Mia Khalifa, a Victim of Cancel Culture?

Mia Khalifa is a former pornographic actress who now works as a commentator and content creator for the adult magazine Playboy. Well, that gig is over for her: Playboy announced that it had fired Khalifa over pro-Hamas comments she made on social media.

"Over the past few days, Mia has made disgusting and reprehensible comments celebrating Hamas' attacks on Israel and the murder of innocent men, women and children," wrote the magazine in a statement. "At Playboy, we encourage free expression and constructive political debate, but we have a zero tolerance policy for hate speech."

Khalifa's comments were indeed vile. On X, the site formerly known as Twitter, she called on Hamas militants to "flip their phones" horizontally in order to capture better footage of the atrocities they were committing, and she referred to a photo of the terrorists as a "Renaissance painting." (She subsequently deleted that tweet.) Moreover, Playboy is a private company and has no special First Amendment obligation to platform speech it detests.

But, of course, many people—myself included—have objected in the past when provocative individuals are sanctioned, punished, expelled, or fired for making controversial and offensive remarks. Sometimes, these individuals are described as victims of cancel culture, even though their underlying behavior was quite obnoxious: Roseanne Barr, Kathy Griffin, Will Wilkinson. (Barr was defended by many on the right, Griffin was defended by many on the left, Wilkinson was defended by…basically just me.)

Playboy has said that it values "free speech" but has a "zero tolerance policy for hate speech." The magazine does, in fact, have a long history of fighting on behalf of the First Amendment: It has won important court battles—including before the Supreme Court—and works with other civil liberties organizations to protect free speech. This admirable track record cannot and should not be overlooked, which is why it's a bit troubling to see the organization committing a classic mistake with respect to the erroneous free speech/hate speech distinction. What constitutes hate speech is in the eyes of the beholder; it is not some carefully defined category of expression that is separate from free speech, despite frequent assertions to the contrary.

And it's not as if the magazine had no idea what it was getting when it hired Khalifa, whose intensely anti-Israel views have been well-known for some time. Playboy hailed Khalifa as a "thought-provoking" addition to their roster of content creators when she was hired, noting that "freedom of expression" is one of the organization's cornerstone values.

Again, no publication owes Khalifa a platform. Her speech rights vis-à-vis her employer are not subject to the protection of the First Amendment. She is in a different situation than the pro-Palestinian students at Harvard University, whose ignorant statements assigning all blame for the Hamas attacks to the "Israeli regime" are protected via the university's stated commitment to honor the free expression rights of students and faculty members.