What's Our Problem?, page 37
During this period, an even more extreme concept began to gain traction.
Silence is violence.
By now, we’re familiar with “dissent is violence”—the highly illiberal SJF tenet that justifies the censorship of ideological opponents, pressures vocal dissenters into silence, and chills discourse.
“Silence is violence” is next-level coercion, taking aim at everyone who’s not a vocal SJF activist.
There are plenty of reasons people might stay silent about a given political topic. Maybe they’re afraid to voice an unpopular opinion. Maybe they hold popular opinions but they’re not the vocal type. Maybe they don’t feel they know enough about the topic to have a strong opinion, or the political tribalism surrounding the topic has made them want to check out. Maybe they’re just not that interested in politics. In a liberal society, it’s totally okay to be silent on any topic, for any reason at all.
But by 2020, silence on sacred SJF topics was no longer permissible in many arenas. To be considered a non-violent, non-reprehensible person, at least within progressive circles, you had to outwardly preach the SJF gospel.
The business world is full of stories of employees being pressured by their bosses to publicly express allegiance to the SJF worldview. One tweet in June 2020 read:
My friend is being told by higher ups at her work that silence on her personal social media accounts is her being complicit in perpetuating injustice…how is this not harassment?116
In an article in Areo Magazine, Helen Pluckrose published some of the emails she had received, like:
I work for a tech company. My boss just announced that he is white, male & privileged and that we all need to do more to show we are addressing this kind of privilege. I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do, but I really want to keep my job.
and
I am a marketing executive & we have all been required to join a Slack channel to talk about racism and any white person not contributing to say they are racist and trying to do better is called out for their white silence.117
In June of 2020, while protests were happening in the street, most tech companies put out statements using eerily similar wording—something along the lines of Amazon’s “we stand in solidarity with the Black community—our employees, customers, and partners—in the fight against systemic racism and injustice.” These typically came along with a pledge of millions of dollars to fight racial injustice and a commitment to establish or expand the company’s office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. There’s nothing wrong with a company doing this. But when nearly every tech company does it, in the same month, using the same language, I can’t help but think that companies know not doing it would land them in hot water with their staff and the media.
Sometimes, even repeating the uniform statement didn’t suffice. In June 2020, both the president and the chairman of the U.S. Poetry Foundation resigned after a letter signed by hundreds of poets expressed outrage that the foundation’s statement—which said it “stands in solidarity with the Black community, and denounces injustice and systemic racism”—wasn’t strong enough.
In the world of sports, 2020 saw every NBA team playing a video before early-season games in support of Black Lives Matter. The BLM logo appeared on every NBA court, teams kneeled in unison during the singing of the national anthem, and nearly all players elected to put a social justice slogan (“Black Lives Matter,” “Equality,” "Say Their Names”) on the back of their jersey. Again, nothing wrong with this, but the coercive pressure of “silence is violence” was hovering above it all. When one NBA player, Jonathan Isaac, elected to wear his normal jersey and stand for the anthem while the rest of his team kneeled, he was subject to a media inquisition following the game. One reporter asked, “You didn’t kneel during the anthem but you also didn’t wear a Black Lives Matter shirt. Do you believe Black lives matter?” On Twitter, he was called a “coon”118 and a subject of “white brainwashing.”
As we discussed on Step 2, being pressured to publicly support the organization Black Lives Matter is not the same as being pressured to support the idea that Black lives matter. The BLM website makes it clear that BLM is a political organization, founded by self-proclaimed “trained Marxists,” that was pushing for radical reforms, like defunding the police and disrupting the nuclear family structure,119 that are unpopular with majorities of Americans of all races.120 If NBA teams want to support a radical political organization, that’s their right. When one player chooses not to, either because he doesn’t agree with the movement or simply because he chooses to practice activism in a different setting, and is all but accused by the media of not believing that Black lives matter, that is a problem. That’s “silence is violence” in action.
It has also become common for students and faculty to be pressured to publicly affirm SJF ideas.
A Las Vegas parent filed a lawsuit in 2020 alleging that the school had been “repeatedly compelling” her son to speak and write about “intimate matters of race, gender, sexuality and religion,” “to reveal his identities in a controlled, yet non-private setting, to scrutiny and official labeling,” and “to accept and affirm politicized and discriminatory principles and statements that he cannot in conscience affirm.” The lawsuit includes a host of class slides displaying all the usual SJF tenets and alleges that the school “repeatedly threatened the student with material harm including a failing grade and non-graduation if he failed to comply with their requirements.”
When Paul Rossi published his article about what was going on at NYC’s Grace Church school, he described a number of similar scenes:
These concerns are confirmed for me when I attend grade-level and all-school meetings about race or gender issues. There, I witness student after student sticking to a narrow script of acceptable responses. … It is common for teachers to exhort students who remain silent that “we really need to hear from you.” … A recent faculty email chain received enthusiastic support for recommending that we “‘officially’ flag students” who appear “resistant” to the “culture we are trying to establish.”121
A list of demands at NYC’s Dalton school—signed by 120 teachers and staff—included a similar item, this one directed at staff: “Administrators, faculty, and staff should produce individual public anti-racism statements.”
