Half a century ago, Tom Lehrer, our iconic musical satirist, paid ironic tribute to National Brotherhood Week. In introducing his cracked paean to tolerance, Lehrer asserted that ‘I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that.’ His grievance is all too common. We have resided for some time in an age that frets about hate speech, but when does distaste become hatred? And is sharp and personal talk bad for the polity? The shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords temporarily invigorated the debate over civility, but such moments have a way of not lasting. That was so January. Biting discourse draws attention and motivates both supporters and opponents.
In the immediate aftermath of the Tucson killings, some on the left focused their attention on those in the Tea Party who expressed vivid – and yes, offensive – animus for President Obama. There surely are those whose colorful language hides an absence of mindfulness. But, as conservatives knew well, their time for grievance would come soon. After all, we have a United States senator who titled his literary effort, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot. And there was the backbench Democrat from Memphis who compared Republican tactics to Nazi propaganda. Hitler would have George Soros’ wealth if he could receive a tiny royalty for each use of his name or image.
Even more dramatic is the boisterous crowd of teachers on the mall in Madison, Wisconsin. Protesters are fighting for collective bargaining rights, and in the process compare their newly elected governor, Scott Walker, to Hosni Mubarak and worse. Others will judge the justice of the Badgers’ cause, but who has taught these demonstrators about the villains of history? By the way, as an Illinois resident, I welcome the fleeing Democratic state senators and urge them to pay our newly increased income tax, part of which will go to teachers’ pay.
The question is how concerned should we be with Governor Walker’s and President Obama’s detractors? What is hate speech? Is it just lusty talk? Is it something to reject and to fear? Or, is it the cornerstone of our rough-and-tumble republic, a democracy that our founders would recognize? When discussed by scholars, such as Jeffrey Goldfarb in Civility and Subversion, civility in the public sphere is often linked to the responsibilities of mainstream intellectuals (Walter Lippmann or John Dewey), but it can equally be extended to C. Wright Mills, Thomas Sowell, or Frances Fox Piven. These thinkers and writers have responsibilities to both lasting discourse as well as to immediate change. But issues of civility and incivility apply also to those who stand outside ivied gates – the Keith Olbermanns, Glenn Becks, Frank Riches, and Bill Kristols of this world.
In fact, there is very little evidence that impassioned rhetoric leads to violence. Admittedly not none, as the assassination of Lincoln, the beating of Senator Seward, or the murder of Yitzhak Rabin reminds us. But objections often seem more aesthetic than criminological. The transposition of scorn and dislike into hatred by those who object to hot talk is misleading, even when we are talking about what has been termed ‘group libel.’ A person who finds African-Americans witless, Jews mercenary, or bankers heartless denigrates the group, but perhaps the heated emotion of hatred does not apply. Maybe they don’t hate, but just scorn, which is different from hate.
As Tom Lehrer breezily suggested, objections to hate speech, when it comes to characterizing a group, can themselves be labeled hate speech. When examining objections to individuals the problem grows thornier still. Someone can object deeply to the president, any president, accusing him of leading the nation into an inescapable quagmire, a world of fascist or communist sympathies. Surely these claims reveal real dislike. As Emily Eisenberg and I once pointed out in comparing reactions to Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton (Tricky Dick and Slick Willie, in their sexualized identities), some leaders raise ire, often less for what they have done, than for who they are.
But it is hard to pin down hatred. A syllogism suggests that I judge critically, you dislike, and they hate. Still, even if one can find such hatred, perhaps we should see the commitment to discourse as opposed to violent action, as within the boundaries of civil society. The allegiance to debate reflects the principles of the Founders, it doesn’t deny them. Being engaged in left or right disruption – talk or action – can be handled by a confident society. Yes, legislators, justices, and government officials must find grounds for reaching agreement, but they can do this – and over centuries have done this – within a welter of voices. The more some say that things have changed, the more that we can say that they have remained the same.
So I am not dismayed about the absence of a congenial debate – even while I wish that those with whom I disagree would sit down and shut up. Throughout our history, tough talk has been common as Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Bush pere and fils can attest. Fiery talk doesn’t lead to fire, it leads to commitment and, sometimes, to social change. As sociologist William Gamson has pointed out, militant social movements tend to be more effective than mousy ones. Get up on the soapbox and shout, as long as there are those who are more pragmatic to do the hard lifting of compromise. Hosni Mubarak is just like . . . fill in the blank.
Very interesting piece! In analogy to the defense of ‘paper stones’ of Przeworski, it seems to me that indeed we should not overreact to uncivilized discourse as we might interpret it as a democratic way to blow off steam from heated political emotions – instead of reverting to real violence. Still, while for sure hate speech or just scorn is of all times, we might ask if there is something new to this ‘business as usual’ state. What first comes to my mind is that political hate-speech has become much more present (public) in our daily lives due to the impact of ICT and media specialization. Where political scorn relating to the average citizen used to be a relatively private affair, the opening up of the traditional media landscape to public opinion comments and the development of social media has made it even for the moderate citizen difficult to escape a polarized discourse coming mainly from his fellow citizens – i.e. the uncivilized nature of speech is in my opinion certainly not set by intellectuals, although they certainly can inflate it. Second, I think another new element about political hatred relates to the trend to a popular distrust of politics. Highly volatile voting patterns show that people have become more cynical about politics and are more voting in protest against political developments they despise than in support of a political agenda with which they shared an ideological commitment and/or on the basis of which they feel to be truly represented. The combination of a polarized(public and popular)debate being overly present in our daily lives and a cynical look at politics do in my view cause for the present disturbance with uncivilized political discourse.
