Much has been already written about censorship and the reasons for resistance on Substack by better writers than I (Matt Taibbi, Michael Mohr, Michael Shellenberger, Alex Guttentag, N.S. Lyons, Chris Bray, The Starfire Codes, Alex Perez and many more) in response not only to the Substack invasion of the Woke pod people, but the state of censorship in American society in general. Today I don’t want to rehash what has already been brilliantly described. Instead, I want to tell my own tale of how I was taught about censorship and why it is wrong in the long ago 20th Century.
In 1991, about the time I graduated from high school, me and my sister and my mother went to an art exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. The show was “Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany,” a traveling exhibit from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It collected many of the modernist works the Nazis seized when they came to power, displaying their loot in the most disparaging way possible to prove the superiority of the Nazi ideology. In the original 1937 exhibit they showed the “degenerate art” interspersed with plaques of insults and examples of what they considered proper Aryan art.
The 1991 exhibit recreated the 1937 one, a chilling display of totalitarianism in the super-safe 1990s of America. We had defeated the Nazis, the Soviet Union was in the process of collapse, and we were told it was because of the ideals of small-”l”liberalism; universal suffrage, open elections, a free press, individual rights, and free markets. We won. But—beware. This Degenerate Art exhibit? This is the warning. Censorship is the big red flag. Beyond this lies authoritarianism, totalitarianism, slavery, and madness.
Not too long before I was born the United States had seen some big freedom of speech cases, Lenny Bruce, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” trial, and others that had put to an end the long standing censorship laws going back to the 19th Century. Post-war small “l” liberalism was ascendant and we would not be like those totalitarian regimes we fought and were fighting. We were the West, the free republics, and we would be free people.
The first contemporary free speech issue I was aware of was the famous Nazi march in Skokie. Many people were offended and disgusted but the dinner table conversation in our house was about the importance of free speech. If we wanted to be able to have free speech then everyone had the same right. Recently my mother told me that while many were quitting their ACLU memberships at that time because of the ACLUs defense for free speech she joined up, because of the importance of that principle.
The next incident I recall was what may have been the West’s greatest free speech stand, the support for Salman Rushdie and “The Satanic Verses.” Threatened, in hiding, chased from one city to another, our political Right and Left stood together against the theocratic threats from the Ayatollah. The message was clear—in the West, we support freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom of conscience. This was bedrock. We would all defend this right.
Somewhere this past year I saw a comment asking whether the Left would support Rushdie today, or would they be worried about triggering some Muslim activists (while completely ignoring other Muslims, of course. For no population is a monolith of opinion). I wonder…
The Reagan years did bring a rise in conservative culture, mostly from the religious right. Fights over the “Piss Christ” and other controversial art works welled up. They were all tamped down by the principle. Stand by the First Amendment, always.
We learned to summon up our stance with one seminal phrase: “If you don’t like it, don’t read it.” Or watch it, or listen to it, or view it. It ain’t for you. But it’s for other people and that’s ok. There’s room for everyone in Western culture.
So by the time I got to high school the principle of unfettered freedom of speech, artistic freedom, and political voice was firmly established. Not just for me but for an entire generation.
Then we had Tipper Gore and her hearings about the rap music and the rock and/or roll music. Laughable and no one took her seriously. We got to see some great musicians in front of congressional hearings (Frank Zappa, man!) and the CDs (yes, CDs) got warning stickers on them that everyone ignored.
On TV the Simpsons was a horrid anti-family anti-establishment show that was going to corrupt America’s youth, etc. etc. No one cared and the show was incredibly popular. The moral panics stopped no one.
Beavis and Butthead hit just about the time college started for me and boy did they piss some people off. They couldn’t say “fire.” Again, no one cared and no one stopped watching. We didn’t turn into monsters under the influence of their antics. The show wasn’t canceled. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. It’s not for you then.
By the mid-90s the first wave of Political Correctness hit. Much has been said about it in hindsight but at the time, again, no one really cared. They could yell all they want but the TV shows kept going on, the books were being written, and no one stopped doing what they wanted. No one listened to them. If you don’t like it….
Our response was the universal Generation X shrug. “Whatever.”
And after that, adulthood, and things just coasted. I listened to music, bought the books I wanted, watched the TV shows and movies I wanted to. I believed, like most Americans, that our individual rights were well-established, sacrosanct, and we could be confident that they would not perish from the earth. We would always be free to express ourselves as we wished and to enjoy the free expressions of others. We were Americans. This is our birthright.
Well. We know the rest.
I won’t re-litigate the current authoritarian atmosphere here—the list of excellent writers I mentioned at the beginning have already done that better than I can.
But I do want say, we are sad, mourning. There’s a deep existential sadness amongst us who grew up in the Free Times. Watching the books we love get disparaged then re-written then disappear. Watching a movie and going wait, something is missing now. Where did that scene go? Then realizing it was cut and now the movie is awkward, the flow stutters. The TV show that was pulled off streaming. What you don’t have physical media? Sorry, you won’t see it again. And the codecs are updated constantly so even if you have the DVDs well, good luck.
The tree has been uprooted and the roots cut off. There is no longer a past where we can say, “I was there. I remember that. And it was good. It made us what we are now. Made me what I am now. This book defined me. This movie spoke to me. You may not understand it but we did. It is us.”
Your Year Zero. We don’t want it.
Referring back to that museum exhibit I started this essay with, the one about Degenerate Art. This past summer of 2023 the “comedian” Hannah Gadsby put together an art exhibit of Pablo Picasso’s work at the Brooklyn Museum titled “It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso According to Hannah Gadsby.”
Centered solely around her hatred of Picasso and the usual bevy of un-Woke behaviors by which he should be judged by contemporary Social Justice beliefs (or this week’s beliefs, at least), the gallery was hung with some of his work, interspersed with paintings by women artists, not necessarily Cubists but just paintings Gadsby liked. Ones she deemed superior due to the identity of the artist. Next to many of the Picasso works were her Twitter-like snarky responses, insulting and ridiculing the artist and his creations.
In other words, Gadsby used the exact same techniques as the Nazi exhibit to disparage art she found to be degenerate according to the cultural ideas of the Social Justice Warriors. The Woke using the tools of the totalitarians.
What the fuck happened?