The mechanics of censorship

What does “chilling speech” actually look like?

This blog is in many ways an extension of my thought process. I make this very clear in the about section, where I state:

Writing helps clarify my thoughts, and sometimes is useful. More the former than the latter.

Any usefulness other people get out of this blog is a side effect.

When I started writing more consistently, it was totally unsurprising that some of my writing would be about politics. I did debate from high school through college, I like to read, and I find moral, religious, and political philosophy fascinating. Politics is precisely where writing helps the most. I cannot properly understand a political position unless I’ve methodically thought it through, and I cannot think things through unless I’ve written about it. The process of putting a few hundred words to paper to construct an argument itself reveals gaps and mistakes and counter arguments that would be invisible if you were just screaming into the void (or into a microphone, or into Twitter).

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I will no longer be writing about politics.

Sadly, given the current climate, I’ve decided to leave a few things in my drafts unpublished. I recognize that this is a cowardly thing to do, but maybe that means I’m a coward. I’m posting this note publicly though so that anytime anyone says there are no chilling effects, you can call bullshit

There is a deep irony inherent to calling out censorship. Cf Scott Alexander:

If someone speaks up against the increasing climate of fear and harassment or the decline of free speech, they get hit with an omnidirectional salvo of “You continue to speak just fine, and people are listening to you, so obviously the climate of fear can’t be too bad, people can’t be harassing you too much, and you’re probably just lying to get attention.” But if someone is too afraid to speak up, or nobody listens to them, then the issue never gets brought up, and mission accomplished for the people creating the climate of fear. The only way to escape the double-bind is for someone to speak up and admit “Hey, I personally am a giant coward who is silencing himself out of fear in this specific way right now, but only after this message”.

My situation is not nearly as bad as Scott’s when he wrote that post. Scott was harassed by an online hate mob; I was not. But nonetheless, my situation represents a different kind of pressure that may not be visible, so I wanted to document it without getting too political (which is perhaps an impossible contradiction).

When I posted my first political article, I had a few dozen subscribers and got maybe a few hundred views. One of those views came from my dad. He messaged me pretty much immediately after the post came out, asking me to edit the post to tone it down, or even delete it. “This is an unnecessary risk. Keep your head down.” At the time, I brushed him off. I love my Dad, he is a great guy. But he’s also constitutionally risk averse. I figured he was just overreacting.

The political situation got a bit worse. The administration ramped up its anti-lgbt rhetoric. I run a discord with ~150 of my closest friends, some of whom are LGBT, many of whom are immigrants, children of immigrants, or on some kind of visa. We had a ‘real name’ policy in the discord — everyone in the discord had to have their real name in their server nickname. After the administration demanded that trans individuals change their passports, we unanimously decided to remove the real name requirement.

The political situation got a bit worse. The administration ramped up their immigration enforcement. The DOJ was gutted; my friend who was there quit. I started hearing stories from family members about harassment at airports and borders. It was friends of friends of friends, mostly. But the stories were circulating. My mom got wind of my blog. She messaged me, a bit more hysterically than my dad. “This is an unnecessary risk for us. Keep your head down.” At the time, I brushed her off. “Mom, you and Dad are citizens, it’s fine.” She didn’t let up. She spoke about how she grew up during the Emergency in India. How people just disappeared because they said the wrong thing or were with the wrong people. This became a recurring conversation between us. My mom, begging me to stop writing about politics; me, brushing her off. Less each time.

The political situation got a bit worse. We were in the midst of planning a wedding where a lot of people had to come from India. Many of them started planning a year in advance to get their visas, which is standard practice. But many of those visas took longer to come through. One cousin got her visa the week before the trip. Everyone made it through, and the wedding was fantastic. But also, my extended family mentioned that they likely would not be back any time soon.

The political situation got a bit worse. Direct friends started talking about how their phones were being searched at airports. Columbia, my alma mater, was fully under attack; students were not being allowed in the country or were being detained because of their writing. No one I knew directly, but people who I had 20+ mutual connections with on LinkedIn or Facebook. My discord has a ‘discourse and politics’ containment channel. Some people openly announced that they were no longer going to participate in that thread. Others announced that they were leaving social media and erasing their digital presence. Increasingly there was discussion about locking down phones or uninstalling apps while traveling through airports. More people started talking about ‘escape plans,’ including my mother in law. A lot of people applied for EU or Canadian citizenship through parents and grandparents. Documents they did not think they needed until recently. We added a bot that automatically deleted all previous messages in that containment channel.

