Speaker 1: Hello everybody, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends.
Speaker 1: I have to admit that this episode you're about to
Speaker 1: listen to was not something I expected to turn into
Speaker 1: an episode for some time. I mean, it's a relatively
Speaker 1: evergreen subject, but unfortunately world events I think I said
Speaker 1: this in the last episode, do not conform to a
Speaker 1: podcast release schedule, and given the ongoing conversations about political
Speaker 1: violence and their causes that have been going on since
Speaker 1: the assassination of Charlie Kirk on September tenth, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: most pointedly in the conversation I had with Danielli, Bellelli
Speaker 1: and Christaps Andredesen's on the last episode, in which I
Speaker 1: actually had to stop and think, like, what are we
Speaker 1: talking about here? When it comes to threatening language. I
Speaker 1: figured that an adaptation of an essay I wrote over
Speaker 1: there Were a year ago in the wake of the
Speaker 1: attempted assassination on President Trump, then candidate Trump, that I
Speaker 1: called the Vital Truth about rhetoric and violence. I still
Speaker 1: am considering what Danielle particularly said when we were having
Speaker 1: this conversation and how I started to think about things
Speaker 1: in terms of existential framing as potentially being something threatening,
Speaker 1: though I still think even if the evidence does not exist,
Speaker 1: one could make an argument against it on the basis
Speaker 1: of law or principle. But I still don't think I've
Speaker 1: moved on that.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to concede that there could be some kind
Speaker 1: of psychological evidence out there suggesting that existentially framed language,
Speaker 1: especially persistently delivered and consumed, does constitute an influencing force.
Speaker 1: But I just don't know. Maybe there's something out there,
Speaker 1: maybe there's some studies being conducted. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: hope so I would like to know. But regardless, I
Speaker 1: still find myself unmoved at the idea. As to be fair,
Speaker 1: Daniellie also feels about the idea of restricting our freedom
Speaker 1: of speech that we have in this country. Obviously, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of controversy about that right now, based on
Speaker 1: people losing their jobs and suspensions of various public figures.
Speaker 1: But regardless, I do find myself still unmoved at the
Speaker 1: prospect of restricting speech even if the evidence psychological evidence changes.
Speaker 1: And that's essentially what I got into with this essay
Speaker 1: that I wrote over a year ago, and what I'm
Speaker 1: about to get into with this podcast adaptation of it,
Speaker 1: so I hope that you guys enjoy this. I want
Speaker 1: to thank everybody who supports this show over on Patreon
Speaker 1: and substack, particularly supporters like my excellent executive producer level
Speaker 1: patrons John Andre Saither and Mike Maylebin, longtime supporters of
Speaker 1: this show. Love having you guys here listening to me
Speaker 1: ramble on about such things, even when it interrupts the
Speaker 1: flow of history. Though, to be fair, guys, there is
Speaker 1: some history in this episode. It's it's a very strange
Speaker 1: combination of some of my passions, but it does involve history,
Speaker 1: specifically legal history. So if you want to support this show,
Speaker 1: if you like what you have been listening to or
Speaker 1: what you listen to here, please consider supporting History Impossible
Speaker 1: at Patreon dot com, slash History Impossible or Historympossible dot
Speaker 1: substat dot com. It doesn't cost you much to be
Speaker 1: a supporter and get all the benefits of having ad
Speaker 1: free versions of this show, as well as early releases
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases and exclusive content such as
Speaker 1: the pop Quiz sub series and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: And if you can't, you know, find the cash to
Speaker 1: support the show right now, that's fine. Just to make
Speaker 1: sure to spread the word about this show on social media.
Speaker 1: Follow me on social media of course, x, Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: all the normal places. But spread the word about this
Speaker 1: show to your friends who maybe would be interested in
Speaker 1: these kinds of things. This episode is a little bit
Speaker 1: different than what I usually do, so maybe it'll be
Speaker 1: a little more relevant, especially in this ongoing conversation we've
Speaker 1: been having about the nature of free speech and rhetoric
Speaker 1: and so forth. So with all that said, let's get
Speaker 1: into some I guess it would be impossible psychology, impossible
Speaker 1: legal precedent, and as always impossible history.
Speaker 2: I'll let me to tell you what you would have
Speaker 2: seen and heard. If we're not being pleasant listening, if
Speaker 2: you're at lunch, or if you have no appetite, now
Speaker 2: it is a good time to switch off the radio.
Speaker 1: An ancestor mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible,
Speaker 1: whatever remains, however.
Speaker 3: Elevation rustle banjie irongto it you genera.
Speaker 2: I need to spy.
Speaker 3: I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace
Speaker 3: is insight.
Speaker 2: I don't see any laughing dream.
Speaker 4: I feel a laugh in the night wore.
Speaker 1: On if we hear for issue to kill, if we
Speaker 1: care for sued to guill.
Speaker 4: Some say the world will end in fire, some say
Speaker 4: a night.
Speaker 2: From what I've tasted of desire.
Speaker 5: I hold with those of favor fire, But if it
Speaker 5: had to perish twice, I think I know enough of
Speaker 5: hate to say that the destruction ice is also great,
Speaker 5: and look sufficed.
Speaker 4: This is history or hustle.
Speaker 1: The tongue has new bones, but is strong enough to
Speaker 1: break a heart. So be careful with your words. Unknown.
Speaker 1: My opinion is enough for me, and I claim the
Speaker 1: right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere,
Speaker 1: any place, anytime, And anyone who disagrees with this can
Speaker 1: pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.
Speaker 1: Christopher Hitchens. Something really surprised me when I started formally
Speaker 1: studying history in graduate school just over two years ago
Speaker 1: that the idea of correlation not equaling causation was not
Speaker 1: some kind of dictum. There were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who seemed to just see correlations as evidence of their
Speaker 1: arguments or sufficient evidence of their arguments. And honestly, if
Speaker 1: you're making a civilizational claim, it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: prove or disprove something like that. But if you're trying
Speaker 1: to make a claim about why American slavery, for example,
Speaker 1: became so particularly brutal later as it went along, and
Speaker 1: are trying to make it more of an argument about
Speaker 1: the essence of the human soul rather than incentives at work,
Speaker 1: you're just going to start to lose me. But when
Speaker 1: you start to lose me, I start to lose the
Speaker 1: rest of the class when I start pointing that out.
Speaker 1: So I have to admit I was a little surprised
Speaker 1: when that particular argument did come up in the first semester, actually,
Speaker 1: but I thought about it, and to be fair, when
Speaker 1: examining history, it is next to impossible or just perhaps
Speaker 1: very difficult to dig out causal links from the past,
Speaker 1: especially the further back in time you travel. Journalism is
Speaker 1: the first draft of history and manages to get this
Speaker 1: wrong so often as it does often get wrong. What
Speaker 1: does that say about history? With the time passing and
Speaker 1: the biases of people long removed from the moment being
Speaker 1: studied needing to be taken into consideration. I mean, the
Speaker 1: layers of difficulty start to become pretty apparent when you
Speaker 1: start thinking about it. But regardless, this was still a
Speaker 1: bit of a surprise for me, having a background academically
Speaker 1: speaking in psychology, particularly research based psychology in which the
Speaker 1: drum of correlation does not equal causation. Was banged upon
Speaker 1: in every single class that I took. In fact, in
Speaker 1: the history of psychology course that I took, the main
Speaker 1: takeaway was that psychology, particularly in its infancy as a field,
Speaker 1: had a major causal fallacy problem. I mean, all you
Speaker 1: have to do is just look at very famous cases,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the claims made by Sigmund Freud,
Speaker 1: but also the much more contemporary ones like the claims
Speaker 1: made about the Stanford prison experiment that people still love
Speaker 1: to cite because it's a great story, but whose veracity
Speaker 1: does not really hold up under much scrutiny. In fact,
Speaker 1: that study, which may be worth examining in detail one
Speaker 1: day on history Impossible, is a much better lesson on
Speaker 1: experimental design and what that can actually do to findings
Speaker 1: and to the people conducting the experiments in ways that
Speaker 1: can't really be appreciated until after the fact. This is
Speaker 1: especially clear with relentless self promoters and people who really
Speaker 1: just want to make the big, common sense sounding statements.
Speaker 1: Be quote unquote proven true, as is the case with
Speaker 1: the Stanford prison experiments. Mayestro, I'll call him Philip Zimbardo,
Speaker 1: who if you look him up, totally not ghoulish looking
Speaker 1: at all. Now, regardless, these days, psychologists and psychological researchers,
Speaker 1: at least it was worth their salt of course, are
Speaker 1: actually quite careful to explain what the evidence in their
Speaker 1: experiments suggest and therefore where future research can go from here,
Speaker 1: essentially either to refute or replicate the results. In other words,
Speaker 1: a good honest study has to have a good and
Speaker 1: thorough and honest conclusion section, one that admits faults and
Speaker 1: suggests future courses of action. It's that simple.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I bring all that up because well, it's related to
Speaker 1: what has been going on in the news for the
Speaker 1: last couple of weeks as of this recording. But really
Speaker 1: what's been going on in the news for the past
Speaker 1: several years. What my friends Danielle Blelli and christap Andresens
Speaker 1: and I discussed in the last episode of History Impossible,
Speaker 1: the rise in political violence. The attempted assassination of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump in July of twenty twenty four was what originally
Speaker 1: inspired the essay on which this episode is based. But
Speaker 1: obviously the recent assassination of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk, to
Speaker 1: say nothing of other assassinations and attempted assassinations around the
Speaker 1: country and just that have really rocked the nation's core,
Speaker 1: like political core in a lot of ways, including the
Speaker 1: assassinations of the Minnesota congress people to the attempted kidnapping
Speaker 1: or assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I mean, the list
Speaker 1: goes on. I spoke about this list, I gave a
Speaker 1: I quoted from a summary in the previous episode when
Speaker 1: I was talking to Christaps and Danielle. The point is,
Speaker 1: political violence is on the rise, and what do we
Speaker 1: always see. What has been always said in the wake
Speaker 1: of these acts of violence, successful or otherwise in terms
Speaker 1: of lethality, is always at least the implication that the
Speaker 1: way people talk, what they say, their rhetoric in other words,
Speaker 1: is causing this violent behavior, this violent outburst. Put most simply,
Speaker 1: this situation that we've all just seen, that we're all
Speaker 1: talking about, that we've just heard only happened because of
Speaker 1: the rhetoric that people on the other side quote unquote
Speaker 1: have been using for the past ten years or so.
