97 Darius Tahir, “The NIH halts a research project. Is it self-censorship?,” CBS News, August 5, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nih-halts-research-project-is-it-self-censorship/.
98 Zach Greenberg, “Chilling open records request targets University of Washington faculty, threatens academic freedom,” The FIRE newsdesk, November 15, 2022, https://www.thefire.org /news/chilling-open-records-request-targets-university-washington-faculty-threatens-acade mic-freedom.
99 Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conpiracism and the Assault on Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 9.
CHAPTER 9: THE PATH FORWARD
1 Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 97.
2 Ibid., 143.
3 Forrest Davis, “Father Coughlin,” The Atlantic, December 1935, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1935/12/father-coughlin/652107.
4 Clyde Haberman, “Today in History: The Father Coughlin Story,” PBS, March 9, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/exploring-hate/2022/03/09/today-in-history-the-father-coughlin-story.
5 Thomas Doherty, “The Deplatforming of Father Coughlin,” Slate, January 21, 2021, https://slate.com/technology/2021/01/father-coughlin-deplatforming-radio-social-media.html.
6 Tianyi Wang, “Media, Pulpit, and Populist Persuasion: Evidence from Father Coughlin,” American Economic Review 111, no. 9 (2021): 3064–3092, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20200513.
7 “Father Coughlin Blames Jews for Nazi Violence,” History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust, https://newspapers.ushmm.org/events/father-coughlin-blames-jews-for-nazi-violence.
8 Davis, “Father Coughlin.”
9 Doherty, “The Deplatforming.”
10 Diane Cypkin, “A Rhetorical Critical Analysis of Father Coughlin’s Radio Broadcast, November 20, 1938, or Call It What You Will… It’s Still Anti-Semitism!,” Journal of Radio Studies 4, no. 1 (1997): 134–150, https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529709391688.
11 “Father Coughlin Blames Jews,” History Unfolded.
12 Bill Kovarik, “That Time Private US Media Companies Stepped in to Silence the Falsehoods and Incitements of a Major Public Figure… in 1938,” The Conversation, January 15, 2021, https://theconversation.com/that-time-private-us-media-companies-stepped-in-to-silence-the-falsehoods-and-incitements-of-a-major-public-figure-in-1938-153157.
13 “Priest Won’t Meet WMCA Conditions,” New York Times, November 27, 1938, 42, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/11/27/99571181.html?pageNumber=42#.
14 Kovarik, “That Time Private US Media Companies.”
15 Doherty, “The Deplatforming.”
16 Otto D. Tolischus, “Germany to Keep Dieckhoff at Home,” New York Times, November 27, 1938, 46, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/11/27/99571225.html.
17 Kovarik, “That Time Private US Media Companies.”
18 “6,000 Here Cheer Coughlin’s Name,” New York Times, December 19, 1938, 6, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1938/12/16/98873857.html#.
19 “Fewer Coughlin Pickets; Protest at Radio Station over Ban Is Repeated,” New York Times, December 26, 1938, 27, https://www.nytimes.com/1938/12/26/archives/fewer-coughlin-pickets-protest-at-radio-station-over-ban-is.html; “WMCA Picketing Limited; Confined by Police to Broadway Side of Building,” New York Times, June 19, 1939, 8, https://www.nytimes.com/1939/06/19/archives/wmca-picketing-limited-confined-by-police-to-broadway-side-of.html.
20 David Goodman, “Before Hate Speech: Charles Coughlin, Free Speech and Listeners’ Rights,” Patterns of Prejudice 49, no. 3 (2015): 199–224, https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2015.10 48972.
21 “Coughlin Copies Goebbels Speech,” Daily Clarion-Ledger, December 31, 1938, 1, published online at Newspapers.com, September 23, 2018, https://www.newspapers.com/article/23966340.
22 “Coughlin Supports Christian Front; While Not a Member, ‘I Do Not Disassociate Myself from Movement,’ Priest Says,” New York Times, January 22, 1940, 1, https://www.nytimes.com/1940/01/22/archives/coughlin-supports-christian-front-while-not-a-member-i-do-not.html.
23 The FBI raid of the headquarters of the Christian Front led to the arrest of seventeen men who came to be called the “Brooklyn Boys.” However, sixteen of the seventeen were found not guilty. See Andrew Lapin, “Ep. 7: Sedition,” Radioactive: The Father Coughlin Story, March 9, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/exploring-hate/2022/03/09/ep-7-sedition; J. P. O’Malley, “FBI Files Shine Light on Homegrown Nazi Plot to Overthrow US Government During WWII,” Times of Israel, January 28, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/fbi-files-shine-light-on-homegrown-nazi-plot-to-overthrow-us-government-during-wwii; Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Christian Front,” Britannica, n.d., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christian-Front.
24 Kovarik, “That Time Private US Media Companies.”
25 “Father Coughlin Blames Jews,” History Unfolded.
26 Stewart M. Hoover and Douglas K. Wagner, “History and Policy in American Broadcast Treatment of Religion,” Media, Culture and Society 19, no. 1 (January 1997): 7–27, published online at Religion Online, https://www.religion-online.org/article/history-and-policy-in-american-broadcast-treatment-of-religion.
27 Ibid.
28 In 1949, the FCC implemented the Fairness Doctrine, which aimed to regulate public discourse on controversial topics in broadcast media by requiring equal time for balanced opposing viewpoints. This rule itself sparked controversy due to its vague criteria for what qualified as a viewpoint requiring equal debate. In 1987, under President Ronald Reagan, the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine, citing its stifling impact on free speech.
29 Kate Klonick, “The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech,” Harvard Law Review 131, no. 6 (April 2018): 1598–1670.
30 Christopher St. Aubin and Jacob Liedke, “Most Americans Favor Restrictions on False Information, Violent Content Online,” Pew Research Center, July 20, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/07/20/most-americans-favor-restrictions-on-false-information-violent-content-online.
31 Daphne Keller, “Lawful but Awful? Control over Legal Speech by Platforms, Governments, and Internet Users,” University of Chicago Law Review Online, June 28, 2022, https://lawreviewblog.uchicago.edu/2022/06/28/keller-control-over-speech.
32 Renée DiResta, “The Digital Maginot Line,” Ribbonfarm, November 28, 2018, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line.
33 Giuseppe Russo et al., “Spillover of Antisocial Behavior from Fringe Platforms: The Unintended Consequences of Community Banning,” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media ICWSM 16 (2023): 742–753, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2209.09803.
34 Jeff Kosseff, Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).
35 Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing), “Twitter canceled a deal with @realdailywire to premiere What is a Woman?…,” Twitter, June 1, 2023, Internet Archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20230601142311/https://twitter.com/JeremyDBoreing/status/1664255321630552065.
36 Some of Twitter’s policies regularly intersected with active fronts in the culture war, turning the policies themselves into a matter of controversy as well as an opportunity to capture attention. For example, it had a long-standing rule that prohibited harassing individual transgender users (such as by referring to them with prior names or pronouns) while still allowing criticism of trans-related policies and laws or identity politics writ large. This attempt to minimize the harassment of individual users, however, was often framed as inherently anticonservative; some argued that it forced conservatives to use pronouns that they disagreed with, which impinged upon their freedom of speech. The targets of the speech, however, were also users who wanted to express themselves on Twitter as well. As with many moderation decisions, calls sometimes hinged on whether individual moderators felt that a word or phrase was harassment, merely offensive, or an overreaction by the reportee. More importantly, however, the policy became a source of secondary attention-capture for clout and profit, as those who alleged that they were moderated unfairly—or felt they went unheard—subsequently commanded attention cycles highlighting the incidents.