Tag: censorship

When Words Kill

In August of 1940, Leon Trotsky was sitting in his study in Mexico City.

It was a peaceful moment. A quiet moment. One that would soon be brutally disrupted.

For there was another man in the study with Trotsky – Ramon Mercader. And as Trosky started reading an article, Mercader hit him in the head with a mountaineering axe.

The blow proved fatal to Trotsky. And it caused outrage far beyond the Mexican capital.

For Trosky was no average citizen. He was a prominent writer and thinker, who also happened to be living in exile.

Yes, Trotsky – who helped form the U.S.S.R – had fled the bloc when he got on the wrong side of Joseph Stalin. And that separation seemingly negated the threat Trotsky posed to the Stalin regime.

Indeed, all Trotsky had left were his words. But those words still got him brutally murdered half a world away — at the behest of the regime.

Words, it seemed, could kill.

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So reads the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

There are only six words in that clause dedicated to the right to speak in America. But one of those six words is freedom.

For years, we’ve pointed to that right. We’ve considered it to be tougher than Teflon. Something that differentiates the United States from other nations.

The power of this right was made evident by looking across our southern border. Leon Trotsky – an exile from a nation 7,000 miles away from Mexico – still found himself in mortal danger there for something he’d said.

Such an outcome would be considered unconstitutional in America. It simply wouldn’t be allowed.

Or would it?

Twenty-three years after Trotsky’s demise, United States President John F. Kennedy was riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, when a bullet ripped through his skull. He was rushed to Parkland Hospital and quickly pronounced dead.

Kennedy’s accused assassin – Lee Harvey Oswald – was himself murdered during a prisoner transport days later. And conspiracy theories continue as to whether someone else pulled the trigger on shot that felled the president. So, we don’t know the motive behind the murder of the leader of the free world.

But what is clear is that Kennedy’s words, as much as anything else, led to his demise.

You see, John F. Kennedy was barely halfway through his term as president when he was killed. Most of the signature actions we associate with him — such as space exploration and Civil Rights legislation — hadn’t occurred yet. Lyndon Johnson would ultimately take those across the finish line.

We associate those actions with Kennedy because of his words. Because of his speeches and addresses.

It was Kennedy who declared We choose to go to the moon in this decade. It was Kennedy who spoke pointedly against the advance of the U.S.S.R. on multiple occasions. It was Kennedy who spoke out against segregation following the attacks on protesters in Birmingham, Alabama.

Any of those words could have driven an aggrieved opponent to violence. And they ultimately did.

Words could kill.

About four and a half years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in Memphis.

Much like Kennedy, King had towered over the 1960s. His activism in the service of the Black community had been extensive, and it led to extensive Civil Rights legislation.

But if we take a closer look at King’s contributions to that movement, it’s his words that come to the fore.

It was King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail that set a roadmap for his activism. It was King’s I have a dream speech that captivated so many — making his cause their cause.

Still, that cause – equal rights – was considered controversial in parts of our society. Indeed, an entire swath of the country was built on a platform that directly conflicted with that ideal.

So, an assassin decided to put an end to King’s letters and speeches. He spotted King on the balcony of a Memphis motel. And the assassin shot him.

Two months later, it was John F. Kennedy’s brother Robert who would meet an untimely demise. In the ensuing decades, President Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan would survive assassination attempts.

A stark reality was coming into view.

The carnage in Dallas wasn’t a one-off. It was the start of a trend.

Sure, people could say what they wanted in America. But if they were prominent enough, those words might keep them from seeing tomorrow.

This concept has come back into focus in recent years. President Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts while campaigning for his second term. And recently, conservative pundit Charlie Kirk was gunned down during an event at a Utah college.

Many have labeled these incidents as political violence, but that belies the point. These individuals were all targeted for exercising their First Amendment rights. And many of them paid the ultimate price.

Freedom of speech, it seems, only practically extends so far.

Back in 2008, I studied abroad in Chile.

Amid the peaks of the Andes and the serene beauty of the Pacific Ocean, I noticed something else – hordes of students engaging in protest.

As a college student who was months away from voting in his first U.S. Presidential election, I was intrigued by this development. But several people told me to stay away.

The police don’t play around here, they told me in Spanish. They show up in riot gear and use tear gas and water cannons. It will burn your eyes and ruin your clothes.

I was horrified by these descriptions. But the locals told me it had once been much worse.

During the reign of Augusto Pinochet, protestors weren’t merely sprayed with tear gas. They were whisked off to secret detention sites, never to be seen again.

It had been 18 years since that dictatorship ended and the disappearances ceased. But I could still see the wariness in the eyes of so many of the locals.

They were exceedingly kind. But they were also reserved. Even after four Pisco Sours, they were unlikely to speak their minds.

It was only those students – too young to remember the Pinochet era – who dared to speak up and face the tear gas.

This is the long shadow that censorship carries.

Rules and regulations, rights and freedoms – they supposedly set the groundwork for discourse. But once we see the blood splatter, or find our acquaintances whisked away, those guidelines go out the window.

The walls close in, and we clam up. A single bullet effectively silences multiple voices.

I worry about this fate befalling America.

Sure, the outliers and the extremists might continue to yammer on, even in the wake of violence. That is their prerogative, and the carnage will not deter them.

