Can Speech Kill?

Ken Taylor
Can mere words be used to kill?

Josh Landy
Words can hurt and offend, but can they be lethal weapons?

Ken Taylor
How do we fight back when words are weaponized,

Josh Landy
Welcome to Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor.

Josh Landy
And I’m Josh Landy, we’re here at the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Ken Taylor
Continuing conversations that begin at philosophers corner on the Stanford campus, where I teach philosophy and Josh directs our philosophy and literature initiative.

Josh Landy
Today we’re asking, Can words kill a charge?

Ken Taylor
Of course not. Words don’t kill people do and you know what? People don’t even kill with words. They kill with things like bombs and guns.

Josh Landy
I’m not so sure can I think maybe sometimes words can be just as deadly as a gun or a bomb?

Ken Taylor
Oh, come on. Look, I’m gonna grant you words can certainly hurt or offend, but they can’t literally kill. Well, well

Josh Landy
think about the words that the Nazis used about Jews or they’re the words that the Hutu used about the Tutsi. What are those?

Ken Taylor
Well, well, look, I’m not denying that words can sometimes incite violence.

Josh Landy
Well, I’m not just talking about in cetacean. I’m saying that words can be instruments of violence. I mean, I mean, maybe not in every case. But when it comes to genocidal killers and their henchmen, words can be every bit as deadly as a machete.

Ken Taylor
No, just wait a minute. Even words don’t have the power to suffocate or to color throat.

Josh Landy
Well, words aren’t killing through physical force. They’re killing through representational forms,

Ken Taylor
representational forms.

Josh Landy
Think about the way that the Nazi genocide unfolded, right? I mean, it started with a kind of latent anti semitism. It was just widespread throughout the German people at the time. But then, propaganda came into the picture and propaganda transformed Jews into mere second class from male second class citizens into a kind of category of subhuman animal.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, okay, that was bad. But the actual genocide jossey took more than the words. I mean, if the Nazis had stopped at the propaganda, well, then they wouldn’t have been genocide of killers.

Josh Landy
Look, look, 1930s, Germany was a loaded gun, right? I mean, using those words, was pulling the trigger of a loaded gun. So in that context, using propaganda that was committing Jennison.

Ken Taylor
Josh does, I see your point, I see your analogy, your metaphor of the loaded gun, but I still say that representations words propaganda, can’t be acts of genocide all on their own until somebody moves beyond representations, and actually acts in the world until they wield that machete or turn that knob. They haven’t yet committed genocide.

Josh Landy
Or not everyone agrees with the academy. I mean, think about those who two journalists in Rwanda, who, who engaged in hate radio, they were found guilty of actual genocide that they weren’t. They weren’t condemned for incitement or something like that. They were like aiding and abetting the people who were actually doing the killing. They were convicted of genocide. Why do you think that was?

Ken Taylor
Well, I think that’s because the international tribunal for Rwanda, I’m afraid to say was conceptually confused.

Josh Landy
No, no, no, that tribunal recognized something really important. You don’t have to wield a machete to be a killer. In the right context, it’s enough to represent somebody else as a subhuman cockroach. In one case, yeah, you’re committing physical violence, but in the other case, you are committing representational violence.

Ken Taylor
Look, look, I know your literary guy, and I know you like metaphor. And I think what you’re calling representational violence, that’s a thing, but it’s not genuine violence. It’s just metaphorical violence. Tell that to the victims of dehumanizing language. Well, look, look, I don’t I don’t by any means to downplay how dangerous this kind of language can be. Yeah, it hurts and offends. Yeah, it poisons the politics of, of a community. Yeah. And sometimes it even gives people license, at least in their own mind to do all manner of horrible things to one another. So it sounds like you’re agreeing with me. No, I look, I will concede that what you call it representational violence, I will concede that’s a real thing. But that still, that just doesn’t mean that language itself can literally kill.

Josh Landy
Well, maybe a little Wittgenstein can help so Vidkun Stein? Yeah. Bear with me. So vixens were Wittgenstein. So is that the distinction between speech and actions? It that’s not as strong as we like to think right? The meaning of a word is necessarily connected to the way we act. So it’s just a mistake to think that there are words and then their actions.

Ken Taylor
Okay, that’s interesting. I liked Vidkun Stein. But what’s that got to do with Dennis? Ah,

Josh Landy
well think of a genocidal act as the final move and what Vidkun Stein would call a language game. The game starts with dehumanizing representations, these representations shaped perception and thought, and then thought culminates in murder.

Ken Taylor
I still think you’re making you in Vidkun Stein. You’re making the same mistake you’re collapsing thought and action into a single thing. They’re not a single thing. That’s why you like him because he makes the same mistake as you.

