We name things based upon how we feel about them. We also feel about things based on how we've named them.
Politicians understand this. When they want to downplay the invasion of a sovereign nation, they call it an "uncontested arrival." When they justify torture of the sort that we hanged people for within living memory, they call it "enhanced interrogation technique." Language manages attitude.
Politicians and priests intentionally deploy language to guide thought. But we all do it unintentionally every day, shaping the culture with the language we choose.
This can lead to unintended consequences. We may mean to say that words should be rebutted with other words rather than with official coercion, and that the best response to speech we don't like is more speech. But the words we choose can subtly promote the understanding that words are violent acts, and therefore something suitable for regulation.
I've rung this bell before, and typically people tell me that I'm being unreasonable and pedantic. I'm not calling for more civility; I can hardly throw that stone first. I'm not decrying harsh rhetoric; how could I? I'm not judging people for linguistic indulgence; after all, it's my thing. I'm suggesting that the prevailing way we talk about speech — even when we are nominally defending it — is contributing to a culture that views it as a legitimate target of regulation.
Take the term "bullying." I've been arguing for years that we've devalued the term. We don't use bullying to refer to the strong preying on the weak for amusement; we use it to refer to anyone we don't like criticizing or making fun of anyone we like. This leads to perfectly incoherent results. The Right1 recognizes that overuse of the term "bullying" might be used to suppress disfavored speech:
Yet the Right just as eagerly overuses "bullying" to marginalize criticism it doesn't like:
Recent dialogue about Donald Trump shows how meaningless the term has become:
If all this talk of bullying meant that we cared more about weak kids being shoved around by strong kids, I'd applaud it. But it doesn't. It just means that we've picked a new word to dismiss arguments and criticisms, without caring about its actual meaning. "Bullying" is the "literally" of political discourse. The term has an emotional impact. Bullies are people who use power and force to get their way, and our gut tells us that it's just to respond with power and force. It's seductive and insidious. Should the law and our institutions protect us from opposing views? Of course not! But should the law and our institutions protect us from bullies! Why, yes! That sounds very reasonable.
Conventional wisdom would blame the Left for misclassifying speech as violent action to be regulated. Speech codes and trigger warnings and "microaggression" lectures and the like are a product of the academic Left, after all. People on the Right (and principled people on all sides of the political spectrum) are pushing back against these fatuities. But at the very same time, the Right is increasingly indulging in rhetoric that promotes the same values. "Lynch mob" and "witch hunt" are omnipresent cliches, used as meritriciously as clickbaity "watch Jon Stewart eviscerate [political figure]" headlines. Those terms are nominally invoked to protect speech, but their message is subtly pro-regulation. Should the law protect us from criticism? No! Should the law protect us from lynch mobs and witch hunts? Why, that sounds perfectly reasonable.
I understand the appeal of these terms. Modern media empowers profoundly disturbing and grossly disproportionate behavior towards the unfortunate target-of-the-day. Sometimes "lynch mob" is not such a rhetorical stretch. Thanks to inadequate law enforcement and sick subcultures, criticism can be accompanied by genuinely terrifying and illegal behavior like death threats. Furthermore, we could be having a serious discussion about whether social and commercial exile of people based on their political positions is productive or proportional, even if it isn't official censorship.
But here's the problem: we don't reserve the language of violence for those extreme situations any more. We're not having that serious conversation. We're venting our spleens. We paint speech with the words of violence all the time. We employ rhetoric that draws a false equivalence between calling out douchebaggery and trying to get someone fired and shunned from society. Even giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt — that we mean to oppose "call-out culture" — the message we're sending is that speech is tyrannical. While decrying victim culture and endorsing thick skins, the Right is relentlessly promoting victim culture and thinning our skins. While calling for smaller government, the Right is describing speech in ways obsequious to government.
I often hear the excuse that the Right is merely "punching back twice as hard" or "giving what it got" or some other variation on "good for the goose, good for the gander." This may be fair, but fair doesn't keep rhetoric from changing the culture in ways we won't like. Take, for instance, the case of Sam Biddle of Gawker Media. Biddle, perturbed by the online movement known as GamerGate, sent a few tweets mock-celebrating bullying.
Anyone with a room-temperature IQ recognized this as belabored irony, the calling card of Gawker. But critics pounced, eagerly portraying Biddle as actually pro-bullying and persuading advertisers to back away from Gawker. Surely karmic justice was at hand: pearl-clutching at wrongthinkers' sarcasm is the modus operandi of the humorless, disdainful turds floating in Gawker's sump. But deserve's got nothing to do with it. The long-term consequences of pretending not to understand sarcasm isn't political equity. It's normalization of dishonest and scolding literalism. It's telling Gawker "you're right! Humor is inappropriate. We just disagree about which humor."
When we engage on this issue, my good friend and coblogger Patrick tells me that I'm being too judgmental of rhetorical flourishes. Perhaps. God knows such flourishes are appealing and satisfying. My purpose isn't to tone police or tell people to mind their manners. My purpose is to consider how our tools outstrip our intentions. We like to think that freedom of speech is a firmly-rooted and universal American value. It is, but mostly in the abstract. When it comes to particulars, support for free speech is fragile. Moreover — as with any push-poll — American support for free speech is very sensitive to how the speech is characterized. Whether people are trained to view critical speech as "dissent" or "bullying" will make a difference, in the long term, in how steadfastly they support it.
You probably have the self-awareness not to ask "why the fuck are you cocksuckers are so vulgar these days?" except as a joke. But are you uttering the equivalent contradiction about speech?
