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Censorship has been an obvious and pervasive aspect of American social technology since well before the founding, all the way back to the initial colonization. How did our long and rich history of censorship amount to abuse, and what were the concrete negative consequences of that abuse?
As a non-exhaustive list:
The Sedition Act was near-instantly turned into a political tool, including of jailing dissenters and political opponents, including with charges related to writings predating the Act's enactment. In addition to not doing much good about the whole War With Napoleon thing, the statute legitimized a lot of internal revolutionary speech and literal rebellions, and badly damaged interstate comity; while not the sole cause of current red-hot judiciary problems, it's very much the first bite at the fruit.
Comstock personally used the law to charge sufferagettes in response to publishing an alleged affair by one of Comstock's . Leaving aside the object-level debates for his censorship itself being bad, the expansive and often quixotic efforts undermined much of his more conventional anti-fraud and anti-spam efforts, was an absolute mess when it came to actual STDs, and often publicized and promoted the very works he was opposing. (Also, from a social perspective, he also inspired a certain J. Edgar Hoover.)
McCarthyism blurred the lines between communist party Russian stooge, 'mere' philosophical sympathizer, and People Who Annoyed McCarthy well before the Army inquiries. In doing so, he both destroyed future anti-Soviet-espionage efforts and provided cover for tankie academics for decades.
Of course, the more morbid question is when did it have a negative impact on the censors; telling people that they'll win but burn down society invites a lot of Joker cosplay. The Adams administration didn't win reelection, but that was probably off the table before the Adams administration first won the presidency; Adams himself nor the Sedition Act's authors were prosecuted. Comstock made his keep off of those he fined and punished. McCarthy died abandoned, so there's that one I guess?
This was an excellent post, and a perfect example of what I was looking for: strong historical cases of actual censorship.
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Orangecat clearly isn't talking about every form of censorship, the impression I got was they are talking about censorship to protect people's feelings or in some other impulsive fashion - the kind which simply wallpapers over an issue, usually to shut up agitators. I can't think of any time that has had a positive impact on society.
When did it have a notably negative impact on society, though?
...I've just finished one big debate on censorship, and I'm not really up for jumping into another one. I know the consensus is supposed to be that censorship is very bad, m'kay. I observe that large amount of censorship, through a variety of methods and with a variety of targets, appears to have been the norm throughout our nation's entire history, excepting perhaps two decades bookending the turn of the last century which were unusually permissive, and which were immediately followed by an acute decline in social conditions.
I know how this all is supposed to work. I am skeptical that it actually works that way. I note that a lot of the standard narrative about censorship conveniently ignores most of the censorship actually happening in the past or present, and gets pretty hand-wavey about nailing down cause and effect.
Covid would be my first example, but it's the first of thousands so I assume I am misunderstanding you. The way I see it, people who argue against censorship aren't arguing against censorship, which is an amorphous concept found in every sphere of life, and as you (and @orangecat) say, often with positive effects. They are trying to stop power grabbing. Someone proposing censorship is trying to assume power they didn't previously have, and anyone grabbing power should be suspect, because the unscrupulous outnumber the scrupulous a thousand to one.
Speech is a particularly important power because it is the basis of communication, allowing our hierarchies to exceed our physical limitations. So I immediately suspect anyone who tries to take it, and it completely blows my mind that anyone would willingly give it up, especially for a reason as minor as hurt feelings or to cover up a mistake. And since in my lifetime I haven't seen any negative consequences to telling censors to fuck off - ever - but can list multiple times I desperately wished everyone else had told the censors to fuck off, I don't see a problem with drawing a line in the sand at 'no censorship'.
I mean, you're right that permissiveness leads to worse social conditions, but if that's all that mattered Saudi Arabia would be a utopia. It's not, (unless you have a fetish for censorship, then it's pretty great) so we get back to the same problem as always - who gets to inflict their values on whom? We can only go forward from here - there's no getting back the Hayes code and CCA.
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