The Function of “Words Are Violence”

Translation of “Words are Violence”: A) You need to shut up and let ME talk. B) I am the sole judge of what words you are permitted to speak. C) I’m so fragile that I can’t bear to talk with people I disagree with. D) I forbid you to use facts, logic and persuasion while we talk. E) If you say anything I don't like, it will be blasphemy and sacrilege and it proves that you are a bad person engaged in "hate speech." F) I am justified ending our relationship and/or inflicting violence on you if your words piss me off.

The above attitude does not invite meaningful debate of anything of importance. Thus:

In "Bury the ‘words are violence’ cliché," Greg Lukianoff reminds us that words are not like bullets:

I had my disagreements with Charlie Kirk—sometimes sharp ones—but none of that matters right now. What I respected, and too many of his critics never noticed, was that he showed up. He stood in the quad, took hard questions, argued back, let students argue back at him. That takes time, patience, and courage. Our culture has been teaching young people to scorn that everyday civic courage and to treat contested speech as a kind of physical harm. On that Utah campus we received the final proof that “words are like bullets” is a poisonous and cruel metaphor.

In other words, what looks like a plea for civility is actually a threat. This pertains to both "Words are Violence" and claims of "Hate Speech."

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The Words that Cultivate Free Speech

Samual Abrams:

“It’s a free country” signals that disagreement is permissible. “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion” acknowledges dignity in dissent. “Sticks and stones” reminds us to meet speech with speech, not violence or censorship. Without such reminders, the civic muscle memory that protects a free society begins to atrophy. That last idiom in the table — “Address the argument, not the person” — may be the most telling of all. Only 30% of Americans even recognize it, and barely 1 in 10 say it often.

This absence shows up everywhere: in the pile-ons of cancel culture, the readiness to attack a person’s character rather than engage their reasoning and in why viewpoint diversity is so hard to come by on many college campuses. If you never learn the habit of separating people from their ideas, disagreement becomes personal and dissenters become enemies to be silenced.

And in their place? New slogans, often adversarial and absolutist. We hear “words are violence” or “speech is harm” far more than “defend to the death your right to say it.” The FIRE/NORC survey found that a quarter of Americans now say the “words are violence” framing describes their own view “mostly” or “completely.”

Samuel J. Abrams is professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Don’t Cancel the Cancelers

Adam Goldstein of FIRE:

Time and time again, we resort to this mob mentality when tragedy strikes. When Barbara Bush died. When the Queen died. Rush Limbaugh. Otto Warmbier. George Floyd. After 9/11. After October 7. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

As free speech advocates, it places us in a painful position. Charlie Kirk’s assassination was an attack on free speech and open discourse. In a free society, we must not be afraid to express our views, no matter how strongly some might oppose them. That’s the point of free speech. But it is precisely for that reason why we must not respond to mockery of Kirk’s assassination by canceling everyone who offends us: because that too creates a society where people are afraid to express themselves.

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