All the conversations about free speech and cancel culture would be greatly improved if they started from the objective and obvious fact that, for most people, the number one threat to your free speech is your boss.

That the free speech brigade frames the issue around access to prestige publications and elite institutions tells you something important: they haven't ever really had a boss.

Show me a person who thinks free speech is about whether you can place an essay with the New Yorker and I will show you a person who never bit their tongue when the boss said some ignorant shit or got canned because a customer overheard something they didn't like.

Marx tells us to *begin* our analysis with the material conditions and to theorize to abstractions only from those conditions. This is why 99% of what the free speech brigade says is nonsense: it starts with the abstraction (free speech) and only then moves to the material.

I guess I should add the link to my gazillion tweet thread where I offer a series of concrete policy proposals to strengthen free expression for all people. https://twitter.com/gnrosenberg/status/1282067717273477120?s=20