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Advocacy =/= Violence. This is one of the worst ideas of our century, that the words themselves cause injury akin to bodily harm. There should be a power strug

• TillE 9y ago
  Advocating genocide is violence, I think most people would agree. Talking about "ideas" is so abstract and antiseptic; clearly there are things beyond the pale.
  • brandonbloom 9y ago
    Please ignore the overly literal pendants who can’t be bothered to look past the word “physical” in the first of several dictionary entries defining the word “violence”. Words can cause harm, and whether you call it violent or not doesn’t make it any more morally justifiable.
    • dsacco 9y ago
      I think you’re being uncharitable in the reason why myself and others are disagreeing that advocation of violence is necessarily violence. This is a problem of definitions, but not the way you’ve said: in the common case, using the word “violence” denotes a sort of harm that is not equitable with the negative effects of advocating for violence. This is important because of accountability and nuance. If I advocate for war, it is unreasonable to try to invalidate my position by claiming that I should volunteer to go to war. You can incorporate that into your argument, but it does not on its own invalidate my argument. Similarly, my advocation of violence is not violence itself, despite how violent all war must necessarily be. This is a matter of using the right methods of investigation and persuasion; you might end up at the rational conclusion using an irrational method, but that method will insidiously steer you wrong elsewhere. It is important to be able to posit advocation of an idea is wrong according to some set of moral axioms without trying to posit the much stronger (and untenable) stance that advocation of violence is itself violence. Rational methods of investigation generalize, and irrational ones do not.
      • brandonbloom 9y ago
        The war advocacy example is a straw man. I don’t even know where to start with the rest of your comment built around that premise.
        • dsacco 9y ago
          Do you mind explaining why it’s a strawman? Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not. But we can’t really find out if you tell me I am without explaining why. That’s not a discussion in good faith. From my perspective, war seems to be a pretty good example. War is violent almost by definition. If you argue that advocating violence is also violence itself, this implies that advocating for war is an example of violence, does it not? Edit: To reiterate for those downvoting - I do not understand why this is a strawman, and my example seems to be relevant, reasonable and logical to a discussion of whether or not advocacy of violence is violence itself. If it is not a good example, I don’t understand how you think silently downvoting is going to meaningfully alter my perspective or provide context for others to see why I’m incorrect. I’m happy to receive your downvote, but I’d ask that you at least try to engage with my argument instead of dismissing it out of hand.
          • brandonbloom 9y ago
            The downvotes are because anyone who has ever been or ever deeply listened to someone affected by bigotry immediately recognizes your argument as fallacious. I'm not bothering to explain it to you because I've been around long enough to know that these internet arguments are a waste of time. Sadly, I still can't help myself sometimes. The silent downvoters are smarter than I am. Anyway, my guess is that you, like me, are some non-trivial subset of young, white, male, and pretty well-off. Maybe I'm wrong and/or you are genuinely open to learning here, but experience suggests people who write comments like yours can only be helped if they force themselves to interact with less privileged folks for an extended period of time.
            • dsacco 9y ago
              > Maybe I'm wrong and/or you are genuinely open to learning here, but experience suggests people who write comments like yours can only be helped if they force themselves to interact with less privileged folks for an extended period of time. Wow. First, I grew up in a situation such that all of my friends were (and mostly remain) “less privileged.” I’m also familiar with bigotry directed towards myself. Second, whether that does or does not describe me has no bearing on the merits of my argument, which is sort of my entire point through these threads - that’s not a rational heuristic. Third, I’m going to circle this back to my original point. You never explained why my argument is fallacious or a strawman, opting instead to deride it as such without a reasonable explanation. I never made an argument in favor of bigotry or genocide. I never said that advocating for such things is good. In fact, I’ve specifically and explicitly said they are not. My point, very specifically stated already, is that advocacy of violence is not violence, and further that this distinction is important for the purposes of discussion that arrives at rational conclusions consistently. I don’t know how you arrived at the comment you wrote, because you’re not just missing the point, you’re firing an arrow at a far off place I don’t recognize. It seems like you’re fixating on verbal violence directed towards others when I am talking about public advocacy in the general case. It’s deeply frustrating to me that you brought personal background and identity into this, and furthermore that you consistently mischaracterized my argument. You’ve twice now called it fallacious without any substantive refutation and without responding to my central thesis. It’s clear that you’re not interested in a good faith discussion. What you’ve done here is extremely antagonistic to another individual expressing their views. Consider this: you dilute the extent to which violent aggressors can be held accountable for their actions if you group them with the same descriptions and responsibility as those who advocated for the violence. And while it may not be the case specifically with genocide, in the general case, you enable censorship if you attempt to call violent those who advocate for violence. It is not a far leap from there to claiming thoughtcrime, and while you might arrive at the rational conclusion by using that heuristic for genocide, you will not necessarily arrive at the rational conclusion for a context in which violence is controversial but not immediately wrong.
