When hundreds of literary figures and employees of Penguin Random House took issue with the publisher’s $2 million book deal with right-wing Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett (Guardian, 10/27/22), they provoked a backlash that underscores the degree to which the right seeks to control speech and dissent.

While Barrett is one of the most extreme high court jurists in recent memory (Guardian, 8/26/22), the joint statement that was the target of the backlash highlighted her vote to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision which had recognized a constitutionally protected right to abortion. The letter urged the publishing house to reconsider the deal, which it stressed concerned “not just a book that we disagree with” but an “assault on inalienable human rights.”

Publisher’s Weekly (10/25/22) noted:

At the core of the statement argument against PRH’s decision to publish Coney Barrett is the alleged violation of the Bertelsmann Code of Conduct. The statement notes that Human Rights Watch, which was founded by former Random House publisher Robert L. Bernstein, cited the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in declaring abortion access a human right. The Code of Conduct for PRH parent company Bertelsmann also cites that declaration, noting that the publisher is “committed to the principles” of the document. The statement claims that proceeding to publish Coney Barrett’s book would be in violation of both the company’s Code of Conduct and international human rights.

The signers focused on the policies of the company, insisting that Bertelsmann—a multinational media conglomerate based in Germany—uphold its own standards. This might be seen as a David vs. Goliath story, in which rank-and-file employees call on a powerful employer to choose its self-proclaimed principles over profit. The signatories pose no danger of silencing Barrett, one of the most powerful voices in the world, whose words will be widely read regardless of whether PRH pays her millions of dollars for the right to distribute them. But not everyone sees it that way.

‘What the left does’

Jonathan Turley (FoxNews.com, 11/2/22) denounces speech he disagrees with as “a general psychosis.”

“Of course they’re calling for censorship! This is what the left does!” hyperventilated Rod Dreher at American Conservative (10/29/22). Dreher, an author for a PRH imprint, added that the signers “do not believe that a female Supreme Court justice who believes in the sanctity of unborn human life (as do tens of millions of Americans) should have a platform.” He seemed incensed that many of the signers were denigrating their “own employer, in public, in an effort to censor Justice Barrett.”

On FoxNews.com (10/28/22), law professor Jonathan Turley wrote an op-ed headlined “Cancel Culture Keeps Targeting Amy Coney Barrett. Now It’s an Absurd Call to Ban Her Book.” The Washington Examiner‘s Quin Hillyer (10/28/22) scoffed, “More than 500 so-called literary figures need to get a life.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Twitter, 10/27/22) called it an instance of “book banning.”

PEN America (10/31/22), perhaps the most mainstream organization to denounce the letter against Barrett’s book, said in a statement that while the political orientation of the Supreme Court was alarming, “if editors have concluded that a book…is of value to audiences, that decision should not be overturned at the behest of protesters who reject Coney Barrett’s views.” This seems to be not so much a defense of free expression as it is of editorial hierarchy, with the publishing world’s underlings enjoined to shut up once their bosses have reached a decision.

Some writers on the right wanted to put teeth in that judgment, arguing that letter signers must be punished severely for their insolence. Conservative journalist Cathy Young (Twitter, 10/28/22) called for the employees who signed the letter to be fired for “demonstrating their unfitness to work for a major publisher in a free society,” and Tablet writer and anti-woke crusader Wesley Yang (Twitter, 10/28/22) said the publisher “must fire every signatory and the wider industry must treat the signatory lists as a blacklist.”

The fallacy of free speech absolutism

Unsurprisingly, a for-profit media conglomerate takes a stand in favor of publishing a book it believes will make money (Wall Street Journal, 10/31/22).

The kerfuffle highlights a number of interesting contradictions and falsehoods that often pop up in right-wing freakouts about so-called liberal attacks on free speech. First of all, Barrett is hardly a lonely dissident fighting a censorship battle against an oppressive government. PRH is sticking with its contract with Barrett, despite all the outrage (Wall Street Journal, 10/31/22). And it isn’t as if liberal society could ever keep her from writing a book; conservative publishers like Encounter would certainly have offered her a contract if the big houses had passed.

