Protect Dissent

 

Protect Dissent

Mob mentality, also called herd mentality, as some call it, describes how humans adopt behaviors and follow trends based on their circle of influence. It explains how ones point of view can be easily altered by those around them. 

This mob mentality, however, has no defense when it comes to the first amendment. Protect Dissent protects minority views, no matter how unpopular. Disagreeing with the government and others is actually supported. 

Protect Dissent resonates with me more so than the others due to its relevance in todays society, with the power of social media exponentially growing, and the explosion of cancel culture.

In todays society, mob mentality has become a growing epidemic, where if someone doesn't agree with the majority opinion- they get "Cancelled." This can include widespread social media coverage, which can lead to an individual losing their job so the employer doesnt have bad coverage. While this is well within the rights of the individuals to disagree with the outlier, the first amendment protects them from any real harm or censorship from the government.                                                                                                                                                  

 Cancel Culture  is to many people, the process of publicly calling for accountability, and boycotting if nothing else seems to work, has become an important tool to the social justice movement- a way of combatting, through collective action, some of the huge power imbalances or social ineptitude, and to put a stop to hurting people and communities that may find specific words and actions harmful. According to Vox, "Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly embraces the argument hat cancel culture, rather than being a way of speaking truth to power, has spun out of control and become a senseless form of social media mob rule." At the 2020 Republican National Convention, President Trump addressed cancel culture directly, and has explicitly targeted the phenomenon, describing it as having grown into erasing of history encouraging lawlessness, muting citizens, and violating free exchange of ideas, thoughts, and speech. 

Protect Dissent is an invaluable tool to the United States population. It is the legal term to counter cancel culture. Even though the social media justice warriors may try to cancel someone for having a different opinion, the Government, in any form, cannot do anything. The Founding Fathers believed strongly in a citizens right to express dissent, preserving the right in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

Exiting out of the realm of  social media and mob mentality, protect dissent, I believe focuses more on criticizing the Government. With the exception of the Alien + Sedition Act, the American people have been told that its their duty to criticize the Government. This is one of the things that separate the United States from the rest of the world, and why we can illicit so much positive change in our country. 

Recently, however, due to the rising power of the aforementioned social media platforms, even criticizing the government is become less and less common due to censorship. During the recent election, social media platforms were deleting and censoring accounts when they were speaking their mind about the election or the candidates. We are currently seeing this today as well, with the vaccine debate. True or not, the people who own those social media accounts have a right to speak their minds. There is also the argument to be made that they have no rights on the platforms, because they sign a contract when they make the account. I personally think that this is a case of public accommodation, since the companies label themselves and platforms, and not publishers under section 230. Either way, I believe that something needs to be done or we are going to lose more and more First Amendment rights.