Help is on the way! See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/20/AR2011022003994.html for the announcement of the opening of the National Institute for Civil Discourse in Arizona. And then go to yesterday’s NYT Oped piece by Richard Dooling for some biting critique of it. See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/opinion/01civililty.html
What seems to me a very important part of the discussion is the question of a link between violent speech and violent action. One of the interviewees in the WP piece says that even though the Tucson shootings were not linked to public discourse, they “created a space for us to think about civil discourse.” Thinking and talking about civil discourse is all good and important, but shouldn’t we be thinking, talking and doing some more about cause and prevention of violent outbursts by lost individuals?
In English one can say, “I love these shoes, I hate these shoes.” Not in Spanish. Spanish doesn’t really allow for a personalized and intense affect directed toward these sorts of things. Spanish speakers, save those with extra dramatic flair, merely like or dislike them. By contrast, the English word “hate” seems more encompassing , so that people not only hate the shoes, but also hate Stalin, hate France, hate walmart, and so onn. This, I think, explains some of the ambiguities in the notion of “hate speech.” I agree with Gary Fine: “grab your soapbox,” be incendiary if you wish (because, remember, “only poison grows from stagnant waters”). But I think that we also have to emphasize that that hate speech today, often enough, is actually about Hate, and not “just lusty talk.” After Mathew Sheppard was tortured and murdered for being gay, a local preacher insisted on the idea of building a memorial reminding folk that Mathew Sheppard is now in hell. My point is that ,given the ideological volatility inthe world today, is not a good idea to be ambiguous about Hate with capital H.
I hate hate speech. It’s awful when I see it perpetrated by people with whom I disagree, but even worse when I see the standard Hitler comparison being used by those whose general position I share. This post is made all the more relevant since it came out on the day that the Supreme Court issued its ruling upholding the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to spew hateful insults at the families who are attending the funerals of their loved ones killed in war. Is it possible that I can actually agree with the likes of Samuel A. Alito? But I do understand the importance of free speech for any democracy. I then have an urge to picket the homes of those members of that hateful church with vile insults. On second thought, is it better to just ignore them and they’ll go away? That seems unlikely, though, since they now feel emboldened to just increase their hateful activity, and the media will follow. The solution seems that we must all develop a very thick skin. The frightening thing is that normal people can do that, while the more unhinged among us could possibly become even more unhinged.
Hate is a very powerful emotion, and in my opinion, more can go wrong when it is felt then in its absence. Hate and Hate speech can be very powerful tools when used by manipulative leaders, and frequently are the default tools when the merits of leaders cannot be defended in other ways.
Joanna Bourke explores many of these issues in her book, An Intimate History of Killing. Bourke defines hatred as, “an enduring organization of aggressive impulses toward a person or class of persons …. Composed of habitual bitter feeling and accusatory thought.”
In military combat, atrocities frequently arise from leaders invoking hate. During the Vietnam War, hate and hate speech played apart in the My Lai massacre; one of the worst atrocities of its kind committed by American troops during the war. Hate speech can be seen in terms of the use of terms such as “gook,” “slope” and “dinks”, derogatory and dehumanizing terms. Poor leadership by the platoon leader was a major contributing factor to the atrocity.
Burke notes that, “It is much more desirable to kill for positive than for negative emotions. Hatred might actually reduce ‘combat’ effectiveness’ while love might enhance it.” Reflecting on earlier times, Bourke wrote, “… hatred reduced the civilizing sense of chivalry in combat. Killing chivalrously meant avoiding ugly feelings of hatred and acknowledging the humanity of the enemy.”
Many of the same points may be made about hatred seeping into other kinds of conflicts. From the outside, it appears to me that hate has worked its way into the current situation in Wisconsin. I hope that I’m wrong. If it has, then I think we need to understand how it is being generated and by whom and for what purposes.
Hate frequently destroys the cultural underpinnings needed for democratic processes to emerge and thieve. Fundamental to building collaborative relationships issues of fairness and trust must be resolved. I think that John Rawls actually had some interesting thoughts on this.
If we think that hate and hate speech has worked its way into the current rancor in Wisconsin, then I think that the institutions involved and their leaders must be examined carefully.
In all the work that I have done over the years in terms of worker empowerment, achieving fairness and trust were foundational. This is made very difficult when institutions and their leaders are resistant to change.
Gary,
When two people cannot sit down at the same table and actually listen to and try to understand each other, then we have a problem. Most political discussions are competitions to win an argument, rather than an attempt to learn and cooperatively pursue the truth. Polemics may be exciting, but reasoned, humble debate is much more likely to produce policies and cultural changes that will improve our society.
[…] act out and upon our emotions, as James Jaspers explored in his posts a couple of weeks ago, and Gary Alan Fine has analyzed as well. Indeed Richard Dienst’s “bonds of debt,” that Vince Carducci reports on, are more […]