Opinion | To stop the cancel culture, sit back and let the free market take over
- Texas is passing a bill aimed at stopping liberal censorship of conservatives by social media companies
- But the better solution is to rely on the free enterprise system. In other words, let other platforms give big tech a run for its money
A whole host of other lesser known figures have also been cancelled – de-platformed, and in many ways silenced – by the likes of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google.
What would John Stuart Mill, the philosopher who wrote On Liberty, have thought of this? He would have been appalled. And he would have been equally perturbed if the tables had been turned: if conservatives had been the powerful figures on the internet and liberals were being cancelled on grounds of “offensiveness”, “misinformation”, “hate speech” and all the rest of these very subjective indictments.
As it happens, the right wing is now in the process of reacting against this left-wing onslaught on open-ended discussion. Texas is passing legislation limiting the ability of social justice warriors in the media to squelch the views of those with whom they disagree.
Sponsors of this bill are attempting to stop liberal censorship of conservatives. There are even some libertarians who mistakenly support such initiatives.
But this – that only the government can really censor free speech and only the state can use legal violence to stop the spread of ideas – is problematic.