The Decriminalization of Dissent

The classical method of "cutting people off."

My left-listing friend Xerxes just surprised me by coming out against censorship, against unfriending in social media, and against shouting down speakers with whom you disagree. This would seem to buck the trend on the left, of demanding ever-increasing and ever-more-stringent censorship.

His may be only one voice. Or this may be a symptom that the left has gone too far, and that the “Just Walk Away” movement is spreading. Gag reflexes may be kicking in.

Xerxes writes of receiving offensive emails:

“You have these friends, see, who keep sending you emails filled with racist slurs against Muslims, abortionists, ‘Indians’ (they still use that term), Hindus, Asians, and immigrants in general.”

And he ponders:

“Should you cut them off? Block their emails? Terminate the friendship?”

But concludes:

“Isolating persons with whom we disagree simply amplifies the echo chamber they live in.”

There are a lot of problems here. But in a backhanded, incoherent way, he seems to recognize that something has gone wrong. He’s just not clear yet whodunit.

To begin, note that he speaks of “racist slurs” against abortionists. You may have noticed that abortionists are not actually a race.

Neither are Muslims, Hindus, or immigrants.

So he is using the term “racism” incorrectly.

This might be trivial, if it is simply a matter of saying “racism” when he meant “prejudice.” But that does not work either. It is hard to see how one would be prejudiced against abortionists. To call someone an “abortionist” is to say they have performed a specific act. What then is one pre-judging? If it is a matter of saying that the act is wrong, that is not a prejudice, but a “judice”— a moral judgement.

It looks as though Xerxes is still simply using the term “racism” to refer to views or political positions with which he disagrees.

Now, the thought that you should “cut someone off” and end a friendship simply because you disagree with them seems self-evidently wrong. Let’s look at his justification:

“Should you cut them off? Block their emails? Terminate the friendship?
Or do you try to reason with them? Prove their so-called facts incorrect? Point out the flaws in their logic?
That might work if they reached their views as a reasoned conviction. But that’s unlikely. More likely, they’re regurgitating cultural memes they’ve accepted without any conscious analysis.”

That is, he says it is impossible to reason with them because they are only repeating things they have heard, and have never thought about.

But that is an obvious non sequitur. If they hold their opinions from ignorance, it is commonly held that people are capable of both thinking and learning. Entire schools have been founded on this premise. If this were the issue, it is the perfect argument for continuing the dialogue. They are misinformed; you inform them.

So whatever the real reason Xerxes and the left previously wanted to censor, deplatform, and silence dissenting views, and still does at some level, this cannot be it. And since this claim is so obviously through-the-looking-glass, I think we can assume that the real reason is discreditable. Otherwise nobody would be able to convince themselves of something so absurd. This is what psychology calls “denial.”

I think he hints at the real reason with his conclusion. It is as though truth is beginning to dawn.

“Isolating persons with whom we disagree simply amplifies the echo chamber they live in.”

Now, who is isolating themselves, the friends who send him the emails, or him, if he “cuts them off”?

This is where the left, and the clerisy who presume they rule the rest of us, have been living. And they are perhaps, if Xerxes is an indication, now beginning to realize it.

In a list of oddly random complaints, as though he does not want to look at the issue too directly, Xerxes then expresses dissatisfaction with “various right-and/or-left-wing advocacy groups who shout down speakers they don’t approve of...”

The next thing he needs to realize, of course, is that it has been exclusively left-wing groups doing this. That’s too much, no doubt, for now.

But I sense a shift in the wind. Sometimes you don’t need a weatherman.