The "Unseen" victims of speech suppression

Readers of this Stack are now doubt aware of the many, many examples of voices being silenced or dampened in recent years. From tenured faculty (e.g. Jay Bhattacharya), scientists (e.g. Bret Weinstein), public intellectuals (e.g. Jordan Peterson) , journalists (e.g. Alex Berenson), and on down to thoughtful must-read anonymous internet writers (e.g. El Gato Malo & Simulation Commander). This might take the form of outright bans, shadow ban, deboosting, removal of videos, etc., etc. from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. I know I am missing countless other names above, just listing a few of the top of my head. Luckily, other platforms (Substack, Rumble, podcasts) have enabled these folks to continue to reach a large audience, but we can’t know how much larger their audiences would be had they not been subject to both hard & soft forms of censorship.

Let me pause and repost a favorite piece of wisdom I’ve used in a previous post:

Friends, in the context of this issue, I’ve been a bad economist. In my defense, I think most other folks have as well. You see, when we rightly discuss the injustice being done in these cases of speech suppression, the focus is entirely on the wrong being done to the suppressed speaker. This person is the direct victim of the censorship and it is justified that we both sympathize with that person, as well as argue for the removal of the suppression of their speech.

But if we stop there in our analysis, we are being bad economists. The person directly censored is the “visible effect”, the “the effect that can be seen”. But to be a good economist, we must also take account of the “effects that must be foreseen” or as Bastiat calls it elsewhere, the “unseen”.

What am I getting at? Well, it just recently occurred to me that when we think about someone being censored, that person suffers direct and possibly serious harm, but the perhaps larger impact is on the potential audience for that speech who is deprived of it. Any thinking person on this earth will undoubtedly be influenced in their thoughts and actions by the thoughts of others. Building walls between the thoughts of one person and another harms both people. In cases where someone has important things to say, the combined harm to audience who is unable to hear it may far exceed the direct harm to the person being suppressed.

Let me provide an example. Suppose for whatever reason, over the last half century, the powers that be had been able to completely silence Thomas Sowell. No books, newspaper columns, interviews, television appearances, etc. This would obviously have had a great affect on Dr. Sowell in terms of income, self-esteem, and any number of other personal issues we can’t name. This might very well have been a tragedy for him. At the same time, it would have been a tragedy for me. Sowell’s research, words, and thoughts have taught me and shaped my views more than perhaps any other thinker in history. I’m not alone. There are thousands of other Sowell folks who list Sowell as one of their most important intellectual influences (Genius of Thomas Sowell podcast)... But, of course, Sowell is only one example. All of our lives would be poorer, more ignorant, and less fun if we had not been exposed to the speech of various people.

So, while the direct harm to Jay Bhattacharya, Bret Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Alex Berenson, El Gato Malo & Simulation Commander is substantial and infuriating, it is the “unseen” audience out there that was not exposed, and therefore was not able to learn anything from these folks (even if that learning meant sharpening their disagreement with them) that we should also consider. When voices are suppressed, we all lose.

Addendum

Well, I was looking for a gif to include in this post, and now I see that Frederick Douglass beat me to the punch by ~160 years. Well, I already wrote the post, so I’ll go ahead a share anyway. At least I’m in the tradition of one of our country’s greats! 🤣