How “Silence is Violence” Can Become Compelled Speech – JONATHAN TURLEY

How “Silence is Violence” Can Became Compelled Speech – JONATHAN TURLEY

Jonathan Turley’s essay identifies a trend that is surfacing: “failing to utter certain words, prayers or pledges is deemed a confession of complicity or guilt.” He cites this an example.

This week, a mob surrounded diners (https://www.businessinsider.com/white-protesters-confront-dinersduring-black-lives-matter-protest-2020-8) outside several Washington restaurants, shouting “White silence is violence!” and demanding that diners raise a fist to support Black Lives Matter. Various diners dutifully complied as protesters screamed inches from their faces. One did not — Lauren Victor, who later said she has marched in protests for weeks but refused to be bullied. The mob surrounded her, and Washington Post reporter Fredrick Kunkle identified a freelance journalist (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/08/25/dc-protesters-blmdiner-confrontation/) as one of the people yelling at Victor and demanding: “What was in you, you couldn’t do this?”

Later Turley says:

The transition from speech codes to commands is based on the same notion of “speech as harm.” Just as speech is deemed harmful (and thus subject to regulation), silence is now deemed harmful.

Turley doesn’t talk about where the idea of speech as harm arose but Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt do in their The Coddling of the American Mind. They refer to a 2017 The New York Times essay by Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology and emotion researcher at Northeastern University, in which Barrett claims: “If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech – at least certain types of speech – can be a form of violence.” Turley’s example above shows that now it’s not enough to avoid politically incorrect language or even “micro-aggressions” where you can be taken to task even for unintentionally using the wrong words. Now even silence can be wrong. As he says, “the appetite for collective suppression will become a demand for collective expression.”

Turley’s use of the word “collective” twice in the same sentence reveals an issue I have with the constant drive to police expression: the drive to suppress individual thought. One side believes they have a monopoly on moral rectitude. So disagreement automatically means you’re immoral. You’re expected to purge your mind of “bad thoughts.”

I recall when I was going to Catholic Church in my youth we were taught that bad thoughts were as sinful as bad actions. (If I may take a slight and somewhat crude detour, George Carlin had a great skit on this where he says just thinking about “feeling up Ellen” consisted of multiple sins. It was a sin for you to want to feel up Ellen. It was a sin for you to plan to feel up Ellen. It was a sin for you to figure out a place to feel up Ellen. It was a sin to take Ellen to the place to feel her up. It was a sin to try to feel her up and it was a sin to feel her up. There were six sins in one feel!)

I have a reason for bringing up George Carlin and religion. As a former Roman Catholic, I was raised to believe humans are born with Original Sin, that we are all sinful by nature

My point is that we are expected to all think and speak alike. No diversity of opinion of allowed. It’s almost like we’re expected to plug into the Borg collective where not only is resistance futile, so is disagreement. (If you’re not familiar with my reference to the Borg collective the Borg was a cybernetic life form in Star Trek Next Generation that conquered other species then absorbed them into the Borg collective where each member became a drone with no individual free will. This link explains in more detail. When confronting the Star Trek crew, the Borg drones would say, “Resistance is futile.”) 

A kernel of truth lies under the concern of using language that can make people feel diminished, abused or oppressed. Pushing the idea that there is no such thing as an innocent misuse of language washes out the validity of this concern. Instead, ALL language that doesn’t meet these speech codes (as Turley calls them) means the person who uttered them is sinful, regardless of intent. Ultimately, it’s a no-win situation. The ultimate result squelches individual thought.

If you don’t agree that silence is violence then these people feel it’s OK to use violence, the physical kind, to silence you. Ultimately speech control boils down to thought control.

Tweet by Naval

https://twitter.com/naval/status/1320071888551358464?s=20 

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Naval. He condenses his thinking into short, pithy posts. Below is an example which I like.

“Artists” calling for censorship don’t know what art is.

“Scientists” citing consensus don’t know what science is.

“Teachers” indoctrinating students don’t know what teaching is.

“Journalists” parroting propaganda don’t know what reporting is.

Programming us all day long.

