Palestine

The US has never had free speech. It constantly peddles propaganda about free speech borrowing from the liberal tradition, which rallied against monarchist and state religious restrictions on speech, as liberalism itself struggled to replace both social relations.

But any time speech is perceived to pose a risk to capital - even indirectly, such as making material demands against its favorite attack dog in the Middle East - it brings out the violence of the state. An American's "free speech" is the freedom to say anything that has no chance of negatively impacting the ruling class. You are free to wail impotently. But a simple reading of history exposes how little the state respects "free speech" when it does threaten the ruling class.