Free speech has no party: how both left and right cancel

The Short Version

Is censorship a habit of the left, or of whoever holds power? Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin of Triggernometry, talking with Joe Rogan, and journalist Michael Shellenberger all describe a left that once defended free speech and now polices it [1][2]. Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE, agrees the recent surge began in left-leaning institutions but brings figures showing about one third of successful attempts to punish professors come from the right [3]. Read closely, even the critics of the left do not say censorship belongs to one camp: Shellenberger notes that for most of history it was the right censoring the left, and the Triggernometry hosts say every side uses these tactics [1][2]. The lasting point is that the urge to silence follows power and tribe, which is why people who defend speech on principle end up attacked from both directions [1][2][3].

Table of contents

What They Said

Rogan, Foster and Kisin: the free speech left disappeared

All three men in the Triggernometry conversation describe themselves as coming from the left and feeling abandoned by it [1]. Rogan says his parents were hippies in San Francisco during the Vietnam War, and that liberals, as he grew up understanding them, were the people of open-mindedness and of the ACLU defending even Nazis' right to march [1]. The rule he took from that: "The only solution to bad speech is better speech." [1]

Foster tells the same story from Britain. He fell in love with the anti-establishment left of Bill Hicks, the left that challenged authority [1]. Then, he says, a herd mentality arrived, and the moment you questioned or pushed back you found yourself "exiled from the group" [1].

Rogan's sharpest charge concerns misinformation rules. He asks where the accountability is for those who spread false claims during COVID and concludes: "They don't really care about misinformation. They care about controlling information." [1] Kisin grants that concern about inaccurate information is legitimate, but says one side cannot police the other while ignoring its own falsehoods [1]. Rogan adds that big technology companies controlled information from one ideological direction until Elon Musk bought Twitter [1].

Their examples of speech punished mostly run one way. Foster warns of a creeping soft authoritarianism in Britain, pointing to Scotland's hate crime law, which covers public performances including stand-up, and to a senior police officer who told him England might have hate speech laws within two to two and a half years [1]. Rogan argues that once words can put you in a cage, the definition of hate can keep moving [1]. They mention comedian Andrew Schulz, whose Brooklyn special was pulled after he interviewed Trump, and note that such attempts now tend to backfire and make people bigger [1]. Foster praises those who answer with "You are not going to cancel me." [1]

Yet they refuse to make it a one-party story. Rogan's diagnosis is tribal: people pick a team and decide it can do no harm, and in the same exchange the labels left and right are set aside because "it's just tribes" [1]. When the complaint is made that a comedian's joke is being weaponized by the Democratic party, the next words are "That's what every side does." [1] And Foster, whose relatives were jailed in Venezuela, asks why the far left escapes the scrutiny the far right receives, then states the rule for both: if you hold the right to account, "you've got to hold your own side to account" [1].

Michael Shellenberger: the left changed, and the target is populism

Shellenberger gives the most direct version of the claim. In the 1990s, he says, his side was anti-war, pro-free speech and pro-gay rights; now, in his words, the left is pro-censorship, and he asks "who changed here" [2]. His evidence is his own reporting. The Twitter Files Brazil, he says, revealed one of the most extreme forms of censorship in any democracy: a Supreme Court justice secretly demanding that particular journalists and politicians be banned from every platform [2]. He cites a congressman supposedly deplatformed for election misinformation over a video about labor issues posted the day after the election, and calls it "arbitrary rule by one guy" [2]. He says he was personally assured by Lula in 1994 that his socialism would be democratic and would respect free speech, and now feels lied to [2].

His history, though, cuts against a simple partisan reading. Over the last couple of hundred years, he says, "it's really the right censoring the left" with few exceptions [2]. Conservatives were about tradition and propriety, and the most dramatic American episode he names is the early 20th century, when socialists were arrested and thousands of people incarcerated [2]. That, he says, is why free speech was part of the left tradition until recently [2].

