Speech repression and threat narratives in politics: social goals and cognitive foundations

Political movements often bind around mobilizing narratives about social threat. In devoted activists, this triggers moral motivations to protect the narrative from criticism and nuance. Speech repression phenomena include public shaming on social media to the “deplatforming” and “canceling” of controversial speakers to imprisonment of dissidents. Speech repression phenomena are most puzzling when the narratives activists try to protect are simplistic and inaccurate, which is often the case in politics. Here, I argue that speech repression derives from at least three main socio-cognitive motivations. First, hyper-sensitive dispositions to detect threat, from hostile outgroups in particular. Second, motivations to try to keep people mobilized in moral causes and against dangerous groups, by controlling information flows and beliefs. Third, motivations to signal personal devotion to causes and ingroups to gain status. Members of most political groups engage in speech repression, even those ostensibly committed to freedom. Political activists and leaders only need to believe that speech restriction will bring about desired effects to engage in it—but their beliefs may be inaccurate. While speech repression can derive from sincere convictions, strategic self-censorship and sanctioning are widespread.