But what about the rest of us? Will we feel the same liberty to speak our minds, as we see the bloody corpses of orators on our screens?

I doubt it.

I’m not sure if there’s tidy way out of this conundrum. It’s hard to feel secure when violence is an omnipresent threat.

My only hope is for more of us to face our fears head-on. To leave the cocoon of self-censorship, and to share our thoughts with the world — as I’ve done here at Ember Trace for nearly a decade.

It’s a risk, yes. But it’s one worth taking.

Words can kill. But they can also change the world.

It’s high time we let them.

Of Words and Weapons

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me.

So goes one of the quintessential schoolyard retorts.

Kids can be brats at times, calling other kids names in order to get under their skin. The sticks and stones phrase has long given the aggrieved an opportunity to blunt these attacks.

Sure, it’s a mouthful. But that’s precisely the point. Its complexity gives the tormentor pause. And this lowers the temperature.

This pattern has repeated itself for years. But things are different now.

Not all words are created equal.

Some bring joy. Some bring sadness. And some are so inflammatory that they’re considered taboo.

Growing up, I knew what these off-limits words were. They were so scandalous that people referred to them by their first letter. The F-word. The S-word. The N-word.

I was not born with this knowledge, but I picked it up quickly.

For instance, when I was 7 years old, I asked my father about a word I’d read in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. My father implored me not to use that word — which was negro. In the same breath, he warned me to never use its uglier, more inflammatory derivative.

Looking back now, it strikes me just how strange this all was. In order to teach me which word not to use, my father needed to use it.

But I learned my lessons well. I steered clear of bad words with a precision that would have made Mormons proud. By the time I got to high school, my best friend — who dropped the F-words and S-words into most sentences — even ribbed me for being so square.

Truth be told, it was easy to avoid these terms. There was a rich ecosystem of synonyms I could draw from to avoid swearing. And that’s precisely what I did.

But these days, it’s trickier to steer clear of the landmines.

Trigger warning.

It’s one of the terms that’s emerged in this newfangled era.

Trigger warnings guard against information that might upset us. They prepare us for the shock, horror or emotional distress ahead.

The premise of this phenomenon is sensible. We shouldn’t be blindsided when facing disturbing topics, particularly since many of us have experienced trauma in our lives already.

Words can in fact harm us, particularly if they reopen wounds that haven’t fully healed. Trigger warnings are our last line of defense against such catastrophe.

Yet, as our society gets more polarized, the number of terms deemed worthy of a trigger warning only seems to grow. Racial slurs and descriptors of physical assaults aren’t the only sources of consternation anymore. Now, phrases that upset our worldviews make the list as well.

Some of these terms do have ties to partisan politics. Global warming became climate change thanks to a focus group put together by conservatives, for instance.

Still, many phrases with a trigger warning label lack obvious political ties. It’s the associations we draw from these terms that so deeply aggrieve us.

This leaves us with a bevy of words that have turned radioactive. And this time, there are no simple substitutes for them.

We can take the long way and describe the words without using them — a real-life version of the game Taboo. But in an era of dwindling attention spans, these efforts are likely to fall short.

And so, with no clear path forward, we avoid these terms — and their associated topics — altogether. And by doing this, we invoke a sense of shadow censorship.

That should trigger its own warning.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So reads the first amendment of the United States Constitution.

Scholars, justices, and activists have broken down those 45 words countless times. They’ve attempted to determine what rights people have to express themselves.

But these dry interpretations miss a key angle. Namely, the intent of those who put those 45 words on paper.

The First Amendment was part of the Bill of Rights — a set of personal freedoms afforded to all Americans. These rights were foundational, rebutting the censorship that was commonplace in the colonial era.

The founding fathers wanted us to use our voices without fear of silencing. In their view, words were not weapons. And opening one’s mouth shouldn’t be treated as an act of war.

While the courts have imposed limitations in a few situations, freedom of expression largely remains intact today. Yet, we now find ourselves restricting our own speech.

By making more and more terms taboo, we are limiting discourse. We are narrowing our perspective. And we are failing to address crucial societal concerns.

Sure, shadow censorship might make us feel more secure and less aggravated. But ignoring the uncomfortable topics around us won’t make them go away. The elephant in the room remains.

It’s time to end the shadow censorship. It’s time to stop treating words as weapons.

Yes, some select words are truly vulgar. And we absolutely should avoid those words whenever possible.

But, by and large, words are not the concern. It’s the actions associated with those words that pose the gravest danger.

This is a point that we seem to miss.

Let’s consider what is really spurring the trigger warnings. Do these difficult phrases trigger emotional distress? Or do they trigger us to acts of aggression?

Both effects are troubling. But words shouldn’t shoulder all the blame for these adverse outcomes. We need to take some responsibility as well.

We have the agency to face our trauma head-on and to help the scars heal. We have the ability to keep dialogue from erupting into violence.

Taking phrases out of circulation doesn’t absolve us of these duties. It only deludes us further.

So, let’s stop with the smoke and mirrors. Let’s rid ourselves of the shadow censorship. And let’s commit ourselves to have important discussions, even if they might be a bit uncomfortable.

This is our best path forward. Let’s not squander it.