Silence, Violence and the death of Civil Discourse

A meandering inquiry into how we speak to each other and why it matters

This is an essay about the death of civil discourse. It is not an essay about politics (although I do focus on the Israel-Hamas-Palestine war to examine this phenomenon), or even about opinion (although I do share some of my own). No, it is fundamentally about how we talk to each-other and why it matters. 

Civil discourse - respectful conversation between people who share different perspectives. A dialogue aimed at fostering understanding and constructive communication. 

It is not blind agreement, insincere politeness or conflict avoidance. 

Quite the opposite - it is the ability to communicate across lines of difference without casting the person/s sitting on the other side of the ideological divide into the role of idiot or enemy. It is the ability to disagree while maintaining humanity - yours and others’.  

It is one of the fundamental building blocks upon which functioning groups, communities and societies are built. It is perhaps the only way that a group of people existing across many lines of difference achieves harmony and peace without force. In times when difference appears heightened, it’s our life raft. 

Many people have commented that this art form is dying, particularly online, so this idea is not new, but this is my own meandering reflection on the looming death of civil discourse and why it matters to me. 

In recent years I have noticed a decline in civil discourse in two equal but opposite directions. On the one hand in person - with the advent of safe spaces, I find myself having less robust dialogue about polarising topics with friends, family and colleagues. Workplaces are adopting “no politics chat” policies, schools and universities insist pupils adhere to an increasingly narrow set of speech principles, families and friends afraid to lose eachother in the sea of polarisation avoid certain topics altogether. And with this our ability to tussle and disagree and then come back to love, becomes less and less practised. Online we see the opposite - freed of the responsibility of looking someone in the eye, digital spaces become the wild west full of name calling, cancellation, cruelty.

As far as I see it - civil discourse depends on three key things: 1) our ability to accept that there are perspectives different from our own 2) our ability to maintain our humanity in the face of this difference 3) that the parties involved to be at least somewhat informed on the topic we are talking about. The current meme of silence is violence threatens all three of these aspects of civil discourse. 

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I was the target of the silence is violence accusation just a few weeks ago. In the wake of the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7th, and the early murmurings of an  unprecedented IDF response, I posted a small note on Instagram stating that whilst I know that many people followed my page for social commentary or words of wisdom, in this moment I didn’t have any, that I was confused and grossly uneducated on the matter and that all I knew at this point was that I prayed for peace and I cried for the children. 

I had a sense that to many of my followers who joined me in the wake of George Floyds death and my unflinchingly vocal advocacy for black lives, this would be seen as a lukewarm response that was disappointing at best and violent at worst. 

And so it was. Whilst many people commented and messaged to say that I had put words to what they were feeling, unsurprisingly I was also met by a small but mighty onslaught of criticism. That my silence on the matter of colonisation was violence, that “if I had a bit of humanity in me” I would be speaking up for Palestine and against Israel. That the nature of my post made me complicit in genocide. One woman entered my inbox to tell me I was a self-centred, virtue signalling narcissist.

The truth is I could have immediately put a #ceasefire meme on my stories, reposted horrors as a way of “waking people up”, joined the condemnation. But this would have been so deeply inauthentic (and self-centred, virtue signalling). Because I didn’t know enough. Until recently I knew little to nothing about this geographical region or the history of its people. 

Over the past 3 months I have spent hundreds of hours pouring over historical essays, watching commentary from all sides, and seeking to educate myself on the history of this geographical area, the conflict and potential ways forward. So that I can speak, act and make a difference.

Recently I have found myself lying awake at night turning this criticism over in my head - have I got this all wrong? I find myself drawing a comparison in my mind to slavery and asking if I am equivalent to white people who didn’t clearly come out in opposition to slavery, confused by the “moral ambiguity” of the situation. I remain open to the fact that I may be. Maybe I am exactly those people, cowardly, heartless, firmly on the wrong side of history in my lack of clear action. And I accept that if this is true my soul will pay the appropriate price. 

But the truth is - to me, clear, this is not. What is clear to me is that - Killing civilians is wrong. The rape and torture of women and children is wrong. Stealing land is wrong (although I do get stuck on the selective application of this one - because almost every inch of the globe has exchanged hands, most commonly by force or coercion aka colonised) Ending war of any kind is right. All these pieces are clear to me. And yet as I piece them together on the map and weave in complex history, religious fanaticism (on both sides), psychopathic governments (on both sides), black ops involvement of multiple global powers - it is devastatingly unclear to me what the way forward is. And the piggy backing of multiple other movements like the anti-racism or decolonisation movements on to this particular situation feel to me like unhelpful and distracting co-options of a tragedy to further a particular political agenda.

It is my view that in the situation of Israel-Hamas-Palestine - whilst every reasonable living person must surely be against the death of innocent civilians and children - when it comes to the politics of this, we have to (surely we have to?!) collectively admit that whether we like it or not, there are millions of people who hold perspectives on both (multiple) sides of the issue. 

And as much as this may seem incredulous to people who are so certain that their position is unfalteringly morally correct and that the situation is not complex or requiring of any additional knowledge or discussion - that simply is not the reality. If it were there would be no need to convince people of their idiocy, heartlessness or indeed violence for not agreeing.

