Quarantining Infectious Ideas
Back in 2018, former Breitbart editor, former Trump advisor, and on-going horrible person Steve Bannon was invited to a live interview at The New Yorker Festival. As a headline event, Bannon was meant to attract attention.
He certainly did attract attention: sponsors and other participants of the festival said they didn’t want to be a part of it if he was going to be there. Bannon’s invitation was ultimately rescinded.
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62208164
Bannon’s friends and supporters cried foul– his free speech was being trampled by this mob of liberal elites! This is absurd, of course– it was just the marketplace of ideas working exactly as intended. Bannon and The New Yorker Festival were facing social and business consequences for their speech, not legal ones. The First Amendment only protects speech from government interference. The government could not punish the Festival for inviting any speaker they wanted to, nor should it.
But if their headline event threatens the logistical and financial viability of the festival, whose fault is that? The people who don’t want to participate or the people who organized it?
Around the same time, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris was premiering a movie about Steve Bannon called American Dharma at the Venice International Film Festival. It was to be in the same vein as his earlier films The Fog of War and The Unknown Known: constructed out of intimate interviews with important political figures (Secretaries of Defense Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld), and interspersed with relevant found footage to examine and critique different aspects of their careers.
But after the festival, Morris had difficulty finding a distributor to release American Dharma in theaters. This was due to Bannon as the subject– Morris is an acclaimed documentarian who has had no trouble finding distribution for other projects.
Critics levied the same criticisms at Morris that they did at the Festival and said that making the film at all was irresponsible.
To me, though there is a big difference.
The point of “deplatforming” is to use the social and business consequences I mentioned above to bring about positive change. Ideas, both good and bad, spread a lot like germs– moving from person to person and mutating as they are considered and explained to others. People like Bannon will, if given the chance, cough on everyone they meet, spreading their ideas far and wide. The problem is that these ideas, like Bannon himself, are awful and hateful and bigoted, and inspire people to do awful and hateful and bigoted things. If super spreaders like Bannon can be quarantined, their ideas will do less damage.
At The New Yorker Festival, Bannon would be allowed to speak off the cuff. Even a moderator on stage with him would not be able to respond to everything he said in real time. The audience would be exposed to Bannon’s germs almost unfiltered.
The most recent season of the podcast Slow Burn, covering Klan leader David Duke’s political career in Louisiana, declined to interview him for similar reasons. They use plenty of contemporary recordings of Duke, and what he thinks is not a secret. But host Josh Levin points out that part of Duke’s success came from his appearances on live TV talk shows, where his views were a provocative ratings grab. Duke was able to win viewers over by sounding “reasonable” and charming his hosts.
American Dharma, though, is the opposite of live: It’s a movie that has been heavily edited. Morris can leave things out, add alternative footage that contradicts what we hear Bannon saying, or use his own voice to respond to him directly. (Some critics who have seen the film say he didn’t do enough of that.)
It might seem strange that someone would want to participate in something where what they say can be twisted to discredit them. Do they even understand what they’re getting into?
Morris even puts this exact question Rumsfeld in The Unknown Known: “Why are you talking to me?”
“That is a vicious question,” Rumsfeld answers. “I’ll be darned if I know.”
Journalist Farai Chideya once asked an avowed white supremacist why she agreed to an interview. The answer was that even in a hostile medium, someone might think her ideas have merit and be pulled into the cause.
Sometimes, though, edited news coverage, even well-intentioned, can have the same effect. Especially in 2017 and 2018, there were lots of articles documenting the lives of members of the alt-right and trying to explain what makes them tick. Even if their ideas were criticized, the takeaway seemed to be, “Nazis! They’re just like us!”
This does nobody any good. Instead of focusing on the germs and why they can make you sick, it makes bigoted ideas seem as normal as buying cereal at the grocery store.
But again, if The Fog of War and The Unknown Known are anything to go on, Errol Morris is not out to make Steve Bannon look normal. From what I’ve read, his ideas are made to look flimsy, like the sets in the classic Hollywood movies he completely misinterprets.
I’m not saying anyone should be arrested for the things Steve Bannon says. And I believe informed citizens should be open to new ideas. And I also believe that our core values, like equality, democracy, and the rule of law, should be able to withstand criticism from anyone– if they can’t, they’re of no value to me.
There are lots of issues that are complicated and nuanced. And there are some that are really, really simple: Steve Bannon is terrible and does not deserve a place to spread his germs. I’m not interested in what he has to say. I am interested in what Errol Morris has to say about him, though. Bannon’s ideas won’t be unfiltered, and they’ll be open to the probing criticism that free speech deems essential.