Speaker 1: In other words, what did you expect they say what
Speaker 1: they mean and they mean what they say now, to
Speaker 1: be clear, and I think I've been pretty clear about
Speaker 1: this in various places. I do believe that the depictions
Speaker 1: of President Trump, both when he was in power, when
Speaker 1: he was out of power, now when he's back in power,
Speaker 1: have been, to put mildly, pretty hysterical over the last
Speaker 1: ten years or so. Invocations of fascism and especially Nazism
Speaker 1: being applied to him have just never made that much
Speaker 1: sense to me, even with what has been revealed about
Speaker 1: his attempts to overturn the twenty twenty election. That is
Speaker 1: obviously a very anti democratic impulse. But the way I've
Speaker 1: always seen it, actual fascists don't just disrespect democracy or
Speaker 1: dislike democracy. They don't just disrespect the democratic process. They
Speaker 1: just tend to not want to have a democratic process
Speaker 1: at all. Whether or not that's true or applies to
Speaker 1: our president is kind of irrelevant. That doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: really be the mo of what's going on here. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff going on. I've already made
Speaker 1: the comparisons to the late nineteenth century form of progressivism,
Speaker 1: which I don't know how wealthoers are going to hold
Speaker 1: up long term, but there's still a comparisons that should
Speaker 1: be well taken, at least in my opinion. Honestly, a
Speaker 1: lot of what we've been seeing has been more resembling
Speaker 1: you know, Chevista regimes, so to speak, down in South America,
Speaker 1: or you know, jew chaism in North Korea. Obviously not good.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying, comparisons to fascism, just on a
Speaker 1: technical level, just have never made sense to me, to
Speaker 1: say nothing of how Nazism makes it little sense either,
Speaker 1: given how aggressively friendly his administration has been towards the
Speaker 1: only Jewish state in the world, regardless, to imply that
Speaker 1: the president is so sinister that we'd soon see millions
Speaker 1: of our own countrymen, not to mention the countrymen of
Speaker 1: our neighbors who we'd be bound to invade in this
Speaker 1: strained analogy, seeing them all herded into cattle cars to
Speaker 1: be shipped to industrial gas chambers to be killed on
Speaker 1: mass I don't know. I have never much liked Donald
Speaker 1: Trump as the president, but that seems pretty damn insulting
Speaker 1: to not just him. I don't really care about his feelings,
Speaker 1: but it is insulting and other peace people who work
Speaker 1: with him, who probably just want to keep their jobs.
Speaker 1: But it's even more insulting to the millions upon millions
Speaker 1: of actual victims to the Third Reich military machine. That's
Speaker 1: just sort of the way I see it. Can make
Speaker 1: very very pointed criticisms about the current administration in the
Speaker 1: United States, especially these days, with their crackdowns on free speech,
Speaker 1: without just jumping the gun and comparing it to a
Speaker 1: regime that literally existed for the sole purpose of committing genocide.
Speaker 1: And yes, that is again how I tend to characterize
Speaker 1: the Third Reich, Another discussion for another time. I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to make it clear where I'm coming from with this,
Speaker 1: but I also want to be fair. I don't think
Speaker 1: that the growing hysteria that we've seen in the Maga camp,
Speaker 1: the populace camp, whatever you want to call it, the
Speaker 1: new right, the online right, is particularly salient either. It
Speaker 1: all starts to feel a little unhinged no matter which
Speaker 1: direction you're looking at, and it's all based on the
Speaker 1: same thing, the application of language and rhetoric and implying
Speaker 1: or impugning sinister motivations behind those things, and even more importantly,
Speaker 1: creating a causal line from that rhetoric to eventual hypothetical
Speaker 1: evil behavior, but also sometimes actually real evil behavior. The
Speaker 1: point is, if we try to limit the insane or
Speaker 1: even just factually incorrect speech or rhetoric that we're hearing
Speaker 1: because there's a risk that some crazed person might respond
Speaker 1: to such speech, we're essentially trying to kill flies with
Speaker 1: sledgehammers or creative explosives if we really want to run
Speaker 1: with this analogy. And yet people will still try to
Speaker 1: kill those flies with sledgehammers and so forth, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to blame them. While there was no shortage of
Speaker 1: unhinged imagery and rhetoric directed at George W. Bush and
Speaker 1: Barack Obama from twenty one to twenty sixteen, I remember
Speaker 1: seeing all those signs of their faces with a Hitler
Speaker 1: mustache on them. I'm sure some of you, at least
Speaker 1: old enough, do remember that too. I do think, in fact,
Speaker 1: they've made this clear. Having just done a conversation with
Speaker 1: two of my podcasting comrades about it, I think it's
Speaker 1: fair to say that the persistence, intensity, source, and scope
Speaker 1: of the inflammatory rhetoric that exists here in this country
Speaker 1: of the United States has since increased in that time.
Speaker 1: That's passed. But the problem is that we're just operating
Speaker 1: on common sense here based on a perceived pattern. That's
Speaker 1: not really an examination of the evidence. I want to
Speaker 1: approach a different question, a real question, both as a
Speaker 1: budding historian will say, and as someone with a moderate
Speaker 1: background in research based psychology. Therefore, that core question is this,
Speaker 1: did violent existentially framed rhetoric cause all of this political
Speaker 1: violence to be unleashed upon the United States? Could we
Speaker 1: argue even that that's what it has caused in the
Speaker 1: past when it's happened leading to presidents almost being assassinated
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump, to actually being assassinated like say President Garfield,
Speaker 1: or for pundits to be assassinated like Charlie Kirk. Can
Speaker 1: we say that speech caused violence and thus possibly give
Speaker 1: credits to the idea that speech is violence.
Speaker 4: Starting to reach through.
Speaker 3: And it feels like we're living in.
Speaker 4: That split seconds of us gone and time is slowing
Speaker 4: down and if we only had a little more time,
Speaker 4: and this time.
Speaker 3: That's all there is.
Speaker 5: Do you remember that time?
Speaker 3: Wait all the times, wait and shut up.
Speaker 4: We're going to.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 4: And I know you remember how we had justified at
Speaker 4: all and we.
Speaker 3: Knew better in our hearts, we knew betters, and we
Speaker 3: told ourselves it didn't we chose to continue. I remember
Speaker 3: that manners anymore, and the twilight, and soon it will
Speaker 3: be all sudden down, and we're going back together as warms.
Speaker 2: Away, if we will.
Speaker 1: The question of whether or not violent rhetoric causes an
Speaker 1: attempted assassination is part of a broader question of whether
Speaker 1: or not rhetoric or speech causes violence in general. That
Speaker 1: has been made clear enough already by me here. But
Speaker 1: that is a very long held debate in various fields,
Speaker 1: including political science and history, but also psychology. And if
Speaker 1: we focus on the psychological dominion of that question, we
Speaker 1: can broaden it even further. And I believe we should
Speaker 1: to look at the question of whether or not rhetoric
Speaker 1: causes behavior to occur positive or negative at all. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty simple question, does action follow speech? That seems
Speaker 1: to be the sort of general way of framing it
Speaker 1: how most people do, at least, And it is a
Speaker 1: simple question and seemingly one with a simple answer. Now,
Speaker 1: I would wager that most people, using what they believe
Speaker 1: is common sense, would say yes. But what I would
Speaker 1: also wager is that saying yes would correspond almost perfectly
Speaker 1: with their political beliefs. They believe that positive rhetoric, say,
Speaker 1: for example, Greta Tundberg's impassion speech in twenty nineteen regarding
Speaker 1: the existential threat of climate change, causes people to behave well.
Speaker 1: They also believe that negative rhetoric, say Trump's speech on
Speaker 1: January sixth, twenty twenty one, causes people to behave badly.
Speaker 1: In other words, people will attribute the positive or negative
Speaker 1: effects of rhetoric based on what they believe is right
Speaker 1: and wrong. Pretty straightforward. To further flesh out this example, though,
Speaker 1: someone who believed that Greta Tunberg's twenty nineteen speech was
Speaker 1: inspiring and helped make people more animated about the threat
Speaker 1: of climate change would be unlikely to believe that her
Speaker 1: rhetoric caused the more unhinged climate activist behavior of the
Speaker 1: past five years that we've been seeing, like the defacing
Speaker 1: of priceless art with tomato soup and the spray painting
Speaker 1: of archaeological sites like Stonehenge. And conversely, someone who believed
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump's speech on January sixth, twenty one directly
Speaker 1: inspired the riot at the Capitol that day would be
Speaker 1: unlikely to believe that his later calls for peaceful dispersal
Speaker 1: and for protesters to go home had any effect on
Speaker 1: anyone's behavior whatsoever. Whether or not anyone in these hypothetical
Speaker 1: scenarios has a point doesn't really matter to the broader
Speaker 1: point that this is a form of what's known as
Speaker 1: attribution bias, specifically fundamental attribution error, and this bias more
Speaker 1: likely informs our moral judgments rather than rational situational considerations. However,
Speaker 1: as suggested, this does not put to bed the claim
Speaker 1: that rhetoric causes violent behavior. According to an article published
Speaker 1: by the Brookings Institute only three months after the January sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one riot, quote, a range of research suggests
Speaker 1: the incendiary rhetoric of political leaders can make political violence
Speaker 1: more likely, gives violence direction, complicates the law enforcement response,
Speaker 1: and increases fear in vulnerable communities unquote. Now here's the
Speaker 1: thing about these claims. The Brookings Institute does indeed cite
Speaker 1: several papers and self described experts which suggests that rhetoric
Speaker 1: emboldens people in quotes there to express what they define
Speaker 1: as hateful attitudes. But if you actually look at the
Speaker 1: data they provided, there's nothing in there that suggests anything
Speaker 1: more significant than that kind of correlation. In other words,
Speaker 1: any evidence which shows that changes in behavior was caused
Speaker 1: by inflammatory rhetoric is at best circumstantial. In fact, the
Speaker 1: article even acknowledges at the top of its fourth paragraph
Speaker 1: that quote, there is no direct line between violent rhetoric
Speaker 1: and political violence if the speakers are careful not to
Speaker 1: name specific targets and means unquote, which I don't know.
Speaker 1: That feels like the best example of an awkward mumble
Speaker 1: in article form, if there ever was one. It also
Speaker 1: seems to be pretty well in line with the free
Speaker 1: speech standards that we have in the United States, at
Speaker 1: least legally speaking. We'll come back to that later in
Speaker 1: this episode, but I just think it's worth mentioning that now.
Speaker 1: The key part of that statement that there is no
Speaker 1: direct line between rhetoric and violence. As long as no
Speaker 1: specific target and means are labeled, the direct line cannot
Speaker 1: be established. That is a key part of this puzzle.