Josh Landy
Thanks, Ken. Well, obviously, I’m not going to convince you but maybe this will, we sent a roving philosophical reporter Liza veal, to catalogue language put to violent, hateful, and deadly use.

Ken Taylor
Warning. This piece contains audio that some listeners may find disturbing. Liza files this report.

Liza Veale
A lot of times the impact of hateful words is diffuse and encode it. But sometimes the consequences are explicit, easy to trace in the lead up to the Rwandan genocide, and throughout the 100 days of murder, the attacks on the Tutsis were coordinated overstate supported radio.

Rwanda state radio
Notice to all cockroaches listening now, Rwanda belongs to those who defend it. And you cockroaches are not Rwandans. Everybody is up in arms to defeat cockroaches. So you see you cockroaches having no way out. If we exterminate all the cockroaches, no one will judge us because we will be winners.

Liza Veale
In Myanmar, years of threats of violence on social media are now being carried out in what the United Nations is describing as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing. It’s time to kill all Colossus says one typical Facebook posts from 2013 using a derogatory word for people of South Indian origins living in Myanmar. For the next generation, it says burn all Muslim villages nearby. Today, there’s evidence of massacres in which government soldiers slaughtered civilians by the hundreds and rot every conceivable form of violence and cruelty. Hateful calls to action are all over social media all over the world, and not just online. In Poland, this year’s annual independent state demonstration organized by far right nationalist groups drew estimated crowds of 60,000 people marching under the slogan Poland for the poles. Death to the enemies of the homeland red signs with the dehumanizing language and the imagery of cloaks and red smoke flares and masses in the streets. You could argue there’s a threat being made, and if a threat or a show of power is effective, the consequences at the targeted side feels powerless. Here in this country, when the founder of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell threatened the Freedom Riders of the civil rights movement. His supporters made it happen

George Lincoln Rockwell
on we are terminated prayers for this country and we are going to exterminate the white race isn’t going to tolerate any more frequent recollecting in this country.

Liza Veale
followed the Freedom Riders in a bus called Rockwell’s keep us civil rights activists were mobbed, beaten and harassed

George Lincoln Rockwell
by our white.

Liza Veale
Today, white supremacist to draw power from remembering past racial subjugation,

Christopher Cantwell
the structure of America is sadly sadly not based on racism.

Liza Veale
Christopher Cantwell, one of the organizers of the unite the right rally in Charlottesville, uses his podcast to ferment racism, what we

Christopher Cantwell
have is this ridiculous, hyper inclusive, egalitarian narrative, a cultural communism that says, Oh, well, if if black people are getting arrested more than whites in the security guard must be racist.

Liza Veale
Charlottesville is of course where the counter protester Heather hire died when a white nationalist drove a car into the crowd,

Christopher Cantwell
I hope with every ounce of my soul, that every white person in America is like get out of here you animals. That’s what I really want. That’s what I’m going to do about systematic racism is to promote it and glorify it and make it look cool. Until it’s like the new trend amongst the young people and and being an anti racist is looked at as being gay.

Liza Veale
It’s easy to see the impact of these words on how they’re higher. But what about everybody else? Most of the world will never hear the sound of Christopher Cantwell his voice to his words still touched them. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Liza veal.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for that powerful, disturbing but important PISA Eliza I’m Ken Taylor, with me as my Stanford colleague Josh Landy and today we’re questioning whether speech can kill.

Josh Landy
We’re joined now by Lynne Tirrell, who is professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, and the author of genocidal language games as well as a forthcoming book about toxic speech. Welcome to philosophy Toplin.

Lynne Tirrell
Thank you, Josh. And Ken, thank you so much for having me on the air today.

Ken Taylor
So then you’re a philosopher of language like me and like me, you did your PhD doing roughly the same period. I’m a little bit of They knew but and in our day, in graduate school people were thinking about these issues, and we weren’t trained to think about them in graduate school. So I’d love to know how you got interested in this topic.

Lynne Tirrell
I think it was because I wrote my dissertation on metaphor. And so I was really keenly interested. And I ultimately argued that metaphor doesn’t live in the words, it lives in our interpretation of the words. And that got me thinking about the power of language to shape our patterns of interpretation. And so pretty soon after I finished, I started looking at what I call derogatory terms that has been taken up as slurs, starting in the 2000s. But back when I was working on it, in the early days, I was really focused on a particular kind of slur that derogates individuals on the basis of race and gender,

Josh Landy
so that that kind of gets us into our topic. I’m wondering, you know, classic, liberals, like mill don’t even think that speech can harm that alone kill but but your view, if I understand correctly, is that this derogatory speech that you’re talking about this toxic speech, can actually kill you? So what does mill have wrong about this?