- For purposes of this post I'm using broad-stroke generalizations about Left and Right, sparing you a few thousand extra words and qualifications. ▲
Last 5 posts by Ken White
- Lawsplainer: The Ninth Circuit and Compelled Speech About Abortion - October 17th, 2016
- Thanks and Congrats To Dhillon Law Group For Important Pro-Bono Anti-SLAPP Win - October 10th, 2016
- Hillary Clinton, the Sixth Amendment, and Legal Ethics - October 10th, 2016
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If the person doing the criticizing is strong and the person being criticized is weak, then guess what – that's bullying. Even if no physical interaction is involved.
If someone is using the term to refer to any criticism of others without regard to the power differential, then guess what – they're using the term wrong.
In no one's mind but your own, I do believe.
What you describe, if I can summarize, is the "right" joining forces with the "left" to demonize speech, even as they fight to save it, by adopting the same tuck-tail and play the victim tactics that the left has been using. I use quotes not to mock, but because I know of no better labels, but I also know those labels aren't 100% accurate.
What strikes me as unfair is that you seem to hold the right more accountable for this state of affairs than the left. But the sad fact of the matter is, the tactics work. And if tactics work in a highly competitive environment, you'd be an idiot no to adopt them yourself. Even if your choices are to lose, or succeed but destroy what you were trying to win.
If anybody is to blame, it's us, for consistently falling for these tactics. For rewarding them so consistently, that everyone else in the game had to go "If you can't beat em, join em".
I hope what we are seeing now is the obsolescence of these tactics. Now that both sides of the fight are abusing them to the fullest, I'm hoping the public wises up slightly and stop rewarding them.
Then maybe in 20 years we'll complain about the new political tactic which is ruining discourse and threatening our rights.
If your definition of "bullying" is met by a stronger person criticizing a weaker one, then I don't think it's a term with much value.
Mmm – I don't disagree, but I spent the whole article thinking "Yes, but"
1) Shaming mobs are their own thing, not quite lynch mobs, but not thoughtful criticism, either.
2) I've never joined in a shame mob and I don't plan to, but if there's any hope for disarmament, it will only come if both sides feel the pain. The Gawker guy wrote a great piece about how he feels bad now for the role he played in shaming what's her name, but would he have reformed if it was just him collecting page clicks by feeding the mob?
Thoughtless speech is still speech.
I don't buy that he's sincerely sorry or that he'll reform. At any rate, I think the likely cultural result isn't moving away from shaming.
@eddie,
So if a supervisor tells a subordinate correctly, "You did this task incorrectly, and here's what you need to do to fix it", that's bullying? In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think [that word] means what you think it means."
I say this pretty much every time I hear this argument, (and I'm pretty sure I've said it here in the past) but while I agree with you that "lynch mob" is almost always a vast rhetorical stretch, "witch hunt" very rarely is, and is almost always appropriate.
Yes, it's true that people who employ it are not literally hunting witches. However, I can think of no other term in the English language that better describes the phenomenon of a group that is bound and determined to root out some heresy and takes extreme measures to do so, often accepting weak or fabricated evidence, and going out of their way to find such evidence, as long as they get to be seen taking action against said heresy. If you can think of one, please, by all means, let me know.
Similarly, unlike lynch mobs, "witch hunt" does not specifically equate speech with violence. It's true that the Salem witch trials and the Inquisition got pretty bloody, but those are hardly the only witch hunts in history, and even in those eras sometimes the people persecuted were not killed. Meanwhile, every successful lynching ends with the mob killing their victim, by definition. Similarly, unlike the victims of lynch mobs during the Civil Rights era and before, no one persecuted by the Salem witch trials or the Spanish Inquisition still exists to be offended by the term, even if those were the only witch hunts we were referring to.
In short, this witch hunt against the term "witch hunt" needs to end. :op
I see your meretricious and raise a stercoricolous.
Not since I subscribed to William F. Buckley's "National Review" back in the 60s, when WFB himself used both of those words in columns, have I enjoyed writing as much as here at Popehat. Thanks!
I would say that the Right is promoting speech regulation via tone policing, but that might be going too far.
===
@eddie:
Wait a second. What if the criticism is valid criticism? Is that still then bullying? If so, then sorry, but your definition of bullying is full of shit.
===
@Horkthane:
Why would they become obsolete? They're very effective.
That requires more faith in humanity than I am able to muster.
Eddie, I bench press 500 lbs and think your post stinks.
Am I a bully?
I equate bullying with tormenting someone who can't do anything about it for personal enjoyment.
I was a big guy in school, but poor so everyone better off than me gave me crap. Sure, I could kick a guy or two's ass but I couldn't fight everyone. That is bullying that affected me for years, and leads me to disappointment when the term is misused.
Even if the criticism isn't valid it's still not bullying. If I say that Bernie Sanders shouldn't be elected until he grows the Einstein hair again and he responds that I'm a nutcase that shouldn't be allowed to vote or weigh in on political discussions that's not bullying even if he's swearing while saying it. However, if I say the same thing about Trump and he asks his fans to call me and tell me how wrong I am and sues me so I can't make political statements about him, it would be more reasonable to characterize that as bullying.
As opposed to just saying that I'm wrong it makes an effort to make my life miserable in a way that I can't easily fight back against. I can take being told that I'm wrong, even if it's in a harsh way and saying that I'm wrong would be part of what Sanders would need to do to defend himself against what I said. Dealing with harassing phone calls and needing to hire a lawyer to defend against a frivolous suit would have a much larger affect on my life and Trump wouldn't need to do it to defend himself against my allegations that those without Einstein-hair aren't fit for office.
It's hardly my definition alone.
I get that you find the non-physical usages aesthetically displeasing, but it's patently absurd to act like they aren't valid English usage.