Speaker 1: The point is, despite making a sneakily worded claim that
Speaker 1: rhetoric connects to violent behavior, the article's author, Daniel L. Byman,
Speaker 1: is unable to make the case that rhetoric causes behavior,
Speaker 1: despite the implication of causality being created by letting connects
Speaker 1: do so much heavy lifting. A much better and in
Speaker 1: my opinion, honest account of the facts that we have
Speaker 1: available comes from an article on Live Science written way
Speaker 1: back in January of twenty eleven, in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: another story to which we'll return. The author, Stephanie Poppus,
Speaker 1: explains that psychologists make it very clear that quote the
Speaker 1: answer isn't as simple as yes or no quote, and
Speaker 1: that while quote violent rhetoric can make people more comfortable
Speaker 1: with the idea of violence, it's almost impossible to pin
Speaker 1: down the larger causes of one specific incident.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 1: Now, this might seem like a cop out to some
Speaker 1: of you listening when it comes to explaining the causes
Speaker 1: of something seemingly straightforward, but it's very important for us
Speaker 1: to remember that just because something seems like common sense
Speaker 1: does not mean that it is therefore true. For example,
Speaker 1: while it is clear from research cited by Papus in
Speaker 1: her article that quote people with acute mental disorders like
Speaker 1: schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are two to three times more
Speaker 1: likely to commit violent crime times not just homicide, than
Speaker 1: people without mental illness unquote. It is also clear that
Speaker 1: other factors play a part, including substance abuse, which correlates
Speaker 1: with violent behavior at rates eight to ten times greater
Speaker 1: than that of the population. Now, these factors matter for
Speaker 1: our purposes because they are completely independent of the presence
Speaker 1: of violent rhetoric, and yet they act as risk factors
Speaker 1: for violent behavior, significant ones at that While it might
Speaker 1: not seem unreasonable to quote unquote toned down violent rhetoric
Speaker 1: as a means of trying to stem a tide a
Speaker 1: violent behavior, there are a number of reasons why this
Speaker 1: might be unnecessary. In terms of it being unnecessary, Papus
Speaker 1: notes in her piece that quote, there hasn't been any
Speaker 1: systematic research on whether rhetoric pushes people on the edge
Speaker 1: of sanity off the cliff quote and that quote, the
Speaker 1: phenomenon is so rare that it would be difficult to
Speaker 1: get good data unquote, and that is important for us
Speaker 1: to remember. Even though there there is very clearly a
Speaker 1: spike in politically motivated violence in the United States in
Speaker 1: the contemporary era, and there has been before as well,
Speaker 1: it's always been statistically speaking, very rare. That's always going
Speaker 1: to make it hard to study at scale and to
Speaker 1: be frank. To quote a University of California Irvine psychologist
Speaker 1: named Peter Diddo who was cited in the Pappus article,
Speaker 1: he says, quote You're never going to get science to
Speaker 1: speak to whether some sort of violent political rhetoric caused
Speaker 1: this particular individual to act as they did. Unquote. It's
Speaker 1: just not that simple. And this is backed up by
Speaker 1: a twenty twelve study from the University of Michigan which
Speaker 1: found that political advertisements which used words associated with violence
Speaker 1: you think of words like fight, that those advertisements had
Speaker 1: little effect on an individual's opinion on whether or not
Speaker 1: political violence was justifiable. In addition, any positive effect that
Speaker 1: was observed by the researcher was more strongly correlated with
Speaker 1: individuals who already possessed high levels of aggression. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the violently worded rhetoric did not make anyone
Speaker 1: violent who was not already primed and ready for being
Speaker 1: violent to begin with, if only to hammer the point
Speaker 1: home a little more strongly. These kinds of findings also
Speaker 1: track with the data that I gathered while doing my
Speaker 1: own research fifteen years ago on the effects of violent
Speaker 1: media exposure on adolescence. This was a little bit touched
Speaker 1: on in the conversation that I had with Kristaps and Danielle.
Speaker 1: You guys might remember where Danielli referenced video games, for example,
Speaker 1: being often cited as a cause, music, movies, and so forth.
Speaker 1: That's what I was studying when I was an undergraduate
Speaker 1: in the psychology program of my alma mater. Now, in
Speaker 1: terms of the research that I examined and collated, there
Speaker 1: was very little evidence back then to suggest that violent
Speaker 1: behavior stems significantly from exposure to violent media. However, there
Speaker 1: was plenty of evidence strongly suggesting that exposure to real
Speaker 1: world violence, namely environments in which domestic violence, gang violence,
Speaker 1: and war violence, produced a very real positive effect on
Speaker 1: an individual's likelihood of committing a violent action at some
Speaker 1: point in their lives. This was supported by a study
Speaker 1: conducted in two thousand and six by mcab and colleagues,
Speaker 1: and from earlier work done in nineteen ninety six by
Speaker 1: Sayner and Elikson. The former study found that quote exposure
Speaker 1: to community violence significantly predicted externalizing problems two years later
Speaker 1: when potential confounds were controlled unquote, and the latter study
Speaker 1: found that quote as the number of risk factors increases,
Speaker 1: so does the likelihood of engaging in violent behavior. Unquote,
Speaker 1: if it was not yet clear that violent behavior stems
Speaker 1: from much more than secondhand exposure, that is, violent media
Speaker 1: and rhetoric speech. In other words, it became comes even
Speaker 1: clearer when examining how biological and cognitive factors have also
Speaker 1: been determined as being significant in predicting violent behavior, relatively
Speaker 1: independent of environmental pressures. According to a study conducted by J.
Speaker 1: Martin Bramirez in two thousand and two, psychobiological factors like
Speaker 1: hormonal levels, namely, unsurprisingly higher levels of testosterone, primarily in
Speaker 1: young natal males, demonstrated a significant link to violent behavior
Speaker 1: with adolescence that continued into adulthood. As Ramirez reports, quote
Speaker 1: early adrenal androgens contribute to the onset and maintenance of
Speaker 1: persistent violent and antisocial behavior, and that it begins early
Speaker 1: in life and persists into adulthood, then concluding that quote,
Speaker 1: hormones can be involved in the development of aggression as
Speaker 1: a cause, as a consequence, or even as a mediator.
Speaker 1: In addition, according to a study conducted back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four by l. Ral Huesman and Leonard d aerin
Speaker 1: aggressive behavior remains stable over time, in which quote a
Speaker 1: circular process in which scripts for aggressive behavior are learned
Speaker 1: at an early age and become more firmly entrenched as
Speaker 1: the child develops, so that aggression becomes self perpetuating in
Speaker 1: children with certain cognitive characteristics. What this further suggests is
Speaker 1: that aggression, that is violent behavior, is something far more
Speaker 1: entrenched than something that can just be activated by the
Speaker 1: presence of violent rhetoric. To put it another way, much
Speaker 1: of the evidence available suggests that human brains, while certainly
Speaker 1: very malleable over time and with proper pressures applied, some
Speaker 1: of which are biological and likely even have a genetic component,
Speaker 1: the brains are not so putty like that someone shouting
Speaker 1: fight at a rally will prompt a violent response. From
Speaker 1: the evidence that is available at least trying to study
Speaker 1: the effects of exposure to violent media and rhetoric, there
Speaker 1: is at best no clear answer which requires us to
Speaker 1: assume a non positive effect. This is not to say
Speaker 1: that we should not continue to study such linkages for
Speaker 1: the sake of expanding our knowledge and the effects of
Speaker 1: speech and behavior, but it is to say that we cannot,
Speaker 1: at least rationally speaking, start ascribing responsibility to speech where
Speaker 1: none conclusively exists. In terms of external social factors, the
Speaker 1: studies that we examined above all concluded the same thing,
Speaker 1: that the risk for violent behavior increases thanks to exposure
Speaker 1: to other violent behavior. That was always the strongest predictor,
Speaker 1: but it was often only in the children's and adolescent's
Speaker 1: immediate vicinity, as in, not part of their media consumption.
Speaker 1: The only significant and persistent effect that media consumption had
Speaker 1: upon children, and these were very young children, often toddlers
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, was that it did sometimes
Speaker 1: desensitize them to violent depictions when they were exposed to
Speaker 1: them again, as in, they didn't have as strong of
Speaker 1: a reaction when looking at it. That was something a
Speaker 1: lot of parents were concerned about, especially with video games
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen nineties and even early two thousands.
Speaker 1: The desensitization question that diminished reaction was very concerning, and
Speaker 1: you know, I honestly can't blame a lot of parents
Speaker 1: and adults are being concerned about it. But the question then,
Speaker 1: of course became this does the desensitization toward violent expression
Speaker 1: lead to a greater propensity toward violent behavior and There's
Speaker 1: a really big problem with that question because of where
Speaker 1: it leads us. It leads us to a frequent and
Speaker 1: at this point classic chicken and egg paradox in psychology.
Speaker 1: Would someone desensitized by violent depictions or rhetoric already be
Speaker 1: someone who is more likely to engage in violent behavior
Speaker 1: thanks to other from what we have seen statistically more
Speaker 1: significant factors, both biological and and environmental. Or did this
Speaker 1: violent depiction, this rhetoric and exposure to it quote unquote
Speaker 1: pushed the person over the edge. Would they have been
Speaker 1: violent without that rhetoric being there? As best I can tell,
Speaker 1: and I double check this, in the decade and a
Speaker 1: half since I conducted my own research, no further data
Speaker 1: has emerged that significantly suggests that exposure to media or
Speaker 1: rhetoric can accomplish this pushing over the edge, not on
Speaker 1: its own, in fact, thanks to the research that has
Speaker 1: been conducted, that because it continues to be looked at
Speaker 1: over the years, suggests the opposite the previously cited Huesman
Speaker 1: and Aaron write that quote violent scenes seen on television
Speaker 1: provide examples that the child can encode unquote and that
Speaker 1: children quote rehearse aggressive acts through aggressive fantasy, and these
Speaker 1: aggressive acts undoubtedly include the ones viewed on TV. However,
Speaker 1: despite this study demonstrating a link between cognitive processes and
Speaker 1: violent behavior, it fell well short of demonstrating those cognitive
Speaker 1: processes being determined by the exposure to violent media, much
Speaker 1: less being persistent across time independent of other factors. According
Speaker 1: to a much more recent study almost forty years more
Speaker 1: recent than that one by Devili, O'donahue and Brown that
Speaker 1: got published in twenty twenty one, anger and aggressive behavior
Speaker 1: was much more strongly correlated with personality factors and feelings
Speaker 1: of frustration than with exposure to violent media or rhetoric
Speaker 1: for that matter. As Devili himself put it in an
Speaker 1: interview about these findings in the Griffith University news story
Speaker 1: covering the study, quote, we found no difference in both
Speaker 1: anger and aggression following exposure to a book, violent video game, television,
Speaker 1: and nonviolent video game. What we did find was that
Speaker 1: people with high levels of impulsivity, increased emotional reactivity to
Speaker 1: the media, and frustration with the content of the media
Speaker 1: are more likely to have a higher anger response to
Speaker 1: media exposure. These results are in direct opposition to traditional
Speaker 1: models of aggression, which suggests a causal link between trials
Speaker 1: of violence and aggression risk. This study has essentially found,
Speaker 1: or at least suggests, what many other studies have found
Speaker 1: over the past several decades, that violent or aggressive media
Speaker 1: exposure demonstrates little to no significant connection to the incidents
Speaker 1: of violent behavior. What makes this frustrating for a lot
Speaker 1: of social scientists, and no doubt some of you listening
Speaker 1: to me talk about this right now, is that while
Speaker 1: it doesn't demonstrate a positive effect, it doesn't demonstrate a
Speaker 1: negative effect either. Believe me, I find that frustrating too,
Speaker 1: but that's how psychology often works. To be fair, these
Speaker 1: kinds of results to these studies also mean that you
Speaker 1: cannot say with any certainty on a scientific basis that
Speaker 1: violent media or rhetoric exposure doesn't cause particular behavior to occur.
