What’s that got to do with Brexit? More than you’d think. When Britain voted early this summer to leave the European Union and go it alone, a large number of those who voted to leave did so explicitly because of concerns over immigration. Tensions ran high in the days surrounding the vote. Immediately following the result of the referendum, police all over the country noted a rise in racial hate crimes. Reports flooded in of foreigners being spat at and snarled at on Britain’s streets, and told to go back to where they came from. This hatred of other people, of those viewed as non-Britons, escalated on the night in late August when a gang of English youths murdered 40-year old Polish immigrant Arkadiusz Jóźwik as he was eating pizza in Harlow, just south of London, in what is widely suspected to be a hate crime. Perhaps most notoriously, on 16 June, a week shy of the vote, a man shouting “Britain first” shot and stabbed Jo Cox, a young Labour Member of Parliament. When he was asked in court a few days later to state his name, he replied: “My name is death to traitors. Freedom for Britain.”

Back on this side of the Atlantic, it’s been reported that supporters at Trump rallies have sometimes cried not just for jailing Hillary Clinton, but also for killing her. Trump’s own veiled threat of “Second Amendment” action at a rally in North Carolina in early August had many wondering whether he was inciting potential armed violence. Last year after a campaign rally in Alabama where several white Trump supporters assaulted a Black Lives Matter protester who interrupted the candidate’s speech, Trump responded on Fox News, “Maybe [the activist] should have been roughed up.” In March in St. Louis, Trump claimed “Part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick protestors out of campaign stops] is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore.” And the list goes on. And on.

In both campaigns—the U.S. presidential bid and the U.K.’s European referendum—the movement of people from nation to nation, and the economic consequences of that movement, has played an outsized role. Whether it’s Trump complaining about Latinos or Syrian refugees, or the Leave campaign’s poster showing a seemingly unending line of dark-skinned migrants under the headline “Breaking Point” (a poster ironically released the same day Jo Cox lost her life), it’s once more acceptable to speak openly and disparagingly of immigrants, refugees, and of others who don’t “belong”–those who don’t look, or sound, or seem like a particular conception of what makes “us” as nations.

Trump visited Scotland (which voted overwhelmingly in favor of remaining in the European Union) the day after the U.K.’s June referendum. He said there were “great similarities” between the vote and his campaign, including that “people want to take their country back” and “they don’t necessarily want people pouring into their country.” His words echo not only those of the haters, but also of the woman who is now Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May. Just a year ago when she was Home Secretary and in charge of immigration policy, she declared at the annual Conservative Party conference that “millions” of people wanted to come to Britain, and that their presence would doom the economy, drive wages down, expand the criminal classes, and make it impossible to build a cohesive society. The speech was pure Trump (albeit delivered in complete sentences), though it was given at a time when few in the U.S. believed Trump could be a serious contender. In both countries, interestingly, the foreign-born residents—41 million in the U.S. and 8 million in Britain—amount to some 13 percent of the total population.

In both countries, this type of rhetoric reveals a regression in recent years that has brought open statements of intolerance and bigotry back into mainstream discussion, often in the name of freedom of expression. Hatred of difference has a long and always ugly history. It was only after 1945, with the horrors of Nazism fresh in people’s minds that derogatory commentary—whether about people of different backgrounds or religions, women, those with disabilities, or migrants—began to retreat from open conversation. Slowly but surely, it became less and less acceptable to make casual anti-Semitic, racist, or sexist comments in public. Instead, such expressions moved to the periphery, the province of fringe organizations and privately expressed antipathy.

But the pushback against migration in much of the industrialized world, fanned by manipulative politicians scapegoating outsiders for all societal woes, has allowed this bigoted talk to return to our political landscape in recent years. Trump and his counterparts around the world couch their blunt rhetoric, which often involves the denigration of difference, in the message that freedom lies in the ability to speak the unspeakable, and that political correctness has made us skirt around real problems and real frustrations that we ignore at our peril. For Brexit supporters, for those who stump for Trump, and for white supremacists and the Alt-Right, diversity has become the favored whipping post. And it’s not just speechifying. The murders of Jóźwik and Cox in the U.K. and the violence at Trump rallies are a painful testament to the dangers of this new manifestation of discontent. Just last week a Conservative MP asked his Parliamentary colleagues how Britain could be made great again, echoing not only Trump’s campaign slogan but a speech delivered in 1950 by a young Margaret Thatcher.

