“I’m just asking questions.” So says every pseudo-archaeologist, QAnon, alt-right conspiracy theorist or anti-woke victim-playing internet influencer. Whether the ‘questions’ they’re asking are “Could the pyramids have been built by aliens?” or “Are Jewish people controlling the woke deep state?” the battle cry of the bigoted and the plain wrong always has been and always will be “Free Speech.” Anyone who dares to criticize them, therefore, is against free speech, or so they’ll have you believe. This paper intends to persuasively describe this phenomenon and express my own personal disapproval.

If the reader will allow me a brief monologue, I recently watched Milo Rossi (Miniminuteman)’s response¹ to Filip Zieba, a YouTube and TikTok conspiracy theory peddler, who himself had just responded to two debunking videos on Milo’s channel. For those who don’t know, Miniminuteman is an amateur science communicator with a brand built on dry humor and debunking pseudo-archaeology conspiracy theories with strong basis in scientific literature.

Some of what I am about to discuss is addressed in this video, but I think Filip Zieba and the like represent only a subgroup of an overall problem I’ve noticed again and again in online spaces. The issue is with a false vision of cancel culture and free speech, a worldview which suggests that any negative reaction to someone’s exercise of free speech is a suppression of that free speech which attempts to censor “anyone that disagrees” with [insert group of people here]. Be it “science,” “the left,” or “the deep state.”

The first negative reaction that some assert to be oppression or censorship is fact checking. This is where the overlap with Milo Rossi’s video essay is strongest. In that video, Milo clips Filip Zieba’s response, where he cries oppression at Milo’s debunking videos. At various points in this video, Zieba refers to conspiracy theories not as such but as “controversial” theories (compared to “accepted” theories) and claims that just because someone doesn’t like the content or disagrees with it (no matter how much evidence they have in their favor), they shouldn’t censor that content.

This, as Rossi points out in his own response, is completely not what is occurring. Throughout Milo’s four hours of debunking, he weaves a complex thesis, one which does not, at any point, suggest that anyone stop discussing conspiracy theories. Rossi’s issue with pseudo-science on the internet is with presenting it as unassailable fact. The morally correct course of action for someone with the platform, knowledge, and communication skills to do so is to debunk this and prevent further harm.² To prove someone wrong is not to censor them.

In this first case, there is often a pre-emptive (or, in cases like Zieba’s, responsive) discrediting of science or facts. Calls of elitism in science, conspiratorial ties to the government, and an quasi-anti-semitic growl that “they” don’t want you to question “them” are the norm in this case. Zieba calls them “googledebunkers,” Netflix pseudo-archaeologist Graham Hancock calls them mainstream science, but no matter what someone calls them, there is a shadowy “them” pulling the strings and oppressing the common people. This makes those who “just ask questions” heroes, and those who try to “silence” them part of the conspiracy.

The second negative reaction that is seen as censorship is plain disagreement. This differs from debunking or fact checking in that it is found in matters of pure opinion, rather than science or fact. This is where we drift from (pseudo)science into politics, my own field. In this field, particularly in internet circles, same as above, you don’t have to try hard to find the bogeyman of “cultural marxism.” Just like mainstream science, cultural marxism is an evil “them” – typically communists and/or Jews – seeking to control society.

This reaction is most commonly and understandably employed when we see bigotry and political extremism from the alt right. When the strength of one’s opinions are not enough for them to stand on their own, a bad faith interlocutor must resort to underhanded tactics. And so, it is not uncommon for the alt right to change the conversation from one about racial justice or “gender ideology” to one about Free Speech.³ If you dare criticize them, you are an opponent of free speech, because, in their eyes, saying someone shouldn’t say something is the same as saying they can’t say it.

This assumption is false. The right to free speech does not include the right to have everyone agree with you. In fact, the point of free speech is for people to disagree with each other. From this perspective, though, free speech seems to exist solely for someone with problematic views to express them without resistance or disagreement. When they get criticized, they deflect. They have a right to believe that, they say, and you shouldn’t interfere with that right.

This is “I’m Entitled to My Own Opinion,” an informal fallacy in which someone essentially “agrees to disagree.” This sounds reasonable at a glance, but it is not when someone’s “opinion” is based in misinformation, hatred, or bigotry, or when someone’s opinion comes to harm others. “I’m Entitled to My Own Opinion” typically results in “If you don’t like it, ignore me.” However, when that happens, we run into another cry of oppression in the form of the “cancel culture” bogeyman.

At this point, the term “canceled,” like “woke,” has been co-opted by those who mock its underlying principles. However, there’s still something substantial underneath it. In this case, I think it’s fair to define it as the social or economic divestment of an individual or group in online spaces from an individual or group which is found to be “problematic” or morally bereft. This includes those accused of sexual assault or harassment, as well as bigots. In other words, the disentangling of one’s internet presence and media consumption from prominent figures who one does not wish to support for moral or political reasons.

This is not censorship or oppression, either. People have the right to protect their peace. No one should have to give the time of day to abusers, harassers, bigots, or even plain idiots. Ignoring someone is not oppression. Refusing to contribute to someone’s success is not oppression. There is a fundamental difference between shunning someone for their beliefs and punishing them through criminalization or violence. “Cancel culture” is not an organized movement seeking to strip people like J.K. Rowling of free speech, it is the fundamental idea that harmful speech should not be tolerated in social circles, and respectable people or groups should distance themselves from those who express it.

It’s not even oppression when an entire company or platform removes someone for bigotry or harassment. Just as a person has the right to protect themselves from harmful rhetoric, so too does a corporation. They may be doing it solely to avoid lawsuits or to save their public image, rather than out of the goodness of their heart, but that doesn’t matter. Max Barry puts it best in the NationStates FAQ – “Ahahahaha! Hahaha! Free speech! No, it's not. I run this web site, see, so you have to play by my rules. It's like my own Father Knows Best state.”

Throughout both cases, a deep, rich, ironic contradiction can be found without much looking. If someone is exercising their free speech by saying something, isn’t their opponent just exercising their own free speech by fact checking them or disagreeing with them? Why are their rights important but not anyone else’s? Someone exercising their own freedoms does not take away from anyone else’s. Besides, they are clearly not being censored if someone is taking their time to engage with them or their ideas. They’re also not being censored if someone has to go out of their way to avoid them.

Censorship oppression doesn’t look like that. Censorship and oppression looks like banning and burning books, altering school curriculums to remove mentions of past injustices, or otherwise using the coercive power of the state to block the free exchange of ideas. Free speech protects people from oppression by the government. It doesn’t protect anyone from being looked at funny, laughed at, or told they’re wrong. If someone wants people to only agree with them, cool, but just because they want something doesn’t mean they’re legally or morally entitled to it. In this case, they are most certainly not.

Footnotes

1. This video can be found here.
2. And what harm is there, exactly? Well, the pseudo-archaeology/pseudoscience pipeline to the alt-right has already been extensively documented (along with the concept’s roots in eugenics and Nazism) in Milo Rossi’s March 2024 lecture at Virginia Tech.
3. See The Alt Right Playbook video essay series for more detail – particularly relevant are the videos “Control the Conversation” and “Never Play Defense.”