Lynne Tirrell
I think that mill was thinking about it a little bit too much in the abstract, a little bit too much in terms of the rights of the people when you read on liberty, it’s it’s a very colonialist kind of picture of liberty. I won’t go into the details of it. But I urge people who are reading it to look for that, even though I do love mail. I disagree. With a lot of what he has to say about the power of speech. Yeah.

Ken Taylor
But listen, so mill thinks, yeah, mill mill is a complicated guy, I don’t wanna do middle scholarship. He doesn’t like speech that incites violence. If you stand in front of the house of the corn grower, he says and incite the people to tear up their corn, that’s bad. But if you have the opinion that the the corn growers are exploiters of the people, that’s okay, any opinion, okay, and expressing any opinions, okay? And that’s kind of what the speech of freedom of speech purists believe that kind of stuff. Obviously, you don’t believe that, I want to get into that. But I’m just thinking, tell me, just give me a thought, a convincing encapsulation of the idea that speech, mere words mere speaking can can be a harm, contrary to what mill thinks.

Lynne Tirrell
So if I say, and now I’m not endorsing this, but if I say Muslims are terrorists, some people might catch cash that out as if it’s political speech. But I see that as something that you can analyze in classic philosophy of language, but that you actually need to look at the way in which that’s embedded in systems of power and how it is getting us to reframe our understanding of an entire religion. And so by syncing Muslim to terrorist in the minds of people, we are under to go with what you were saying, can we are damaging them we are demeaning defaming and so on. But I also think that we are making their mode of life unlivable in certain ways. So you so in that sense it kills

Ken Taylor
so you think that we just put this really briefly before it for a break, you think that we change the with our speech, Muslims are terrorists, we actually have changed the world we have reconfigured the worlds Amal in a way that damages Muslims. Is that a fair capsulation? Okay, so that’s what we’ll have to dig into how language can reconfigure the world just in the speaking, you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today, we’re thinking about speech that kills with Lynn Terrell from the University of Connecticut.

Josh Landy
In our next segment, we’ll explore how mere words can harm and perhaps even kill, can words make up in representational power, what they lack in physical power, does the damage that words can do depend on people willing to translate them into action?

Ken Taylor
From words to thought to action, plus your calls and emails? When Philosophy Talk it continues. Why you got to be so words like nice swords and weapons not just mean, but harmful, even lethal. I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Josh Landy
except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy and we are asking how speech can kill our guest is Lynn Terrell from the University of Connecticut.

Ken Taylor
Okay, then so I’m going to grant you I’m not going to try and defend mill here at all. I’m going to grant you that words can cause harm and maybe maybe even kill, but I think I we started touching on this, but I think I need help with understanding how they managed to do that they surely don’t do that the way that guns and knives do. So how is it that words can harm and even possibly kill? Let’s talk about that a little bit. What’s the first thing that I need to understand? To understand this possibility?

Lynne Tirrell
I think that the most helpful thing to start with is understanding that speech is part of practices, that it’s not just a one off, you know, one person saying something on one occasion, but that these are, that might be how things start, but that they get repeated and repeated and repeated, we get used to it. So in the early days of feminism, the second wave of feminism, philosophers, and legal advocates made a distinction between or started to try to argue against pornography, saying pornography causes harm to women. In fact, they argued that pornography causes rape. And it was really hard to make that causal argument, there’s a parallel in the arguments that that came up between, or between the the prosecution and defense in the International Criminal Tribunal over Wanda, because in order to show incitement, they were supposed to show a direct link between the speech and the action outcome, that’s really hard to do. So if we take a lesson from the feminist strategy, they moved from causal harms, which are, you know, we can believe they happen, but harder to prove to constitutive harms, and saying that speech can be a harm because it creates a toxic climate. And it does all the kinds of damage you outlined at the beginning of the show damaging a person’s social standing, their functioning, humiliating them, demeaning them, and so on, inflicting a variety of indignities that makes it very hard for them to actually have decent functioning in the society.

Josh Landy
So it sounds like you’re saying that, if there’s enough of the wrong kind of speech, then you then you get a new normal, right that the definitely understand the communal understanding of what’s normal changes. And then this affects the way people think about themselves, and also the way people think about each other.

Lynne Tirrell
What and the way that people think they can treat each other because our conception of what kind of being you are shapes how people treat each other.