    • jopalm 9y ago
      The word "violence" only recently had its definition broadened to encompass hurt feelings. There is an established legal definition for violence that makes it clear it is always physical The term has unfortunately been redefined by the same people who want to use it to censor speech.
      • brandonbloom 9y ago
        sigh I couldn't disagree any more strongly. 1) This isn't about "feelings", it's about the fact that speech _has consequences_. People get hurt both emotionally and physically because of things other people say, especially in aggregate. 2) Etymologically speaking, violence comes from "violent", which meant "having a marked or powerful effect". 3) Legally speaking, violence includes intimidation. 4) Practically speaking, arguing definitions is a total waste of time.
  • abnry 9y ago
    Advocating genocide is not violence. You can have someone on the internet yelling to kill all the muslims but if they never actually throw a punch, they are not committing violence.
    • albinofrenchy 9y ago
      Are you just arguing strict semantics here? If I'm Jewish and someone advocates for killing all the Jews, to me that is clearly a physical threat and potentiality assault. There is also a very real normalization that goes with online threats. If 100 people talk about running over liberals in a chat room, and then one of them does it; the other 99 facilitated that violence.
      • whatyoucantsay 9y ago
        > "If I'm Jewish and someone advocates for killing all the Jews, to me that is clearly a physical threat and potentiality assault." Groups that do just that have governmental support in Canada, the UK and many other first world countries, and this is one of those things that one simply isn't allowed to speak of publicly.
        • marcelluspye 9y ago
          And society is not worse off for the lack of that discourse.
          • whatyoucantsay 9y ago
            It most certainly is worse for the Jewish people living in fear for their safety in such societies. We need to be able to attack bad ideas, and few ideas are worse than "Death to all people of <ethnic group>!"
            • marcelluspye 9y ago
              I think you misread what I wrote. I meant that society has not been made worse by "death to the jews" being considered hate speech, i.e. we're (weakly) better off having 'banned' such phrases.
  • WillPostForFood 9y ago
    It literally is not.
    • Avshalom 9y ago
      It literally is Assault in the First Degree in many states however.
      • somecontext 9y ago
        Name three?
  • dsacco 9y ago
    > Advocating genocide is violence, I think most people would agree. I disagree. I do not consider peaceful advocation of an extremely controversial or violent activity to be violence in of itself. Moreover, I think it is important to be able to express why advocation of a thing can be bad without resorting to conflating the advocation with the thing itself. You lose a lot of nuance in discussion (and charitability for opposing views) with this kind of hyperbole in the general case. > Talking about "ideas" is so abstract and antiseptic; clearly there are things beyond the pale. I disagree with this as well. In my opinion, things are only beyond the pale if there is nothing new to contribute to the discussion, not because we are born with a heuristic that refutes it automatically. For example, we should consider advocating genocide bad because every critical, completely informed examination of genocide comes to the conclusion that it is a net loss for society, and there is no novel information to lead us to a different conclusion. We should not consider advocating genocide to be bad because we believe genocide is bad a priori; this is in fact untrue. Note that I disagree with dialectic methodology, not overall conclusion. It is important to use rational methods for deriving conclusions instead of subjective dismissals. It is bad to beat a dead horse when we know the result is bad for society, but we can’t begin from a position that is unwilling to examine certain subjects because others consider them “beyond the pale”. Rational dialectics generalize to other topics and arguments; subjective heuristics do not.
  • kneisley 9y ago
    Advocacy is the road to violence. Sure, saying “I wish you and everyone like you were dead” is not the same thing as killing them. But in a public sphere, or a private conversation, words matter. Arguing against the humanity of others like you’re talking about your favorite kind of cheese is appalling: “I do like cheddar and I don’t like Jews.” It isn’t physical violence, but I don’t know a distinct word to define that changing of the tone, the introduction or affirmation or just open acceptance of hate within a community. And given the natural, possibly even biological predilection toward in-group/out-group bias and groupthink in humans, suggesting dehumanization has real consequences. Here in the US, there is one group of people who are almost entirely impervious to the dehumanizing power of that kind of speech. That group is white cis hetero men. And they make the laws that form the legal consequences of saying hateful things. To no one's surprise, the legal consequences are basically nil. Historically, the social consequences were also light or non-existent. It was no one’s business who was or wasn’t a member of the Klan. But now, the most powerful group, while still making most of the laws, no longer holds complete control over social consequences. The people whose ancestors or contemporaries were hung from trees or tied to fences in the Wyoming cold or shot down in a walmart have more social power. We listen to them and respect them and create consequences for expressing hate toward them. We're starting to insist that everyone be respected, not just white guys. To me, this is progress, not oppression and in no way restricts the flow of good ideas.
• twobyfour 9y ago
  Advocacy is not violence, but advocacy of violence is close enough. There is a distinction to be made between advocacy in general and advocacy of harm (such as deportation or the denial of civil or human rights and of course including violence) or the spreading of slander/libel (e.g. [1]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of...