The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

by Yascha Mounk

Three negative consequences of abandoning free speech are particularly important at a moment when levels of political polarization are at record highs. All three are intimately connected to the way in which restrictions on free speech entrench the dominance of those who are already powerful. For if those who hold power are able to censor what they consider noxious views, then the ideas of the powerful are going to be systematically favored over those of the powerless, perpetuating the kind of injustice that progressive opponents of free speech rightly abhor; the stakes of who gets to hold power vastly increase, incentivizing political partisans to refuse to accept the outcome of elections or even engage in violence; and society will lose a crucial safety valve that allows the victims of bad public policies to protest the status quo, making it harder to achieve much-needed social change.