Ken Taylor
Yeah. Okay, so, the Nazis, other food, too, you know, they thought of their victims as some human vermin of some sort. And they thought that empowered them or in licensed them, or permitted them to treat them in these ways. But that didn’t make them that. I mean, the Nazis thinking that the Jews were subhuman vermin did not make the Jews to be subhuman vermin. I mean, every it’s not the case that everybody who thinks of me as x, right, whatever x is, makes me to be an x, right?

Lynne Tirrell
No, but they can make you incapable of functioning, the way that you seek to function as an as an adult, autonomous human being in a free society. So let’s

Ken Taylor
slow down speech, the speech do that or does power, political economic power? Do that the speech? Sure the speech married with the power to carry out what you you declared to be the case? Yeah, that’s right. Who would deny that but does the speech itself? Or am I making?

Lynne Tirrell
You can’t tell because I’m on the radio, we’re on the radio over here. So, um, for me, the speech is never just speech. It’s never to use Catherine McKinnon’s phrase only words, the speech is embedded in social and political for with social and political force. So you know, that’s why, you know, if I just make up some name and call you it, there’s, there’s no power to that. But if I use a derogatory term that has a history in our culture, of putting a group of people down, then I have done something that is capable of inflicting harm. So it has to be embedded in social practices, and a hysto social practices include all the economic practices, discrimination and other things.

Ken Taylor
How much do I as the victim of your speech have to grant authority to your practices? So you the Nazi say to me the Jew, I’m a subhuman vermin I say, No, the heck I’m not and I’m going to resist you with everything in my power. How much do does my resistance to you have to be cut off in order for your speech? Back by your power to constitute me in the world to Constituent Assembly? As opposed to just making me and you at odds, but you it’s not just that you and I are at odds, it’s like, it sounds like you think you make me into something you construe my agency or something?

Lynne Tirrell
Well, it depends how much power you actually have. But I love that question because a friend of mine who is much, much older, she’s somewhere in her late 80s. Now, so my mother’s generation, she told me a story about the headmaster at her girls school telling her that she should not go to college to become a kindergarten teacher, because women are just taking the place of men in colleges. And that was a really bad thing. And she walked out of the headmaster’s office thinking, Wow, he’s really an idiot. But how many how many girls in that school didn’t go to college? Because they felt like it wasn’t their place? So the question of what builds resistance is part of where we go. We can go later when we talk about inoculations and antidotes and things. And some people are pretty good at resisting. But you saying if you’re the the hypothetical Jew in Nazi Germany, and you say I don’t accept all this demeaning behavior, you can do what my colleague Jeremy wanderer at UMass Boston calls ignoring or rejecting, if you completely ignore it, you’re in trouble. Because you’re at peril. If you reject it, that’s a position of strength. And that’s pretty cool. But you may not have the power to avoid all of the rest of the baggage that comes with the imposition of that label on you, because other people will accept it. And they will start treating you in ways that deny you access to education deny you access to work opportunities, social opportunities, and more. Right,

Josh Landy
I mean, that. So it sounds like it’s actually quite a complicated picture, because clearly, language is doing some really important work here. But it’s not only language, that’s power structures, this, there’s systems, you know, institutional systems practices. And it seems like we need to be making a distinction here between the effect of this hateful language on the targeted group and the effect of this language on the powerful group, right. But it sounds like you’re saying, look, the effect on the Jews in the 1930s. It’s not just that Jews might start thinking of themselves in a certain way. It’s also that the non Jewish Germans are thinking about the Jews in a certain kind of way. Is that an important distinction for

Lynne Tirrell
you? It is, and but it’s also that that’s part of the inside or outside or way that some of these terms operate. And so the the Germans who thought of themselves as true Germans, and Ariens, may have felt licensed to treat Jews in a particular way. They also felt they also gained a kind of sense of solidarity with others who they saw as like them. And so there was a kind of polarization. So first, its division, and then division becomes entrenched, and widened into a kind of polarization. And I think you have to look at the what the dominators would view as a positive effect for them. They really enjoy their camaraderie and their group identity that they’re building at the expense of the subordinated group. Yeah, there’s

Ken Taylor
definitely language plays all kinds of complicated roles in our collective lives. I mean, Jeff Thunbergia, The linguist and philosopher Jeff Nonnberg, was this beautiful article on slurs where he says slurs are having an affiliation or purpose, I call that group, the N word or whatever. And I thereby affiliate myself with a certain group of people. And that’s, and that’s a powerful thing, these these human affiliations, we array ourselves into tribes through affiliation language, I don’t deny that. So and I think Josh is, right. So the dynamics of language and use, interacts with power and interacts with social structures and all that sort of stuff. But I don’t know that the the encapsulated phrase, language can kill it, it doesn’t elute I mean, that on its own, I understand why people react negatively to that, because that seems too simple. What you’re talking about is really a complicated, complicated structure in which language plays one role, but it’s not the only thing that at work, but I don’t think you would deny that or would you know,

