Post by Jasi on Aug 14, 2017 21:49:22 GMT
Many or even most of us, in reacting to Charlottesville, seem to agree that everyone should speak out against racism. But that seems to be about where the agreement ends. I’m shocked at the vast number of people who condemn “many sides” or “both sides” of the altercations, attempting to take a third side where “both” are “crazy.” There is a lot of equating the neo-Nazis with the counter-protestors because, they say, both promote violence and both are racist. I’m interested in interrogating this train of thought from a number of different but related angles: speech as action or violence, hate speech as protected speech, identity politics and the place of white people in the discourse about race or even in the world more broadly, white guilt and gentrification and self-hatred.
(Without even getting into the role of the presidency in all of this, I have been dealing with many thoughts about this for some time, but this is my first attempt to coalesce them into a semi-coherent essay, so please bear with me. This might come off a bit like a rant at an unnamed person, in which case, I assure you it’s not directed at anyone on LA or maybe not even anyone in real life, but just my amalgamation of a lot of the horrible stuff I’ve read over the past few days.)
Anyway…
First, I’ll lay out my understanding of the traditional viewpoint. America prioritizes free speech above many things, maybe all things. It’s the First Amendment: government shall make no establishment against freedom of speech. Therefore, Nazi groups are entitled to assemble, to speak, and so on. The Nazi flag may be flown. The Confederate flag may be flown. People may go on television and insist that the creation of a White state would be beneficial to all of society. Most Americans may not believe these things; most may find these things abhorrent; however, because of the First Amendment and the principles that America was founded on, we must not silence these people; instead, we are to engage in rational discourse with them, find common ground, reason with them.
Is there ever any cause to make exceptions to freedom of speech? In fact, there are—one may not yell “fire” in a crowded theater, for a classic example. One may not make bomb threats in the TSA line. Generally, free speech is not permitted where violence is imminently implied in the speech itself—in other words, if you make violent threats against people, you can claim all day that it was your “free speech,” but you’ll still run the risk of being charged with the crime of making a terrorist threat.
The concept of speech act theory, from linguistics and philosophy, asserts that words are not just words; they are actions. Words are meant to accomplish something. In the most obvious way, words can be actions when words alone can make something happen: for example, on an oral exam, your words alone can make you pass the test. A subtler kind of speech act is called “perlocutionary”: the action of words on another person, such as frightening them, persuading them, and so on. My words are not just my own emission, but they also have an impact on the person to whom I am speaking. If I insult you, I am taking an action.
When that Google memo went out from that employee who felt diversity was not a good value for the company, many protested his firing by saying, “This was just his free speech. He didn’t act in a discriminatory way.” Presumably, by this, people mean something like “He did not attend a Nazi rally and advocate for the destruction of his Black coworkers.” But of course actions come in softer shades than that. One can assume that his bigoted opinions that he articulated with words likely influenced his interactions and decision-making throughout his tenure at Google—deciding how to divvy up tasks among a group, maybe who gets hired and fired, who gets invited to after-work drinks and who doesn’t. By sending out a bigoted memo en masse to the department, he created a hostile work environment (if you’ll forgive the tired HR language) for any women or people of color working at the company—it threatens and undermines all those people, directly as a result of speech.
Okay, equality in the workplace is one thing. An entire Other Thing is that Nazis believe that not only are other races bad at certain jobs, they believe that other races need to be removed from society in some way—maybe forced to live in some kind of separate colony, maybe forcefully assimilated into a White society, or maybe actually exterminated and wiped from the planet. Nazis have actually managed to go a long way toward accomplishing this, historically. Nazi beliefs align with the idea of slavery in the Confederacy, as slavery of course would keep Black people in a separate colony, or in a separate caste in society. Again, historically, it’s been demonstrated that in fact people are capable of forcing Black people into this role.
Articulating these values in a public sphere is an action—a violent action, because (as these protected groups know better than anyone) this train of thought leads to rampant physical violence and genocide against people like them. They have heard these stories not just from the history books but also from their living relatives. They have seen the trauma inflicted by Nazis and by KKK members firsthand. There is no need to wait to see how these ideas will grow and develop. Believing some kinds of people are subhuman is a fast track to justifying violence against those people, and we have actually seen this in action many times throughout the course of history. One need not “hear them out” to know that the ultimate goal of these groups is at best forced removal and entire segregation (which is a kind of genocide by tearing people away from their culture and history), or at worst, mass murder.
