E-Pluribus | November 9, 2023
Free speech for thee and me and him and her and them; not all free-speech advocates are hypocrites; and artificial intelligence has a new use: propaganda art.
A round-up of the latest and best musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Jacob Mchangama: Free Speech Defenders Must Be Consistent
During extreme crises, the usual rules are sometimes suspended for reasons of security or safety. While such exceptions may be justified, they are dangerous nevertheless. At Persuasion, Jacob Mchangama urges all free speech defenders to resist the temptation to use the current Middle East war to silence their political opponents. That strategy often ends badly for everyone.
In times of crisis, the default reaction of authorities and institutions is to assert control of the public sphere. The war between Israel and Hamas is no exception. In France and Germany, authorities have temporarily banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations, citing public order and the need to prevent antisemitism (the French ban was partially upheld by a top court). In Denmark, Palestinian protesters burning Israeli flags are being investigated under a provision of the criminal code protecting foreign nations against insult. The European Commission and its relentless crusader for online safety, Thierry Breton, have sent letters to X, YouTube, Meta, and TikTok, demanding that these platforms not only delete “illegal content” (a concept that differs widely between member states and depends on context) but also the vaguely-defined concept of “disinformation,” which is not in and of itself illegal under European human rights law.
The outpouring of antisemitism and glorification of terror has also made media, cultural, and educational institutions jittery. The Guardian, citing antisemitism, fired cartoonist Steve Bell for a cartoon critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the newspaper deemed antisemitic. Several cultural events in both Europe and the United States featuring Palestinian authors, filmmakers, and musicians have been canceled despite no relationship to, or support of, terrorism. In the United States, lawmakers are demanding that universities that fail to discipline students for what they consider antisemitism be defunded and even that foreign students supportive of Palestine be deported.
But open democracies should not retreat from the institutional and civic commitment to free expression, however ugly many of its current manifestations are. Freedom of expression serves its most important function at times of deep polarization, where the sense of righteous indignation tempts us to silence the viewpoints we hate with scant regard for the collateral damage to democracy, freedom, and tolerance that constitute the necessary precondition for social peace in diverse societies.
Read it all here.
Jonathan Chait: Why Haven’t the Free-Speech Liberals Denounced This? (They Have).
Pointing out your opponent’s hypocrisy can be a legitimate way of undermining their credibility, but only if the accusation is true, writes Jonathan Chait for New York Magazine. Chait points out the danger in dividing everyone into “good” and “bad” groups without actually considering the facts and recognizing diversity of opinion on the “other side.”
The main organization dedicated to defending free-speech norms against both the left and the right is the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. If you peruse FIRE’s website, you’ll find it includes a long list of defenses of free speech for left-wing activists and academics in general, and anti-Israel activists in particular.
FIRE has gotten so accustomed to being accused of ignoring right-wing violations of free speech that it is, in fact, actively criticizing that it has a collection of them. To offer a few examples of this common trope, here are student-debt activist Melissa Byrne, The Nation columnist Elie Mystal, and Democratic satirist Doug J. Balloon asserting that FIRE has refused to defend some left-wing victim of cancel culture that FIRE has, in fact, defended.
It is true, of course, that hypocrisy exists on every issue, including free speech and cancel culture. Broadly speaking, there are three approaches to free speech. The first is to complain about censorship by the left while ignoring or defending censorship by the right. The second is to complain about censorship by the right while ignoring or defending censorship by the left. And the third is to attempt to have some consistent set of principles that can defend free-speech norms regardless of content.
Calling out hypocrisy is an important tool to identify the difference between members of the first two categories and members of the third category. Strategic silence is a form of hypocrisy: If you only call out illiberalism by one side, while ignoring it by the other side, you are effectively legitimizing illiberal actions by your allies.
For those in categories one or two, the third category is deeply inconvenient. Since they wish to denounce their political enemies for impinging on free speech while ignoring similar actions by their allies, they don’t want to acknowledge that any consistent standard is possible. Asserting that nobody actually opposes illiberalism on the merits frees you up from grappling with this position.
That impulse is not limited to free-speech issues. Insisting that nobody really upholds a value is a way of giving yourself permission to ignore it. Brutal dictators like to say that every government violates human rights; gangsters are fond of insisting they’re no more crooked than any other powerful person.
Read the whole thing.
Julia Friedman: Faking Hope: AI Art as Propaganda
Fake images are nothing new, and propagandists have abused the power of visuals for centuries. However, the ease with which falsified images can be produced with current technology, especially with artificial intelligence (AI), writes Julia Friedman at Quillette, means we must be more vigilant than ever.
About a week after Hamas slaughtered more than 1,400 Israelis, a user of the AI platform Midjourney created a reddit post entitled “Visions of Peace.” It features ten images, all of which show smiling and hugging people—both children and adults—who can be identified by the their dress as Arabs and Jews. In one image, a girl and a boy are sitting by the seaside. To ensure that there is no doubt about their respective group affiliations, the girl is wearing an oversized Star of David necklace, while the boy’s head is covered with a keffiyeh. This display of symbols presumably reflects the verbal prompt that generated the image—probably something along the lines of “Jewish girl and Palestinian boy smiling and embracing by the sea.”
While it is photorealistic, the image is replete with improbable details that result from the AI’s translation of language prompts into unrefined visual renderings. The girl’s necklace is preposterously large, and her Star of David is the size of the crosses worn by Orthodox priests. The boy is dressed like an old man—white button-up shirt, dress coat, and a keffiyeh secured with an agal—the same sartorial inaccuracy as in the staged 1993 photograph. The children’s oddly intertwined fingers are a telltale AI flaw, as is the mismatched landscape in the background. AI is still learning the tricks that were mastered by Western painters six centuries ago.
The comments on the initial post were overwhelmingly positive. Many Redditors recognized and welcomed the propagandistic nature of the image of the two children. One commentator even spells it out: “This is the kind of propaganda we need!” He had his wish, as the image was shared and reshared numerous times across social media, often accompanied by emoji-filled, inspirational comments, such as “Pray for peace,” “Hate is learned, love is our nature,” and “We used to be friends.” There is clearly a market for images like this—easily legible (cue the jumbo necklace) virtual modifications of reality. But, thanks to the photorealistic nature of generative AI art, not everyone who liked and shared the image realized that it was simulated. The image pretends to be photography, and by association it pretends to be true to life. The story of Ricki Rosen’s staged 1993 photograph caused a stir at the time because back then people expected such an image to be a snapshot of two real-life friends hugging. That would have been a sign of real-life hope and inspiration, epitomized by two boys growing up in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords to coexist peacefully. When the conflict was reignited in 2014, the same image, improbably enough, was again used to urge peace and reconciliation.
[. . .]
Photorealistic AI-generated images, if recognized as such, should function as symbolic representations that invite the suspension of our disbelief. They should not be seen as photographs, and as therefore “truthful,” and they must remain separate from any context in which they could be confused with staged analogue or digital photographs.
Read it all.
Around Twitter (X)
Eric Kaufmann examines diverging views of government power among critics of wokeness. Here are some key excerpts of the incendiary discussion that unfolded:
Rikki Schlott weighed in:
Twitter account Wokal Distance pushed back:
Helen Pluckrose will have the last word here, but there’s plenty more to the debate on X:
And finally, John Milton on liberty: