Book review: In 2019, rugby union player Israel Folau posted a screenshot on Facebook: “WARNING Drunks, Homosexuals, Adulterers, Liars, Fornicators, Thieves, Atheists, Idolaters HELL AWAITS YOU. REPENT! ONLY JESUS SAVES.”
Folau’s wrath had been provoked by a Tasmanian government decision allowing gender to be changed on birth certificates.
The response was predictable: Folau’s opponents and supporters piled into the argument, Rugby Australia sacked him, claiming the way he expressed his opinions was “inconsistent with the values of the sport”, legal proceedings followed, eventually there was a multimillion-dollar payout for the now-unemployed Folau, and he moved on to play in Japan.
To which, social liberals might say: serves him right – he got what was coming to him for sharing his homophobic views.
But hang on a minute, argues author Josh Bornstein. It’s fair enough to criticise Folau for harming gay people, but it’s not fair enough to punish him for allegedly damaging Rugby Australia’s brand. Why not? Because it shouldn’t be up to corporations to decide what people can and can’t say. Also, because the same process that was used against Folau can be, and often is, used against other people, too.
This is a book about free speech, and about the corporate threat to that freedom. It works like this: many employment contracts include a clause forbidding the employee from doing anything that damages the employer’s reputation. If the employee then does something that sets off an online storm – let’s say it’s a Facebook post – and the employer fears damage to its brand, the easy answer is to placate the angry mob by showing the employee the door.
Adding insult to injury, these clauses are often so vague that it’s impossible to know what sort of action may be regarded as brand-damaging until after the event, by which time it’s too late.
It need not matter that the original Facebook post had nothing to do with the employee’s work. And it can cut both ways, whether the post is a right-wing rant that sparks a left-wing reaction, or vice versa. All that matters is the employer’s desire to get the online mob off its back by removing the cause of the problem.
If a government had such power to take away a person’s livelihood for saying the “wrong” thing, we’d call it totalitarianism, says Bornstein. As it is, it’s just standard reputation management. The result is a reduction in free speech and a limitation on workers’ rights to take part in the democratic process.
This is very much a social media story. First, it is social media that makes it possible to instantaneously outrage millions of people, sometimes without even trying, and second, for those millions of people to form an online posse looking for someone to string up.
While online outrage isn’t limited to right-wingers, and there are plenty of examples of earnest lefties baying for blood, Bornstein is clear about who he believes is the bigger threat. “Contrary to suggestions otherwise,” he says, “the greatest threat to free speech and liberal democracy is not the work of woke activists. The authoritarian right is by far the greatest exponent of cancel culture.”
And it isn’t just corporations that Bornstein accuses of this repressive behaviour. He’s also scathing about universities that claim to be the critic and conscience of society while imposing employment contracts allowing them to take away academics’ jobs for voicing controversial opinions.
The author is an Australian lawyer and he’s making the case for the prosecution here, so don’t expect a lot of counter-argument. The main solution he has to offer is the restoration of union power, to act as a bulwark against the excesses of employers.
In a perfect world, argues Bornstein, companies would react to an online pile-on by saying that employees don’t speak for the company and won’t be censored, sacked or otherwise disciplined for expressing unpopular views. Given the fevered state of online debate, and companies’ devotion to protecting their brands, it might be a while before that response becomes standard practice.
Working for the Brand: How corporations are destroying free speech, by Josh Bornstein (Scribe, $45), is out now.