These are, undeniably, violent viewpoints being espoused by Nazis and the KKK. Given that, it is not so short a step to say that hate speech, like terroristic threats or inciting a panic, might be a form of speech that ought not be protected under the First Amendment. Hate speech (defined as speech that incites violence against a protected group due to race, religion, gender, sexuality, etc.) may not be as immediate a threat as a bomb threat or the threat of an uncontrolled fire, history has shown repeatedly that terrible violence does in fact follow from the harboring of hateful views. The Holocaust is just one obvious example, but consider also more recent attacks on U.S. soil, such as Dylann Roof’s shooting.
The valuation of free speech above all else is a U.S. American oddity. Most other developed countries have written laws prohibiting hate speech. I am most familiar with the laws in Germany, where my brother now lives, which ban use of the Nazi flag, salute, and hate speech against all groups. The punishment is jail or a fine. Though the slippery slope argument suggests that Germany, and all these other governments, would eventually begin to wield “hate speech” as a weapon against all those that the government does not approve of, in fact, this has not yet happened. Citizens are only prosecuted for hate speech when they have committed hate speech under the strict definition of it. The reasoning behind prosecuting hate speech is identical to the prosecution of terrorist threats and inciting panics: it endangers the citizens of the community.
If you can agree that hate speech is an act of violence (I know, maybe you don’t, but I’m going to move on for now), then we can move on to the question of whether violence against Nazis is “just as reprehensible” as violence caused by Nazis. But violence against Nazis is not equally reprehensible, because the only platform of Nazis is inherently one of violence. Naziism is based in the endangering groups of people, and absolutely nothing else. I recently read an articulate writing by Simone de Beauvior: “A freedom which is occupied in denying freedom is itself so outrageous that the outrageousness of the violence against it is almost cancelled out…”. In other words, the desperation one feels to prevent such horrible acts makes violence understandable, if not forgivable. By extension, to redirect energy from the crusade to eliminate Naziism to focusing on the sins of those crusaders is also reprehensible. Nazis are the ones beginning the violence, through their advocating that some races are lesser than others. The crusading wouldn’t be necessary if they had not advocated this violence. Any resulting violence is the fault of the Nazis that began the violent dialogue.
I am baffled when I read that some do not consider the public promotion of Naziism to be a dangerous thing, and imply that we must hear them out and reason with them. The viewpoints of Nazis are already well-documented: why rehash them? Prioritizing notions of American Values and Free Speech above the actual lives of human beings is quite backwards. Perhaps those making this prioritization don’t agree that lives are on the line, but to not see the connection is to be in denial. The denial might just be the result of ignorance, but sometimes, or most times, it is the result of willful ignorance. This ignorance comes easily to those that have no need to fear the results of the speech on a personal level—from never having to hear stories from grandparents about being beaten or denied service, from not having lost much of their family history due to enslavement and extermination. It comes from a total lack of empathy.
(Without even getting into the role of the presidency in all of this, I have been dealing with many thoughts about this for some time, but this is my first attempt to coalesce them into a semi-coherent essay, so please bear with me. This might come off a bit like a rant at an unnamed person, in which case, I assure you it’s not directed at anyone on LA or maybe not even anyone in real life, but just my amalgamation of a lot of the horrible stuff I’ve read over the past few days.)
Anyway…
First, I’ll lay out my understanding of the traditional viewpoint. America prioritizes free speech above many things, maybe all things. It’s the First Amendment: government shall make no establishment against freedom of speech. Therefore, Nazi groups are entitled to assemble, to speak, and so on. The Nazi flag may be flown. The Confederate flag may be flown. People may go on television and insist that the creation of a White state would be beneficial to all of society. Most Americans may not believe these things; most may find these things abhorrent; however, because of the First Amendment and the principles that America was founded on, we must not silence these people; instead, we are to engage in rational discourse with them, find common ground, reason with them.
Is there ever any cause to make exceptions to freedom of speech? In fact, there are—one may not yell “fire” in a crowded theater, for a classic example. One may not make bomb threats in the TSA line. Generally, free speech is not permitted where violence is imminently implied in the speech itself—in other words, if you make violent threats against people, you can claim all day that it was your “free speech,” but you’ll still run the risk of being charged with the crime of making a terrorist threat.
The concept of speech act theory, from linguistics and philosophy, asserts that words are not just words; they are actions. Words are meant to accomplish something. In the most obvious way, words can be actions when words alone can make something happen: for example, on an oral exam, your words alone can make you pass the test. A subtler kind of speech act is called “perlocutionary”: the action of words on another person, such as frightening them, persuading them, and so on. My words are not just my own emission, but they also have an impact on the person to whom I am speaking. If I insult you, I am taking an action.