Teachers have reported being required to add to their curricula a “Pyramid of Racism” graphic that includes “remaining apolitical” and “avoiding confrontation,” while other classes have taught students that “white silence” is among the descriptions of “covert white supremacy.”
These examples all go further than the forced listening on Step 2—they’re stories of people being forced to express outward allegiance to a single ideology.
“Silence is violence” did not come out of nowhere. It is a core principle of SJF.
In Robin DiAngelo and Özlem Sensoy’s 2012 book Is Everyone Really Equal?, their definition of “passive racism” includes “silence,” “lack of interest in learning about racism,” and “not getting involved in any antiracist efforts or in continuing education.” In a 2012 paper about “white silence in racial discussions,” DiAngelo writes that “regardless of the rationale for white silence in discussions of race, if it is not strategically enacted from an antiracist framework, it functions to maintain white power and privilege and must be challenged.”122
This is the fancy theoretical underpinning of “silence is violence.”
Then there’s Ibram X. Kendi, whose name was everywhere in the months following George Floyd’s death.
In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi writes: “There is no inbetween safe space of ‘not racist.’ The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism.”123
In his 2020 TED Talk, Kendi talks again about this idea:
What I'm trying to do with my work is to really get Americans to eliminate the concept of "not racist" from their vocabulary and realize we're either being racist or anti-racist. … The heartbeat of racism itself has always been denial, and the sound of that heartbeat has always been, "I'm not racist."
Silence is violence. “Not racist” is racist. Different wording—same idea. Both reduce the world to good vs. bad and eliminate the possibility of neutrality, equating the neutral position with the “bad” position.
When most people hear “antiracist,” they think of being “against racism,” which of course sounds great. But when we listen to more of what Kendi has to say, we see that “antiracist” means much more than that.
Kendi defines a “racist individual” as “someone who is expressing a racist idea or supporting a racist policy with their actions or even inaction.”124 Contrast that with Kendi’s definition of antiracist: to “spend your time transforming and challenging power and policy is to spend your time being anti-racist.”125
So “inaction” (like silence) lands someone in the “racist” pile, while to be an antiracist requires “spending your time” as an activist.*
Kendi calls racism and capitalism “conjoined twins,” arguing that “the life of racism cannot be separated from the life of capitalism … In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.”126
So “you’re either antiracist or racist” also means “you’re either anti-capitalist or racist.”
Kendi has also said, "I can't imagine a pathway to being Antiracist that does not engage critical race theory."127
So “you’re either antiracist or racist” also means “you either engage critical race theory or you’re racist.”
You either engage in activism using Ibram X. Kendi’s precise worldview, precise politics, and precise way of diagnosing and solving problems—or you’re racist.
You’re either a vocal, active member of the SJF army—or you’re a harmful person.
“Silence is violence”—in all its forms—is textbook coercion. The same exact “you’re with us or you’re against us” mentality Grover Norquist used to coerce 1990s Republicans into signing his pledge. The same “struggle session” technique 1960s Maoists used to force their opponents to declare their allegiance to the movement, or else. No neutrality allowed is a trademark of every low-rung movement with way too much power.
Having descended down this staircase, let’s recall that a society’s “big brain” is made up of the brains of its individuals—those are its “neurons.” It’s why free discourse is so important: the big brain can only think when people are free to speak their minds. So beyond violating the basic spirit of a liberal society, slipping down this staircase comes along with a major consequence.
Idea Supremacy Makes Society’s Big Brain Dumb
The stories from Steps 1, 2, and 3—policing the marketplace of ideas, instituting mandatory political indoctrinations in workplaces and schools, pressuring people into vocal political support—are all examples of idea supremacy in action. In a liberal society, most effective movements succeed by stoking a mind-changing movement that moves the Thought Pile, not by using bullying tactics to muscle the Speech Curve to their desired shape. When a movement like SJF is allowed to do things the Power Games way, it cripples the society’s ability to make knowledge. In his book The Constitution of Knowledge, Jonathan Rauch writes:
Ideas in the marketplace do not talk directly to each other, and for the most part neither do individuals. Rather, our conversations are mediated through institutions like journals and newspapers and social-media platforms; and they rely on a dense network of norms and rules, like truthfulness and fact-checking; and they depend on the expertise of professionals, like peer reviewers and editors—and the entire system rests on a foundation of values: a shared understanding that there are right and wrong ways to make knowledge. Those values and rules and institutions do for knowledge what the U.S. Constitution does for politics: they create a governing structure, forcing social contestation onto peaceful and productive pathways.128
We’ve seen how SJF has been able to hijack the “governing structure” of America’s knowledge-making mechanisms. The society’s big brain—the national genie—relies on these mechanisms, and when they’re disabled, the genie is disabled too. The country’s big brain becomes fractured, spreading confusion and delusion.129
In his book Inside the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler’s architect and Minister of Armaments Albert Speer wrote about how he and so many others descended into the alternative reality of the Nazis:
In normal circumstances people who turn their backs on reality are soon set straight by the mockery and criticism of those around them, which makes them aware they have lost credibility. In the Third Reich, there were no such correctives, especially for those who belonged to the upper stratum. On the contrary, every self-deception was multiplied in a hall of distorting mirrors, becoming a repeatedly confirmed picture of a fantastical dream world, which no longer bore any relationship to the grim outside world.130
I bring this up not to compare Nazi ideology to Social Justice Fundamentalism but to point out that the ideas themselves barely matter. If flat-earthers gained enough power to punish those who argued against the flat-earth worldview and intimidate most round-earthers into silence, continually amplify the flat-earth worldview from the most prominent and reputable platforms, teach people that the earth is flat in companies and schools, and pressure people to outwardly proclaim their belief in flat-eartherism, the number of people who believed the earth was flat would rise dramatically. When people lose the ability to speak openly or to criticize falsehoods, it becomes difficult to separate truth from fiction.