Media Bias 101: The Difference Between News, Analysis, and Opinion | AllSides or How to Recognize Skewed News

Media Bias 101: The Difference Between News, Analysis, and Opinion | AllSides

I've referred to AllSides before as a source for analyzing bias in news reporting. This article explains the three different aspects of a news story: news, analysis and opinion. Here is how AllSides describes each category.

News: What happened.

Analysis: What happened and why — writer considers facts and draws conclusions.

Opinion: What I think about what happened.

The article provides three examples of a story about a protest with a headline of "violation of human rights."

News: Crackdown "Violation of Human Rights"

• attributes information to a source
• uses quotes, cites source
• describes what is objectively observable (something was said, something happened)
• to be truly balanced and unbiased, the piece would also include a quote from the other side (in this fictional example, the perspective of law enforcement, or perhaps a bystander or another organization who has a different account of what happened)

Analysis: Crackdown Violation of Human Rights

• explains what events may mean
• someone with experience, knowledge, and background considers evidence and interprets events
• conclusions are drawn based on evidence (they may or may not be accurate conclusions)

Opinion: Crackdown Violation of Human Rights

• offers judgement, viewpoint, belief, feelings, or statement that is not conclusive (notice the writer does not directly describe what happened)
• language is colored by subjective spin words and phrases

The AllSides article highlights the problem when all three factors are mixed together in a story. The resulting stew results in what I call "skewed news" which I think is more accurate than Trump's "fake news." I say skewed because most news outlets leave out key information that doesn't support the narrative they want to create. In this case the term "news story" is accurate if we take the word story to mean crafting a narrative or trying to lead the consumer to reach a specific conclusion. We tell stories to influence the listener or reader to agree with us.

For examples check out the weekly Blind Spot report of Ground News. Each week Ground News provides examples of stories that the left will cover much more than the right and vice versa.

 

Sneaky Bias

I normally don’t bother trying to document examples of biased reporting because, frankly, I don’t have the time or interest. Years ago a friend and I put together a course on critical thinking that we gave at a local center for adult education. My partner and I used examples from various publications like the Boston Globe or Newsweek. We had absolutely no trouble finding examples. They were literally on every page. It was a target-rich environment. 

However sometimes I see particular example of how sneaky the bias is in the reporting. Here are two, both related to the controversy over mail-in voting.  I have my own concerns about mail-in voting, just to be transparent. I’m not going to talk about them here because the point I’m making has to do with how some news reporting tries to influence your opinion by their choice of the words they use … or don’t use.

The first example comes from the local Boston evening news. They showed Trump saying that absentee ballots were OK but that mail-in voting was subject to fraud. When they cut back to the news anchor he says, "There is no evidence of mail-in voter fraud." Period. The anchor doesn't cite any sources while saying it like it's an established, unquestionable fact. They then immediately shifted to a different story. So this leaves the uninformed viewer with the impression that Trump is wrong as usual and that mail-in voting has no risk.

The second example comes from the CBS This Morning Show in their coverage of the 2020 DNC convention. After showing some clips from the convention the anchor briefly reported on what Trump was doing at the same time and his “unsubstantiated” claims about mail-in voting fraud. Period. The anchor provided no substantiation for this statement.  If you’re not listening critically words like “unsubstantiated” slip by your filter and could influence your opinion. I think this is intentional, not accidental.

You could argue that the available time in news shows is too tight to get into detailed counterarguments. Fair enough. However, I’d say they could add something like, “Some experts say there is no evidence of mail-in fraud.” In fact, I used to see statements like that added at the end of a story where the news aired a claim by someone who challenged something like the validity of claims about global warming. I haven’t seen that recently.

My main point is to show how they sneak in their own unsubstantiated claims as if it were an indisputable fact. These days there is no such a thing!

The centrifugal forces of ideology

Someone posted a comment on another blog about the strong reaction some people have against Trump supporters. The commenter related how her own daughter who is an ER doctor called the mother a racist. The daughter also said she can’t believe the mother was supporting Trump who puts her the daughter’s life at risk because of inadequate personal protective equipment. The mother feels that it’s the responsibility of the state governor, not the president. As a result the mother and daughter haven’t talked in months.