How about criticism designed to abuse, intimidate, or dominate others? Does anyone want to allow that as fitting within the concept of bullying? I'm not really sure what I think, but it doesn't seem productive to dismiss an idea by pointing out an obvious (and easily fixed) flaw in eddie's definition that was clearly tangential to the point he was arguing.
@eddie
A mere power differential should not change criticism into bullying. Constructive criticism can be helpful and is frequently directed from one in authority (supervisor, superior officer, teacher, mentor) towards one not in authority. Even with genuine insults, with no justification, "bullying" would be a truly weak word if a single round of insults from a larger child met the qualifications without more.
This post made me think of George Orwell. He made the point many times (most memorably in 1984, but in several works of non-fiction as well) that choice of words can influence thought strongly.
In the context of speech in particular, it is important not to allow the choice of words to persuade use quickly to leap to regulation when a better answer is instead more speech.
Also, since I see my point is getting missed due to imprecision of language, let me take pains to spell out more clearly what I am trying to say.
I don't mean to say that mere criticism is bullying (and, in fact, said precisely that calling it so is misusing the term). In that respect I agree with Ken.
Power imbalance is an essential element of bullying. However, I also don't mean to say that mere criticism is bullying even when coupled with a power imbalance.
What I meant to say is that bullying is (quoting Ken) "the strong preying on the weak for amusement". I tried to imply that such predation can take the form of (quoting Ken, who disputes this) "criticizing or making fun". Some of the other commenters here have zeroed in on my use of the word "criticizing"; that's my fault for being imprecise.
The point I was trying to make is that bullying can be verbal as well as physical, which I believe Ken is trying to dispute or dismiss. If someone is in a position of power over another person (whether physical or social) and they use that position to prey on the other person for amusement (or some other sorts of personal gain, such as improved social status) then that can also be bullying, even if the predation is verbal rather than physical, and even if the power disparity is social rather than physical.
In this respect, I disagree with Ken. I think.
I hope that makes my point clearer.
I wouldn't dispute that possibility.
I would. Not all criticism = bullying, but that doesn't mean that bullying can't be in the form of criticism. And although overbroad, certainly, eddie's definition of the strong using it against the weak (in whatever form strong/weak take) is a necessary component.
ETA: And while I was posting, I see eddie clarified him(?)self. And I agree even more with what he's said…
(And I'll see Ken's Unforgiven reference, and with all these references to strong and weak, add: "The truth is, you're the weak, and I am the tyranny of evil men. But I'm trying, Ringo. I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd.")
>Anyone with a room-temperature IQ recognized this as belabored irony, the calling card of Gawker. But critics pounced, eagerly portraying Biddle as actually pro-bullying and persuading advertisers to back away from Gawker.
"It's only a joke when *we* say it!"
Yeah. Go fuck yourself.
I'll let you decide if I was joking or not.
I think the more interesting question is "why the fuck aren't you cocksuckers proofreading your posts these days?"
Little joke, if you don't get it, take another read through of the last paragraph.
At this point, I just want to know: How does one "cob logs?" (ref: to Patrick as "coblogger" above). [grin]
@Justin:
I would call that bullying, not criticism. Criticism comes from analysis and judgment of the merits or faults of something – or someone – and can be applied to an objective standard, even if you are dealing in postmodern deconstructionism. The primary component of criticism is holding to an objective standard, whatever that standard may be. This doesn't mean the standard is a good one, but it's the difference between an opinion and criticism.
Criticism designed to further a goal ceases to become criticism, as analysis and judgment are discarded. It's more a form of censure, condemnation, etc.
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@eddie:
I wouldn't agree with that either. I don't need to be stronger, physically, mentally, or otherwise, to engage in bullying someone. A power imbalance in the victim's favor might make it easier for them to stop me, but it does not prevent me.
OK, Ken, I can't resist a challenge like that.
Do you consider this to be bullying?
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/08/13/3691021/black-lives-matter-strategy/
You've made the case that the semantic scope of "bullying" has been broadened from something like "strong kid beats up weak kid" to something like "person who disagrees with me employs offensive or hyperbolic speech to oppose me or my point".
You have failed to make the point that there's a subtle or insidious invocation of laws or institutions behind the broader usage. You sketch the imagined subtlety:
However, the many examples of broad usage and hyperbole you mention include no examples of overt or tacit appeals to the legal or institutional infrastructure that might meaningfully regulate such conduct.
You're left merely to suggest that slippery semantics somehow make the environment more amenable to non-occurring but possible calls for regulation. But why suppose that's so? Why not suppose, instead, that all these uses of speech to oppose other speech, even through the hyperbolic use of a term like "bullying", will probably and naturally (and correctly) be taken just for what they are?
You want to invoke speech as the correct response to speech and to insist that even hyperbolic speech falls within the scope of correct responses. You also want to draw a distinction between that kind of counterspeech and some second, unsavory variety that doesn't actually appeal to state or institutional regulatory power but somehow, through its specially special hyperbolic hyperbole in this special case, nevertheless makes other speech that does call for regulation seem less odious.
You can't have it both ways. You think hyperbole about "bullying" is sneaky in this way. But someone else will think that your hyperbole about killing or maiming or marginalizing (or whatever) is sneaky in this way. It's tu quoque all the way down.
"If the person doing the criticizing is strong and the person being criticized is weak, then guess what – that's bullying"
That means that in any debate, the odds are overwhelming one person is "bullying" another. True equality of power in all possible contexts is extremely rare.
So, congratulations. You've just said "Debate is bullying."
And, oh dear. I'm criticizing you. But am I the bully, or are you? I've got a dull job, a pile of debt, no personal charisma to speak of, I'm physically weak, I have no powerful connections, and I've made no noteworthy achievements. I'm nominating myself for the "weak" side here. That makes you the bully, unless you can show you're more pathetic than I am, which is a pretty high bar. (Or is that a low bar? Not sure. Anyway…)
I hope you're suitably ashamed of yourself, bullying me like this.