When that Google memo went out from that employee who felt diversity was not a good value for the company, many protested his firing by saying, “This was just his free speech. He didn’t act in a discriminatory way.” Presumably, by this, people mean something like “He did not attend a Nazi rally and advocate for the destruction of his Black coworkers.” But of course actions come in softer shades than that. One can assume that his bigoted opinions that he articulated with words likely influenced his interactions and decision-making throughout his tenure at Google—deciding how to divvy up tasks among a group, maybe who gets hired and fired, who gets invited to after-work drinks and who doesn’t. By sending out a bigoted memo en masse to the department, he created a hostile work environment (if you’ll forgive the tired HR language) for any women or people of color working at the company—it threatens and undermines all those people, directly as a result of speech.
Okay, equality in the workplace is one thing. An entire Other Thing is that Nazis believe that not only are other races bad at certain jobs, they believe that other races need to be removed from society in some way—maybe forced to live in some kind of separate colony, maybe forcefully assimilated into a White society, or maybe actually exterminated and wiped from the planet. Nazis have actually managed to go a long way toward accomplishing this, historically. Nazi beliefs align with the idea of slavery in the Confederacy, as slavery of course would keep Black people in a separate colony, or in a separate caste in society. Again, historically, it’s been demonstrated that in fact people are capable of forcing Black people into this role.
Articulating these values in a public sphere is an action—a violent action, because (as these protected groups know better than anyone) this train of thought leads to rampant physical violence and genocide against people like them. They have heard these stories not just from the history books but also from their living relatives. They have seen the trauma inflicted by Nazis and by KKK members firsthand. There is no need to wait to see how these ideas will grow and develop. Believing some kinds of people are subhuman is a fast track to justifying violence against those people, and we have actually seen this in action many times throughout the course of history. One need not “hear them out” to know that the ultimate goal of these groups is at best forced removal and entire segregation (which is a kind of genocide by tearing people away from their culture and history), or at worst, mass murder.
These are, undeniably, violent viewpoints being espoused by Nazis and the KKK. Given that, it is not so short a step to say that hate speech, like terroristic threats or inciting a panic, might be a form of speech that ought not be protected under the First Amendment. Hate speech (defined as speech that incites violence against a protected group due to race, religion, gender, sexuality, etc.) may not be as immediate a threat as a bomb threat or the threat of an uncontrolled fire, history has shown repeatedly that terrible violence does in fact follow from the harboring of hateful views. The Holocaust is just one obvious example, but consider also more recent attacks on U.S. soil, such as Dylann Roof’s shooting.
The valuation of free speech above all else is a U.S. American oddity. Most other developed countries have written laws prohibiting hate speech. I am most familiar with the laws in Germany, where my brother now lives, which ban use of the Nazi flag, salute, and hate speech against all groups. The punishment is jail or a fine. Though the slippery slope argument suggests that Germany, and all these other governments, would eventually begin to wield “hate speech” as a weapon against all those that the government does not approve of, in fact, this has not yet happened. Citizens are only prosecuted for hate speech when they have committed hate speech under the strict definition of it. The reasoning behind prosecuting hate speech is identical to the prosecution of terrorist threats and inciting panics: it endangers the citizens of the community.
If you can agree that hate speech is an act of violence (I know, maybe you don’t, but I’m going to move on for now), then we can move on to the question of whether violence against Nazis is “just as reprehensible” as violence caused by Nazis. But violence against Nazis is not equally reprehensible, because the only platform of Nazis is inherently one of violence. Naziism is based in the endangering groups of people, and absolutely nothing else. I recently read an articulate writing by Simone de Beauvior: “A freedom which is occupied in denying freedom is itself so outrageous that the outrageousness of the violence against it is almost cancelled out…”. In other words, the desperation one feels to prevent such horrible acts makes violence understandable, if not forgivable. By extension, to redirect energy from the crusade to eliminate Naziism to focusing on the sins of those crusaders is also reprehensible. Nazis are the ones beginning the violence, through their advocating that some races are lesser than others. The crusading wouldn’t be necessary if they had not advocated this violence. Any resulting violence is the fault of the Nazis that began the violent dialogue.
I am baffled when I read that some do not consider the public promotion of Naziism to be a dangerous thing, and imply that we must hear them out and reason with them. The viewpoints of Nazis are already well-documented: why rehash them? Prioritizing notions of American Values and Free Speech above the actual lives of human beings is quite backwards. Perhaps those making this prioritization don’t agree that lives are on the line, but to not see the connection is to be in denial. The denial might just be the result of ignorance, but sometimes, or most times, it is the result of willful ignorance. This ignorance comes easily to those that have no need to fear the results of the speech on a personal level—from never having to hear stories from grandparents about being beaten or denied service, from not having lost much of their family history due to enslavement and extermination. It comes from a total lack of empathy.