The political situation got a bit worse. The Vice President started talking about ‘heritage Americans’, meaning Americans who could trace ancestry to the Civil War. This became a normalized term in certain corners of the media landscape. An extremely close family friend of mine (we’ve known each other since we were 3) was stopped at the border. They were driving back from Canada. A family of four, mom and dad in the front, my friend and his older sister in the back. All US citizens, all passport holders. This was the conversation between the agent and my friend’s Dad.

Agent: Sir, how long have you lived in the US?

Dad: I don’t know, at least 40 years.

Agent: When did you become a citizen?

Dad: It’s been a long time. Maybe 30+ years ago?

Agent: The kids in the back. When did they become citizens?

Dad: They were born here. You have their passports already.

Agent: Were they born when you already naturalized?

Dad: Yes.

Agent: Your wife too?

Dad: Yes.

Those last two questions sent waves through the Whatsapp groups. Uncles and aunties frantically messaging each other, and then trying to figure out birth dates and citizenship dates. What kind of a question is that? What is the implication? If my friend’s Dad had said that the kids were born while he was on a greencard would that have somehow invalidated their citizenship? My parents both doubled their efforts to get me to stop writing about politics. My mom asked me to just kill the blog entirely.

The political situation got a bit worse. Some of my friends left the country. People started planning trips that required stopovers in Ireland or Canada so they could go through immigration in friendlier territories. Others stopped planning trips at all, terrified that their visa status could disappear. Weddings, funerals, visiting family, all put on hold. Racism against Indian immigrants reached shocking highs. More and more anonymous twitter accounts denouncing Indian immigrants as backwards people. Elected officials called for the NYC Democratic Mayoral candidate to be deported because he had brown skin. Mamdani is a naturalized citizen; I was born here. Is there a difference? Would anyone care about that difference? Does that distinction matter to an overzealous ICE agent? I was harassed on the street for the first time in my life for being of Indian descent. It was silly, an idiot driving by yelling ‘Pajeet’ out of his car. But I took note. It had never happened before.

The political situation got a bit worse. SCOTUS allowed the enforcement of an executive order that effectively removes birthright citizenship. They also allowed ICE to stop and detain people based solely on how they look. Propublica released an article about 170+ US Citizens who had been detained by ICE for no reason. More stories began circulating about hundreds of people who had simply vanished. Dark jokes abound. “You can’t say that, they’ll deport you to South Sudan.” Then the jokes stopped too, once the government announced that making certain kinds of jokes was indicative of anti-American intent. My friends started to encourage me more vocally to stop writing about politics. They were worried.

The political situation got a bit worse. My grandmother, maybe 80+, has been a greencard holder for decades. She would often go back and forth between the US and India, spending a few months in India at a time. This time, on the way back to the US, agents pulled her aside. They threatened to cancel her greencard and send her back to India. My uncle was luckily there with her and managed to get her through. My wife, who is extremely supportive and reads everything I wrote, turned to me a few days later and said, “Maybe it’s not worth writing about politics.”

Censorship is an interesting beast. At no point did anyone come to me and say, “We are punishing you because of your writing.” I never experienced people coming after me or my friends or my job. I never had a mob of people attack me. In some ways, I could have handled that. That would have made me mad, and I am incredibly stubborn when I am mad. No, what I got was far worse than that. I had family, friends, who asked me with love and respect to please stop. They were scared for me, and scared for themselves. In a world where people are getting detained and harassed first and asking questions never, sticking your neck out is a real risk.

When I shared this decision with some of my friends, they encouraged me to keep writing. They insisted that nothing bad would happen — after all, I am a citizen, born and raised. But. These friends were invariably people who, to put it kindly, would not be mistaken for an illegal immigrant in an ICE raid. People who could in fact trace their lineage back in this country several generations. I don’t blame them for their kind words of encouragement. But I also do not think they appreciate the full scope of the risk. My friends who are on some kind of visa have long since stopped talking about anything political. Same with those who are naturalized citizens, people born in a different country but who have been here for years and years. That is the chilling effect, doing what it was intended to do. They no longer have a voice. For a while, I considered it my responsibility as a citizen to be their voice for them. Now, I think the risk is too high and too close to home for me as well.

So.

I am no longer writing about politics. My writing is meant to be an extension of my thought process. I will still write, but now that part of my thought process will remain hidden.

Today is the day of the second No Kings protests. I think I finally have an appreciation for why these kinds of mass rallies are important. As an individual, with a face and a name, there is real risk in speaking out. In a crowd, you can show your disapproval without incurring that same risk. I hope that there are more opportunities for individuals to come together and protect each other, so that those who are currently silenced have a chance to speak.

Still. I will not be at No Kings today. My parents begged me not to.