Chapter 4: Intimidation and Violence
“When we dehumanize and demonise our opponents, we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences, and seek to justify violence against them.” Nelson Mandela
University California-Berkeley:
February 1, 2017
-Milo Yiannopoulos, a young, British, gay Trump supporter, was scheduled to speak
-an estimated 1,500 protesters surrounded the building the speaker was at
-he has been banned from Twitter that summer for violating its policy by “inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others.”
-the protesters’ goal was to prevent the speech from happening
-radical anarchist groups that call themselves “antifascists” or “Antifa” showed up on campus
-they racked up $500,000 in property damage
-the protesters goal was to prevent the speech from happening
-the mob got its way, the speech was canceled
***This marked the turning point in the escalation of conflicts over campus speakers
-many students on the left have become increasingly receptive to the idea that violence is sometimes justified as a response to speech they believe is “hateful”
-many wearing masks to protect their identities engaging in violence and vandalism
***The lesson learned is that violence works
-Antifa activists built on their success by threatening more violence in response to invitations to conservative speakers
Words are Violence; Violence is Safety:
“Violence is Self-Defense”
“Condemning Protesters is the same as Condoning Hate Speech”
-the claim is that violence is justified because it is self-defense from the speaker’s words
-the only choice is to side with the violence
-only see life as a battle between good people and evil people and if you disagree with us, then you are one of the evil ones
-multiple cognitive distortions are used to justify physical violence as a reasonable way to prevent a speech
***Orwellian inversions of common English words
-asking for peaceful dialogue is violent, then it seems that the word “violence’ is taking on new meanings for some students
-an example of concept creep is the word “violence” being expanded on campus to include a multitude of nonviolent actions, including speech that this political faction claims will have a negative impact on members of protected identity groups
-outside of cultures of safetyism, the word “violence” refers to physical violence
Shift:
-students, professors, and activists are labeling opponents’ words as violence
-claiming that speech is violence so that gives themselves permission to engage in ideologically motivated physical violence
-physical violence is permitted when used to shut down speech that is deemed hateful
***shutting speech down is “not acts of violence’ but “acts of self-defense”
2017:
-students surveyed agreed that using violence to prevent a speaker from speaking was sometimes “acceptable”
“If someone is using hate speech or making racially charged comments, physical violence can be justified to prevent this person from espousing their hateful views.”
-concept creep and emotional reasoning expand the meaning of “hate speech” and “racially charged”
-a call-out culture interprets pretty much anything as having a negative impact on vulnerable members of the community regardless of intent
-so everything can be considered “hate speech”
-the term “white supremacist” is now used in an “utterly athletic, recreational” way as a “battering ram” to attack anyone who departs from the party line
-some students now think it’s O.K. to punch a fascist or white supremacist, and if anyone who disagrees with them can be labeled a fascist or white supremacist
-this rhetorical move might make people hesitant to voice dissenting views on campus
Violence and Intimidation After Berkeley:
-spring semester of 2017 saw in increase in politically motivated violence, vandalism, and intimidation, all of which was justified by moral arguments about violence and safety, with the goal of shutting down speakers on campus
Middlebury College:
-Charles Murray, a libertarian scholar affiliated with the conservative think tank
-he was invited by a school group to come speak so the college’s Political Science Department cosponsored the talk
-he had been invited to speak on the social and economic dysfunction of the white working class in 2017
-prior to his recent book he had previously written about the IQ averages found across racial groups with the point that genetics may play a role in IQ levels
-the IQ comment had students and professors calling Murray a white supremacist
-they came together to demand that Murray’s talk about his later book be canceled
-the disinvitation effort failed
-a large number of students attended Murry’s talk just to shut it down by changing in unison and shouting over his attempts to speak
-due to this Murray and a political science professor was moved to a locked room to continue with the talk through a livestream
-students pounded on the walls and pulled fire alarms in the building trying to stop the livestream
-both Murray and professor Stranger were swarmed by protestors; Stranger had her hair pulled so hard it caused a concussion and whiplash injury
-Murray and Stranger tried to flee in a car as the crowd pounded on the car, rocked it back and forth, and jumped on the hood
-later, when Murray and Stranger were having dinner with other colleagues protestors swarmed and they had to be moved to a different location for their safety
-Later, professor Stranger was asked about her experience and she stated:
“what alarmed me the most was what I saw in the eyes of the crowd. Those who wanted the event to take place made eye contact with me. Those intent on disrupting it steadfastly refused to do so. THey couldn’t look at me directly, because if they had they would have seen another human being.”