It is Testudinidae all the way down.
Yes. Yes, you are. I think the too-free use of "broad-stroke generalizations about Left and Right" makes this post largely an amorphous nullity. TimothyAwiseman reminds us of Orwell, who said something similar before and, in my opinion, said it better.
I'm skeptical of speech codes; I'm a tiny bit less skeptical of trigger warnings; the dismissal of microagressions as "fatuities" is, I think, a disease mostly of the white male who enjoys at least modest socio-economic status and who has avoided paying careful attention to recent events. I commend to your attention the interesting article "The real reason Americans fight about identity politics".
@Lizard,
I thought you showed great restraint when Ken insulted you in that earlier blog:
Hyperbole and metaphor are ancient parts of the English language. Similar to Vorkon's point, it may just be that we don't have an appropriate word to describe the kind of metaphorical bullying that happens in a dialog. Sometimes it's just that people don't know the words. For example they may call it "bullying" when it's really "grandstanding." Ultimately you have to either address that on a case-by-case basis or identify and call out the actual trend (which requires more than a small handful of citations).
When I use the term metaphorically, (which isn't often) it's usually when I consider the context to be primarily discourse and when I perceive someone to have tacitly agreed to unwritten rules of intellectually honest discourse and are violating those rules by using coercive language (threats, shaming) to get someone to express an opinion they do not actually hold. I use it metaphorically to emphasize the consequences of that form of argument in the context of discourse, and particularly online communities that claim to value discourse. The victim gains nothing and may lose social status, while the bully gains fleeting satisfaction of dominating an opponent and possibly increased social status. Neither party gains knowledge relevant to the discussion topic.
Most bloggers and media writers are at least pretending to engage in discourse as well as entertainment and advocacy. Readers and other writers should hold them to appropriate standards for discourse, and should be free to use the most appropriate language within that context.
If people don't know how engage in purposeful discussion in the first place and don't know how to identify the relevant unwritten rules of discourse, they have bigger problems than careless use of metaphors.
PS Civility is not the point, nor is strict avoidance of rhetoric. A discussion can be heated and all manner of rhetoric may prove useful. Even when the goal is enlightenment, discussion itself still an emotional experience and its participants are humans not robots. And of course it's perfectly possible to be polite, civil, and use no rhetoric, but nevertheless completely fail to contribute anything to a discussion. http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/blissninny.htm.
The same thing is happening with the word 'troll', as in an internet troll. It used to mean someone that took joy out of mocking and insulting others and usually saying absurd things just to get a negative emotional response. Now it means any disagreement.
I don't think is is a modern trend though, it's how language has always been and always will be. When I was young the word 'decimate' used to mean 'to reduce by 10%', now it means total destruction, even though the 'deci' prefix is obviously right there in the word. The word 'okay' has quite a few meanings today, even though it came from the abbreviation 'OK' which has a few origins, the funniest of which is that ~170 years ago newspapers used to intentionally misspell words just to be funny and 'Oll Korrect' jumped out of the print and into our daily usage.
As much as some of us would love to have words that mean what we learn them to mean, the truth is that language is defined by how it is used, not by a dictionary.
Tried to repair an early model Satire last week. The framing gaskets were blown for starters, and the drive metaphors just didn't have any power. Turns out the author had let the thing run dry on empathy and used aftermarket hyperbole patches he bought off Slate to give the poor thing "more power". Hell, it was barely still functional as a means of disputation.
Now some people these days would see a thought vehicle like that and say "This is why we should have trigger warning governors! This is why the lynch inspectors should sticker boilerplates! Hot air bags! Libelslander crumple panels!!". Bollocks.
Too much of that and soon you get arrested just for using a basic insult screw because it doesn't fit your "licensed inspectors" list of approved parts. You end up with a flashy clickbait chassis that can't even find first gear. It just sits there signalling left or right.
That said, I do wish people would respect their linguistic tools and parts. If I see one more wallered out ideological lynchpin on what could have been a fine piece of rhetorical steel, I'm gonna start drinkin.
Brought to you by BonMotMoCo: "If it it ain't juste, at least make it Bon!"
Food for thought, this post.
Still, I wonder what the purpose of the "broad-stroke generalization" really was since we know that "victim culture" and "the race card" are things made up by conservatives in an attempt to shame people (women and uppity brown people) into not speaking up about injustices committed against them.
As much as the right would like to claim that it's the "academic left" (I'm not calling you "the right", Ken) or liberals in general that shame people into submission, a quick look into conservative media (of which Fox News is the most sane) will show you just the opposite is true.
So, did you just not want to push Clark into writing another epic spam post about the culture war going on between the eeeeeevil women (and omega males) and good-and-proper liberitarians?
That's what bugs me about the reaction to that (admittedly stupid) Chicago Tribune editorial. If they shout enough about how it KILLS people, they don't have to address any of the problems Illinois has.
Ken, you say, dim internet users dilute meaningful words and there is no mechanism for retrieval or replacement of common understanding. Is the proper response to develop anxiety over this, resign to hijacked meanings of things, or fight a losing battle against the decline of things taken over by the unrestrained masses and blog media. I say, still use words the way you see proper and explain the use to others if it's worth it -a new burden come by universal free typed speech and not quite replaced by the addition of memetic parlance as entertaining as it is. Tell me there's an easier way. There is nothing to change that media has an incentive to be inappropriate because people like their ideas better than reality and now media and people are more because we're all tethered to devices. We will live in a world of caricature and hyperbole or develop skill to dilute dim internet masses seeking entertainment by way of shaming.