Freedom of speech and of the press don’t mean everyone is entitled to a contract with a particular publisher, and Barrett’s pen is already far stronger than those of most writers: She has the ability, in her government job for life, to strike down our civil rights and liberties, and there is little us plebs can do about it. The conservative backlash is a naked attempt by the right to shield a powerful government figure from the hoi polloi—condemning even the discussion of whether her views need to be further amplified.

I have previously written about how these right-wing outbursts are often hypocritical and a form of projection, as the right will happily “cancel” leftists and liberals (FAIR.org, 10/23/20)—often enlisting the power of the state to turn their opinions into diktats. But the accusation that liberals are somehow censoring conservative thought by criticizing it also reminds us of the uncomfortable fallacy of free speech absolutism. Like media objectivity, it isn’t real.

Sure, we all like to think of ourselves as free-speech die-hards who would fight for the right for our enemies to disagree with us. But everyone who isn’t an anarchist thinks some forms of speech should be illegal—for example, “Give me all your money or I’ll kill you”—and no one who isn’t a sociopath thinks that you ought to say everything that’s legal to say.

Few people would question why employees of a publisher would object to their bosses approving a book that promoted slavery. If people see forced birth as the same sort of human rights atrocity, should they be condemned for raising similar objections? Meanwhile, there are certainly staffers at Evangelical publishing houses who would be alarmed to see a book defending reproductive rights in their lists; should they be attacked if they demanded that their employers stick to their proclaimed moral code?

The fact is, employees calling on their bosses to cancel a book deal, a performer boycotting Spotify because it gives a platform to disinformation, or an audience member heckling a speaker are all forms of speech. You can’t condemn any of it without letting go of your fanciful claim to free-speech absolutism.

Yang and Young appear to think criticizing a book deal is crossing a red line, that this is a form of speech that deserves not just condemnation but economic punishment. So there is the limit of their free speech advocacy—a limit, it should be pointed out, that seeks to punish the people with vastly less power in the conversation.

Associative freedom also key

To debunk the notion of free speech absolutism is not to reject the importance of free speech, which is vital to liberalism and democracy. Publications and publishing houses must have the freedom to have a point of view, and individuals must have the freedom to criticize an agenda that seeks to dial women’s rights back to the Middle Ages. In its statement in favor of the book’s publication, PEN America said it “is the role of major publishers to make available a wide array of ideas and perspectives.”

Surely all the open letter’s signatories would agree with that; the question is, how wide? PEN America’s leadership would draw a line somewhere; the letter-writers would draw it in a different place. That’s the disagreement—one that has to do more with how much you value the right to abortion than it does with how much you value the right to free speech.

Osita Nwanevu (New Republic, 7/6/20) defends “freedom of association, the under-heralded right of individuals to unite for a common purpose or in alignment with a particular set of values.”

Osita Nwanevu noted at the New Republic (7/6/20) that freedom of speech and freedom of association are both crucial liberal ideals, and yet “associative freedom is often entirely absent from popular discourse about liberalism.” That is certainly true about the hand-wringing over the future of “free society” in the PRH story. Nwanevu wrote:

While public universities in America are generally bound by the First Amendment, controversial speakers have no broad right to speak at private institutions. Those institutions do, however, have a right to decide what ideas they are and aren’t interested in entertaining, and what people they believe will or will not be useful to their communities of scholars—a right that limits the entry and participation not only of public figures with controversial views, but the vast majority of people in our society. Senators…have every right to have their views published in a newspaper. But they have no specific right to have those views published by any particular publication. Rather, publications have the right—both constitutionally as institutions of the press, and by convention as collections of individuals engaged in lawful projects—to decide what and whom they would or would not like to publish, based on whatever standards happen to prevail within each outlet.

Like campaigns against “cancel culture” and “wokeness,” the conservative agenda isn’t just about policing speech, but aims to punish those who challenge the establishment and social hierarchies. It is very much about destroying the associative freedom that is inherent to the existence of democratic society. That is the nature of conservatism, but these days that movement, falsely, takes on the rallying cry of “free speech” in doing so.

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