And this is where the silence is violence position troubles me. Because the essence of the position bypasses the stage of trying to listen and to understand why someone else might see or experience the world differently to you and becomes a judgement about the other person’s moral character. If they don’t speak up in your language and your terms and to your timeline, they are dangerous. Because silence is violence isn’t really about silence - it’s about the refusal to allow for different perspectives to that which is seen as the “right” perspective

In the current situation, from what I have seen, it tends to be the #freepalestine position that employs the silence is violence meme - and I would hazard that in these circles anyone adopting a pro-Israel position is likely to be seen as just as immoral as someone not speaking on the issue at all. And so it becomes not about the virtue of engagement but the “rightness” of your position.

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The silence is violence meme emerged into mainstream consciousness in 2020 amidst the wave of BLM movements. The sentiment at its heart was powerful and important. It in a sense meme-afied Martin Luther King’s, call to action when he said “there is such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.” But in the context of BLM, “speaking up” very quickly became not so much about genuine engagement but about following the correct script. 

For many it became trotting out the same old playbook of posting black squares, and acknowledging your privilege at the start of every sentence. It meant people saying things they either did not believe or were grossly uninformed on. This in itself is a threat to truth. But that’s not what really concerns me here. What really worried me at the time was the war like mentality with which the silence is violence meme went after people who were reading from a different script or acting in a different play altogether. People who held different perspectives or were still trying to figure things out. People who were existing in a myriad of different realities with a host of their own unique challenges and priorities who for whatever legitimate reasons were not suddenly racial justice activists. 

It showed up as social shaming, cancellation and calling on people to divest their attention and custom from people who weren’t advocating in the right way. And here lies another problem with the silence is violence position - which is one of consciousness. When we attack people for holding a different position or holding no position the unspoken message here is - if you’re on the other side you’re dangerous and I will fight you, if you are on no side you are equally as dangerous and I will fight you. And so the very consciousness of war it seeks to fight takes root at the heart of the movements for justice. 

People shout at other people to speak to change the course of a physical war in the world, and in the process wage an ideological war, where the casualties are not bodies on the ground but the social relationships and unspoken agreements of civility that sustain our societies. 

When I get to this point I have to stop myself from venturing into conspiracy, sci-fi theories. That on some sub perceptual level, the consciousness of war and separation has infiltrated the very movements as a trojan horse. That we are living in an Orwellian nightmare where both terrorists and activists are The Party. So convoluted is it to me that we have ended up in a place where our everyday activism mimics the thing it’s fighting that sometimes it feels like the only logical explanation. But I will leave that there. 

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What this ultimately comes down to, in my eyes, is this - the solutions to almost all important human problems lie in working together, negotiation, compromise. All of these practices require us to be able to speak to eachother, even when, especially when, we see things differently. They require us to be able to say “I see things differently, I may even think you are wrong, but that doesn’t make you a bad person”. They require us to allow people to be different without making them immoral, criminal, disposable - which is exactly what the silence is violene position does. 

It says “if you don’t vocally agree with me you are a bad person, dangerous, not even worth talking to”. Perhaps the saddest thing about the whole situation, is that the the intolerance of the position breeds a culture of fear such that people who might otherwise desire to engage in conversations about complex issues, bow out altogether. 

This is the tragedy of the death of civil discourse -  a situation where the respectful co-existence of different perspectives in the quest of finding a way forward together becomes impossible. More than that it villainies the very art of discourse itself - where listening, reflecting, arriving at a considered perspective becomes seen as inherently dangerous. Where anything less than an instant and correct alignment with a certain position becomes worthy of the term “violence”.  

I myself deeply desire to have deep, respectful and honest conversations with people from all sides of the conversation on this issue and all others. So I can be shown where I am under-informed, where I am wrong, where I can grow. Or where we can disagree and still co-exist, where we can find common ground and work together for the good of all. I wish this for all of us.

In times of great upheaval we must remember the life raft that is civil discourse. Our future as a functioning society, literally depends on it.

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PS: A quick ps on saintliness and the spiritual perspective for people who follow this newsletter. As I continued to try and find my footing through this conflict, I believe that I temporarily found refuge in the high spiritual perspective of “loving no matter what”. The idea that some of us are here to hold the pole of love for all beings, forgiveness, mercy, acceptance. I hold this idea so dearly because I believe in it and there is great value in holding it as a possibility.  I started recording a series of videos exploring the applied response of love in times of conflict. I had intented to start with a sermon on forgiveness and mercy, but instead spoke on grief, then gratitude, then generosity. But each week, as I continued to sit down to try and record a video on forgiveness and mercy, and continually failed to do so, I realised that I couldn’t. I came to the truth that, as I am now, if someone had murdered a single member of my family, I’m not sure I could forgive. And so as I explored this aspiration in myself, I concluded that whilst I continue to hold it as an aspiration to evoke the saintliness within me. But is it mine to teach.. no (at least not yet 💙) So I’m discontinuing this series and currently shifting my research focus to look at relating across lines of difference.