Must not get into left vs. right issues, and who is worse…
THAT being said, I think partly, it comes down to how we think about physical vs. mental, well, stuff. Harm being of utmost importance here, but stuff in general. We, society, humanity, whatever – we tend to prioritize physical stuff. If you build a car, that's REAL work. If you punch a guy in the nose, that's REAL harm. If you can routinely hit a baseball travelling 89 miles per hour into right field, that's REAL skill. We routinely characterize mental stuff as less real. If you solve an important math problem, well, I coulda done that if I wanted to. If you tease Annie about her bad haircut, well, she should just stop listening. If you can speak seven languages, well, who really cares, since you'll only ever use one at a time anyways?
Yet mental harm is real. Heck, it sticks with us LONGER than physical harm in all but the rarest cases. We know exactly how to fix broken bones, almost good as new. We can replace hips and knees. We can circumvent clogged arteries. Yet we still don't REALLY know how to fix that one time your father said that you were worthless. We don't know how to get soldiers to not wake up in the night screaming because some kid lit a firecracker in the back yard. The only sure sign of a suicidal person is that they are hanging from a rope, and the only sure sign that somebody will go on a shooting rampage is that they just started firing into a crowd. We consider ourselves to be more than mindless automata, to be the most highly evolved of apes, the most sentient of vertebrates, and yet we routinely characterize mental issues as less important than physical issues. We claim that matters of the mind matter less than matters of the body, even while claiming that our minds are what set us so far apart from all other forms of life.
And in the case of verbal bullying, which is very real and very damaging? We tell people to toughen up. To grow a thicker skin. We ignore that we don't actually know how to do that ourselves – that nobody since Buddah has mastered the art of not caring at all about what others say, and not letting it get to them. And we ignore that this advice would be EASIER to follow for physical abuses – that it's easy to go to a martial arts class, and learn to be less affected by pain. That it's easy to learn a few steps in ballet, and use them to avoid that shove into a locker.
And yet we defend free speech at all costs, knowing that we honestly have no idea how to reverse the damage done by terrible speech, even while we happily penalize those who throw punches, or shove into lockers, even while we know that that damage would wear off inside a month, and almost certainly be forgotten. And we do this because we know that when we go against free speech, we get McCarthy, and his reign of terror, and the only actual example of thought police this country has ever known. While when we ban physical bullying, we simply get safer hallways.
I dunno. I tend to support free speech. Heck, I support the Westborough Baptist Church, and its ability and legality to say whatever it wants, and that's practically the new Godwin's law. But given how much worse mental attacks can be than physical attacks, and how pathetically ill equipped we are to fix the damage from such? The only reason I can honestly give as to why somebody should have to pass a tormenting sign every day on the road to work, or spend time making sure never to be in the same room as Jackie "the tonguelasher" Smitt, or spend every day of highschool wishing to have been born in a town where homosexuality wasn't the ultimate sin, is that we've tried banning certain forms of speech before, and it went very poorly. Because just as we think physical issues are 'more' than mental issues, we seem to be able to agree upon the ethics of physicality relatively easily. The ethics of mental issues change by the day, depending upon who has power. And that makes it dangerous to write laws around them.
Docrailgun says August 18, 2015 at 6:11 am:
Conservatives hate uppity brown and black people who speak up against injustices?
@Blaster
"… when I consider the context to be primarily discourse and when I perceive someone to have tacitly agreed to unwritten rules of intellectually honest discourse and are violating those rules by using coercive language (threats, shaming) to get someone to express an opinion they do not actually hold."
That's not "bullying," that's "goading."
With Duffy dead (poor guy, really), how will Prenda get to their money in the offshore trusts?
At this point I've come to the conclusion that I have literally no idea what you're arguing on a vast array of non-government speech issues. Which makes me sad because I generally find your writing illuminating and worry I'm missing something good.
Your friends just realized they don't have a chance of ruining Volokh's life for writing a legal brief. Now they seem to have you in their sights instead.
This is going to be funny to watch, after all you've done for them.
Anyone who thinks Sam Biddle was being ironic with his tweets obviously hasn't bothered researching him, he only pleaded "It was a joke!" after he found out nerds weren't going to be so easily cowed.
@King Squirrel: I think you win this thread.
===
@Eggo:
Foolish monkey. You seem to think Ken is pro-SJW instead of just being pro-free speech.
I don't believe in Hyperbole, I believe in Parabole: what goes around, comes around. :)
Such lovely, lovely speech, isn't it Castaigne?
"I don't know who this 'Volokh' goon is, but let's get him fired for writing a legal brief against a gag order! Oh… He's… too strong to mess with. Let's find someone weaker than us to punch up at."
Huh. It's almost like all they do with speech and power is try to silence other people.
Do you count as "pro free-speech" if you support activists who are making speech dig its own grave?
Please go ask Justine Sacco and see how much she thinks supposed "jokes" on twitter shouldn't lead to criticism. Sam Biddle got what he has already given. If you believe one can be punished and/or ridiculed for their transgressions, whether you thought a tweet was funny or not, then so can the other.
You mean, the person whose treatment I specifically referred to in the post as being profoundly disturbing?
Rather illuminating article in The Atlantic Monthly recently on college students and faculty and the growing hostility to speech that could be deemed offensive – intentionally or not. One of the interesting points of the article was that expectations and feelings were becoming less aligned with reality – that people were conflating facts and feelings. If this is the case, then the outlook for free speech is grim, with even the most respectful and smallest disagreement becoming what another person legitimately believes to be bullying. And objectivity itself is considered by some to be a form of bullying, the ultimate trump card in what seems to be the war against rational discussion.
