John Kerry Accurately Explains First Amendment, MAGA World Loses Its Mind
In this stupid partisan world we live in, the MAGA world has decided that simply accurately explaining that the First Amendment does not allow for the suppression of speech (which is a good thing!) is somehow a call for abolishing the First Amendment. This isn’t even “blaming the messenger.” It’s misinterpreting the messenger and demanding he be drawn and quartered.
We’ve pointed out a few times how ridiculous both Democrats and Republicans have been of late when it comes to the First Amendment. Unfortunately, both have been making arguments for trimming back our First Amendment rights. Donald Trump has called for jailing those who criticize the Supreme Court (something, I should note, he regularly does himself).
However, as we’ve pointed out, Democrats don’t have the best track record on speech either. They’ve been caught calling for jailing social media execs over their speech, punishing booksellers for selling books they dislike, and making certain kinds of misinformation illegal.
So, I was certainly concerned when I saw a few headlines this week about John Kerry’s conversation last week at a World Economic Forum event, in which he talked about the First Amendment as a “major block” to punishing companies that spread disinformation.
His word choice was awkward and could be interpreted as criticizing the First Amendment. However, after watching the video clip of him saying it, I realized he’s just accurately saying what reality is: the First Amendment is a block to removing disinformation.
Because… it is? And that’s generally a good thing.
He was asked about how to deal with disinformation online, and he says, factually, that you can’t use the law to suppress that speech:
“You know there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc. But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence…”
If he then said “and that’s why we need to repeal the First Amendment,” then I’d be right there with the people concerned about this. And I would rather he followed up that statement by saying something along the lines of “and it’s a good thing the First Amendment is a block to such things.” But he still doesn’t appear to be saying that the First Amendment needs to change. He appears to be explaining reality to a questioner from the audience who wants to suppress speech.
But, of course, the MAGAsphere has gone crazy over this. Fox News, the National Review, and RT (of course) are all hammering it. On YouTube, the MAGA nutjobs are going crazy over it. Just a few examples, starting with everyone’s most mocked Russian-paid troll victim, Tim Pool:
Except, nowhere does Kerry call for “ending” free speech at all. He just notes that the First Amendment blocks suppressing speech by the government. Which is true! You’d think that the Russian-paid Tim Pool would, you know, appreciate that?
There are a bunch of others just like this:
Again, if he had actually called to abolish the First Amendment or even to weaken it, I’d be here calling it out. And again, as mentioned above, there have been other Democrats that have, in fact, called for unconstitutional speech suppression.
From the descriptions I initially saw of what he said, I was all ready to write a piece slamming Kerry for this. But then I watched it. And he just was… explaining accurately that the First Amendment blocks the government from suppressing speech.
He doesn’t call for that to be changed. He certainly doesn’t (as some of the folks above claim) call for “abolishing” the First Amendment or for censorship. One of the screenshots above from one of Elon’s favorite Twitter trolls falsely quotes Kerry as saying that the First Amendment “stands as a major roadblock for us right now,” which is not what he said at all. That’s just false.
Since the question itself was regarding disinformation around climate change, he does say that the best way to deal with climate change is to “win the ground” and elect people who can “implement change.” But it’s clear that he’s talking about implementing change regarding the climate, not about changing the First Amendment.
Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure literally none of the people screaming about this have discussed Trump’s announced plans to jail people who criticize the Supreme Court (which is a legitimate First Amendment threat).
I wonder why?