International Man: Under the previous administration, we saw an aggressive push against so-called “disinformation”—fact-checkers, censorship, and suppression of views outside the mainstream narrative. At the same time, there was a strong focus on social justice, gender ideology, and migrant protection.
What’s your perspective on that era and its impact on free speech?
Doug Casey: It’s no longer okay to have a difference of opinion in politics and academia. Not so long ago, it was possible to have a polite discussion and ask Socratic questions to determine what’s right or wrong. Not anymore.
Free speech is one of Western Civilization’s most important contributions to the world. Throughout history, of all the world’s cultures and civilizations, only the West made free speech and free thought into cultural icons. Free speech is a major reason why the West—with all its flaws—has always been not only different from but objectively better than any other. Incidentally, just saying that can now get you canceled or even prosecuted in some places.
Without free speech, it’s very hard to have free thought because if you’re forced to keep concepts within the confines of your own mind, it’s very hard to explicate, expand, and concretize them. What’s going on now is extremely dangerous. It amounts to putting tariffs on others’ ideas so they can’t enter your brain.
Europe and the Anglophone world—Australia, New Zealand, England, the US, and Canada—are turning into police states where thought crime is a real thing that can be prosecuted. It’s not 1984 yet, but things are rapidly moving in that direction.
One of the most perverse aspects of the trend is that universities have become the center of this anti-freedom groupthink. They once were— and should be—centers of discussion, debate, and free thought. That’s no longer true. They’ve become institutionally corrupt. They’re no longer even places to hang out, party, and pick up a few idle facts while delaying the onset of maturity. They’ve mutated into something destructive and dangerous, as illustrated by the recent scandals at Colombia, Harvard, and Penn.
95% of American universities have become indoctrination centers. It’s quite amazing. Most of the teachers and administrators are Woke or Marxist and actively destructive to young minds. The schools are scams, losing money even with tuitions crowding $100,000 per nine-month year. They’ve become self-licking ice cream cones mainly benefitting the staff.
International Man: Now, under the new Trump administration, those left-leaning agendas seem to have fallen out of favor.
Has the pendulum swung the other way?
Doug Casey: I can only say that as bad as things look today, they would have been much, much worse if Kamala Harris had been installed as the US President. But we should take a moment to comment on Trump, who currently bestrides the world like a colossus.
As I’ve been saying for years, Trump has no philosophical center. He doesn’t have any core beliefs. The good thing about him, and the reason why he’s popular, is that he’s a cultural conservative who wants to preserve many aspects of what was good in America. But he doesn’t have any consistent view of the world. He just does whatever seems like a good idea at the time, flying by the seat of his pants. I fear that he suffers from megalomania. Things could get out of control because he lacks a philosophical core. His military threats and his using tariffs as weapons could lead to a genuine catastrophe.
That said, what Elon Musk is doing with DOGE is absolutely great. As is Trump’s anti-Wokeism. Wokeism has become an ideological force. It’s a set of memes, beliefs, and feelings—psychological aberrations, really—that have captured the West.
Wokism is defined by things like LGBTQ, DEI, intersectionality, safe spaces, trigger warnings, irrational pandering to minorities, identity politics, guilt about being white, abolishing traditional norms and culture, and disavowing Western values in particular. It’s actually a spiritual illness. Throughout history, there have been lots of similar episodes—the Inquisition, witch hunts, Jacobinism, Leninism, Hitlerism, Maoism, and many, many more.
It’s fine that Trump reacts against what amounts to a mass psychosis. But you can’t win a battle of ideas just by reacting against them. It’s good to destroy the foundations of Woke. They’re evil—a word rarely used since it was inadvertently discredited by religious fanatics. The problem is that, at best, Trump will just create a vacuum, and that vacuum can be filled by almost anything in today’s world. It seems unlikely, in the resulting chaos, that it will be filled by the things which actually made America great—free speech, free thought, free markets, individualism, rationality, the rule of law, and a half dozen other things I outlined in the article here.
International Man: Beyond cultural issues, we’re also seeing the political right suppress certain kinds of speech. The Trump administration has cracked down on campus protests and issued an executive order targeting anti-Semitism, stating:
“President Trump’s new Order takes forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all Federal resources to combat the explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023.”
How do you view this development?
Doug Casey: The real question, the important question, is: What’s the government doing on campuses in the first place?
The State and its minions have absolutely no place on campuses. Injecting force and politics into academia is poisonous. Entirely apart from that, the US university system has outlived its usefulness. Almost all of them are intellectually dead. They’re essentially indoctrination centers attached to hedge funds. They’re no longer centers of free thought and critical thinking to help you find a direction in life, determine what’s right or wrong, and build your character. If you take STEM courses, you’ll pick up some facts at best. But that’s not what education is about.
Worse, looking at Trump’s statement, he’s looking to defend one group, the Jews, and particularly Israel. It’s none of the government’s business. And it’s not about promoting freedom. It’s about taking sides in a dispute between two antagonistic groups—the Muslims against the Jews, or the Palestinians against the Israelis. Trump isn’t solving the problem. He’s making it worse by choosing sides. Local police and the University itself are responsible for preventing violence.
International Man: From the left and now the right, it seems like free speech is increasingly conditional—depending on who’s in power and what views are deemed acceptable.
Do you believe the First Amendment is being eroded from both ends of the political spectrum?
Doug Casey: Unfortunately, the political spectrum is only divided into left and right.
Historically, the Left has always talked about free speech and social freedom. They never really believed in them, but they were overt about hating economic freedom. The Right always pretended to defend economic freedom but traditionally hated freedom of speech and social freedom. They’re really two sides of the same coin and should both be thrown out. Only libertarians believe in both free minds and free markets as a matter of principle.
The US Constitution was intended to defend citizens from government. But unfortunately, the Constitution is now a dead letter. It’s been completely interpreted out of existence. It’s become a meaningless sham. I don’t think that’s likely to change because the people it governs no longer have any philosophical or moral grounding.
In recent elections, particularly the last, half of the population voted for actual communists—although they always avoid that word. The only way this can be solved, if it can be solved, is by returning to a government which exists only to prevent violence and allow people to pursue free minds and free markets.
Unfortunately, government has become the source of all solutions, funding, and everything else. As I’ve explained before, since government is pure force, it should do nothing but protect you from force. Force from abroad with the military, and force inside the country with the police and a court system.
Unfortunately, those three extremely important elements of a civil society can be easily corrupted by the type of people who are inevitably drawn to government.
International Man: Given these trends, from disinformation crackdowns to culture wars to campus speech battles, where do you see this headed? What does the future of free speech look like in the US?
Doug Casey: I’ve said numerous times over the last decade that the US is headed towards a civil war.
For a while, with the defeat of the Democrats—who have mutated into thinly disguised communists, Marxists, and socialists—it looked like we might have a “Morning in America.” But it turns out that morning only lasts six hours.
I think we’re headed towards something like a civil war, though nothing resembling the unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865.
The point is that when you have 350 million people compressed into a political aggregation that no longer shares a common culture, religious values, economic interests, or political beliefs and no longer has any internal cohesion, it can only be held together by force. And that’s the way the US is headed.
It’s a real pity because the concept of America was unique in the world; it was the only country that was overtly founded on the principles of free minds and free markets. But it’s completely lost the plot and has transformed from a guiding light to an active danger, both to itself and the world at large.
Reprinted with permission from International Man.