One of the biggest free speech scam is claiming one political spectrum or the other is more supportive of it. The left, the right and the middle would all throw free speech under the bus (and have) in a heartbeat if they thought they could advance their political causes. The examples you present are simply the most recent examples.
For anyone that thinks the "right" defends free speech more than the left ask yourself this. Why is the ACLU hated by most of the right and viewed as a "left organization" when their principle function is to defend the 1st amendment, including speech and religion that other people don't like. At least in my little red state the ACLU is absolutely vilified for defending unpopular speech and religious practices.
It's a pretty simple IMO, free speech is something that transcends party and ideological bounds. It's abused by both sides and both sides would throw it under a bus for different reasons tied to their bias. To be in support and defense of the 1st amendment means you will objectively be outside the bounds of both sides of the political spectrum at times.
The more time you spend outside the bounds of the "right" and "left" the more time you see that both ideologies have fallen for the "with us or against us" gambit of divide and conquer.
Another example of an inappropriate use of "bully": Rebecca Watson calling Ben Radford a "libel bully" for demanding that she remove her posts that strongly supported sexual harassment (and worse) allegations against him; this after Radford and his accuser issued a joint statement declaring the harassment allegations false. (Although carefully sprinkling "allegedly" throughout her posts may cover her legally.) Watson is raising money for a "legal defense fund" because Radford's lawyer asked her to take the allegations down. It may be within Watson's rights to gleefully transmit serious accusations, and follow up by sneering at the retraction of those accusations. But grifting for dollars and calling Radford a "bully" because he wants her to exercise some decency, is a bit much.
I was sadly one of those people who took part in the Sam-Biddle-is-literally-Hitler campaign.
I guess I felt it was using his own tactics of public shaming against him that made me feel justified. He is responsible for ruining the like of Justice Sacco after all.
Though it does seem a bit hypocritical in retrospect.
I consider myself liberal and at one time probably a "social justice warrior," but I had grown jaded with people of privilege telling the uneducated and poor to check their own. Today the social justice clique are doing their best to exile entertainers and creators for appealing to common folk instead of pandering to their pampered sensibilities.
And I think it's the latter that has me most concerned. I want to live in a world where I have the opportunity to be offended, but instead choose to have a sense of humor.
I think a distinction should be made between "lynch mob" and "witch hunt". The two phenomena overlap, but are not the same.
A "lynch mob" is a mob – a large number of people acting without lawful authority to punish some alleged criminal or offender against the social order. There is an implication that a "lynch mob" acts hastily, without proper information (as in The Ox-Bow Incident) or to enforce some invidious rule (as in the case of Emmett Till), and under the influence of fleeting high emotion, possibly inflamed by a demagogue (Leo Franks and Tom Watson). These are not always present – there have been lynch mobs that acted calmly, deliberately, and against genuinely guilty targets. There were also cases where the target was charged with some crime, but his real offense was defying a dominant social group.
A "witch hunt" is a proceeding to expose alleged evil-doers working in secret, where the supposed crimes are particularly lurid and alarming. "Witch hunters" often act with official power (the actual witch hunters of the 17th century certainly did; so did the Chekists who pursued "wreckers" and "traitors" under Stalin). There is an implication that the alleged crimes don't actually exist – as when an intelligence agency turns itself inside out searching for moles. Panic may lead to a witch hunt, as it may lead to a lynch mob – and there are recent cases of lynch mobs killing alleged witches in Africa. It may also drive reckless action by official agents, nominally within the law (the "satanic ritual" prosecutions of the 1990s).
The lynch mob may also serve as a metaphor, when a group of people collectively inflict some punishment with no regard for the rules of civil conduct. In the case of Clarence Thomas, a large group of advocates and pundits tried to lay a very damaging imputation on him with (in his view – and mine) little regard for its truth, and thereby block his appointment to the Supreme Court.
How you can defend him is unbelievable. Sam got to keep his job at Gawker. He never became unemployable. He's still at Gawker promoting the ruination of the lives of people who don't truly matter to the public. Sacco won't even speak about where she works for fear of more harassment. Sam Biddle did that with his power.
Sam Biddle did to Sacco is worse than what happened to Monica Lewinsky or Sandra Fluke by the right wing nuts. Lewinsky didn't deserve to have her name dragged through the mud with Clinton and Fluke spoke for the rights of women in congress. But those wackos demonize these women all the time. Biddle took a nobody and put this same magnifying lens on her. Twice he did this, as wrote that damn second article 6 months later to send another pack to demonize her all over again.
Where was his 6 months off in Ethiopia? He kept on writing, and he will continue to write hit pieces on people who don't matter as long as he isn't punished. If Gawker goes down, I hope his career goes with it.
RE: Justin
If you think calling someone's actions 'profoundly disturbing' is the same thing as defending that person and their actions, then you don't understand the definitions of profound, disturb, or defend.
And while I'm not defending Bindle, did you miss his third post on the subject made six months after the second? "Justine Sacco Is Good at Her Job, and How I Came To Peace With Her" dated 12/20/14. Sure seems like you're holding a grudge more than she is.
So kind of him to "come to peace with her" after he got a slap on the wrist from his bosses at Gawker for his tweets. It wasn't from his heart, it was after the bully learned just a fraction of the pain he caused. He had that opportunity in his second article to make peace. and he just kept with the same routine. Yeah, Sacco can forgive him, as that speaks well of her character. But it still disgusts me how he can take an innocent woman and dump the trolls of the internet on her head for a few clicks and laughs.
RE: Justin
While I remember Justine's tweet making the headlines, I'd forgotten about it until you brought it up just now, and even had to Google it. I had no idea Gawker was involved in any way, shape or form, because the normal media outlets never made any mention of Gawker. Even going back and reading Fox, CNN, and other outlets with stories from December, 2013 about the issue I see no mention of Gawker. You're bringing publicity to actions that you disagree with, almost two years after the fact.
