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SilentCenter's avatar

I really like Persuasion, but sometimes the arguments feel a little too nuanced and divorced from the context. Of course people are equating speech with violence, because speech is protected in this country and violence is not. If your opinion is violence, I've made your opinion illegal. People who argue that speech is violence are opponents of the very first amendment to our Constitution. That should be argument enough against it.

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Steve Stoft's avatar

For the longest time, I could not see the most obvious fact about the woke and their verbal violence nonsense. But I find myself in good company. Many are discussing whether mere speech can be violent, and none have raised the most obvious examples.

The examples that we all miss are the woke shaming and canceling people. Cancelling, by all accounts, does real, tangible harm. It causes depression, persistent loss of sleep, loss of friends, and loss of jobs and careers. Physical violence is not just kids shoving each other or wrestling. Violence is moving beyond causing temporary discomfort. Sure, it’s hard to draw the line precisely.

But canceling can go far beyond the point of temporary discomfort, and more to the point it is far worse than any of the examples the woke label as verbal violence. So how do we miss it?

Here is an example picked at random from many that are ubiquitous on the web.

“I saw this last night in a TV episode I was watching. A child being bullied finally stood up to the bully, punching him. The bully’s nose was broken. The school punished the child being bullied and forced him to apologize to the bully for punching him. Not one person addressed WHY the child felt the need to punch him, only that it happened. The bully not only got away with being a bully but then got rewarded as the “victim” of an “attack” that was self-defense.”

The woke always, always claim they are the ones being attacked.

Now watch Nicholas Christakis, of the Yale Halloween incident, being shamed and bullied.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IEFD_JVYd0 (only a minute)

He was called a racist and then this was screamed in his face “Then why the fuck did you accept the position?! Who the fuck hired you?! You should step down! … you’re disgusting.” 1000 people on campus signed a petition blamed him and his wife for verbal violence. But after reading a great deal about this incident I did not once find anyone saying this attacker was being verbally violent. Certainly, the woke never admit that even their most devastating attacks are verbal violence.

For reasons I don’t understand, blaming the victim works. Bullies do this constantly, and somehow it blinds people to the reality that is the reverse of their claims. It doesn’t blind everyone, but I still find it shocking how well it works. When Trump lies, or cheats, or incites violence, his first line of defense is to claim that whoever points this out is a liar, a cheater, or has incited violence.

The woke are bullies. Expert bullies. And even though we halfway see through them, we still fail to notice that they are responsible for nearly all of the verbal violence committed in the fights between the woke and the rest of us who are left of center. Any discussion of whether the woke are exaggerating or inventing verbal violence, should begin and end with an examination of woke violence.

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