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FAIR
View article on FAIR's website ([link removed])
Trump's Protest Threat Reflects Belief That Free Speech Belongs to Some Jim Naureckas ([link removed])
In The Dawn of Everything ([link removed]) , David Graeber and David Wengrow note that the Western notion of freedom derives from the Roman legal tradition ([link removed]) , in which freedom was conceived as "the power of the male household head in ancient Rome, who could do whatever he liked with his chattels and possessions, including his children and slaves."
Because of this, "freedom was always defined—at least potentially—as something exercised to the cost of others."
You have to understand this notion of freedom—that to be free, you have to make someone else less free—to make sense of the idea that Donald Trump is a champion of "free speech."
NYT: A Theory of Media That Explains 15 Years of Politics
Ezra Klein (New York Times, 2/25/25 ([link removed]) ) thought Martin Gurri's argument that "maybe Trump is building something more stable, creating a positive agenda that might endure....was worth hearing out."
This is, unfortunately, not a fringe idea. Last week, the New York Times (2/25/25 ([link removed]) ) ran a long interview Ezra Klein ([link removed]) did with Trump-supporting intellectual (and former CIA officer) Martin Gurri, who said his main reason for voting for Trump was that "I felt like he was for free speech." "Free speech is a right-wing cause," Gurri claimed.
Trump is the "free speech" champion who said of a protester at one of his rallies during the 2016 campaign (Washington Post, 2/23/16 ([link removed]) ): "I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that...? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
Trump sues news outlets when he doesn't like how they edit interviews, or their polling results (New York Times, 2/7/25 ([link removed]) ). Before the election, future Trump FBI Director Kash Patel (FAIR.org, 11/14/24 ([link removed]) ) promised to "come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.... Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out." Trump's FCC chair is considering yanking broadcast licenses from networks for "news distortion," or for letting Kamala Harris have a cameo on Saturday Night Live (FAIR.org, 2/26/25 ([link removed]) ).
Nonetheless, Trump is still seen by many as a defender of free speech, because he sticks up for the free speech of people whose speech is supposed to matter—like right-wingers who weren't allowed to post content ([link removed]) that was deemed hate speech, disinformation or incitement to violence on social media platforms ([link removed]) . As the headline of a FAIR.org piece (11/4/22 ([link removed]) ) by Ari Paul put it, "The Right Thinks Publishers Have No Right Not to Publish the Right." Another key "free speech" issue for the right, and much of the center: people who have been "canceled" by being criticized too harshly on Twitter (FAIR.org, 8/1/20 ([link removed]) , 10/23/20
([link removed]) ).
** 'Agitators will be imprisoned'
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Donald J. Trump: All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Trump (Truth Social, 3/4/25 ([link removed]) ), of course, does not have the power ([link removed]) to unilaterally withhold funds that have been authorized by Congress ([link removed]) .
Now Trump (Truth Social, 3/4/25 ([link removed]) ) has come out with a diktat threatening sanctions against any educational institution that tolerates forbidden demonstrations:
All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS!
The reference to banning masks is a reminder that, for the right, freedom is a commodity that belongs to some people and not to others. You have an inalienable right to defy mask mandates ([link removed]) , not despite but mainly because you could potentially harm someone by spreading a contagious disease—just as you supposedly have a right ([link removed]) to carry an AR-15 rifle. Whereas if you want to wear a mask ([link removed]) to protect yourself from a deadly illness—or from police surveillance—sorry, there's no right to do that.
But more critically, what's an "illegal protest"? The context, of course, is the wave of campus protests against the genocidal violence unleashed by Israel against Palestinians following the October 7, 2023, attacks (though Trump's repressive approach to protests certainly is not limited to pro-Palestinian ones).
On January 30, Trump promised ([link removed]) to deport all international students who "joined in the pro-jihadist protests," and to "cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.” He ordered the Justice Department to "quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities."
A federal task force convened by Trump (CNN, 3/3/25 ([link removed]) ) is threatening to pull $50 million in government contracts from New York's Columbia University because of its (imaginary ([link removed]) ) “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students,” which has been facilitated, according to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy ([link removed]) , by "the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture."
So the expression of ideas—Palestinian solidarity, US criticism, generic "radicalism"—has to be suppressed, because they lead to, if they do not themselves constitute, "harassment of Jewish students" (by which is meant pro-Israel students ([link removed]) ; Jewish student supporters of Palestinian rights are frequently targets ([link removed]) of this suppression). Those ideas constitute "censorship," and the way to combat this censorship is to ban those ideas.
No one is talking about cracking down on students who proclaim "I Stand With Israel," on the grounds that they may intimidate Palestinian students—even though they are endorsing an actual, ongoing genocide (FAIR.org, 12/12/24 ([link removed]) ). That's because—in the longstanding Western tradition that Trump epitomizes—free speech is the possession of some, meant to be used against others.
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Featured Image: Demonstration in London in support of a free Palestine (Creative Commons photo ([link removed]) : Kyle Taylor).
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