Claremont McKenna College:
-a month after Berkeley, 250 students prevented fellow students from attending a speech by journalist, attorney, and social commentator Heather Mac Donald
-in her book, The War on Cops, she had argued that Black Lives Matter protests made the police more hesitant to enter and actively engage in minority neighborhoods so that left the people in those neighborhoods unprotected and vulnerable to crime
-students stated that allowing Mac Donald to present her thesis would be allowing “violence” on campus, so she had to be stopped
-the students mobilized on social media to show up “wearing black” and “bring comrades, because we’re shutting this down”
-protesting students prevented anyone from entering the building to hear the talk
-Mac Donald had to speak on a livestream, but student protestors pounded on the glass wall
-Mac Donald had to be evacuated from the building through a kitchen door to a waiting police car
-after the event, the president of Pomona College (part of Claremont consortium) wrote in defense of academic freedom and Mac Donald’s right to speak on campus
-students responded by writing a response to this freedom to speak by asserting that the speech itself was a form of violence
“Engaging with her, a white supremacist fascist supporter of the police state, is a form of violence.”
****this letter exemplified the dichotomous thinking of the Untruth of Us Versus Them
“Either you support students of marginalized identities, particularly Black students, or leave us to protect and organize for our communities without the impositions of your patronization, without your binary respectability politics, and without your monolithic perceptions of protest and organizing.”
Students:
“If engaged, Heather Mac Donald would not be debating on mere difference of opinion, but the right of Black people to exist.”
-they called her a fascist, a white supremacist, a warhawk, a transphobe, a queerphobe, and a classist
-this is labeling that is out of control
-this list of serious accusations made without supporting evidence
-this sentence includes fortune-telling, as the students predict what Mac Donald would say
-it also includes a rhetorical flourish that became common in 2017 which is the assertion that a speaker will “deny” people from certain identity groups “the right to exist”
-this thinking is a form of catastrophizing, in that it inflates the horrors of a speaker’s words far beyond what the speaker might actually say
***How did college students learn to think this way?
-the letter overall shows the influence of the common-enemy identity politics
-it makes extensive use of the language of intersectionality
Ex. the students end their letter with a demand that the president must an email
“To the entire student body, faculty, and staff by Thursday, April 20, 2017, apologizing for the previous patronizing statement [his defense of academic freedom], enforcing the Pomona College does not tolerate hate speech and speech that projects violence onto the bodies of its marginalized students and oppressed peoples, especially Black students who straddle the intersection of marginalized identities.”
-this kind of identity politics-amplifies the human proclivity for us-versus-them thinking
-this just prepares students for battling not learning
Violence in Charlottesville:
-the right also has angry radicalized groups which mutually the left has angry radicalized groups that escalate mutual outrage
-the self-described alt-right including neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen marched across the campus carrying Tiki torches changing “Jews will not replace us”
-this is a common-enemy identity politics
-the racist group marched downtown carrying swastika flags to the statue of Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army in the American Civil War
-during the march, the alt-right marchers beat a black man causing great injuries
-the marchers also violently clashed with Antifa counterprotesters
-a white supremacist who idolized Adolf Hitler drove the car into a crowd injuring 19 peaceful counterprotesters and killing one young woman
“A passionate advocate for the disenfranchised who was often moved to tears by the world’s injustices,” stated her mother after her death.
-both Republicans and Democrats should denounce the white supremacists and neo-Nazis
Autumn of 2017:
-the levels of fear and anger were understandably elevated in the wake of the events in Charlottesville, the common response seemed to be an increase in us-versus-then thinking, including hostility aimed at people and groups (including many on the left) who otherwise could have become allies
-during this year, there were more episodes of students using the heckler’s veto to shut down classes and speeches than in any previous semester on record
William & Mary:
-students shut down a speech by Claire Guthrie Castanaga, the director of Virginia ACLU
-ACLU had defended the constitutional rights of the the Charlottesville alt-right march organizers
-ACLU had also defended the right of abortion, rights of English translators of Islamic texts that call for Jihad, and the rights of the Black Panthers
***the point was that ACLU defends rights, not ideologies
-students chanted “the revolution will not uphold the Constitution!” and “Liberalism is white supremacy!”