Lynne Tirrell
it’s part of why in my work, you know, I started thinking about the power of derogatory terms and using US context, and then I got interested in what was going on in Rwanda in the 90s. And actually have been there a few times and done research with people there. And the reason that I think saying, if you just say like, a word can kill or language can kill you obliterate the important complexity. So I agree with that. But I think You shouldn’t think it kills. Most the time it doesn’t kill like a bullet. Right? It I, what I’m moving toward now is looking at the idea of toxicity. And the way that words can be like poison, which is a metaphor that comes from Victor klemper, who, who wrote the groundbreaking book, the language of the Third Reich where he chronicled his experience. As a Jew during the Holocaust period,

Ken Taylor
you’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re asking whether words can kill and if so, how? We’d love to have you join this conversation. And Ellie in San Francisco is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Speaker 1
I, you know, I agree with what you were just talking about, about how words can’t words probably. So the sentence can speech kill. I mean, a word isn’t like a bullet, right? It’s a word is not going to literally murder someone, you know, directly. But there are cases where, and I would just give you this as a question, of course, there’s cases when words caused death, right? They seem to be the causal factor in someone dying. There was recently this documentary called mentor about children getting bullied in high school. And there’s a case in that documentary about a little boy who received you know, was getting bullied, and then he gets an email saying, you want to go kill yourself. And he went home and killed themselves. So yeah, and I guess my question would be, you know, doesn’t it seem in that case, that

Ken Taylor
words did kill? No, thanks.

Speaker 1
It’s causal. The words weren’t the noose or the gun that he used to kill himself, but it seemed like it’s a direct correlation.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for the question. What do you think of that?

Lynne Tirrell
I think it’s really, it’s incredibly sad. It’s, I think that slurs and derogatory terms can function, like bully words to begin with. And then when you have some kind of bullying that actually includes a directive to do harm to yourself, then you’re getting into a different kind of criminal speech. And it’s interesting, because the way Ellie phrased it, that the bully said, why don’t you go home and do this, it’s like, it’s like they are putting the onus back on to the person who has been so brutalized by the onslaught of terrible speech.

Josh Landy
So it seems like there are these cases. I mean, another thing that comes to mind for me, is PTSD. I mean, that there’s a bunch of studies that have been coming out about the physical effects of bullying and other kinds of, you know, exposure to toxic speech. I mean, that’s something you have in mind, too, because obviously, you know, the the case of Rwanda is a, maybe a more complex and diffuse but also more deadly, or more systematically deadly case. But there are these lower level but maybe more common cases, right, of actual physical damage being done.

Lynne Tirrell
I think that is a great point. And it’s, it’s, it is part of why I’m turning to toxicity now, because I think, you know, a child growing up in a context where the parents it, you know, are constantly using negative words, maybe they’re connected with, but we’ll make them not connected with brutal violence, but things like Oh, you’re so stupid, What a moron you are. I had a neighbor, once who I heard through the window, calling his little kids holes, I think I can say that on the air, because it’s not a whole slur. Sure. And I thought, what does the kid think, you know, what are they growing up? Believing about themselves? And what kind of effect do they have when they walk into the room with that person who they have to be with all the time? And the answer is, there are clear physiological effects to that kind of behavior. And in in Rwanda, the aftermath of the propaganda and it isn’t just propaganda, it was changing practices of how to see were referred to and then how they were treated, has left many people in that country with mental health issues that the you know, the there are agencies there that are working on

Ken Taylor
Harvey in San Francisco’s on the line Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Harvey. Give us your question. We might answer it after the break now. Okay. Give us your question.

Speaker 2
Yes, getting back to the to the Nazis. Well, first of all, to state the obvious when you say speech until a direct order to kill is essentially is essentially just like pulling the trigger yo, the Nazis. Some of the Nazis tried to defend themselves they saying we were just following orders, but the ones who gave new orders bid even tried to say we only gave the orders and the other ones carried him out. But getting back to more general speech. There was this guy named Julius striker striker striker Stretch he published, he was the editor and publisher of a publication called Dersch. Stormer. The Stormer which was very overtly anti semitic. It was, you know, a little bit embarrassing to the other Nazis. Nazis were in charge. He was he was so violently anti Jewish. Like he published a, a children’s story, he published a children’s story called The poisonous mushroom. They said, like, just like one poisonous mushroom can kill an entire family. One Jew can poison an entire village or entire vote. You know, the German term VOA, okay. And then after the war, he was tried at Nuremberg, he was found guilty of I forgot the exact charges, but like genocide and crimes against humanity, and he was actually hanged by the Allies, because he actually created the environment in which Jews could be more easily killed. So maybe, if you know anything about him, you could talk about that.

