Should Libel Be Legal?
Non-fiction
The question posed in the title of this piece is one that came jogging through my mind after watching one of my favorite YouTubers who focuses primarily on bookish things, thanks to some of the comments his video received from viewers. These viewers' comments roughly coalesced into the following message: "The man whose work you are critiquing so vociferously is known to be a litigous sort, and you are likely being placed in his crosshairs for a libel or defamation suit at worst, and/or a YouTube complaint at best. We collectively recommend you take this video down, or layer it in enough caveats that searching through them to get to your core message will be much akin to a linguistic version of digging through the rubble of a missile-struck apartment complex in search of a Composition notebook."
The harriest part of my own response to this inquiry is that it will sound similar to a line echoed by the kind of rampant blue-hair cancel pigs who have been trying to dominate online discourse since the mid-2010's, that I might temporarily be mistaken for one of them, until I remind readers that I recognize that I am a man who knows the biological reality of humans having only TWO sexes, and that I am not what one could even loosely describe as 'politically left'. With that distinction made, here's my response to the question in the title:
"It already IS legal, criminally speaking. However, there can occasionally be civil tort consequences for overt lies intended to do reputational and fiscal harm to individuals or organizations, and that system seems to be functional insofar as I can tell."
It's not a great answer for places like YouTube or Twitter/X, where being brief and to the point, or having a very black-or-white reply tends to drive traffic and engagement. However, this is Substack, where nuance is not only allowed for, but is actively encouraged by readers and writers who have an attention span that exceeds that of the average house fly. Yes, I'm aware that YouTube has loads of long-form podcasts and shows, and that Twitter/X under Musk hosts long-form video or text for premium account holders, but given the FOCUS of those platforms to reward brevity and 'gotcha" over "Hmm, let's dissect this", I don't feel guilty making the distinction.
The nuance of my response is also part of why I cannot honestly claim to be a free speech absolutist. I'm not. The other and much larger component of why I can't genuinely claim to be an absolutist is that I acknowledge and agree with the notion that direct calls for illegal activity which include an immediate target/victim and can be induced within less than an hour's passage are NOT legally protected speech. Broad brushes, though? Those get a pass from me. Example: if Dickbag A says "I think all people of X political persuasion should be keelhauled and shot on sight," I will defend Dickbag's legal right to say it. Not only defend it, but I will mark down the date and time he said it, and keep a very close eye on Dickbag, because he is now someone to hold in extremely high suspicion if or when something should happen to a person of Group X. However, if Dickbag says, "Snaggletooth McPoopyPants should be shot, he's right there, somebody get him," I will NOT defend his speech, because Dickbag is naming a specific target, a specific methodology (not a prerequisite for me), and aiming potential murderers right at the nearby McPoopyPants, thus endangering Snaggletooth's life in the near term.
It's nuance and details that matter.
Piers Morgan and Steven Crowder recently had a go-round about this sort of thing on Morgan's hilariously named "Uncensored", a program put on by a man who owes birthright fealty to a country where citizens can be criminally charged for telling a transwoman that his penis actually makes him a bloke, and I don't care if you think otherwise 'Shannon'. By the way, fetch a razor, your 5 o'clock shadow is creeping in. On the segment, Piers prattled on about how Alex Jones was found guilty in an American court of slander/libel, and that as a result, he owed more dollars than San Francisco has piles of human excrement on the street to a handful of Sandy Hook families. This by itself is actually a great example of Mr. Morgan himself engaging in slander, because Jones was NOT found guilty in a court, not in the way Piers tried to imply. Jones had a single judge issue a summary judgment against him, and he did so because he demanded that Jones and his Infowars team produce a document which, quite literally, COULD NOT BE PRODUCED.
The court had instructed Jones and company to produce a financial document showing how much money they had made, quote, "as a result of your Sandy Hook coverage". This would be an unfalsifiable document if it were created, because when a customer purchases weird supplements or merch from Infowars, one does not tick a box or fill out a form explaining WHY they made their purchase. As such, there is no legitimate way of tracking how many sales came "as a result of [their] Sandy Hook coverage". If the judge had made this request of a laboratory grade scientific researcher, he would have been politely grasped about the shoulders, turned about, and walked out the door without a word spoken by the nerds in the lab coats (at least, not until the door had been shut and lab security called).
But neither the judge in that case, nor Piers Morgan OR Crowder opposite him brought that second element up. Crowder DID bring up that someone can risk a civil penalty for defamation/slander, and Piers was compelled to do the usual Saxon thing of muttering somewhat incoherently that he was in agreement with Crowder on that point.
I've prattled on long enough on this question now, but wish to make one final point before moving along and getting back to my usual daily routine (though that now includes training a new family dog)- regardless of how someone feels about whether or not someone has the legal right to say something, it should be pointed out that how you FEEL about what someone says doesn't actually matter. What DOES matter is that they have, in most instances, the RIGHT to say it. You, having received their words, have the RIGHT to tell them they're a heartless jackal or fuckwit, or prove them wrong.
What you do not have the right to do, however, is to compel them to stop talking, be it by lawsuit or physical intervention. The lawsuit may compel them to pay up for saying something slanderous or libelous, but it doesn't, as Crowder brought up, suddenly remove their right or ability to keep talking.