The night before the referendum last June, Nigel Farage, leader of the ultranationalist U.K. Independent Party (UKIP) and a major architect of the Leave campaign, stated in a speech that his opponents had “lost faith in their country.” When Trump, as he will surely do, invokes his “Make America Great Again” slogan the night before our own election, we can only hope that his strikingly similar sentiments don’t seal this country’s fate for the coming years too. Brexit and Trump share values that have ignited a new era of hatred and intolerance—which neither side of the Atlantic can afford.

The post Brexit Is Spelled T-R-U-M-P in America appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But absent from discussion is a more fundamental question: Should we be using the notion of “free speech” to understand online speech at all?

As a general matter, it’s important not to confuse the First Amendment with the broader notion of free speech. Free speech policy is about the First Amendment kind of like how Cheez Whiz is about dairy products: They are related, but fundamentally different. The First Amendment protects “free speech” by saying that the government cannot (with certain important exceptions) prevent you from speaking. But private individuals or corporations, like Twitter, are not covered by the First Amendment and can curate or even censor speech without violating the law. In fact, some have argued that a platform’s right to keep up and take down what’s posted there is its own free speech right. Others have pointed out that not policing for abuse has a chilling effect on speech.

Twitter’s rigid adherence to being the so-called “free speech wing of the free speech party” seems reminiscent from a scene from the cult classic movie The Big Lebowski. Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) is sitting in a diner having a loud and animated conversation with his friend Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges). A waitress gently asks Walter to lower his voice, because “this is a family restaurant,” a request that sends Walter into an apoplectic fit, screaming to the waitress that “the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint.”

“Walter, this isn’t a First Amendment issue,” The Dude says before walking out in frustration.

So if the First Amendment doesn’t constrain how speech is regulated by online platforms, what does? And what should?

One of the main forces governing speech online is the same thing that governs Walter’s speech in his local diner: societal norms. Norms are customary standards for behavior that are shared in a community. They can be self-enforced by a person’s desire to fit in with the group and conform, and they can also be externally enforced by the group when an individual violates the norm. Speaking at a lower volume in a public place is one kind of norm and shaming a person who yells loudly is a way that norm is enforced.

But while geographically bound communities have had thousands of years to evolve norms in real life, developing expectations for behavior on a global Internet is still in its nascent stages. This is especially true for online speech, says Nicole Wong, the former vice president and deputy general counsel at Google who helped establish YouTube’s public policies on speech. Over the last 20 years, says Wong, online speech has been undergoing a “norm setting process” that is different and much faster than previous responses to technological advances in publication platforms. “We’re still in the middle of how to think about the norms of behavior when what is considered ‘appropriate’ speech is constantly iterating,” says Wong. “If you layer the changes in technology over a broadening array of cultural, racial, national, global perspectives, it is hard to pin down principled, universal social norms, let alone create policy to reflect them.”

The task of creating policy for governing online speech falls not to governments, but to platforms. Individual platforms that host user’s content—like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or YouTube—are each responsible for creating policies that reflect the online speech norms of the community the platform wants to create. Those policies most often take the form of a platform’s Terms of Service or community guidelines. For example, at YouTube, such policies prohibit the posting of pornography or sexually explicit content; at Facebook, community standards ban the posting of content that promotes self-injury or suicide.

Having those policies in place is important, but equally important is having a system in place that is nimble enough to allow for changes in that policy as norms evolve. And while platforms like Twitter have historically struggled in this capacity, others, like Facebook, have excelled. After the site’s policy on female nudity resulted in takedowns of women posting photos of their mastectomy scars, Facebook created an exception to its policy. When similar outcry erupted over the removal of breast-feeding photos, the policy changed again.