Speaker 1: The real thing, the real, key thing to remember is
Speaker 1: that the lack of a positive claim does not therefore
Speaker 1: negate the negative claim. That is what trips up a
Speaker 1: lot of people, as in, well, there's no evidence that
Speaker 1: rhetoric causes violent behavior, but there's no evidence that it doesn't.
Speaker 1: If so facto, we might as well assume that it does.
Speaker 1: In order to be safe. Better be safe than sorry,
Speaker 1: that kind of thinking. But here's the thing. That kind
Speaker 1: of response is at the heart of a correlation equals
Speaker 1: causation fallacy. Some of my favorite examples of this fallacy
Speaker 1: at work can actually be found on Wikipedia on their
Speaker 1: entry for this, and while Wikipedia has its problems, this
Speaker 1: is a very fun entry, or at least it was
Speaker 1: last time I looked at it. Some of these included
Speaker 1: the following. One. Young children who sleep with the light
Speaker 1: on are much more likely to develop myopia later in life. Therefore,
Speaker 1: sleeping with the light on causes myopia. Or two, as
Speaker 1: ice cream sales increase the rate of drowning deaths increases sharply,
Speaker 1: therefore ice cream consumption causes drowning. Or three, A hypothetical
Speaker 1: study shows a relationship between test anxiety scores and shyness
Speaker 1: scores with a statistical R value, which is the strength
Speaker 1: of correlation of plus point five nine. Therefore, it can
Speaker 1: be simply concluded that shyness in some part causally influences
Speaker 1: test anxiety. Or what will always be my personal favorite,
Speaker 1: the number of films that Nicholas Cage has appeared in
Speaker 1: in a given year has a positive relationship with how
Speaker 1: many people drowned by falling into swimming pools in that
Speaker 1: same year. Therefore, Nicholas Cage film releases cause people to
Speaker 1: drown and swimming pools. There are just too many variables
Speaker 1: for which we must control when studying the phenomenon of
Speaker 1: media or rhetoric consumption to say for certain whether or
Speaker 1: not that consumption has a strong enough correlation with violent
Speaker 1: behavior for it to be something we have to start
Speaker 1: thinking about more seriously. Now, I actually had to stop
Speaker 1: and think about this for a little while, and I
Speaker 1: was able to break it down in the original essay,
Speaker 1: and I want to break it down for you here.
Speaker 1: I want to give you a list of what would
Speaker 1: need to be controlled in a study that seeks to
Speaker 1: determine this this connection between consumption of speech, will just
Speaker 1: put it so broadly, or rhetoric or violent media whatever,
Speaker 1: and violent behavior, because this would be very difficult to design,
Speaker 1: and I might be missing some things, but let me
Speaker 1: at least try to give you this list of what
Speaker 1: we need to be controlled in an experiment seeking to
Speaker 1: determine singular causal effects of this violent media, rhetoric consumption
Speaker 1: and violent behavior. We'd have to one, control for the
Speaker 1: genetic incidents of behavioral disorders that are positively correlated with
Speaker 1: aggressive behavior towards others, such as antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy,
Speaker 1: extreme bipolar disorder, and so forth. The second thing we'd
Speaker 1: have to control for would be the self perpetuating cognitive
Speaker 1: connections between violent behavior and thought patterns. That's already pretty
Speaker 1: hard to do too. Then the third thing we would
Speaker 1: have to control for is a socioeconomic hardship from when
Speaker 1: growing up, because that's also considered to be a factor
Speaker 1: when it comes to increased likelihood of violent behavior. The
Speaker 1: fourth thing we'd have to control for would be exposure
Speaker 1: to violence in the real world, including different kinds of abuse, bullying,
Speaker 1: urban violence, and warfare, And in doing that, we would
Speaker 1: have to control for that at different ages in order
Speaker 1: to look at how impressionable people are at different ages
Speaker 1: for these things. The point should be clear when I
Speaker 1: list off all these things, unless you can control for
Speaker 1: all these things, and like I was essentially saying, other factors,
Speaker 1: I'm probably not smart or qualified enough to even think
Speaker 1: of while conducting a study of people's propensity towards violence
Speaker 1: when exposed to violent media or rhetoric, you cannot, at
Speaker 1: least if you're a good or honest researcher that isn't
Speaker 1: searching for a particular conclusion, say with any certainty that
Speaker 1: rhetoric causes particular behavior to occur, violent or otherwise. However,
Speaker 1: there is a deeper reason, at least to me, that,
Speaker 1: at least until such evidence appears and is conclusively replicated,
Speaker 1: that we should not be ringing our hands over the
Speaker 1: effect of rhetoric. The lack of clarity when it comes
Speaker 1: to whether or not we can scientifically prove quote unquote
Speaker 1: the connection between violent behavior and violent rhetoric. That difficulty
Speaker 1: in forming that connection one way or another is difficult enough.
Speaker 1: There's a much more, i'll say loose but principal reason
Speaker 1: that we have yet to consider, Because even if we
Speaker 1: can determine a strong or even somewhat significant causal link,
Speaker 1: perhaps we still should not be wringing our hands over
Speaker 1: all of this.
Speaker 2: Now, the old ladies pockets were a fillid with gold.
Speaker 2: But never contented was she? So she ordered her daughter
Speaker 2: to pay her a tax of threepence a pound on
Speaker 2: the tee, ah threepence a pound on the tee, Oh mother,
Speaker 2: dear mother, the daughter replied, I'll not do the thing
Speaker 2: that you ask for. I'm willing to pay a fair
Speaker 2: price on the tee, but never a threepenny tax, but
Speaker 2: never rottree penny tax.
Speaker 1: So does rhetoric cause violence? That is the million dollar question?
Speaker 1: Or perhaps should we be treating the expression of rhetoric
Speaker 1: violent or otherwise as something that can meaningfully affect behavior? Now,
Speaker 1: despite the psychological evidence as I've presented it, at least,
Speaker 1: and from what I've found and read appearing pretty damning
Speaker 1: against the idea that there is such a meaningful influence,
Speaker 1: it's still not as clear as I would like it
Speaker 1: to be in order for me to say definitively, at
Speaker 1: least no on the basis of human psychology alone. There's
Speaker 1: just too many unknowns. Like I said, it's actually more
Speaker 1: impossible to say one way or the other on the
Speaker 1: question of does rhetoric cause violence or does speech cause violence?
Speaker 1: More oddly, in a psychological sense, the evidence does not
Speaker 1: go one way or the other, which means I will
Speaker 1: dispute anybody who says yes, but I will not on
Speaker 1: that basis simply say no. I think there is a
Speaker 1: deeper reason why we should say no. However, and that
Speaker 1: is what I want to get into here. What I'm
Speaker 1: talking about is the practical answer from an American perspective,
Speaker 1: particularly the practical answer of does rhetoric cause violence? Should
Speaker 1: be no, A definitive, outright, flat out no. We can
Speaker 1: base it both on this lack of compelling evidence from
Speaker 1: the psychological literature, but it's more compelling to make this
Speaker 1: an outright, flat out no on the basis of the
Speaker 1: profound legal history in the United States on the subject
Speaker 1: of speech protection. The practical implications of claiming that rhetoric
Speaker 1: speech is what causes violent action are or should be
Speaker 1: pretty simple. This is because even if the causal link
Speaker 1: between rhetoric and violence wasn't extremely tenuous already, there is
Speaker 1: a profound legal and even moral perversion at work if
Speaker 1: we acted as if rhetoric definitively caused violent behavior to occur.
Speaker 1: And frankly, I don't think anyone understands as better than
Speaker 1: the head of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
Speaker 1: as well as co author of the excellent classic. I
Speaker 1: would even say the Coddling of the American Mind and
Speaker 1: its semi sequel, The Canceling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianov.
Speaker 1: Now I need to make a quick admission for the
Speaker 1: sake of transparency that I made in the original essay
Speaker 1: this is based on Frankly, as far as I'm concerned,
Speaker 1: Greg is a true mench for one reason alone. On
Speaker 1: top of his tireless amazing work for the protection of
Speaker 1: free speech in this country, but he's also been recommending
Speaker 1: the history Impossible substack for over a year at this point,
Speaker 1: two years or so, and this recommendation that he's been
Speaker 1: giving is significantly responsible for the rapid growth that I've
Speaker 1: been seeing over there. But more importantly, I see Greg
Speaker 1: as a true point man for defending free expression in
Speaker 1: the US from a legal perspective, like I was saying,
Speaker 1: especially given the sorry state in which the ACLU has
Speaker 1: found itself over the past decade or so. Now, I
Speaker 1: have no idea how he found my substack. Someone must
Speaker 1: have recommended it to him, or maybe he just came
Speaker 1: across at browsing, but I am very thankful for the
Speaker 1: work that he does and for of course the recommendations
Speaker 1: that he gives. So with that out of the way,
Speaker 1: Greg has been providing incredible commentary on this subject for years.