So what changed? His answer is about power more than ideology. The censorship, he argues, is counter-populist: a reaction by what he calls the deep state and a center-left global elite to movements that challenge them on COVID, elections and mass migration [2]. He even poses the test case himself: if Bernie Sanders had become president in 2016, would the same forces have sided with Republicans to censor a populist Democratic party? He says he does not know the answer [2].

He also describes how he came to his own view. He once thought support for free speech came naturally, then realized "it was taught to me" [2]. His father told him about the ACLU defending the right of Nazis to march through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors. As a boy he found that horrifying, and his father explained that "censorship would then be used against other people", and that "you want to know who the Nazis are" [2].

Greg Lukianoff: the numbers on both sides

Lukianoff defines cancel culture as the uptick, from around 2014, in campaigns to get people fired, expelled or deplatformed for speech that would be protected by the First Amendment if it applied, together with the climate of fear that followed [3]. His book, he stresses, covers both sides [3].

On the left, he describes campus shout-downs, DEI administrators joining in, and mandatory DEI statements that he calls effectively political litmus tests [3]. He is critical of California community colleges requiring even chemistry professors to work DEI concepts into teaching: "It's even worse to tell them what they must say." [3]

On the right, he gives a figure: about one third of successful attempts to punish professors come from the right, often from off-campus sources and at less elite schools [3]. FIRE sued Florida over the Stop WOKE Act, which tried to ban topics in higher education; a judge called it dystopian and FIRE won [3]. His most useful contribution is a pair of matching descriptions. The left's "perfect rhetorical fortress" is a series of steps for dismissing a speaker: label them conservative, then white, straight or male, until almost nobody is left whose wrong opinion must be answered [3]. The right's "efficient rhetorical fortress" is shorter: do not listen to liberals, experts or journalists, and for some, anyone who is not pro-Trump [3]. He sees both as versions of "winning arguments without winning arguments" [3]. He admits he once did it himself, skipping Thomas Sowell and Camille Paglia because they were labeled right-wing [3].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

They agree the left moved. Rogan, Foster, Kisin and Shellenberger say so from experience [1][2]. Lukianoff's timeline fits: the shift was obvious on campus by 2014, and until about 2013 students were free speech's best supporters [3].

They agree on the founding example. All three conversations return to the ACLU defending Nazis' right to march. Rogan cites it as what liberalism meant [1], Shellenberger learned it from his father [2], and Lukianoff points to FIRE's documentary about Ira Glasser and Skokie, where letting the Nazis speak made them look like fools [3].

They disagree on how much of the problem is the right's. The Rogan and Shellenberger conversations offer almost no current examples of censorship from the right, and Shellenberger frames the present wave as a center-left elite project [1][2]. Lukianoff says a third of the successful campaigns against professors come from the right and has a court victory against Florida's Stop WOKE Act to show for it [3]. The gap has an explanation in what each is looking at. The Triggernometry hosts and Shellenberger are describing media, platforms, Britain and Brazil, where the pressure they report comes from governments and institutions they place on the center-left [1][2]. Lukianoff counts cases on American campuses, where pressure from the right arrives through legislatures and outside campaigns [3].

They disagree on the cause. Rogan says tribalism [1]. Shellenberger says a reaction against populism by those in power [2]. Lukianoff says a lazy habit of dismissing people instead of answering them, combined with university bureaucracy and low viewpoint diversity [3]. These are compatible, but they point to different fixes: Rogan and the Triggernometry hosts want long conversations in good faith [1], Shellenberger wants transparency and exposure through reporting [2], and Lukianoff wants institutional leaders who hold firm and a stronger free speech culture [3].

They differ on misinformation. Rogan treats the term as a cover for control [1]. Kisin concedes the worry is legitimate and objects to one-sided enforcement [1]. Shellenberger says true information has been labeled harmful and suppressed [2]. Lukianoff's objection is practical: "when you censor people, it doesn't change their opinion." [3]

Why It Works

Censorship follows power. Shellenberger's history has the right censoring when it held cultural authority, and his Sanders thought experiment suggests the target is whoever threatens those in charge [2]. Rogan makes the same observation about the period when one ideological group held sway over social media: the tribal mentality kicks in and people forget that everyone has to be able to talk, and that "you might be wrong" [1].

