A Call to Harm
This essay was inspired by a documentary I watched in The Fire Next Time by The Working Group. It was about a group of people in a northwestern Montana, in the town of Kalispell, with a political agenda that they advanced through fear and intimidation of their political rivals.
This caused me to wonder about the legitimacy of speech, when that speech threatens others with harm. By this, I mean a statement like that on a bumper sticker I saw on the program, “Have you bitch-slapped an environmentalist today?”
This is one example of a common form of speech that calls for violence against another because of their beliefs or their job or role in an organization. It applies to calls that judges (or their families) be made to suffer for their judicial activism, or that the holy shrines of another religion may be a legitimate target military target. It also applies to those who would make video games or other forms of entertainment where players target groups such as immigrants, Jews, Native Americans, environmentalists, African Americans, cops, judges, any similar identifiable group.
The effect of these types of speech acts is to cause others to live with at least some measure of fear for their own well-being, and for the well-being of those that they love. It introduces a cloud of uncertainty that would not otherwise exist, and which nobody wants in their own lives.
The right to freedom of speech is not a right to cause others to live in fear of suffering harm. A decent person knows this and will not speak in ways that threaten others who, themselves, do not mean to do any harm.
The Use of Coercive Power
Before going too deeply into this subject, I want to make it clear that I am not defending coercive censorship of those who make these types of statements. In fact, I oppose this measure. As I wrote in the essay Offense, the best response to any wrongful speech is to explain what’s wrong with it and why those who utter such statements deserve our moral condemnation.
History has shown that when people use coercive power to silence speech they do not approve of, it is far too difficult to keep that coercive power inside the lines. People who use this tool find it tempting to use it against any contrary opinion. Falling victim to an attitude of, “Those who are not for us are against us,” anybody who suggests that a given plan is poorly conceived and that something else might work better are seen as obstructionists. Limiting their speech is too easily considered a legitimate means of “protecting” whatever project those with power favor at the moment.
There are so many examples of this that it is in our interest to allow speech even when we consider it to be wrong, so that speech that is not wrong but only disagreeable to those with power does not get silenced as well.
Instead of using coercive power, the proper response to this type of speech is to explain why it is wrong. If the arguments are sound, it is hoped that they will also be convincing, and the wrongful speech can be checked. If the wrongful speech does not end, it can still be rendered more impotent.
Why it is Wrongful Speech?
In this documentary, a failed U.S. Senate candidate bought a radio station in Kalispell and began to express his political views. Those views are extremely hostile to liberals and environmentalists — which itself is not a problem. The issue that this essay is concerned with happens when that anger goes so far that its participants talk favorably about doing harm to the people who oppose them and their property.
In the atmosphere being created in Kalispell, several government officials have suffered damage to their property, threats to their own well-being, and attacks that put them or their family members at risk. A police officer told about the day he had to go home and tell his family that, based on a list of targets that was found in a police raid, not only was his life at risk, but theirs (his family’s) well-being was at risk as well.
The school-aged daughter of one of the activists had the lug bolts on one of her tires loosened.
More important than this is the fact that all of those who shared these political views had to live each day in fear that something bad was going to happen. They had to make a conscious decision to accept the risk and to continue their activities in spite of the threats, or to shut up, which is the option that those who threatened harm certainly wanted to inspire.
Different people, as could be expected, took different routes. To the degree that they decided to remain silent, the tactic of fear and intimidation was successful, granting more political and social power to those who would use it.
This is where I saw the bumper sticker that says, “Have you bitch-slapped an environmentalist today?” Seeing it in this context made it clear that this was an instrument of fear and intimidation. Its effect was to tell environmentalists that they lived where people entertained thoughts of using violence against them. This may have well been its purpose.
If there are people who are entertained by the idea of causing you harm, then you would be irrational not to respond to this by living your life in a cloud of fear. In such an environment, you have to accept the fact that there is a greater chance that you will be harmed or killed, or that somebody you love may be harmed or killed, or that something you care about will be destroyed through violence.
The Unloaded Gun Analogy
The person who utters the type of statements that this essay is concerned with is morally like the person who points a gun at somebody. He doesn’t pull the trigger. This is not the goal. He watches the person he points the gun at duck for cover, and laughs, because he finds this entertaining.
The victim of such a prank has no way of knowing that the gun is not loaded. From the victim’s perspective, he is being attacked. He would be foolish if he did not duck and run for cover, and wonder whether he was going to see another day, or at least he will be whole then the next day comes.
This is an aggressive act. This is not something that a morally decent person would even consider doing, or tolerate in those he calls ‘friend’.
The person who faces bumper stickers, slogans, and talk-show comments from those who find the idea of harming him entertaining, is facing the same type of threat. He has no way of knowing how far these people will go. The only rational response is to treat the threat as genuine and to act accordingly. If there is nothing he can do to protect himself, then his only option is to live in anxious anticipation of what might happen. Even if nothing happens, the quality of his life has been diminished.
Even if the person with the gun or the threatening slogan is “just kidding”, there is nothing funny about this type of behavior.
Freedom of Speech
There are those who would defend these speech acts by calling forth the right to freedom of speech. They would answer, “Alonzo, I have a right to say whatever I want. You are trying to promote censorship. Censorship is immoral. Therefore, Alonzo, you are the one who is doing that which is immoral, not me.”
Anybody who would raise this objection has fallen into a contradiction. He is saying that I should not condemn the speech acts of another person, while at the same time he is condemning my speech act. This makes him a hypocrite. In fact, there is no way to say, “It is wrong to condemn what another has said,” that is not hypocritical.
The right to freedom of speech does not say, “There is no such thing as a statement that one morally ought not to make.” It does not say that no utterance can be morally condemned. In fact, lies and broken promises are speech acts that can and should be morally condemned. My argument is that calls to harm others belong in this same category, and for the same reason — because of the harm that those who use these speech acts do to their victims.
The right to a freedom of speech says that there should be a presumption against using physical coercion to silence somebody who says something you do not like.
I am not using, nor am I threatening to use, physical coercion against those who employ the speech acts condemned in this essay. I am arguing for moral condemnation - public pronouncements that these are people to be shunned and avoided and held up as examples for children with the words, “You are not going to grow up to be like that awful man, are you?”
Asserting ‘censorship’ is a red herring, designed to distract people from an argument that the person making the assertion does not want the listeners to hear. It is a rhetorical tool, a piece of sophomoric demagoguery that some people may seek to use to hide their guilt.
Summary
History tells us that it is not at all irrational to fear the actions of those who become too fond of violence. There seems to be no limit to what people, not only as individuals but as groups, can do to others, without a single individual raising a voice in moral protest.
This tendency alone, among humans, is frightening.
It tells us that a rational person has reason to worry whenever he hears others talk approvingly about causing him harm. He has more reason to worry to the degree he does not hear others raise their voice in condemnation of those who would say such things.
There is a right to freedom of speech. However, this only protects the speaker from being physical silenced. Moral condemnation of those who say such things is also speech, and fits just as well under the umbrella of freedom of speech.
Those who would speak approvingly of causing physical violence to others are like those who would point a loaded gun.
No moral person would point a gun at somebody because he thinks it is funny or enjoys causing fear in others. No moral person would speak approvingly of causing harm to others or doing violence to real people in enjoys such things. Statements suggesting violence against real people have the effect of forcing those people to live with the same type of fear and uncertainty over their own well-being.
No morally decent person would do such a thing.
Even in jest, let us not talk about committing violence against those who stand against us.