Speaker 1: In an excellent post that he wrote over on his
Speaker 1: substack called the Eternally Radical Idea that he wrote back
Speaker 1: in July of twenty twenty four, titled why the words
Speaker 1: our violence argument needs to die, he discussed this very
Speaker 1: subject that we're talking about. Greg made it very clear
Speaker 1: in this essay that this argument of speech constituting violence
Speaker 1: does indeed need to die. As he explains, quote, anyone
Speaker 1: who equates speech and violence has likely never been punched
Speaker 1: in the face unquote. And that quote equating a barbed
Speaker 1: tongue with a barbed spear not only betrays a lack
Speaker 1: of understanding of genuine violence, but also the way words,
Speaker 1: even harsh ones, have served as both an alternative and
Speaker 1: a solution to violence unquote. This is the core moral
Speaker 1: issue with claiming that rhetoric causes violence, because it is
Speaker 1: in effect saying that rhetoric is violence and thus should
Speaker 1: be subject to legal punishment akin to the punishment of
Speaker 1: actual that is, physical violence. And if that is the case,
Speaker 1: well then we know who is really rep for the
Speaker 1: attempted assassination on former President Trump, or perhaps more controversially
Speaker 1: than we know who is really responsible for the chaos
Speaker 1: that occurred on January sixth, twenty twenty one, or most
Speaker 1: relevantly in terms of when it happened, then we know
Speaker 1: who is really responsible for the brutal killing of Charlie Kirk. Now,
Speaker 1: as we've already covered, these kinds of claims simply do
Speaker 1: not hold much water when it comes to human psychology. Again,
Speaker 1: they don't hold water very much in the other direction either,
Speaker 1: but they don't hold water in the positive direction, and
Speaker 1: that is what matters here. But more importantly, they hold
Speaker 1: very little to no water when it comes to what
Speaker 1: I consider to be the long and extremely vital to
Speaker 1: understand history of free speech protections in the United States
Speaker 1: legal system. Well, Greg is the real expert on such
Speaker 1: a subject, and he does great work summarizing some examples
Speaker 1: in his article that I referenced earlier. I need an
Speaker 1: excuse to make this long very obviously in many ways
Speaker 1: political ramble of mine, that is, making an appearance on
Speaker 1: a historical podcast into something a little more about history.
Speaker 1: So I think it would only be fair to apply
Speaker 1: some historical analysis of the free speech debate in the
Speaker 1: United States to demonstrate why I believe, at least arguing
Speaker 1: for rhetorical responsibility for violent behavior. Again, already shown to
Speaker 1: be dubious at best, simply does not pass muster for
Speaker 1: anyone who values free expression at least. Again, this is
Speaker 1: more of a practical argument as I see it, and
Speaker 1: hopefully my use of historical examples will help with that.
Speaker 1: In Greg's article, he mentions a couple of vital cases
Speaker 1: in the history of free speech rulings, including the infamous
Speaker 1: Wants via the United States nineteen sixty nine and Walter H.
Speaker 1: Rankin etc. At Al. Petitioners v. Ardith Macpherson nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: both of which involved inflammatory speech against the President Johnson
Speaker 1: and Reagan, respectively. These cases demonstrated that, at least by
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, our freedom to say extremely inflammatory things
Speaker 1: such as the watts of wats to be the United
Speaker 1: States proclaiming quote, if they ever make me carry a rifle,
Speaker 1: the first man I want to get in my sight
Speaker 1: as lbj unquote, was actually quite robust. Yes, these cases
Speaker 1: went to the Supreme Court, but they both worked out
Speaker 1: in favor of the defendants thanks to their First Amendment rights. However,
Speaker 1: things were not always this certain. The road to what
Speaker 1: I for a long time have called the post Brandenburg world,
Speaker 1: referring to a famous case to which will return has
Speaker 1: had many twists and turns that many have not and
Speaker 1: still do not fully appreciate. And I include myself a
Speaker 1: legal layman in that I have an awareness of the
Speaker 1: Brandenburg case and of free speech protections and an appreciation
Speaker 1: of them. But I'm still a layman. Let's just keep
Speaker 1: this in mind as we move forward. I'm just reporting
Speaker 1: what I have read here and as I understand it now.
Speaker 1: There are many incredible books that cover all these twists
Speaker 1: and turns, both broad and specific. But the one that
Speaker 1: has helped me most in coming to understand this journey
Speaker 1: through the American court system of the concept of free
Speaker 1: speech is actually a book from nineteen ninety eight, and
Speaker 1: it's a magnum opus regarding the idea of speech protection,
Speaker 1: especially in the academic context, called The Shadow University, The
Speaker 1: Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses, by Alan Charles Corers
Speaker 1: and Harvey A. Silverglade, the co founders of the Foundation
Speaker 1: for Individual Rights and Expression back then education instead of expression,
Speaker 1: and one of them serving as Greg Lukianov's mentor. The
Speaker 1: course in Silverglade's history is comp prehensive and vital in
Speaker 1: my opinion for understanding the journey free speech is taken
Speaker 1: in the United States, they cover it all, especially most
Speaker 1: importantly in the twentieth century. To begin, Coors and Silverglade
Speaker 1: describe Gitlo v. New York nineteen twenty five, in which
Speaker 1: Benjamin Guitlow, one of the founders of the Communist Party
Speaker 1: USA and future anti communist crusader. As it happens, thanks
Speaker 1: to like many similar to him, at that time, newfound
Speaker 1: post Stalinist disillusionment and horror as the crimes of that
Speaker 1: regime became clearer and clearer and less possible to deny.
Speaker 1: But back in the twenties, Gitlow was convicted for spreading
Speaker 1: pro revolution pamphlets in the United States, which was ultimately
Speaker 1: upheld by the Supreme Court. Now, this upholding of that
Speaker 1: conviction might seem like an obvious loss, and indeed Coors
Speaker 1: and Silverglade explain that this first major victory of the
Speaker 1: ACLU in nineteen twenty five as being quote unquote pyrhic.
Speaker 1: But the ruling incorporated the Fourteenth Amendment by arguing that
Speaker 1: its provisions of due process also applied to local state
Speaker 1: authority as well as federal authority. As cores in Silverglade
Speaker 1: summarize quote. Despite Gittlow's loss, the incorporation of First Amendment
Speaker 1: rights into Fourteenth Amendment due process proved vital to the
Speaker 1: development of free speech jurisprudence. This standard would be solidified
Speaker 1: just over a decade later with Haig v. Committee for
Speaker 1: Industrial Organization nineteen thirty nine, in which the ACLU was
Speaker 1: able to challenge an anti organizational ordinance passed in New
Speaker 1: Jersey against a CIO or the CIO of the AFL
Speaker 1: CIO mega union that we all know and love today,
Speaker 1: and this ordinance prohibited them from distributing leaflets and organizing meetings,
Speaker 1: so it was seen as unconstitutional with regards to the
Speaker 1: First Amendment, but also the Fourteenth Amendment, which the ACLU
Speaker 1: did see as a violation of this CIO's constitutional rights.
Speaker 1: As Cores in Silverglade explain, this secured the quote unquote
Speaker 1: public forum doctrine of free speech protections thanks to Justice
Speaker 1: Owen Roberts quote, holding that the parks and streets where
Speaker 1: the CIO and others were speaking were held in trust
Speaker 1: for the public as a forum in which to exercise
Speaker 1: the rights of speech. Local governments no longer could restrict
Speaker 1: speech because they controlled the land upon which the speaker
Speaker 1: stood unquote. So if you've ever heard someone say I
Speaker 1: pay taxes as a way to defend their right to
Speaker 1: say vile things on publicly owned land, they may be obnoxious,
Speaker 1: but they are absolutely and more importantly, legally correct. Cores
Speaker 1: and Silverglade also devote a lot of space in their
Speaker 1: book to explaining how the litigious pursuit of loopholes in
Speaker 1: these free speech protections actually helped fuel plenty of cases
Speaker 1: that helped create the incredible free speech protections that we
Speaker 1: enjoy today in the third decade of the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: As they write, quote, the history of First Amendment jurisprudence
Speaker 1: has been written by the efforts of those who have
Speaker 1: sought to whittle away free speech rights by positing one
Speaker 1: exception after another, and by those who have resisted unquote.
Speaker 1: This has resulted in the Supreme Court consistently hearing four
Speaker 1: special types of cases against what we consider free speech
Speaker 1: in the United States. Two of these exceptions, namely those
Speaker 1: of obscenity and threats to quote unquote national security, are
Speaker 1: actually less relevant to what we're talking about in this episode,
Speaker 1: and they'll likely open up enough cans of worms on
Speaker 1: their own, So we will just leave those be for now.
Speaker 1: At least. The exceptions that matter most to the question
Speaker 1: of whether rhetorican behavior violent behavior in this case are
Speaker 1: connected are in cores and silver glades words quote speech
Speaker 1: posing a clear and present danger of imminent violence or
Speaker 1: lawlessness end quote, so called fighting words that would provoke
Speaker 1: a reasonable person to an imminent violent response.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 1: The clear and present danger exception actually first arose before
Speaker 1: any of the cases we've already mentioned, in the infamous
Speaker 1: Shank v. United States in nineteen nineteen, in which Justice
Speaker 1: Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed that First Amendment protections were a
Speaker 1: moot point when words were quote used in such circumstances
Speaker 1: and are of such a nature as to create a
Speaker 1: clear and present danger that they will bring about the
Speaker 1: substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent unquote.
Speaker 1: The part of Holmes's opinion that most of us are
Speaker 1: familiar with, very familiar with, is his proclamation that quote,
Speaker 1: the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect
Speaker 1: a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and
Speaker 1: causing a panic. Unquote. Now, this standard of you can't
Speaker 1: shout fire in a crowded theater, something people still repeat
Speaker 1: to this day erroneously, I should add, was actually kept
Speaker 1: in place legally speaking, for a half century until the
Speaker 1: most famous free speech case of the twentieth century, Brandenburg vi.
Speaker 1: Ohio nineteen sixty nine, began the process of putting limits
Speaker 1: on these attempts at limiting free speech on the grounds
Speaker 1: of quote unquote clear and present danger standards. There is
Speaker 1: a reason that the Brandenburg case is considered such a
Speaker 1: landmark in the expansion and protection of Americans' freedom of speech,
Speaker 1: and a reason that I still sometimes use the term
Speaker 1: post Brandenburg world, even though I've come to think that
Speaker 1: more credit is due to subsequent cases as well. The
Speaker 1: reason why this case is considered such a landmark is
Speaker 1: that it began the process of whittling away anti speech
Speaker 1: activists' ability to go after their targets for their advocacy
Speaker 1: of distasteful ideas, for fear of quote unquote incitement. And
Speaker 1: there's that word again, guys, incitement. Now, obviously, people have
Speaker 1: continued to claim that unseemly speech will quote unquote incite
Speaker 1: others into action all the way until twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: As we have talked about, and they will likely to
Speaker 1: continue to do so well into the future because ironically,
Speaker 1: perhaps it is their free speech right to do so.
Speaker 1: But the outcome of Brandenburg v. Ohio began a process
Speaker 1: of strengthening the standards required for such legal outcomes to occur.
Speaker 1: And there are likely people who, when they hear the
Speaker 1: things that the Brandenburg, the man himself of this case
Speaker 1: was sane, would like to see him not perhaps just
Speaker 1: thrown in jail, but maybe even strung up on a lamppost.