Tribes excuse their own. Rogan says each team minimizes the extremes on its own side [1]. Lukianoff's name for a related move is whataboutism, answering criticism of your side with the other side's alleged wrongdoing, and he notes that January 6 and the 2020 riots get used to deflect from each other [3].

Suppression backfires. Lukianoff says censored people talk only to those who already agree, group polarization takes off, and he cites data suggesting that driving people from Twitter to Gab led to greater radicalization [3]. Shellenberger says Facebook's own research warned that censoring true vaccine injury stories would increase suspicion [2]. Rogan and his guests see cancellation attempts making their targets bigger [1].

Why defenders get hit from both sides. The pattern appears in every source. Lukianoff says that as FIRE's president he was distrusted by the left for defending people on the right, and nearly got into fights with people on the right for defending those who joked about 9/11 [3]. FIRE constantly hears the question "where is FIRE on this case?" from people sharing an article that quotes FIRE, which he calls "hypocrisy projection" [3]. The Triggernometry hosts say that when they started, people told them the whole free speech thing was cover for wanting to say racist things [1]. Rogan says people assume he is a right-wing MAGA guy because of his appearance, though he supported Bernie Sanders [1]. Anyone who defends a speaker gets assigned to that speaker's tribe.

Law is not enough. Lukianoff distinguishes the First Amendment, which limits government, from free speech, an "older, bolder, more expansive idea", and warns that the law will not hold if the culture stops believing in it [3]. Shellenberger's point that the principle has to be taught is the same idea at the scale of a family [2].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

The both-sides finding is best supported for American universities, where Lukianoff has counts [3]. Even there the split is uneven: two thirds of the successful campaigns he counts do not come from the right [3]. The claim that the left leads the current wave therefore survives; the claim that the right does not cancel does not.

Outside campuses, the sources mostly give accounts and examples, such as Scotland's law, Brazil's court orders and a pulled comedy special, and they come from speakers with a declared point of view [1][2]. Much of the Shellenberger conversation is opinion and speculation, flagged as such by both men [2].

Two limits apply. Lukianoff holds that schools are a different case, since legislatures have legitimate democratic oversight of public school curricula, though he opposes simply banning lists of books [3]. And none of this makes protest or criticism a form of censorship: he stresses that protest is protected and that the line is an institution acting on demands to punish protected speech [3].

What To Do With It

1. Apply one standard to both sides. Foster's question, "where's the consistency?", is the test: object to your own side's censorship as readily as the other's [1].
2. Check before assuming hypocrisy. Lukianoff's "hypocrisy projection" is assuming an opponent stayed silent on a case without looking [3].
3. Notice the fortress you live in. If you dismiss a speaker for a label, whether conservative, liberal, expert or journalist, you have skipped the argument [3].
4. Read people you were told to avoid. Lukianoff regrets having skipped writers for their politics [3].
5. Teach the principle on purpose. Shellenberger learned it from his father's explanation of Skokie; it did not come naturally [2].
6. Oppose compelled speech as firmly as banned speech. Lukianoff objects to both the Stop WOKE Act and required DEI teaching [3].
7. Ask who gains when speech is restricted. Shellenberger's question about whether a populist of the left would have been treated the same is a good template [2].
8. Prefer long conversations to short fights. Rogan and his guests argue that complicated issues cannot be settled in five-minute shouting matches and need good faith and a willingness to admit error [1].
9. Stay curious about views you reject. Lukianoff argues it matters, even for your own safety, to know what people really think [3].
10. Do not be surprised by fire from both sides. Each of these speakers has been placed in a camp by critics; in these accounts that comes with defending speech on principle [1][3].

Sources

1. Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin With Joe Rogan: Free Speech, Tribalism, Immigration and the 2024 Election · The Joe Rogan Experience
2. Michael Shellenberger on Joe Rogan: Censorship in Brazil, Drug Policy and a New UAP Whistleblower · The Joe Rogan Experience
3. Greg Lukianoff on Cancel Culture, Deplatforming and the Case for Free Speech · Lex Fridman Podcast