I say this because it appears that through sheer irony, you are disagreeing with Ken for Ken's words that what Gawker did was bad, even though you agree with Ken when he says that what Gawker did was bad (it may not have been Gawker as a whole, but I really care so little that I don't feel like scrolling up to find the authors name.)
To further feed the Gods of Irony, you're disagreeing with Ken on an article in which he sarcastically claims that disagreeing with article you're joining a bullying lynch mob. If creating a lynch mob to attack others over words on the internet is what you find disgusting, then take a look in the mirror and see the roots of that disgust forming in the eyes staring back at you.
Now wouldn't it be ironic if I made comments about you on other websites, calling you out in public for publicly announcing that you disagree with people making their disagreements with other people in the public forum? Is it even irony at this point, or have we crossed the threshold into hypocrisy?
Justine was free to make a tasteless joke, Gawker was free to disagree with her, you're free to disagree with Gawker and I'm free to disagree with you. All of that is well within the bounds of our First Amendment rights. Inciting others to action because of our disagreement is when the problems can arise, when we start to form groups to alter the life of someone else for exercising their First Amendment rights is when we begin to lose touch with rational, civilized society.
(Gawd dahmmit, I have read more Gawker in the past month because of Popehat discussions than I have in the previous entirety of Gawkers existence. Why why why?)
So going back and reading Biddle's (fuck, now I remember his name after intentionally trying to forget it after making my last reply to you) initial post, which is nothing close to creating a mob, and then his followup six months later, which is even further from creating a mob, I fail to see why you're so emotionally butthurt over what he said. It's hardly fair to say he's calling for her head and creating the mob when he finishes his second post with:
but the idea that anyone can get a second chance gets a reluctant "Hot."
She obviously wanted attention and she should have known that an employee of her employers competition was following her, that hardly makes her innocent.
I'm not defending Biddle or Gawker, and I do feel bad for Sacco for losing a job over saying something dumb. But the only people that did anything questionable are the ones that made threats and called for the silencing of anyone saying anything about it, as usual in nearly all controversial situations. The First Amendment covers all of us and allows us to say the dumbest things we can think of, and as far as I'm concerned, more power to it and us. As long as everyone is allowed to freely speak then we're all fine, the problems only arise when the systems are abused to silence others for speaking freely.
tl;dr
Get over it.
@Justin, who in the actual fuck are you arguing with right now?
It's easy to put a little spin on words. Everyone does it.
"The answer to bad speech is more speech" from another angle sounds much like: "the answer to trolls is lynch mobs".
I don't agree that it's obvious Biddle was being ironic. It's obvious that he was trying to maintain plausible deniability, while saying whatever he wanted and having a reputation for belabored irony is something of a license to do that.
This justification from the business insider article is paper thin.
>If we understand it correctly, his point, which was highly nuanced for Twitter, was to voice support for the mostly female targets of Gamergate by suggesting that the hardcore video game fans attacking them were the sort of people — geeks, basically — who would have themselves been bullied in an earlier era.
I think it's something he wanted to say (not the same as something he actually wants to happen), for the purposes of hurting an outgroup and calling it a joke is his way of evading the social consequences of that speech. What's funny about it? There's a stupid man saying a stupid thing, but that's accomplished by saying "WHARBALGARBAL."
You're probably right that it would be better if we just let stupid people say stupid things sometimes though.
I expect my lynch mob membership card promptly.
Speaking of bullying, Gawker's Sam F. Biddle blocked me on Twitter…because I called him fat. He's fat.
Bullies are immoral cowards. Always have been, always will be, regardless of the medium, venue or situation. The internet is a safe place for bullies, because it provides anonymity to immoral cowards.
My elementary school nickname was "Dictionary," so I feel especially qualified to weigh in on the meaning of the word "bullying."
Those focusing on the power differential are correct, but they're leaving out the important part; the use of the power differential to lend coercive weight to whatever is being done to the aggrieved party.
If you are invoking or making disproportionate use of a power differential as part of the activity leading to aggrievement, then that is bullying. So if you're physically stronger and you hold the other party in place while giving him a nuggie, that is bullying. If you're more popular and tell them, "I'll tell everybody (some untrue horrible) if you run away" then that is bullying. If you use your position at the school paper to misrepresent their position in order to attack a straw man, knowing they don't have access to any forum large enough to correct the misconception, that is bullying.
If you're both trading volleys on twitter, it is unlikely to be bullying, unless there is some sort of power differential that is involved in the exchange, and used in a way that leaves one party feeling reasonably aggrieved. For example, if we call each other names on twitter, and you have lots of followers, some of whom will dox and swat me, and you knew from past experience that that would be the result of your tweets, then you're surely a major bully. If you only say words, and other people re-tweet those words, and nobody uses a power differential for an unfair, dishonest, or harmful purpose, then it would not be bullying.
Honestly the more I dig into the details, the more obvious it is that there is a lot of ignorance in this thread about the meaning of words, and lots of ignorant grandstanding. This is not even a difficult word to understand. If this is the quality of understanding that is typical of lawyers, I fear for our future, I really do. The word "bully" should not require a trip to the phrontistery to figure out.
Personal postscript: Calling me Dictionary was intended as bullying, but it failed completely because at the time I always interpreted it as a compliment; a recognition of my sophisticated nerdy values. Luckily for both sides, they found my pride in the title to be hilarious and continued the honors.
Any bullies who disagree with me online should face a war crimes tribunal and be hanged for the Nazi kitten murderers they really are. So go ahead and confuse people with facts and rational discussion, because Hitler is warming up the motherfucking ovens and he's coming for Fluffy!
