Jihad Now and Forever, Car Bomb, Terror, al Qaeda, ISIS, IED

Do those words shock you? Are you afraid to employ them? That’s because of fear and self-censorship.

How about spic, kike, nigger, polack, coon, sand nigger, chink, wop, dago, wetback, cracker, gringo, honky, ofay, okie, redskin, cracker, white trash, kraut, jerry, hebe, mick, snout, greaseball, jap, and a very long list of more where those came from?

Context is important. These words are placed here by me intentionally in order to protest self-censorship, and in order to raise the idea of self-censorship as a real phenomenon. It’s to be free of the personal fear of using these words. This outburst is stimulated by the passage of the 2017 NDAA, because that passage alone may have the effect of causing web sites to self-censor.

This protest doesn’t amount to much, admittedly, because I am unknown to the authorities, hardly ever cited, have no wiki page, avoid notoriety, make no public appearances, and give no interviews. These blogs disappear from Google searches quite thoroughly unless one knows the titles. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, libertarianism has very little impact on American political life. If we measure it by the Libertarian Party, a very imperfect proxy, we find that it got 4 million votes or 3.2 percent, hardly a ringing endorsement from Americans.

In fact, the very unimportance of libertarianism in this election and in the minds of the electorate is another reason why the anti-free speech provision of the 2017 NDAA is so ill-motivated and extreme. It’s out to swat some barely noticeable mosquitoes that the voting public easily handles of its own accord.

Glenn Greenwald reported on a study of self-censorship. The 2013 Snowden revelations produced a self-censorship effect as people became more fearful about using certain words and being exposed to authority and sanctions. Don’t tell me you haven’t felt that and altered your behavior, because it is almost sure that you have. I don’t like it, and that’s why I will say “JIHAD NOW AND FOREVER” outright, in order to thumb my nose at the idea of such censorship. Screw government censorship! Screw the spying on us, even if it’s merely a monstrous pile of unread e-mails. Context matters hugely when we use words. Can government censors distinguish contexts and shadings of ideas? Whom will they regard as a danger? Why not anarcho-capitalists? Why not capitalists? What such bureaucrat censors might do is a crap shoot. The authority embedded in the 2017 NDAA is a crap shoot, almost sure to cause self-censorship. Whom will they lean on? Whom will they investigate? What words will be red flags? What activities will they take out of context? Whom will they scare? Who will be intimidated? Whom is this bill aimed at that Obama already signed?

In my opinion, it’s important for tiny and not so tiny cliques to say whatever they please on the internet if they choose, whatever philosophy they have, whatever emotions they display, but within a strict limit of not advocating violence or inciting it. I am opposed to violence in the form of revolutions, rebellions, coups, assassinations, bombings, arsons, etc.** But I am not opposed to speech, and that includes speech expressing hatred and strong emotions, and speech expressing ideas I consider wrong. Without free speech, we enter into a total control over our ideas and thoughts. Nothing is more deadly to humanity and the human being than that. Speech may definitely have negative effects, but they have to be accepted if we are to retain the basic human attribute of creativity. It’s a price we pay. Life is not perfect. We cannot simultaneously control speech and have it be free, and free speech or more broadly expression is a necessary condition of expressing our unique personalities. Besides, who is to say that what superficially seems like “bad” speech doesn’t have good effects by stimulating the formation of other ideas in those exposed or by venting emotions or by other pathways?

Is society or order in society inconsistent with free expression? Not at all. There exist lines of friction, however. There are borders that we have and that make sense. May I advocate broadly that you imbibe an arsenic brew and may I sell it? No, and such restrictions can be rationalized. I think laws against slander, libel and defamation of character make sense, even if Rothbard and Block think otherwise. My thinking is more in line with Frank van Dun’s that libertarian law is too narrow if it’s based solely on absence of physical aggression.

Can it be shown and has it been shown that Russian disinformation is as poisonous as arsenic and that Russian propaganda has infected hundreds of web sites? Can it be shown that the speech has poisoned the minds of Americans and undermined “our democracy”, a meme growing more popular by the day? This is certainly not the case. It’s downright ridiculous. What’s next? Will the government in its own paranoia point to hundreds and thousands of “entertainment” vehicles that have poisoned the culture? Have you checked out movies lately or scanned the offerings on all those cable channels?

More to the point, will it ever happen that government will look in the mirror and see what it has done to poison the democracy and culture?

If we extol Russian culture, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, ballet, piroshki, “Ballad of a Soldier”, “Potemkin” or agree with Putin in public on some issue, will that cross a red line for the censors? What if I send some money to Russia for some cause?

Shall Americans live in a culture of fear and self-censorship?

If I say, “Jihad, now and forever,” is that a red flag to some FBI computer program? Jihad has a meaning, one of several, of “the spiritual struggle within oneself against sin.” If I use “enough” such words, will FBI agents nevertheless appear at my door offering to help me obtain the materials needed to make a car bomb? Have I increased the chances of some government inquiry by writing this very blog, which is an entirely innocent exercise in promoting free speech? If you think it unwise, that shows your fear. Can you be fearful in such a way and free at the same time?

**I refer to violence initiated by the revolutionists, not in self defense. As an example of a revolution that was non-violent and successful, see the April Revolution in Korea in 1960. The incidents that triggered it were so gross and well-publicized that they were catalytic in bringing down the government very quickly and instituting a new form altogether. The government initiated the violence. The government used violence against peaceful protests, and that was part of the catalysis. The protestors threw rocks in self-defense. This revolution was not a violent one from the protestors’ side, if you get my meaning.

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