Ken Taylor
Can you answer briefly, Lin? Thanks. Thanks for the call, or the Can you answer briefly?

Lynne Tirrell
Yeah, um, I think that the case of Stryker was actually very influential in the way that the International Criminal Tribunal dealt with what’s now known as the media trial. And that was a trial of the key radio and print leaders of the Hutu extremist movements. So they were found guilty of genocide. And many legal scholars are now wrangling over, you know, how careful was that case? How well done it was, and so on. But I think that the case of Stryker was crucial for that analysis.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re thinking about how speech can potentially kill with linter L, from the University of Connecticut author of genocidal language games,

Josh Landy
if some forms of speech are so toxic that they can kill or at least harm? Should they be regulated or even banned? Or Should all forms of speech be allowed

Ken Taylor
regulating toxic speech? When Philosophy Talk continues?

Can you imagine someone calling you a name so toxic, that they shouldn’t have the right to even say it? I’m Ken Taylor. And this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything except your

Josh Landy
intelligence. I’m Josh Landy, our guest is linked Terrell from the University of Connecticut. And we’re asking whether speech can kill so let

Ken Taylor
I’m just going to assume I think it’s a safe assumption that you’re not a free speech purist. And so I want to know how you would go about regulating, controlling, not necessarily under our laws, but imagine an ideal society and appoint us czar of the world, and you’re going to regulate the so called what you call toxic speech, what would you do? What are the what’s the first thing you would

Lynne Tirrell
do? I would, I would start with an assumption that we want our society to be to be one in which people have the ability, at least adults have the ability to make decisions that promote their own best interests, and that we actually want that to not only be adults, we want it to be something that we are growing in children as they emerge into adulthood. And so if certain kinds of propaganda interfere with our ability to make decisions that promote our own best interests, or even identify our own best interests, so I think things that interfere with that might be things that we as a society would want to say no to. But then how do you say no, and that’s where you, you know, we should discuss the tricky business of do we want explicit laws? Do we want penalties that are not part of law? Exactly. I mean, their law, but things like Title Nine, which say, you know, okay, you can be really discriminatory, but then you don’t get any federal money.

Josh Landy
How about so that these are excellent suggestions for regulation? What about a kind of positive response? How about, you know, counter speech? Could we be encouraging people to use positive language, right, whatever the opposite of a toxin

Ken Taylor
is, especially because the millions would say to you the way to combat speeches with more speech, that’s their claim, always more speech speeches in this arena, and it should always be come at it with speech. So what do you think of that?

Lynne Tirrell
So I love the idea of positive more speech. I think of that is, you know, if we could find antidotes that would be terrific. The problem is antidotes are after the harm. So actually looking at some work done in the social sciences in the 1960s by Yale social psychologist named Bill McGuire, on inoculation theory. And it’s it’s both really exciting and a little bit scary because it in have a certain level of social manipulation, right. But I think more speech is definitely part of the picture. But we have to recognize that a lot of times the bad speech is targeted at the most vulnerable members of our society. And so expecting them to counter bad speech with more speech when they’re already vulnerable and now being harmed. I think the rest of us have an obligation, those of us who are not being targeted.

Ken Taylor
I think you have a point, but I think it points in a different direction. There’s another equality concern that one could have in a liberal, democratic pluralistic society is equal access to the means of both self and public representation. And so that equal access to the means of representation gives you a chance to enter the contest of representations. I agree with you that the contest of representations is a vital thing in a pluralistic society. So it’s not like we say, well, they’re the powerful in that we make it our we make it our agenda to provide equal access to the means of representation. What do you think about that? We don’t usually think of that as an equality concern. But it seems I think it’s

Lynne Tirrell
great. And one of the so so you know, to go back to the inoculations idea, and there’s equal access to the means of representation. But one of the ways that we come back against the kind of stance I usually take is, well, do you think that the neo Nazi white supremacist should have equal airtime or equal access to the means of representation? And that’s where the inoculation theory kind of says, Well, no, maybe not. Maybe they should? Maybe we should let there be some of that, but not too much of that. And then how do you deal with that question? And that that approach? I honestly, I don’t have an answer. But maybe one of you do.

Ken Taylor
We Well, let’s let’s try. Aileen from mountain views on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, I think, what’s your comment? Your question?