I agree with your premise and the misuse of words, especially bullying, by people trying to curb speech they don't like with actions. However, using Donald Trump as an example might be going a bit too far. He actually IS a bully, using his power and influence to hinder careers as well as get people physically removed from areas if he doesn't agree with them.
It's funny because the other example in the same situation, the criticism of Megyn Kelly for bullying is a perfect example of what you are saying.
"why the fuck are you cocksuckers [so] vulgar these days?" Fixed that for you, cuntmaggot. If the goddamned idiot writers at Popehat weren't such pussybiters and staring in terror at fucking ponies, they might catch a typo now and then. You people should be burnt at the stake. Assholes.
"Bloggers complain that it is "bullying" to challenge the language they use."
That is not at all an honest description of the position presented in the page linked to. Ariel Meadow Stallings did NOT say that challenging the language she uses is bullying. What she called bullying was
She goes on to clarify that she is talking about:
While "bullying" isn't necessarily the best term for this, the actual assertion is much more legitimate than Ken's characterization of it. Can't Ken make his point without lying about what people have said? This post seriously degraded my respect for Ken and his credibility.
and god fucking bless you for that, good sir.
Yeah. Except of course when he isn't. Because principles just go out the window when your friend convinces you their victim is nothing but a "sociopath."
RE: Okay
PSSSSSST! Clark isn't Ken, and Ken isn't Clark.
If you have evidence that Ken has been anti-free speech, then post a link to Ken's words that proves he is anti-free speech. You don't get to use Clark's words to accuse Ken of something, and you don't get to use an accusation made on Twitter by a random nobody that Ken said something.
You've got all of Popehat at your fingertips with a search engine to help you find what you need to find. Go ahead, take your time, and come back to us when you've failed to find Ken supporting unConstitutional restrictions on free speech. (You don't have to take that last step, it would require a certain amount of integrity I doubt you possess anyway.)
…What? That wasn't a citation of ClarkHat's words and attributing them to Ken. Try actually reading the whole link, or both of them. That was a citation of a very long chain of tweets, linking to ClarkHat's tweet ABOUT Ken, for convenience. As well as a search of general tweets by and to @Popehat for context, just in case you were confused by the other link.
Look, another link to the same conversation about (and involving) Popehat! Clearly I think Ken=Ben now.
Because clearly someone labeled a "sociopath" via diagnosis-by-Internet doesn't have first amendment rights, and defending them or even commenting on how what was being done to him was wrong would be "harassment." He's noticeably selective in when the 1A is worth talking about.
the people who are quickest to form these giant online lynch mobs and go after people's livelihoods because of an IDEOLOGICAL disagreement, are the same people who actually are out using buzzwords, trying to manipulate language to suit their own agenda, as if there were any scientific evidence behind these postulations on language, but the reality is that such postulations come primarily from COMMUNICATIONS majors, and as such, it has no basis in sociology, linguistics, or psychology, which is why you don't see Noam Chomsky, the most cited political author of all time and the most accomplished linguist in human history, perpetuating this nonsense. but also, part of the reason he doesn't perpetuate it, is because its fine for the state to use buzzwords on the off-chance they MIGHT have some effect, without evidence, but when someone claims to be a progressive or someone who wants to reform society, and then they start advocating pseudo-scientific communications major bullshit, because they're advocating change that they can not begin to fathom the consequences of, because they aren't interested in the projections of sociologists, political scientists, or economists, but rather what buzzwords sound intuitive and will work as propaganda. but how are you going to go around claiming to be a progressive, or anyone who wants to radically transform society, and then turn around and have no qualms with using the same propaganda techniques for consolidating power and maintaining ideological hegemony? yeah, that's what I call a fucking HYPOCRITE, and you can't manipulate ME with YOUR language by saying we "all do it", because we really don't. I've done really well in my life by NOT biting my tongue, and I'm not about to start. not everyone is some Machiavellian sociopath, but nice try on the cop out meant to justify your use of propaganda.
I mean, the most recent buzzword from the state you could come up with, was enhanced interrogation techniques, which is hilarious because at this point, ever since the ICC defined solitary confinement as torture, prisoners of war and detainees linked to extremist groups, are now treated better than American civilians in prison. Americans are going INSANE from as little as THREE WEEKS in solitary, being left for months or years, of which many of them are put in there for BEING attacked on the yard, for being victims, while fucking TERRORISTS kick back all day, they get to eat whatever halal shit they want, and they play fucking fucking nintendo DS while watching TV between prayers, meals, sleep and exercise. ever since Abu Ghraib, anti-Coalition POWs and detainees have been living it up like they're at a Jihadi Summer-camp for Kids.
besides, FOX NEWS might talk over the people who come on their show, but its nothing compared to the shit feminists and progressives on tumblr will do for simply disagreeing with them. feminists are probably the biggest hate mob on the internet, the number of females who they have harassed and intimidated off the internet, is insane, and its growing by the day. I'd rather Bill O'Reilly ignorantly yell over me, than fucking Anita Sarkeesian or Zoe Quinn using the god damn UN to censor their critics. Hey, here's a thought, if you don't like to be criticized, make better content, & do more research? If you added some RIGOR to those meaningless postulations, it might actually develop into a well thought out and comprehensive political philosophy, but that sounds like too much work. it's much each to just create a positive feedback loop, where you either love me and everything I say, or agree with me silently. and if you don't respect my choice to criticize men as INHERENT RAPISTS, while deriding any criticism of myself as CYBERVIOLENCE, you will be arrested and sent to prison for disagreeing with a female, but be careful, because they add an extra 5 years if its a privileged white female with a blog.