Silence is not golden

“If they insist on being irresponsible with our common liberties, then we must be all the more responsible with our liberties. When they talk of hatred, we must stand against them. When they talk of violence, we must stand against them. When they say things that are irresponsible, that may have egregious consequences, we must call them on it. The exercise of their freedom of speech makes our silence all the more unforgivable. So exercise yours, my fellow Americans. Our country, our future, our way of life is at stake.”—President Clinton in the aftermath of Oklahoma City.
That’s always been one of the sharpest things he said. I strongly believe it’s true.
David Neiwert catches a blogger arguing the counter-view: Speaking out only gives them more attention. Specifically discussing a counter-protest to a neo-Nazi protest, the blogger says “Protesting isn’t going to stop them. In fact, protesting gives them the one thing they need desperately from outside of their movement, and that’s attention. These creeps live on the margins. Their ideas find few adherents. They have very little political and social clout. Except when they are given attention from outside of their movement.”
Neiwert admits this is a risk, but argues that ignoring them is worse. They’re not going away. They construe silence as support (in another post he said people who commit hate crimes sincerely believe the community supports them). Humiliating them, making it clear they’re not supported and always, always keeping an eye on them is better.
I strongly agree. As I said in a previous post, letting them speak up unopposed makes it look like they’re acceptable and part of the mainstream. It’s important to push back, not only against neo-Nazis but KKK, theocrats and others.
And contrary to the blogger, they’re not going to wither and die if we ignore them. I have a friend who parrots exactly the same bullshit the John Birch Society did when I was a tween, about the vast Communist/Socialist/U.N. plot which liberals are either helping (Obama) or enabling (all us clueless ones who don’t see the terrifying threat). Some right-wingers predicted a socialist tyranny if Obama won in 2008 and kept on predicting in 2012.
Or consider this post on a series of racist Tweets between two school board officials who endless used the N-word, discussed “that ape” “banging that white piece” and more of the same (apparently an Arab IT guy in the school district leaked the texts—which were on official phones—possibly offended by the use of “camel jockey.”). As Slacktivist says at the link, this is how some rich white people talk when they imagine nobody’s listening. It’s a good thing they’re getting serious blowback. It won’t stop people saying it in private, but keeping this stuff unacceptable is a good thing.
Then we have a guest speaker at Patrick Henry College who’s getting a lot of blowback. His speech recycles lots of cliches about how rape is all vengeful, lying women, sexual harassment is just the natural result of women who chose to go out and work in a man’s world, and in general sexual freedom is just an eeeevil scheme to oppress men and destroy America.
Once again, this is not anything new or something that will go away because the speaker got called on it; the fundamentalist belief in women’s submissive role is quite common. But ignoring it won’t make it disappear either. At least by speaking up, we can maybe stop the mainstream from inching any further right than it has already this century. Maybe not, but it’s worth a try.