Oregon State University:
-a speech was shut down by 50 students who seized the stage
-they chanted “Nothing about us without us” and “We will not be ignored”
-a student complained about the oppression of minority students, tuition increases, and indigenous rights, and described “fascism and neo-Nazis”
-the president wrote an op-ed about how students are misguided on on fascism
-the president then set up a question & answer session named “What is Civil Discourse”
-protesters formed called “refuse fascism” disrupted the event
Reed college:
-September 2016, campus activists tried to shut down the freshman humanities course because it focused on the thinkers of ancient Greece and the eastern Mediterranean world (considered the whites of today)
-Martinex Valdivia found it difficult to lecture while students were waving signs with aggressive and vulgar statements right next to her at the front of the classroom
-she shared her discomfort and asked then not to protest in her classroom
-students complained in an “open letter” that her request “creates a hierarchy [of traumas] where traumas matter more.”
-they accused her of being “anti-black,” “ableist,” and engaging in gaslighting
-they claimed she was manipulating victims by making them question their perceptions or their sanity
-she was shocked that the college would allow these intimidating in-class protests to go on so she decided to speak out in October 2017 by writing an essay titled, “Professors Like Me Can’t Stay Silent About This Extremist Moment on Campuses.”
“No one should have to pass someone else’s ideological purity test to be allowed to speak. University life–along with civic life–dies without the free exchange of ideas.”
Why It is Such a Bad Idea to Tell Students that Words are Violence:
-the most common justification is that hate speech is violence
-students believe it is legitimate to use violence to shut down hate speech
-they set aside the questions of moral and constitutional legitimacy
What are the psychological consequences of thinking this way?
“A free-for-all attitude toward speech that allows people to say whatever they want with no fear of consequences can therefore affect people with different social identities differently.”
-political correctness just means being thoughtful or polite, so using words in a way that is considerate to others
-But today, students make a serious mistake when they interpret words, so even words spoken with hatred as violence
-In July 2017, the argument that words can be violence made by LIsa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology and emotion researcher and North-eastern University
“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.”
Response:
-a logical error to accept the claim that harm–even physical harm–is the same as violence
“If words can cause stress and stress can cause harm, then words can cause harm, but that does not establish that words are violence.”
-this only establishes that words can result in harm
Ex.
-breaking up with your girlfriend
-giving students a lot of homework
-both of these can provoke stress in someone and stress can cause harm, so both can cause harm
-that doesn’t mean either are violent acts
-interpreting a campus lecture as violence is a choice
-a choice that increases your pain with respect to the lecture while reducing your options for how to respond
-if you interpret a speech as a violent attack on your fellow students then you have a moral obligation to do something about it
-this may include something violent
-this is precisely how trolls manipulate their victims
-there is a distinction between speech and violence and you a choice
***you can choose not to be harmed so then you won’t feel harmed
***the more ways your identity can be threatened by casual daily interactions
***you need the ability to not be emotionally reactive
-do not let others control your mind and your cortisol levels
-understand that words do not cause stress directly
-words can only provoke stress and suffering in a person who has interpreted those words as posing a threat
-you can choose whether to interpret a visiting speaker as harmful
-you can pick your battles
-devote your efforts to changing policies that matter to you
-make yourself immune to trolls
-the internet will always be there, so extremists will always be posting potentially offensive images and statements
-some groups will be targeted more than others
***we should work to lessen hatred and heal divisions, all of us must learn to ignore some of the things we see and just carry on with your day
-work on rejecting that “speech is violence”
-you can use your opponent’s ideas and arguments to make yourself stronger
-there is a difference between physical and emotional “safety”
***terrible ideas: “I need to be safe ideologically. I need to be safe emotionally. I just need to feel good all the time, and if someone says something that I don’t like, that’s a problem for everybody else, including the [university] administration.”
-Van Jones even rejected the untruth of fragility and turned safetyism on its head:
“I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.”
-Jones understands antifragility
-Jones wants progressive college students to see themselves not as fragile candles but as fires, welcoming the wind by seeking out ideologically different speakers and ideas
Sum:
-campus protests used violence to successfully stop a speaker
-students justified the violence as a legitimate form of “self-defense” to prevent speech that they said was violent
-students agreed that sometimes “acceptable” for other students to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking on campus
-right and left provocations has increased
-there is a tendency to focus only on perceived impact, not on intent
-words give rise to fear for members of some groups are now often as a form of violence
-on the other side: speech is not violence
-interpretive choice and it is a choice that increases pain and suffering while preventing the other
-a more effective response includes cultivating nonreactivity
-the antifragile response suggested by Van Jones, “put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity”
***Nelson Mandela warned us against the danger of demonizing opponents and using violence against them
-Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for nonviolent resistance
-Mandela noted that violent and dehumanizing tactics are self-defeating, closing off the possibility of peaceful resolution