“What we do is informed by external conversations that we have,” explained Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy, in an April interview with the Verge. “Every day, we are in conversations with groups around the world. … So, while we are responsible for overseeing these policies and managing them, it is really a global conversation.” Facebook’s flexible responsiveness to the expectations of its community might be one reason its user base keeps growing while Twitter’s stagnates.

The underlying principle that Facebook has managed to grasp and put into motion is that digital speech is about much, much more than Twitter’s black and white notion of “free speech.” Online speech is not about simple speech absolutes. It’s about developing a global system of governance that can empower the most, while harming the least.

Talking about online speech in terms of “free speech” isn’t incorrect, it just misses so much of the picture. Or, more accurately, as The Dude might counsel, “You’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole.” The sooner we start thinking of online speech not only in terms of “free speech” but in terms of responsible and responsive platform governance, the sooner we create the internet we want.

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Fred Phelps died on March 19. Few tears were shed. Obituaries labeled him a preacher of hate. Reverend Phelps led the Westboro Baptist Church, a group known for its virulent opposition to homosexuality and for picketing a variety of events, including the funerals of military personnel, whom they believe God kills to punish a nation that tolerates homosexuality. From a library of placards, several with hurtful language are chosen for each picket: “God Hates Fags” (also the name of Westboro’s Web site), “God Hates You,” and “Thank God For Dead Soldiers,” for example. The picketers march, sing popular melodies with their own lyrics, and take on those who oppose them.

I first learned of Fred and Westboro when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Snyder v. Phelps. Al Snyder is the father of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq. Fred was one of seven Westboro members who protested the Snyder funeral. As with all of their pickets, Westboro had carefully planned this one, obtaining the necessary permits and obeying local laws. They were 1,000 feet from the church and ended the picket before the service began. Though he never saw them, Al sued for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. He won at trial but lost an appeal. The Supreme Court would settle this First Amendment issue.

As a professor, researcher, and writer in the First Amendment field, I wanted to know the story behind the case. It was not only a major test of this nation’s tolerance for free speech; it would also be an emotional one. It was good vs. evil, integrity and honor vs. disgrace and vile, the venerated military vs. those who dare to oppose it. I wanted to arrange for a trip to the Phelps family home in Topeka, Kansas. The goal was to observe and interview.

I recall making my first contact with Westboro—a telephone call—in 2010 and doing so with some trepidation. Who are these people? Will they tell me to drop dead? Do they shun any kind of contact with the outside world? No. Shirley Phelps-Roper, one of Fred’s 13 children and a spokesperson for the church, welcomed my call and helped by scheduling interviews across several days. (The interviews—both during the trip and afterward by telephone—ultimately totaled dozens of hours.) In effect, Fred’s family is his church. Almost all of the church’s 70 or so members are his descendants or their spouses.

Shirley was extremely kind throughout the process and beyond. Of course, one reason behind the hospitality was Westboro’s desire for publicity, which its members readily acknowledge. Their mission is to convey the word of God (as they define it). The more eyes, ears, cameras, and microphones the better. I later learned that Westboro members viewed me as an angel sent by God, a facilitator of spreading the word.

My observations began on a Sunday, attending the weekly noon church service. Shirley welcomed me into her home, one of several in a neighborhood where many Westboro members reside, forming a sort of compound. We walked across the backyard—a fenceless area that creates open territory shared with other Phelps families—and into the church. Fred presided, speaking in an accent reflective of his Mississippi roots. The service did not seem out of the ordinary, though I must confess I couldn’t hear all of the words from the 80-year-old preacher from where I sat in the back. Fred read from a prepared script, employing Biblical passages, to illustrate the theme of comfort. There was no fire and brimstone that day and no mention of any of the groups that attract Westboro’s wrath outside the church. But there were visual images. Two of the protest placards stood on easels at the front of the church: “God Hates Fags” and “God Hates Fag Enablers.” Several attendees wore T-shirts with either anti-gay or anti-Jewish messages.

