[Freddie deBoer] Nitro Edition: None of This is New

I did not enjoy this essay by Timothy Egan. With unusual candor, Egan says flat out that he thinks suppression of the (admittedly kooky) views of arch-conservatices is necessary for his side to win. He waves to some vague sense in which technology has changed politics and the idea that we’re somehow in a uniquely pernicious moment in American history as justification for using a variety of legal and technocratic solutions to make what are fundamentally social and political problems go away. As usual the normative questions people want to debate (should we make those problems go away) are potentially made irrelevant by the empirical question they don’t (can these tactics actually make those problems go away). Personally I find Egan’s take to be both wrong (incorrect on the merits) and bad (poorly written and argued). Let me take you on a journey.

I used to believe that the remedy for bad speech is more speech. Now that seems archaic.

The overall form of this essay is pretty standard: it’s an argument that digital technologies have changed/are changing/will change the world, so we must do whatever the author thinks we should do. “Before it was the same, but now it is different” is something essayists love to pepper in there because it’s almost tautologically true and because most readers will just sagely scratch their beards over it instead of thinking too deep.

For example, we might think about the strange perpetual newness of the internet in this genre. Before you could trust in the benevolence of more speech, now you can’t because, what - the internet? Because truth can’t survive in the digital age or whatever? Do people not get that widespread adoption of the internet is 25 years old? I still hear this stuff all the time. “The internet will totally remake education, there won’t be physical schools anymore, pass the blunt.” What do you mean, will? When the internet finally gets here? The internet has been doing what, exactly, for the prior quarter century? Warming up? Why would the internet suddenly become a font for misinformation now, rather than in 2012, say? We had Facebook then. We had YouTube then. We had Breitbart then. We had 4Chan then. We had a bizarre reactionary political movement made up of guys who own snowblower dealerships spreading lies on the internet about birth certificates and the secular left agenda. Why would misinformation be anymore prevalent now compared to in 2012? Republicans were too honest back then? No one has a remotely plausible material explanation for why today would be different - because “misinformation” is sophistry, a way to avoid having to actually make an argument.

The real reasons so many people believe that this is an inflection point in history are a) as human beings we are sure Now is unique/special/important because we live Now and we believe we are important so Now must be important; b) claiming a crisis inspires people to adopt a cause without pondering whether it makes any sense, such as when trying to solve thorny political questions with shortcuts; and c) a lot of people desperately need to believe that Trump was a totally unique figure in human affairs, rather than a garden variety demagogue, to flatter themselves that they lived under authoritarianism. (When these people tell their stories of enduring Trump to their grandchildren they’re going to be insufferable.) Regardless, the notion that speech is more dangerous than it ever was is a fiction. Speech was always dangerous. What people want is for it to always be dangerous for their enemies and never dangerous to them. Life doesn’t work that way.

Now is not new. How’s that for a general aphorism for life: now is not new. And the continuing prevalence of “the internet will change everything” narratives, in 2021, is so odd. We had the internet in school when I was in junior high. The internet has already occurred.