In real life, we can’t see the Thought Pile, so when a small group has the ability to bend the Speech Curve to their will and control what’s being said, people tend to assume that the viewpoints they’re hearing again and again must be “what everybody thinks.”131 As more and more people come to believe the viewpoints, the social cost of being a vocal dissenter to that view rises. Delusion begets silence and silence begets more delusion.
This kind of vicious cycle will naturally be most pronounced when it comes to the most sensitive, controversial topics, riddled with the most taboo landmines.
Take police killings. Between 2016 and 2022, 326 unarmed white men and 232 unarmed Black men were killed (by any means) by police in the U.S. Media coverage of these incidents has been highly skewed, with the median story about a Black victim receiving nine times the coverage as the median story about a white victim. When we look at the ten most written-about cases for each category (between January 2013 and November 2021), the numbers are even starker:132
This kind of vast distortion in coverage leaves people with a vastly distorted picture of reality—one that is then broadcast from society’s largest megaphones.133
A 2019 survey asked 980 people from across the political spectrum how many unarmed Black men they believed were killed by police (by shooting or any other means) in 2019. That year, 31 unarmed Black men were killed by police.134 All groups overestimated the number, with those on the political left being the farthest off. Fifty-four percent of the “very liberal” group were off by a factor of over 30X, while 22% of that group were off by a factor of over 300X.
The survey also asked participants what percentage of total people killed by police in 2019 they believed were Black. The actual number, according to the Mapping Police Violence database, was 25.9% (285 out of 1,099). Again, all groups overestimated the percentage, with those on the left being the farthest off.
Anonymous surveys like these are graphical depictions of a Thought Pile driven toward delusion by a distorted Speech Curve.
This particular distortion can be especially harmful by feeding into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as people who believe cops are more dangerous than they are become less trusting of police, which may make them more likely to resist arrest.135 And more generally, people who feel that the state is out to get them are more likely to feel separate and rejected and fall into an antisocial culture.
There are all kinds of statistics that suggest that racism in America, while still very present, is moving in the right direction overall. The percentage of non-Black Americans who stand in opposition to a close relative marrying a Black person has dropped from 65% to 13% since 1990. The percentage of white Americans who agreed with the statement that Black Americans shouldn’t “push themselves where they’re not wanted” has also dropped precipitously, as has the percentage who agree that it is permissible to racially discriminate when selling a home. During the same decades, the percentage of Americans who support racial equality in jobs, schools, and public accommodations has risen dramatically.136
But the Thought Pile is bending toward a very different viewpoint. Over the past decade, the percentage of white liberals who believe racism is a big problem has doubled:137
Over the same stretch, the percentage of Black Americans who believe Black-white relations are good or somewhat good has been slashed almost in half:138
A Pew question asks Americans whether they believe “racial discrimination is the main reason why many Blacks can’t get ahead.” The percentage of Black respondents answering “yes” steadily decreased starting in the mid-1990s, suggesting that Black Americans’ feeling of agency was on the rise.139 This makes sense, given the amount of promising data pointing to improving conditions for Black Americans—both the Black poverty rate140 and the Black unemployment rate141 have dropped to all-time lows, while both the Black incarceration rate142 and the disparity between the Black and white incarceration rate143 have been steadily declining over the past 20 years. But the SJF narrative tells the opposite kind of story, and this could be contributing to a sharp reversal in Black Americans’ sense of empowerment in recent years.*
In another realm, the SJF narrative says that women are routinely paid significantly less than men for doing the same work. But the statistics this claim is based on—often cited as “77” or “80” or “83 cents on the dollar for the same work”—are highly misleading. Namely, the figure compares the median wages earned by all American women who worked full-time year-round to the median for all American men who worked full-time year-round. Under that crude calculation, the average working woman earns 82% of what the average working man earns. This number doesn’t account for specific occupations, positions, education, or a number of other relevant variables.
