Month: January 2020

Peter Boghossian:

The rules of engagement relate to how we deal with our disagreements. In Culture War 1.0, if an evolutionary biologist gave a public lecture about the age of the Earth based on geological dating techniques, creationist detractors would issue a response, insist that such dating techniques are biased, challenge him to a debate, and ask pointed—if unfairly loaded—questions during the Q&A session.

In Culture War 2.0, disagreements with a speaker are sometimes met with attempts at de-platforming: rowdy campaigns for the invitation to be rescinded before the speech can be delivered. If this is unsuccessful, critics may resort to disrupting the speaker by screaming and shouting, engaging noise makers, pulling the fire alarm, or ripping out the speaker wires. The goal is not to counter the speaker with better arguments or even to insist on an alternative view, but to prevent the speaker from airing her views at all.

Today’s left-wing culture warriors are not roused to action only by speakers whose views run afoul of the new moral orthodoxy. They combat “problematic” ideas anywhere they’re found, including peer-reviewed academic journals. In 2017, Portland State University Political Science Professor Bruce Gilley published a peer-reviewed article titled “The Case for Colonialism” in Third World Quarterly. Many academicians were enraged, but rather than write a rebuttal or challenge Gilley to a public debate (as they might have done in the era of Culture War 1.0), they circulated a popular petition demanding that Portland State rescind his tenure, fire him, and even take away his Ph.D. “The Case for Colonialism” was eventually withdrawn after the journal editor “received serious and credible threats of personal violence.”

Christian organizations have a long history of censorship, and this has continued to some extent even in recent decades. All the same, such an attempt to suppress an academic article would have been almost unthinkable during Culture War 1.0. There were some analogous attempts on the part of Christians during precursors of this culture war, as for example in the incidents surrounding Tennessee’s Butler Act of 1925 and the subsequent “Scopes Monkey Trial.” And religious would-be censors during Culture War 1.0 did occasionally make attempts on novels and movies interpreted as blasphemous or obscene, such as The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). But for the most part, Creationists in the first Culture War didn’t want evolutionary biologists to lose their tenure and their doctorates. They wanted to debate and prove them wrong.

One common theme running throughout Culture War 2.0 is the idea, endorsed by many well-meaning activists, that speech is violence. And if speech is violence, the thinking goes, then we must combat speech with the same vigor we use to combat physical violence. This entails that we cannot engage supposedly violent speech, sometimes referred to indiscriminately as “hate speech,” merely with words. If someone is being punched in the face, it’s futile to say, “Would you kindly stop?” or “This is not an ethical way to behave.” You need to take action. The rules of engagement change if speech cannot be met with speech—with written rebuttals, debates, and Q&A sessions. If speech is violence, it must either be prevented or stopped with something beyond speech, such as punching Nazis, throwing milkshakes, or using institutional mechanisms to smother unwanted discourse.

Is Speech Violence?

As the nursery rhyme goes,

Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words can never hurt me.

No speech is physically violent, and so the first thing that ought to be said is that unwanted speech, offensive speech, dissenting speech, contrarian speech, polemical speech, and the like including so-called 'hate speech,' ought not be met by physical violence.  There are exceptions, but in general, speech is to be countered, if it is countered and not ignored,  by speech, not physical assaults on persons or property private or public.  The speech may be sweet and reasonable or ugly and combative.

Here is an exception. Some speech is of course psychologically violent and psychologically damaging to some of those who are its recipients. The young, the impressionable, and the sensitive can be harmed, and in instances terribly, by psychologically violent speech.  Suppose one parent is verbally abusing a sensitive child in a psychological damaging way. ("You worthless piece of shit, can't you do anything right? I wish you were never born!") The other parent would be justified in using physical violence to stop the verbal abuse.

A second exception. Blasphemers invade a church service.  It would be morally permissible to force them to leave by physical means.   A third exception. Protestors block a major traffic artery. The police would be justified in using physical force to remove the law breakers.  In this case it is not the speech that is being countered by physical violence but the protestors' illegal action of blocking the artery.

But in general, no speech may be legitimately countered with physical violence to the person or property of the speaker.  Speech is not a form of physical violence and may not be countered by physical violence.

That's one point. A second is that we of the Coalition of the Sane are justified is using physical violence against those who try to shut down our dissent by physical means if the authorities abdicate.  This is why Second Amendment rights are so very important.

Finally, as I have said many times, dissent is not hate to those who can think straight and are morally sane.