was trying to write a book about money and then it just all sort of sprang to life — and in that new vision, there were my old comic strip characters who were going to be my friends. It just was one of those lovely moments when something just comes into your mind fully formed, which hardly ever happens to me.
Winnipeg Free Press
40 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Trump once floated a plan to attract more foreign students. Now they feel targeted on all fronts
To attract the brightest minds to America, President Donald Trump proposed a novel idea while campaigning: If elected, he would grant green cards to all foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges. 'It's so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools,' Trump said during a podcast interview last June. 'That is going to end on Day One.' That promise never came to pass. Trump's stance on welcoming foreign students has shifted dramatically. International students have found themselves at the center of an escalating campaign to kick them out or keep them from coming as his administration merges a crackdown on immigration with an effort to reshape higher education. An avalanche of policies from the Trump administration — such as terminating students' ability to study in the U.S., halting all new student visa interviews, moving to block foreign enrollment at Harvard — have triggered lawsuits, countersuits and confusion for international students who say they feel targeted on multiple fronts. In interviews, students from around the world described how it feels to be an international student today in America. Their accounts highlight pervasive feelings of fear, anxiety and insecurity that have made them more cautious in their daily lives, distracted them from schoolwork and prompted many to cancel trips home because they fear not being allowed to return. For many, the last few months have forced them to rethink their dreams of building a life in America. A standout student from Latvia feels 'expendable' Markuss Saule, a freshman at Brigham Young University-Idaho, took a recent trip home to Latvia and spent the entire flight back to the U.S. in a state of panic. For hours, he scrubbed his phone, uninstalling all social media, deleting anything that touched on politics or could be construed as anti-Trump. 'That whole 10-hour flight, where I was debating, 'Will they let me in?' — it definitely killed me a little bit,' said Saule, a business analytics major. 'It was terrifying.' Saule is the type of international student the U.S. has coveted. As a high schooler in Latvia, he qualified for a competitive, merit-based exchange program funded by the U.S. State Department. He spent a year of high school in Minnesota, falling in love with America and a classmate who is now his fiancee. He just ended his freshman year in college with a 4.0 GPA. But the alarm he felt on that flight crushed what was left of his American dream. 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After six years in Arizona, where Avi attended college and is now working as an engineer, the U.S. feels like a second home. He dreams of working at NASA or in a national lab and staying in America where he has several relatives. But now he is too afraid to fly to Chicago to see them, rattled by news of foreigners being harassed at immigration centers and airports. 'Do I risk seeing my family or risk deportation?' said Avi, who asked to be identified by his first name, fearing retribution. Avi is one of about 240,000 people on student visas in the U.S. on Optional Practical Training — a postgraduation period where students are authorized to work in fields related to their degrees for up to three years. A key Trump nominee has said he would like to see an end to postgraduate work authorization for international students. Avi's visa is valid until next year but he feels 'a massive amount of uncertainty.' He wonders if he can sign a lease on a new apartment. Even his daily commute feels different. 'I drive to work every morning, 10 miles an hour under speed limit to avoid getting pulled over,' said Avi, who hopes to stay in the U.S. but is casting a wider net. 'I spend a lot of time doomscrolling job listings in India and other places.' A Ukrainian chose college in America over joining the fight at home — for now Vladyslav Plyaka came to the U.S. from Ukraine as an exchange student in high school. As war broke out at home, he stayed to attend the University of Wisconsin. He was planning to visit Poland to see his mother but if he leaves the U.S., he would need to reapply for a visa. He doesn't know when that will be possible now that visa appointments are suspended, and he doesn't feel safe leaving the country anyway. He feels grateful for the education, but without renewing his visa, he'll be stuck in the U.S. at least two more years while he finishes his degree. He sometimes wonders if he would be willing to risk leaving his education in the United States — something he worked for years to achieve — if something happened to his family. 'It's hard because every day I have to think about my family, if everything is going to be all right,' he said. It took him three tries to win a scholarship to study in the U.S. Having that cut short because of visa problems would undermine the sacrifice he made to be here. He sometimes feels guilty that he isn't at home fighting for his country, but he knows there's value in gaining an education in America. 'I decided to stay here just because of how good the college education is,' he said. 'If it was not good, I probably would be on the front lines.' ___ AP Education Writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Toronto Star
43 minutes ago
- Toronto Star
Canada ‘will take some time' before responding to Trump tariff increases, Mark Carney says
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney stopped short of immediately retaliating against U.S. President Donald Trump's new tariffs on steel and aluminum Wednesday, saying his government 'will take some time' as trade discussions continue with American officials, and union leaders warn of approaching devastation to jobs and livelihoods. At Queen's Park, Premier Doug Ford also urged the federal government to double existing counter-tariffs on American steel and aluminum, and accused Trump of trying to shut down the province's steel industry, which has major operations in cities like Hamilton and Sault Ste. Marie. Shortly after midnight Wednesday, Trump raised existing tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25 per cent to 50 per cent — a move that hit Canada and countries around the world as the White House argues steeper import taxes are needed to protect an industry it sees as vital to U.S. national security. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW On his way into his weekly caucus meeting, Carney called the new tariffs 'illegal' and 'unjustified,' but said he wants to see how ongoing trade negotiations with the United States play out. 'We will take some time, not much — some time, because we are in intensive discussions right now with the Americans on the trading relationship,' he said. 'I would note that the American action is a global action, it's not one targeted at Canada,' Carney added. 'So we will take some time, but not more.' Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters that negotiations are ongoing, and repeated the government's pledge to push back against American tariffs and support industries and workers that are affected by them. 