Speaker 1: Clarence Brandenburg was a leader of a ku Klux Klan
Speaker 1: chapter in rural Ohio in the nineteen sixties. He had
Speaker 1: organized a rally in Hamilton County and invited a Cincinnati
Speaker 1: reporter to come cover the proceedings he was showing off.
Speaker 1: In other words, he wanted the world to see what
Speaker 1: he had to say. He wanted the world to know
Speaker 1: what he and his organization stood for. During the rally,
Speaker 1: captured on two separate films, Brandenburg proclaimed the following quote, Personally,
Speaker 1: I believe the Niggers should be returned to Africa, the
Speaker 1: jew to Israel unquote, and that quote, we are not
Speaker 1: a revenge in organization, but if our President, our Congress,
Speaker 1: our Supreme Court continues to suppress the white Caucasian race.
Speaker 1: It is possible that there might have to be some
Speaker 1: revengeance taken unquote, thanks to the, to say the least
Speaker 1: inflammatory remarks made by Brandenburg, he was arrested and charged
Speaker 1: under the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Law, in which quote crime sabotage,
Speaker 1: violence or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of
Speaker 1: accomplishing industrial or political reform, and dissembling quote with any society, group,
Speaker 1: or assemblage of persons formed a teacher advocate the doctrines
Speaker 1: of criminal syndicalism quote was deemed illegal. This case, when
Speaker 1: it appeared in front of the Supreme Court, was eventually overturned,
Speaker 1: the reason being it was clear to the justices that
Speaker 1: the remarks made by Brandenburg merely advocated for the objectively
Speaker 1: racist policies and violent action that were described in his comments,
Speaker 1: but not in any set time or place, or against
Speaker 1: any particular person. This was where the more modern standard
Speaker 1: of the quote unquote imminent lawless action test came into being,
Speaker 1: which made the notion of quote unquote clear and present
Speaker 1: danger far stricter as far as standards went, In other words,
Speaker 1: unless Clarence Brandenburg had been holding his rally on say
Speaker 1: A Street in Cincinnati and directed the KKK members at
Speaker 1: his rally to go attack a random passer by who
Speaker 1: happened to be black, his invective was indeed protected. It
Speaker 1: should be noted by the way that this kind of
Speaker 1: specificity has been plaguing the debate surrounding President Trump's role
Speaker 1: in the violence of January sixth, twenty twenty one. But
Speaker 1: as best I can tell, there still is no consensus.
Speaker 1: I've already stated my own opinion on such claims as
Speaker 1: they relate to the psychological aspect of this thing we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, but legally speaking, it appears to still
Speaker 1: be in a bit of a gray area the incitement claim,
Speaker 1: at least anyway. This new standard was applied only four
Speaker 1: years later in Hesvi, Indiana in nineteen seventy three, and
Speaker 1: it reaffirmed and clarified the imminent lawless action test established
Speaker 1: by Brandenburg. Ever since then, the standard has continued to
Speaker 1: be used and continues to be strengthened, to the point that,
Speaker 1: as Cores and Silverglade put it, quote, mere advocacy ceased
Speaker 1: being the repeated target of censors. Quote, however, would be
Speaker 1: censors had another exception that, despite seeming less well known
Speaker 1: than the notion of shouting fire in a crowded theater
Speaker 1: in the sense that it doesn't seem to be referenced
Speaker 1: as often, has become even more common as a weapon
Speaker 1: being used against free speech in a courtroom.
Speaker 5: That is, the.
Speaker 1: Supposed exception of fighting words, which Cores and Silverglade explain
Speaker 1: is quote a doctrine honored and constitutional law more in
Speaker 1: theory than in practice.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: It began with a case that, by today's standards, seems
Speaker 1: pretty open and shut, in which a man named Walter
Speaker 1: Chaplinsky was arrested after getting a crowd in Rochester, New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: riled up when shouting from a street corner. He proclaimed
Speaker 1: that conventional forms of religion, as opposed to his Jhovah's
Speaker 1: witness faith, was quote unquote a racket. After he was
Speaker 1: escorted away by a police officer for his own safety,
Speaker 1: he railed against the City Marshal of Rochester, calling him
Speaker 1: a quote unquote goddamn racketeer and a quote unquote damned fascist,
Speaker 1: and that the local government was made up of quote
Speaker 1: fascists or agents of fascists unquote. Seen as this was
Speaker 1: nineteen forty this charge meant a lot more back then
Speaker 1: than it does today. I should note from there, Chaplinsky
Speaker 1: was arrested and charged for violating a law that prevented
Speaker 1: him from saying quote any offensive, derisive, or annoying word
Speaker 1: to any other person who is lawfully in any street
Speaker 1: or other public place unquote. In Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, the Supreme Court upheld this conviction, with
Speaker 1: the majority arguing that quote there are certain well defined
Speaker 1: and narrowly limited classes of speech unquote, and that Chaplinsky
Speaker 1: had violated these classes by using quote insulting or fighting words,
Speaker 1: those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend
Speaker 1: to incite an immediate breach of the piece. As we
Speaker 1: can see, even the Supreme Court at least eighty years
Speaker 1: ago agreed with the idea that words constituted a form
Speaker 1: of violence or in their words, injury. Chaplinsky was not
Speaker 1: able to see his free speech rights affirmed by the Court,
Speaker 1: and the Court reaffirmed the idea that speech could be
Speaker 1: made illegal the name of public safety with this decision. However,
Speaker 1: this decision, with its invocation of quote unquote fighting words
Speaker 1: set into motion future nuances and expansions of what constituted
Speaker 1: free speech. Only one year after Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire
Speaker 1: was decided, the Court contradicted its own fighting word standards
Speaker 1: in their decision on CAFETERII Employees Local three to zero
Speaker 1: two v. Los Angeles nineteen forty three. In their ruling,
Speaker 1: the Court decided that the word fascist was quote part
Speaker 1: of the conventional give and take in our economic and
Speaker 1: political controversies on quote, weakening their own previous ruling but
Speaker 1: strengthening the protections on free speech in the process. However,
Speaker 1: the first truly significant change occurred in nineteen forty nine, when,
Speaker 1: as Courts and Silverglade put it, quote, the Court further
Speaker 1: undermined the idea that offensive speech is not protected unquote.
Speaker 1: They continue their summary as follows quote. In Termina Yellow v. Chicago,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court reversed a disturbing the peace conviction of
Speaker 1: a suspended Catholic priest and follower of the notorious anti
Speaker 1: Semite Gerald L. K. Smith. Father Arthur Terminiello, gave a
Speaker 1: speech in Chicago attacking quote communistic Zionistic Jews un quote,
Speaker 1: moving an unsympathetic crowd to violence against him. Justice William O.
Speaker 1: Douglas wrote that the quote function of free speech under
Speaker 1: our system of government is to invite dispute. It may,
Speaker 1: indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a
Speaker 1: condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are,
Speaker 1: or even stirs people to anger. Thus, the court sent
Speaker 1: a message that the First Amendment prohibits the punishment of
Speaker 1: words merely because they might produce an angry reaction. Terminiello
Speaker 1: was particularly important because the offensive language there, even though
Speaker 1: it in fact produced a violent reaction, was not viewed legally,
Speaker 1: speaking as fighting words unquote. The significance of this ruling
Speaker 1: and subsequent rulings like Street v. New York nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine and Coen v. California nineteen seventy one, which involve
Speaker 1: flag burning with the former and anti conscription agitation with
Speaker 1: the latter, that reaffirmed the core principle of that first
Speaker 1: ruling should be obvious, but in case it isn't. And
Speaker 1: consider it this way under the protection of these cases
Speaker 1: today in the twenty first century, even if violent rhetoric
Speaker 1: caused or even significantly contributed to violent behavior. Then, as
Speaker 1: best I can tell, neither progressive media outlets or democratic
Speaker 1: politicians referring to Donald Trump as an existential threat to
Speaker 1: democracy or a fascist, or any person criticizing Charlie Kirk
Speaker 1: and calling him a racist or a fascist, would be
Speaker 1: liable in their respective twenty twenty four and twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five attempts, successful in the latter case, on their lives.
Speaker 1: The same can more than likely be said, at least
Speaker 1: by my best estimation, about Donald Trump's speech to his
Speaker 1: supporters on January sixth, twenty twenty one, or for that matter,
Speaker 1: any of the really insulting and frankly, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: morally disgusting speeches made in the streets of New York
Speaker 1: or London in the wake of October seventh, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: talking about Zionis and even globalizing the Intifada quote unquote
Speaker 1: ugly words, possibly even with the intent of inciting something,
Speaker 1: but they're still protected in all cases, it seems to me,
Speaker 1: at least as a layman. Again, remember I'm not a
Speaker 1: legal expert. This is just my personal opinion. But back
Speaker 1: to the story at hand here and the actual facts
Speaker 1: involving the evolution of free speech protections. An important aspect
Speaker 1: of the Coen v. California ruling that must be added
Speaker 1: to all of this is the fact that constitutional protection
Speaker 1: was extended to the quote unquote emotive function of speech,
Speaker 1: in which the court powerfully ruled that quote expression of
Speaker 1: emotion was as much a function of speech as was
Speaker 1: the cognitive role quote. According to Cores and silver Blade,
Speaker 1: because according to the Cohen decision, quote emotive function may
Speaker 1: often be the more important element of the overall message
Speaker 1: sought to be communicated on quote. Who can honestly say
Speaker 1: that emotions have not been and were not running high
Speaker 1: among the commentariat throughout the entire Trump presidency or during
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four campaign, much less in the mind
Speaker 1: of the soon to be ex president at that time
Speaker 1: at the January sixth, twenty twenty one rally, or among
Speaker 1: the anti Israel demonstrators in the wake of October seventh,
Speaker 1: ranting and raving about genocide and intefada with zero sense
Speaker 1: of irony. I might add after the Terminiello, Street and
Speaker 1: Cohen decisions, as well as other decisions like Gooding v.
Speaker 1: Wilson nineteen seventy two, which involved the defendants saying things
Speaker 1: like white, son of a bitch, I'll kill you, and you,
Speaker 1: son of a bitch, I'll choke you to death in
Speaker 1: the midst of an altercation. After all those decisions, many
Speaker 1: other convictions involving inflammatory language got reverse, which helped further
Speaker 1: set precedent. In legal terms. This is basically like replicating
Speaker 1: the results of a study in the sense that these
Speaker 1: standards continued to pass muster across time and justices. These
Speaker 1: standards continued and still continue to be challenged every step
Speaker 1: of the way. That is ultimately the point of First
Speaker 1: Amendment law. Challenges to free speech will never end, and
Speaker 1: it's important for us to remember they never will. As
Speaker 1: the famous cognitive psychologist Stephen Pinker put it in an
Speaker 1: interview on the Free Press Honestly podcast just over a
Speaker 1: year ago, not only is consent of the governed not
Speaker 1: particularly intuitive in the context of human nature, but neither
Speaker 1: is the notion of free speech itself. There is a
Speaker 1: reason that people like Greg Lukianov and the other people
Speaker 1: at Fire and others rightly say that freedom of speech
Speaker 1: must be defended at all costs. Assault upon it are eternal,
Speaker 1: because human nature is the only true eternity. In a way,
Speaker 1: these challenges should not end, because that would mean that
Speaker 1: free speech has in effect ended. The power of free
Speaker 1: speech can be seen in the challenges against its very existence,
Speaker 1: as long as the ability to make those challenges and
Speaker 1: to challenge those challenges still exists the experiment that is
Speaker 1: free speech, and it is an experiment. And one could
Speaker 1: argue American culture itself will continue.
