The Internet Won’t Let the Senate Censor Elizabeth Warren

Astrid Riecken/Getty Images

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s fiery rebukes of Wall Street, Republicans, and President Donald Trump have been known to make the rounds online. But Tuesday night, it was what Warren couldn’t say that went viral. GOP, meet the Streisand effect.

During a late-night Democrat-staged protest of Trump’s pick for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions, Warren began reading a letter Coretta Scott King wrote in 1986 to oppose Sessions’ then-nomination to a federal judgeship. “Mr. Sessions has used-the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge,” Warren said, reading from King’s letter.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell swiftly shut Warren down, saying she’d violated rules against impugning other members of the Senate. And just like that, Warren’s message, which might have otherwise gone largely unheard during the late-night session, spread far and wide with the hashtag #LetLizSpeak.

McConnell had inadvertently triggered a little internet phenomenon known as the “Streisand effect,” named for Barbra Streisand, who once sued a photographer for taking pictures of her Malibu home. The lawsuit achieved the opposite of what Streisand had hoped, driving tons of traffic instead to the website that hosted the photos. The Streisand effect, then, describes the phenomenon in which efforts to conceal or censor information only drive more attention to it.

That’s precisely what happened last night. Almost as soon as McConnell silenced Warren, his own words were used against him as a battle cry for Warren online. “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted,” McConnell said. Before long, the quote circulated widely, appended with images of women’s rights and civil rights leaders like Malala Yousafzai, who was shot for advocating for girls education in Pakistan, and Ruby Bridges, the first black child to integrate schools in the Jim Crow south.

King’s letter was also widely shared, in its entirety. In it, she expresses concern about Sessions’ history of prosecuting civil rights leaders in a voter fraud case as US Attorney. “It is my strongly held view that the appointment of Jefferson Sessions to the federal bench would irreparably damage the work of my husband, Al Turner, and countless others who risked their lives and freedom over the past twenty years to ensure equal participation in our democratic system,” it reads.

It’s possible, of course, that none of these memes or messages are reaching audiences beyond the liberal echo chamber. Even so, McConnell’s words and Warren’s forced silence became a rallying point for the progressive movement around a moment that, even 10 years ago, may have been lost to the CSPAN archives.

For elected officials, it’s an important reminder that technology is rapidly forcing open the closed doors behind which they’re accustomed to operating. You can silence someone in a Senate chamber, but the internet will give them a voice.

Here’s a look at Warren’s full speech. Cut to the end to see where McConnell cuts in.

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