Speaker 1
Hi, thank you for taking my call. My question concerns the self image of the people who are who are committing the atrocities. And I’m wondering if it’s not only that people think badly of the people they’re killing, of course, but also that they, you know, they think that they’re doing things in their own best interests, they think well of themselves. They’re taught to think that we need to eliminate this segment of the population for the good of our country. And there’s a really interesting article in the science news of August 19 2017, that talks about Rwanda. It’s called duty bound killings. And they talked about a lot of the killing was done by, like, militia groups. And so that makes me worry about local militias, here. But mostly, I’m wondering about the power of words to make you feel better. Thank you. I’ll take my answer off the air.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for the question only when he got a thought there.

Lynne Tirrell
Yeah, I think that goes back to a point we were talking about earlier about the effect of the speech on the people that are that are not directly harmed, and actually think there’s a kind of boomerang effect that the speech has. So on the one hand, the perpetrators in Rwanda felt really good about what they were doing for a while they didn’t at first, it was hard the if you read their testimonies, quite a few of them had a hard time, you know, picking up the machete and killing their neighbor, once they were beyond neighbors, and they were in the habit of it. It was just work. And that’s what they called it just work and getting the job done. But for for some of them, the idea that they were clearing the land of an evil infestation and that kind of thing. That wasn’t really the main thing that was motivating them, it was really this group identity. And so when you think about the self image of those who are committing the atrocity, often they have very low self images and participating with this group, this gang and they actually called them gangs, helped them to feel involved. It helped them to feel valued, and they had a shared project.

Ken Taylor
Yes. Simone de Beauvoir has interesting things to say about those kinds of people and how they become the the henchmen of the genocidal killers. But that’s another that’s a deeper, another show. That’s another show, but we got a caller Max in San Francisco. Welcome to philosophy talked Max, what’s your comment or question? Hi,

Speaker 3
thank you. Um, my question is this. If but if we see someone let’s see, I’m sorry. A parents abusing a child, verbally in public. How is that different from seeing a parent beating a child in public it’s, it feels wrong to just kind of look over way yeah, not do anything and I wonder one’s responsibility.

Ken Taylor
Take it. Max, I like your question. Thanks a lot. I want to expand Max’s question beyond just the child because we may feel some paternalistic concern for the well being of the child. Just take two equals and the person hurling hate speech in public at another person. What what is it? We and we’re not part of the transaction in general? I mean, are we supposed to Unreal? Is it okay to just be buying bystanders to this? Or do we? Are we complicit if we’re just bystanders, kind of linguistic bystanders?

Josh Landy
Right, and should we intervene? And and how?

Lynne Tirrell
I think the question of the obligation to intervene is a really tricky ethical one, I sort of stand on the sort of more extreme side of, yes, you have a moral obligation to speak up unless doing so actually puts you at serious risk of harm or injury. And I think that’s something that each individual has to figure out in their own case, but so many of the cases in everyday life are, you know, men telling sexist jokes about women and one guy is a little bit uncomfortable, but doesn’t say I don’t like it, when you talk that I’m

Ken Taylor
gonna give you I’m gonna give you something I worry about. So I worry about how we resist just by what linguistic devices, we resist problematic speech, somebody says that darn, they say something worse than that. But I can’t say that Darren Terrell was just on Philosophy Talk. And I say to Josh, you know, Terrell was on Philosophy Talk. I don’t say that Darren, because then I would be complicit. But what if I just drop the derogatory terms, drop the slurs, and report what you said, is that enough? Or do I have to do more? Do I have to call that person on their use?

Lynne Tirrell
I think you have to at least drop it. But I think it’s better if you call them on it. But how do I do because and that’s because I think that when we speak, we make certain kinds we make commitments, and one of them is to is a kind of meta level commitment. It’s like you rise above and you’re actually making a commitment to how we can talk. So if I start using racist or sexist derogatory terms, then I am making a commitment to their viability and their value. And that’s a problem. So saying, I don’t like it when you talk that way. I think that’s not a good way to talk. So you make it explicit and bring it out in the open, then that’s something that you can then have an argument about.

Josh Landy
We just received a comment from Joanne in studio a saying that hate speech is causes harm, but it’s protected under the First Amendment. So she said, Joanne, Joanne says this, this discussion is moot. Since the language is protected.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, it’s moot. Maybe an actual the world but we’re talking about ideals out Wheatland Give me your last car. Give me your last comment about how we should regard this. I mean, you know, divorce from the law and and how we might want to divide this design an ideal speech community.

Lynne Tirrell
So what I’m concerned about are the licenses to speak that we give in taken our everyday talk with each other socially. And also in private in the sense of very small, like, just you and I. And I think that if we engage with a sort of attention to the power of what we say, and the damage it can do, or the repair it can offer, then our society is going to be much healthier, and our individuals and groups are going to be much happier.