Speaker 4: And its split the seventh of slow And if we
Speaker 4: only had a little more time, and this time it's all.
Speaker 3: M.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the time?
Speaker 3: Wait little the times we.
Speaker 4: Should have never going?
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 4: And I know you remember.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't just do it.
Speaker 4: And we knew better than the means. We knew better,
Speaker 4: and we told ourselves it didn't matter as.
Speaker 2: We chose to.
Speaker 4: You didn't remember that matters anymore than the other little
Speaker 4: by life. And soon we'll be all said and down
Speaker 4: and we'll all be back together as w if we
Speaker 4: will getting wet all.
Speaker 1: M M.
Speaker 4: Shame of us.
Speaker 5: Due from the star. May God have mercy, shame of us.
Speaker 4: For all.
Speaker 5: And Jesse.
Speaker 1: Was In the immediate aftermath of the attempted assassination of
Speaker 1: Don Trump in July of twenty twenty four, there was
Speaker 1: an outpouring of seemingly principled callouts against violence and praise
Speaker 1: at the idea of using our words instead of our fists.
Speaker 1: And now that was correct, if only by accident. And conversely,
Speaker 1: there was and now, especially in the wake of the
Speaker 1: brutal killing of Charlie Kirk, there continues to be plenty
Speaker 1: of people claiming that the idea of a Trumpian fascist
Speaker 1: nightmare that Kirk was cheerleading had not spread, then none
Speaker 1: of this violence would ever have happened. There are also
Speaker 1: plenty of people who are now banging the drum of
Speaker 1: saying that had it not been for all the attempts
Speaker 1: at calling our times a Trumpian fascist nightmare and referring
Speaker 1: to Kirk as a propagandist for such fascism, such hatred
Speaker 1: as his alleged killer claimed in his justification to his roommates,
Speaker 1: slash Lover that this, this violence is the logical endpoint
Speaker 1: of such violent language, of such inciting language. Many of
Speaker 1: the people saying this also have long since mocked, derided,
Speaker 1: and refuted the idea that words are violence, and sometimes
Speaker 1: even more explicitly, that words lead to violence. The hypocrisy
Speaker 1: at the core of all of this, the inconsistencies everywhere
Speaker 1: was and remains apparent the people who entertained the idea
Speaker 1: that words were violence in the first place suddenly realizing
Speaker 1: that real world violence was what was truly beyond the pale.
Speaker 1: The irony was as thick and smooth as butter, and
Speaker 1: the people who were mocking the words are violence crowd
Speaker 1: in recent years, months, and even weeks are suddenly wringing
Speaker 1: their hands over the existential tenor or hysterical tone of
Speaker 1: the rhetoric that supposedly led to their favorite conservative pundit assassinated.
Speaker 1: The irony is just as thick, and yet despite the
Speaker 1: obvious selective memories and selective standards and therefore hypocrisy coming
Speaker 1: from pretty much every camp in this conversation, it should
Speaker 1: be clear that after everything we've covered that none of
Speaker 1: it matters. It almost certainly does not matter for actual
Speaker 1: psychological reasons, but more importantly, it doesn't matter for broader legal, moral,
Speaker 1: and I would argue even national reasons. Let's look at
Speaker 1: one more story from our past, one I referenced in
Speaker 1: passing earlier on in this episode. It's actually a pretty
Speaker 1: recent story in the grand scheme of things, but it
Speaker 1: feels like an eternity ago. On January eighth, twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: US Representative Gabby Gifford's Democrat from Arizona, was in a
Speaker 1: Tucson supermarket parking lot meeting with her constituents when a
Speaker 1: lone gunman opened fire and shot eighteen people, including Gifford's
Speaker 1: with a point blank gunshot to the head. Somehow, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's probably more common than it sounds like when you
Speaker 1: put it this way, but somehow Gifford survived, but six others,
Speaker 1: including Federal District Court Chief Judge John Roll, were killed.
Speaker 1: The event was obviously horrifying, and it quickly became and
Speaker 1: largely remains, one of the centerpieces to the gun control
Speaker 1: movement in the United States, and indeed, Representative Giffords has
Speaker 1: spent much of her post congressional public life advocating on
Speaker 1: behalf of this cause. However, while the gun control debate
Speaker 1: it sparked sucked most of the oxygen from the room
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, which, honestly, even though people haven't invoked it,
Speaker 1: in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination in September of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, it all feels strangely muted and even passe.
Speaker 1: There was back then a now very familiar refrain going
Speaker 1: on that political rhetoric, particularly violent political rhetoric, caused this
Speaker 1: to happen, caused this woman to be shot in the head,
Speaker 1: and for these six people to be killed and needed
Speaker 1: to be quote unquote cooled down, in the words of
Speaker 1: many people at the time, specifically former vice presidential candidate
Speaker 1: and someone I have not thought about in a very
Speaker 1: long time. Sarah Palin, along with the relatively nascent Tea
Speaker 1: Party movement, became the target of the political left's ire
Speaker 1: for Palin's website called take Back the twenty which used
Speaker 1: animated crosshairs to indicate which US districts needed to be
Speaker 1: well taken back, that is, electorally by Republicans. Giffords had
Speaker 1: already expressed outrage at this a year earlier, in March
Speaker 1: of twenty ten, when after her office had been vandalized,
Speaker 1: she said, quote, we're in Sarah Palin's targeted list. But
Speaker 1: the thing is that the way she has it depicted,
Speaker 1: we're in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district.
Speaker 1: When people do that, they've got to realize that there
Speaker 1: are consequences to that action unquote. Thus, the pump was
Speaker 1: already primed for a massive amount of confirmation bias when
Speaker 1: the actually unthinkable occurred ten months later. While much of
Speaker 1: the commentary, both at home and abroad seemed to echo
Speaker 1: this common sense notion that quote, there are lethal consequences
Speaker 1: unquote to political speech, there was some vital, if somewhat muted, dissent.
Speaker 1: It began with the fact that it wasn't even clear
Speaker 1: if Gifford's would be assassin even saw the map on
Speaker 1: Palin's website to begin with. This was definitively reported in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen by The Washington Post, whose article was titled
Speaker 1: the bogus claim that a map of crosshairs by Sarah
Speaker 1: Palin's pack in cite a representative Gabby Gifford's shooting. So
Speaker 1: this claim that was so in vogue at the time
Speaker 1: has been largely put to bed and nobody even knows
Speaker 1: about it. But soon this kind of descent expanded into
Speaker 1: more meaningful and even philosophical commentary about how inflamed rhetoric
Speaker 1: was by no means unique in American history, by no
Speaker 1: means to blame for what happened to Gifford's and by
Speaker 1: no means even a bad thing as communications professor and
Speaker 1: journalist W. Joseph Campbell pointed out in his own historical
Speaker 1: reckoning of blaming quote unquote overheated commentary for assassinations, the
Speaker 1: effort to link Palin and the Tea Party's rhetoric to
Speaker 1: the Gifford's shooting was quote evocative of a campaign more
Speaker 1: than a century ago to blame the assassination of President
Speaker 1: William mcain hinley on the yellow Press of William Randolph Hurst. Continuing,
Speaker 1: Campbell writes the following quote. President McKinley was fatally shot
Speaker 1: in September nineteen oh one by an anarchist named Leon Cholgos, who,
Speaker 1: according to William Randolph Hearst's finest biographer, was unable to
Speaker 1: read English. Even so, Hurst's foes, notably The New York Sun,
Speaker 1: sought to tie the assassination to ill advised comments about
Speaker 1: McKinley that had appeared in Hearst's newspapers months earlier. One
Speaker 1: especially ill considered comment helped fuel the allegations that was
Speaker 1: a quatrain written by columnist Ambrose Bierce twenty months before
Speaker 1: McKinley was shot on September sixth, nineteen oh one. While
Speaker 1: greeting well wishers in Buffalo. Bierce's column of February fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred closed with a reference to the assassination a
Speaker 1: few days earlier of the Kentucky Governor William Goebel. Bierce,
Speaker 1: a prickly and a cerviit commentator wrote the Bullet that
Speaker 1: Pierce Gebel's breast cannot be found in all the West.
Speaker 1: Good reason it is spreading here to Washington to stretch
Speaker 1: McKinley on his beer, Quoting from The New York Sun's
Speaker 1: own story, a menace to our civilization. Campbell points out
Speaker 1: that the paper accused Bierce, the Hearst Paper, and by extension,
Speaker 1: Hurst himself, of enabling quote an atrocious anarchistic assault on
Speaker 1: the president unquote, and that yellow journalism had just quote
Speaker 1: graduated into a serious and studied propaganda of social revolution unquote.
Speaker 1: Does this, or for that matter, the reaction to the
Speaker 1: Gifford shooting, or for that matter, the reactions to the
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk killing sound familiar? Now, despite all this evidence, Marshall,
Speaker 1: here one might still ask, more than an abstract philosophical sense,
Speaker 1: at least you know, to me personally, are you saying
Speaker 1: that you value the freedom for people to express themselves
Speaker 1: more than preventing harm or ensuring public safety. Yes, and
Speaker 1: if you'll pardon me paraphrasing the joker meme format, I've
Speaker 1: become increasingly tired of pretending that there are any compelling
Speaker 1: counter arguments against this stance that currently exists and have
Speaker 1: been studied.
Speaker 5: At least.
