The Weird War of the Kidnapped Israeli Flyers
Tearing down posters is not free speech, but we need more sensible deterrence than destroying people's lives.
As war rages in Gaza and Israel, a curious parallel war has been waged on the streets in the US, Canada, and Europe. After the Oct 7 massacre of Jews in Israel by the Hamas terrorist organization, activists in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and elsewhere began putting up flyers with the faces of people kidnapped by Hamas. Most of these people remain in captivity as of this writing. Soon, other individuals began tearing these flyers down. The result has been a continuous low-grade skirmish of poster supporters and opponents. The lives of people who are caught on film tearing posters down have been potentially ruined.
Debating the merit of the posters is very fair. Do they bring attention to rising antisemitism worldwide or are they provocative regarding the fate of Gazan civilians? Reasonable arguments could be made both in favor of and against the posters. Yet, tearing them down is a very specific anti-free speech behavior. This would be true too, for the record, should posters of Gazan civilians be torn down by Israel supporters, though there seem to be far fewer reports of this. This phenomenon has left a lot of people confused about the appropriate response.
It bears reiterating that tearing down flyers is not free speech and, as such, not protected. Indeed, it is specifically the opposite of free speech. Yet, I’ve gotten some sense that the public shaming of poster rippers has left some free speech advocates with a conundrum. If tearing down posters is bad…what is the appropriate deterrence?
Some debates get a bit lost in the details. Does it matter if the people putting up the flyers don’t have a city permit to do so? What about extremes…surely if someone were putting up posters advocating for, say, pedophilia or praising the Holocaust in a primarily Jewish neighborhood, taking them down would be “good?” Yet, these seem like convenient rationalizations for bad behavior. Technicalities about permits raises the question of who gets to declare themselves the poster police? Are they taking down all unpermitted flyers? I doubt it. As for the second point, it’s an argument to extremes. Almost anything can be made to sound defensible by arguing to excesses, “Oh, so you like firefighters, but if Hitler used firefighters to put out the Reichstag fire, would you approve of those firefighters?” Of course, we all recognize some things are beyond the Overton Window…the range of reasonable discourse. However, posters of kidnapped kids are not, so arguments to these extremes are a distraction.
Such arguments are generally selective, anyway. Those who might defend tearing down pictures of Israeli kids almost certainly would be outraged if, say, religious conservatives tore down flyers promoting gay marriage. Self-anointment as the poster police is a door we generally don’t want opened. It’s a bad look…something I think even most of the people doing it realize. Granted, videos making the rounds on social media are likely to be selective, but those caught on film generally have an awkward deer-in-the-headlights look, generally unable to mount a rational defense of their actions. A few mumble vague comments about “settler colonialists”, reminding us once again how university humanities are the root of all evil. Others lace into profanity, but I’ve yet to see a principled argument for poster tearing.
There are some exceptions where poster removal is consistent with free speech. Free speech also means that a person can’t be compelled to participate in speech. So, the owners of private property are within their rights to remove posters on their property. So too can municipalities enforce any laws regarding permitting of posters.
But for the self-appointed censors, what are we to do? The reality is, in the absence of deterrence, behavior will continue. Given that this behavior is anti-free speech, some degree of deterrence is appropriate. But destroying a person’s life forever seems excessive. Poster-tearing isn’t homicide and, besides, which of us would like to be judged forever by the worst decision we ever made?
Since poster ripping generally isn’t a matter of the law, it will be for society to decide the appropriate deterrence. Unfortunately, societies are really bad at this, too quickly succumbing to mob rule and witch hunts. Ideally, poster rippers would be offered an opportunity to apologize privately (public apologies tend to veer too far into Cultural Revolution-style jargon) to those who placed the poster. A small amount of monetary compensation could be paid to replace the damaged flyers. Businesses or universities could reasonably require offending staff or students to attend a class on free speech civics. Then the matter should be dropped, the individual allowed to return to polite society. Nobody should lose jobs or be bullied online forever.
And for those who don’t like someone else’s flyers remember: don’t tear them down. Put your own up instead.