After the service, I was introduced to Fred. Though friendly, he cut an imposing figure at about 6-foot-3. During some small talk, he told me that Walter Cronkite stood for gay rights. The comment came somewhat out of left field, except for the fact that I’m on the faculty at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. In a courteous tone, Fred was apparently reminding me that, in his view, I was part of a pro-gay rights workplace—one of those “fag enablers.” A news article about Cronkite’s gay rights views also appeared pinned to a bulletin board behind Fred when I interviewed him in his office upstairs from the church a few days later. Something told me that had appeared just for the occasion.

Even though the years were catching up to him, Fred Phelps was very bright. We tend to conclude that people who regularly commit vile, insensitive, and offensive acts lack common sense and basic intelligence. On the contrary, he and his family are highly educated and very intelligent. Though he no longer practiced, Fred had been a lawyer. He was inspired to become an attorney by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case that originated not far from his home. After schools across the country and especially in Kansas dragged their feet in integrating, Fred represented many whose rights were being denied. He was honored by many organizations, including the NAACP.

So how did he end up on a path that has created so much anguish for the people he and other Westboro members picket? First, there is what I describe as a warped view of Christianity, with religious passion and zealotry, run amok. Westboro was first established in 1955 as a “mainstream” Christian church, but its approach began a downward spiral when Fred reportedly witnessed his then-5-year-old grandson being lured by what he says was a homosexual at a Topeka park. After complaints produced no action, the Phelpses put up signs warning of homosexual activity. Protests followed, locally at first, then nationally.

Second, Fred kept his family/church together by ruling with an iron fist. He became estranged from some of his children, including his son Nate, who has said that physical and psychological abuse were not uncommon. When I asked Fred about this, there was no denial. In a house of 13 children, he said, “you have to have some rules, you have to enforce the rules and sometimes, in an extreme case, you have to spank a child. The Bible says to do that, and the Bible says if you don’t spank him when he needs it, you don’t love him, you hate him. The Bible says that.” The “spankings,” Nate told me, involved beatings with a garden tool. The iron fist rule also meant a “my way or the highway” approach that results in lifetime banishment from the church and family for any non-believers.

As the court date for Snyder v. Phelps approached, I wondered how the Westboro legal arguments would play out. The U.S. Supreme Court is an intense experience that tests even the most veteran of lawyers. Fred’s daughter Marge was going to represent her father and the church at the Supreme Court, and many of her siblings have also chosen this profession. I couldn’t help but wonder if so many of his children became lawyers to deal with anticipated lawsuits. No, I was told, it was simply to help him with his civil rights caseload years ago.

The day before her Supreme Court appearance, Marge and several of her family members had some “business commitments” – picketing at three Washington-area sites. In front of the White House, they were two-dozen strong. Fred did not make this trip, but Marge was there in full picketing regalia – a ball cap, sweats, an upside-down U.S. flag and placards in hand. It was less than 20 hours from her Supreme Court appearance. During a break from the picketing, we talked about her presentation the next day. She was quietly confident.

In court the next day, now in a business suit, Marge argued that Al Snyder, the father of the fallen Marine, should not be awarded damages for the infliction of emotional distress, largely because Westboro’s speech was on matters of public concern—homosexuality, the conduct of the military, gays in the military. Marge was virtually flawless, in contrast to her adversary, who stumbled and bumbled his way through his presentation and fielding questions.

Marge’s only error was the prediction she made afterward: “9-to-0!” When the ruling was issued in March 2011, the Court ruled 8-to-1 in Fred’s favor. The Court basically accepted Marge’s argument. In his opinion for the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized that the United States does not punish speech that causes pain, though it might be distasteful: “As a Nation, we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

Though many observers may have difficulty distinguishing between Phelps’ actions and his right to freedom of speech, even hurtful speech can make a positive contribution to the kind of debate that is essential in a self-governing democracy. As pornographer Larry Flynt—also a winner at the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving offensive speech—once said: If the First Amendment can protect someone like him, it protects all of us. Phelps was an accidental First Amendment champion who ended up strengthening the safeguards of liberty.

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