Speaker 1: Not only was or is any of this discourse. I'm
Speaker 1: blaming rhetoric for violence, nothing new in American history. But
Speaker 1: it's also, if I dare risk falling prey to a
Speaker 1: naturalistic fallacy, a good thing. As the writer Jack Schaeffer
Speaker 1: brilliantly put it in his article on Slate back when
Speaker 1: slay was actually a good place to find good content,
Speaker 1: in his reaction to the Gifford shooting and the role
Speaker 1: or lack thereof, of political rhetoric on violent behavior. Quote,
Speaker 1: any call to cool inflammatory speech is a call to
Speaker 1: police all speech. And I can't think of somebody in government, politics, business,
Speaker 1: or the press that I would trust with that power
Speaker 1: unquote and that quote. The great miracle of American politics
Speaker 1: is that, although it can tend toward the most cutthroat
Speaker 1: and thuggish, it is almost devoid of genuine violence. Outside
Speaker 1: of a few scuffles and busted lips now and again unquote,
Speaker 1: even with the increased risk seemingly an incidence of foul,
Speaker 1: vile political violence, this statement from almost fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: is actually an important reality check, especially in the context
Speaker 1: of our dreaded twenty four hour news cycle, whose twenty
Speaker 1: four hour nature is less of a concern to me
Speaker 1: than the spotlighting effect that it creates on outliers. But frankly,
Speaker 1: this long rant of mine has already grown unweelly enough.
Speaker 1: I'll just put it that way it did in the essay,
Speaker 1: and it is growing so here. Schaeffer's best point, however,
Speaker 1: and one that I think matters most to what we're
Speaker 1: trying to uncover here, is this quote. The wicked direction
Speaker 1: the American debate often takes is not a sign of danger,
Speaker 1: but of freedom unquote. I can't think of a better
Speaker 1: way to justify the broader point of this tangled, snarled
Speaker 1: attemptive mind at explaining why I don't believe rhetoric really
Speaker 1: matters materially as much as so many people think it does.
Speaker 1: Not to recap the psychological evidence that rhetoric causes behavior,
Speaker 1: much less violent behavior, simply does not exist. Counter evidence
Speaker 1: does not really exists too compellingly either, But we can't
Speaker 1: operate on the assumption that a lack of evidence means
Speaker 1: that there must be some evidence or vice versa. And
Speaker 1: more to the point that I've been trying to make,
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually matter, because even if there was evidence
Speaker 1: that rhetoric caused behavior, and we acted accordingly to restrict
Speaker 1: rhetoric on that basis, we would be sacrificing the one
Speaker 1: biggest thing that really makes the United States special as
Speaker 1: a nation and as a culture. This is demonstrated by
Speaker 1: the repeated expansions and protections applied to the First Amendment
Speaker 1: to the United States Constitution. The legal system for generations
Speaker 1: now has demonstrated a willingness to continue, but was ultimately
Speaker 1: the experiment that the founding fathers thought we might put
Speaker 1: forth as a nation, a culture, and a civilization. Given
Speaker 1: the sophistication of the Bill of Rights, it is clear
Speaker 1: that they understood, or at least intuitive, that human psychology
Speaker 1: was far more complex than a to B causality, especially
Speaker 1: when it came to the question of speech and action.
Speaker 1: Psychological evidence seems to bear this out. Should our legal
Speaker 1: system and standards not also match what is indeed real
Speaker 1: and true, at least so far. Of course, none of
Speaker 1: this is to say that such things can't or shouldn't
Speaker 1: be challenged, but it is not insignificant that with every
Speaker 1: landmark legal case regarding the individual citizen's right to free
Speaker 1: expression in the United States, his or her protections have
Speaker 1: ultimately been expanded. Perhaps the advent of new technologies like
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence will require more careful readings on such things,
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, when it comes to the question
Speaker 1: of rhetoric and behavior, the debate is and should be,
Speaker 1: in essence closed for now. Now, further study of the
Speaker 1: connection or lack thereof, between rhetoric and behavior must absolutely continue,
Speaker 1: if only because it will help us make better sense
Speaker 1: of the greatest mystery of all, the true final frontier,
Speaker 1: which is the human mind. As I posited more to
Speaker 1: myself as a challenge when discussing this with Danielle and
Speaker 1: Christops on our recent conversation, perhaps there is something to
Speaker 1: the idea of existentially framed rhetoric having a greater effect
Speaker 1: on people's behavior than I'm willing to countenance. I want
Speaker 1: to keep my mind open to that possibility. We'll just
Speaker 1: have to see, especially if studies continue to be produced
Speaker 1: and have compelling, replicatable results. But again I find myself
Speaker 1: still chafing at the idea that that would even matter,
Speaker 1: even if it was true, regardless of the findings of
Speaker 1: such studies. If Americans are to consider ourselves unique among
Speaker 1: the rest of the world's nations and cultures, and maintain
Speaker 1: the reputation as not just a land of true freedom,
Speaker 1: but the land of true freedom, then restrictions or even
Speaker 1: referenda on the subject of broader speech restriction. I don't
Speaker 1: want to put it too harshly, but they seem to
Speaker 1: me to essentially render the entire American project moot. Well,
Speaker 1: I will always be the first person standing in line
Speaker 1: to proclaim that the United States is not as special
Speaker 1: as so many of its appraisers and critics alike seem
Speaker 1: to think, especially when it comes to comparing it to say,
Speaker 1: other countries' behavior. I will also always proclaim that there
Speaker 1: are things that Americans do and try to do that
Speaker 1: are unique, and when it comes down to it, our
Speaker 1: experiment with expanding just how much our citizens are legally
Speaker 1: allowed to say and thus think, is one of those things.
Speaker 1: And to put it even more bluntly, our legal protections
Speaker 1: for our speech are not something that any American would
Speaker 1: like to see curtailed if they ended up on the
Speaker 1: wrong side of that curtailment. Let's just be honest here,
Speaker 1: So why will there no doubt be people who hear
Speaker 1: this that are unconvinced by the evidence that I've provided
Speaker 1: and the reasoning that I've suggested. While it's certainly possible
Speaker 1: that it will be due to evidentiary oversights on my part,
Speaker 1: I've only read so many psychological studies on this subject.
Speaker 1: After all, it does go back, in my view, to
Speaker 1: that pesky load star we all have within us, that
Speaker 1: is common sense. It is really hard to override common sense,
Speaker 1: especially when it feels like what I'm saying doesn't comport
Speaker 1: with what we want to be true, which often does
Speaker 1: comport with what we perceive in front of our own
Speaker 1: two eyes and hear with our own two ears. If
Speaker 1: we look at how a lot of people who don't
Speaker 1: like the polarization in our political culture or the tenor
Speaker 1: of the rhetoric in it, respond to such events, it
Speaker 1: almost always becomes reduced to arguments about how it certainly
Speaker 1: doesn't help things, or well it makes things less pleasant,
Speaker 1: and those things are true. They certainly can be true,
Speaker 1: and I think they are true. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, that's still just one person's opinion. It
Speaker 1: even is maybe millions of people's opinions, but they're just opinions.
Speaker 1: When I hear someone say it doesn't help things or
Speaker 1: it makes things less pleasant, I do know what they mean,
Speaker 1: and I might even sympathize sometimes, Like I said, I
Speaker 1: often do, especially lately. But I also think that those arguments,
Speaker 1: given the evidence out there, should probably be put to bed,
Speaker 1: because the implication will always be we need to put
Speaker 1: a stop to that speech that we think is bad. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: what's the point of saying you don't like the speech.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things that we don't like
Speaker 1: but can't or, as I hope I have made clear,
Speaker 1: should not do anything about. If only it was so
Speaker 1: simple that the young man who killed Charlie Kirk, or
Speaker 1: the young man who shot at Trump, or the man
Speaker 1: who killed those Minnesota representatives, or the man who tried
Speaker 1: to likely kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh, or the man who
Speaker 1: broke into Nancy Pelosi's home and beat her husband with
Speaker 1: a hammer, or the assassins of years passed like the
Speaker 1: one who shot Reagan or the one who shot John F. Kennedy,
Speaker 1: or the who shot William McKinley, or the one who
Speaker 1: shot Andrew Garfield or the one who shot Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 1: If only we could show that these people were motivated
Speaker 1: by pure brainwashing of a hostile partisan media, then we
Speaker 1: could find some justice, maybe where there seems to be
Speaker 1: none or not enough in such a seemingly chaotic and
Speaker 1: violent world. Maybe then we could pin the necessary responsibility.
Speaker 1: Maybe then we could place a lid on the specific
Speaker 1: kinds of rhetoric that led to this outcome, so it
Speaker 1: would never happen again. Maybe then the left or the
Speaker 1: right could finally take real responsibility for the things they
Speaker 1: say so flippantly, and the problem of left or right
Speaker 1: terrorism could finally be put to bed forever, and we'd
Speaker 1: all be safe from the people on the other side
Speaker 1: of the political aisle who hate our fucking guts. If
Speaker 1: only it was so simple.
Speaker 3: That you want.
Speaker 5: Was to feel less song you bother desire, desires to
Speaker 5: drive him into.
Speaker 3: The arms of another.
Speaker 1: Love in the dream.
Speaker 5: Is this song is even after years of trial and.
Speaker 3: Learning out of love.
Speaker 5: Be loved and destroyed.
Speaker 3: The bed.
Speaker 5: Room Jobs.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in to this episode of
Speaker 1: History Impossible. This special one that I honestly was kind
Speaker 1: of wondering when I would find time to make it
Speaker 1: part of the catalog. I guess because I had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun writing the original essay over a year ago.
Speaker 1: Really gets to the core of one of my pet issues.
Speaker 1: I guess we could call them pet issues in this case,
Speaker 1: you know, being all sorts of things, but in this
Speaker 1: case it being free speech. And yeah, I definitely went
Speaker 1: a little hard on this one. I think, at least
Speaker 1: that's how it feels to me. I don't you know.
Speaker 1: I'm obviously, you know, pretty overtly political in some of
Speaker 1: the things I say, but in this case it felt
Speaker 1: less historical more political than usual. So I always have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a guilt complex about that, but
Speaker 1: I feel like it's very relevant and I felt like
Speaker 1: this might be something you guys be interested in. So anyway,
Speaker 1: before I get go in here, I just want to
Speaker 1: thank the following people for supporting History Impossible over on
Speaker 1: Patreon and substack. These people include the following Zazu, Ben Ben,
Speaker 1: Bob Downing, Sam Graham, Greg Hunter, s O Skip Pacheco,
Speaker 1: Molly Pan, John Pisano, Anna R. PJ. Raider, Matthew m Rice,
Speaker 1: Philip Rice, Emily Schmidt, Pierre Vapuni, Christian Wilson, and as
Speaker 1: always Fu so thank you again for listening. We will
Speaker 1: be back to more regular programming so to speak. Have
Speaker 1: a really fun research based episode that was a cat
Speaker 1: in the background by the way, coming uh soon actually,
Speaker 1: and then after that, well we will see when it
Speaker 1: comes to interviews. But we're finally getting back to real
Speaker 1: regular programming so to speak, as in the next installment
Speaker 1: of the Muslim Nazis. Yes, it's really happening, So thank
Speaker 1: you again for listening, and please stay tuned.