Her story reminds me of an encounter I had when Romney was running against Obama. I was at a get together at a friend’s house where the daughter of a friend proclaimed that she wouldn't vote for Mitt Romney because "he wants to kill me." When I asked what she meant by that she explained that she has a condition that was life-threatening if she got pregnant. She wanted the government to provide contraceptives for people like her. Romney was against government-provided contraceptives. Ergo, he wants to kill people like her. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it? There is no arguing with that, literally. 

In her mind her need became a right and there is no honest disagreement with her position. If you don't agree with her that means you want to kill her. That probably helps explain why people like this hate Trump (and conservatives) so viscerally and viciously. They're literally threatened by the existence of people who disagree. I'm speculating here but I think the people who hate Trump and conservatives see them as evil, not wrong, so this justifies the whole cancel culture agenda. Actually I'm not speculating or mind reading so much. I've heard people explicitly say Trump and his supporters are evil. And, yes, you can find similar examples of people on the right calling Obama or Biden supporters evil. 

I suppose this reaction typifies what it means to be an ideologue. They see everything as either-or with no shades of grey. If you say you support Trump that means you agree with everything he says or does. Every. Single. Thing. Or if you’re an Obama supporter he never did anything wrong. Never. As I said above there is no arguing with an ideologue. You either agree 100% with an ideologue or you’re no longer human. Unfortunately that mentality justifies a lot of what is playing out in front of our eyes today. Cancel culture. Tearing down statues. Rioting. And so on. The centrifugal forces of fear and hatred fueled by ideology tear us apart.

Media Bias Chart | AllSides

Media Bias Chart | AllSides

AllSides recently updated the chart they post on their web site on media bias. I generally agree with their ratings which are: Left, Lean Left, Center, Lean Right and Right. I also like how they caution readers not to automatically assume that Center means no bias or that it's better than being on the left or right side of the spectrum. Here is what they say:

Center doesn't mean better! A Center media bias rating does not always mean neutral, unbiased or reasonable, just as "far Left" and "far Right" do not always mean "extreme," "wrong," or "unreasonable." A Center bias rating simply means the source or writer rated does not predictably publish opinions favoring either end of the political spectrum — conservative or liberal. A media outlet with a Center rating may omit important perspectives, or run individual articles that display bias, while not displaying a lot of predictable bias frequently. Center outlets can be difficult to determine, and a case can often be made for them leaning one way or the other.

Pandemic Perceptions

I’ve recently learned a lesson in how people hear things. Yesterday I mentioned to a friend that several doctors who specialize in infectious diseases ranked various activities such as playing tennis or food shopping with 1 being the safest and 10 being the most dangerous in terms of COVID exposure. When I said that going to the grocery store was rated 3 (relatively safe) in both lists my friend thought that meant I was saying grocery shopping was dangerous, like a 7 on the scale. She then went on a rant about how she sees people doing bad things in the store. My wife confirmed that I said a 3 and had clearly explained the 1 to 10 scale.

Later in the same conversation I said that when I looked at the ratio of deaths to positive cases I noticed that Massachusetts has a ratio of 1 death for every 10 positive cases. On the other hand, states where the cases have spiked generally have a ratio of 1 death to 100 positive cases. Once again, my friend thought I was saying that the ratio of deaths in the spiking states was higher than it is here in Massachusetts. That’s because her perception is that these southern states are run by stupid Republican politicians and have a stupid population. (Hmm, I thought we’re not supposed to stereotype people.) 

(By the way, I don't know what to make of these ratios; I just was curious to see if there was a difference between the states. The ratio in the spiking states might narrow if the normal delay between the detection of infections and the uptick in deaths.)

Getting back to my friend, she casually stated later that she watches CNN all day and I know that CNN pushes the pandemic panic so I think what happened is that her filter translated what I said into what she expected to hear. I didn't bother to correct her. (What is more important is that I'm thrilled that tennis is rated #1 in safety!)