Ken Taylor
So learn on that uplifting, optimistic note, I’m going to thank you for joining us. This has been a great conversation. I don’t think we killed anybody with our words.

Lynne Tirrell
I don’t think so. Thanks so much for having me on the air,

Ken Taylor
I guess has been Lynn Terrell. She’s a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, author of genocidal language game and also a forthcoming book on toxic speech. You got one very quick thought, Josh,

Josh Landy
look, I think that it’s toxic speeches, is really damaging. But the good news from this show is that we got an array of strategy at our disposal not just regulation, counter speech, inoculation, intervention, social practices, we need to get on that.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, this is big stuff. This conversation continues at philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers where our motto is Cogito ergo Blago, I think, therefore, I blog. And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you. Send your questions to us at comments at Philosophy Talk, or tea, and if it’s a scintillating deep and important question, we will feature it on the

Josh Landy
blog. You can also become a partner in the community by visiting our website Philosophy Talk dot o RG. Now let’s hear from someone whose rapid words never do harm. It’s Ian shows the 62nd philosopher

Ian Shoales
in shows I look around me in here running norms and normalizing and Punchdrunk, persuasion in ham fisted propaganda, not much hate speech per se, but that gets shut down by protested before his bullhorn. There’s plenty of scorn online the right calling the left snowflakes and Cox and social justice warriors and calling themselves alt right Because calling yourself a fascist doesn’t mean hips and stinking three, seven, the left calls the right Nazis and the right calls the street fighting left Antifa throat for Anti Fascist. So there’s an implicit acceptance of that description by the right I guess. Sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you but names can incite others to hurt you. Luckily, most lefties get triggered by insults not angered, they lay down on the painting culture and issue Wounded Little Facebook posts. Actual American speech is not inherently dangerous so much as it’s degraded and ignored. Conservators made a fuss about being censored at UC Berkeley but were they last fall they popped up in Berkeley once a month or so even though nobody wanted to listen to them. Even the people who brought them there didn’t want to listen to them. They just want to trouble magnet kind of like get these back in the 60s. The school spent half a million dollars in security to protect them. Maybe that’s the point bankrupt the school so Nazis can make speeches. Nobody listens to to nobody when when when Miley INNOPOLIS the alt right pretty boy did bail on speaking at Berkeley. His followers claimed the left was shaming the memory of Mario Savio on the free speech movement. The alt right and solidarity with Mario Savio next thing you know, they’ll be high fiving Jane Fonda and putting up posters of hoochie men and their bunkers. Everybody’s freaking out about free speech and fake news and authenticity and leaks and privacy and assaults in the press. But no official has stopped anybody from speech. The problem is getting people to shut up. If we can remove anything from the marketplace of ideas this time around, by the way, I would pick Twitter. If you have a taco truck Twitter is good for letting customers downtown no one you’ll be out there building I don’t see what else it’s good for. It’s like a self fulfilling prophecy. People say alarming things people get alarmed right back before you know it. There’s an endless feedback loop of responses and what remains of the mainstream media wondering what it all means. And reading articles that are mainly transcriptions of Twitter feeds. I don’t even subscribe to Twitter. And yet I’ve seen nearly all of President Trump’s tweets, which are reposted and reprinted everywhere. But despite all the alarm, Twitter is nothing it’s a telegram which the world can read or a postcard a billboard a headline from a dead newspaper just because the president tweeted doesn’t mean it has value. A tweet is not a press release or a proclamation or a manifesto. It’s not a letter pamphlet or brochure. Not a law or a poster. It’s not shouting a crowded theater is not a warning shot across the bow is not an announcement over a bullhorn. It’s not the lunch menu read over the school’s pa though it could be not race results, not arrival times not a play by play not a call to arms, not a prayer for the dead. It’s just a wisecrack thrown out there. Sometimes funny sometimes not sometimes just leads to trouble as President Trump handles that it’s usually three in the morning and the president tweets on the best you guys yay. There was a disagree tweet something like you’re not either the best shut up and it goes round and round and round. It’d be so much better if we just shut Twitter down except for taco trucks and go back to not believing everything we read but you know, believing something that these tools are self evident maybe or that these are the times that try men’s souls. Yeah, yeah, women too. I gotta go.

John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
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Ken Taylor
Thanks also to Laurel Kessler, Angela Johnston. And Collin Peterson.

John Perry
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Ken Taylor
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John Perry
The conversation continues on our website Philosophy Talk dot o RG where you too, can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m John Perry. And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening and thank you for thinking.

Speaker 4
I’m telling you some of this language makes me want to vomit. Well, maybe not vomit. Makes me want to engage in an involuntary personal proteins .