'Things change fast in the tariff world, so we're all hands on deck on that,' Champagne said. Later Wednesday morning, the Conservatives called for an emergency debate in the House of Commons, accusing the government of failing to get an exemption for Canada from Trump's steeper tariffs. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW At Queen's Park, Ford said he would back any counter-tariffs imposed by Prime Minister Mark Carney's government. 'I support them 1,000 per cent on retaliation and I'm sure the rest of the premiers will as well,' said Ford, chair of the Council of the Federation and a close Carney ally. 'You're either standing up for Canada and protecting people's jobs, their livelihoods, protecting communities and the people and the jobs that they have — or you sit back and get steamrolled,' he said, who has already removed U.S. booze like California wines and Kentucky bourbon from LCBO shelves. 'I'm going to fight back like with every tool we have in our tool box to protect the people of Ontario and protect the jobs and the community. As I've always said, it's tariff-for-tariff, dollar-for-dollar. we need to tariff the steel coming into Canada at an additional 25 per cent totalling 50 per cent.' Ford, who appeared on CNN Wednesday morning, said he was resuming his U.S. media blitz that made him staple on cable news shows earlier this year after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his tariff plans. 'What President Trump has done here is increase a tax of $15 billion on the backs of Americans,' he said, noting businesses will have to pass along the higher cost of steel and aluminum products and packaging to consumers. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'I've directed our office to make sure anything that we build here — the $30 billion that we're importing — to onshore as much as we can,' added the premier. 'I'm going to have another meeting with three or four of the large steel companies, getting a list, no matter if it's steel beams or rebar, to see how we can support them. They have to use Ontario steel, Canadian steel, at all costs — and that's what we're going to do to retaliate.' But Ford stopped short of possibly imposing a 25 per cent surcharge on the electricity Ontario exports to about 1.5 million customers in New York, Michigan and Minnesota. That high-profile threat made earlier in the trade war led to a worried Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick responding directly to the premier. 'Again, everything's on the table, but it's unfortunate that President Trump and his team in the U.S. thought this was a great idea. They can't see the forest beyond the trees,' said Ford. Meanwhile, the head of the United Steel Workers union in Canada said the federal government has a very narrow window to get the tariffs rolled back before thousands of jobs are lost, perhaps permanently. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'I think they've got a week or two at most, because we will start seeing complete devastation,' said Marty Warren, USW's director for Canada. The latest increase is devastating, Warren added. 'At 50 per cent, that really shuts our producers out of the U.S. The U.S. is slamming the door shut. We just can't compete at that level,' Warren said. 'Twenty-five per cent was disastrous enough. At 50 per cent, we are going to feel pain — communities, businesses, workers, I'm talking thousands of jobs.' Union members, said Warren, are scared about the future. 'These have been good-paying jobs, where you could raise a family, buy a house. Now all that's gone. People are wondering if they're going to be working in three weeks. Our members are scared. Our communities are scared.' Warren urged the federal government to block low-cost steel imports from China and India, as well as to retaliate against the U.S. Steel-producing countries will be even more motivated to flood other markets now that they're facing being shut out of the U.S., Warren added. In a statement Wednesday, Unifor — Canada's largest private sector union — predicted the new steel and aluminum tariffs will drive up the price of cars, planes and 'critical infrastructure,' and called on the federal government to immediately retaliate. The union also said Canada should temporarily stop exporting 'strategic metals' to the U.S., and block companies from relocating south of the border. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW 'President Trump fails to understand the chaos and damage these tariffs will inflict on workers and consumers in both Canada and the U.S.,' said a statement from Unifor's national president, Lana Payne. 'This is about economic sovereignty. Canada must respond with strength and urgency.' Carney campaigned on a promise to 'win' the trade war against Trump. In recent days, the Conservatives have railed against his government for creating remissions to some counter-tariffs — effectively dropping them on certain goods — while declaring the need to firmly fight back against Trump's economic aggression. On Tuesday, responding to concerns from steel producers that the remissions weakened Canada's response, Champagne's spokesperson Audrey Millette confirmed the government expects about $8 billion to be remitted on imports from the U.S., meaning 'about 73 per cent of the measures would remain in place.' Carney said Wednesday that, not including remissions, Canada has retaliated against American tariffs with counter-tariffs on about $90 billion worth of American goods, and will use proceeds from those measures to support businesses and workers. Trump first slapped tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum in 2018, during his first term as president. He brought them back in March, when he imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. The U.S. also placed tariffs on a Canadian goods that don't comply with the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement that Trump signed in his first term, along with 25 per cent tariffs on cars and light trucks. Trump has threatened additional tariffs on other countries, claiming the U.S. has been mistreated and lost out in trading relationships for years. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW Trump argues the tariffs, while they increase the cost of imports into the U.S., will boost industries in the U.S. and grow the economy. In Canada, however, they have been met with consternation, with business and industry groups ringing alarm bells over damage to sectors ranging from automaking to forestry and other industries. Meanwhile, on Parliament Hill, Liberal MP Terry Sheehan said 'everyone is very concerned' in his city of Sault Ste. Marie, home to a major Algoma steel factory. He said some are worried that jobs could be lost, and then home values and other community impacts could follow if the plant shuts down entirely. '(The tariffs) are hurting the Canadian-American relationship terribly,' said Sheehan, who is also co-chair of the all-party 'steel caucus' in Parliament. 'I've never seen anything like this … This is totally, absolutely ludicrous to say the least.' With files from Tonda MacCharles Politics Headlines Newsletter Get the latest news and unmatched insights in your inbox every evening Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. Please enter a valid email address. Sign Up Yes, I'd also like to receive customized content suggestions and promotional messages from the Star. You may unsubscribe at any time. 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