Excerpted from the chapter "Silencing the Voices of Others -- with Jason Stanley," in I'm Right and You're an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up.
When I began thinking about pollution in the public square, the attack rhetoric and toxic public discourse that we hear coming from all sides, I wanted to know more about what was causing it and how to dial it down. Why? Because this kind of damaging debate leads to inaction and gridlock. If we could clean up the public square and make space for real conversations, maybe we could begin dealing with today's serious issues such as climate change.
Having been in PR for 30 years, I know that lasting solutions to a communications challenge are found when we first examine the background causes of a problem and the obstacles to change. Jason Stanley is an expert in this area. A professor of philosophy and epistemology at Yale, he teaches courses on democracy and propaganda; but he also explores new ideas and techniques about mass deception that are directly related to pollution in the public square. One of these is something he calls "silencing."
There are a number of rhetorical and linguistic tactics being used to silence people today, and he said one of the most blatant is the misappropriation of words such as "ethical" or "clean" in relation to oil and coal. In an article for the New York Times' Stone series, Stanley said that using what he called code words to win support has always been part of the arsenal of politics, but it is now widely used in the popular media.
When we talked, Stanley explained that making outlandish allegations, twisting meanings and making improbable statements have the same effect. This is not really about making substantive claims; these tactics are what he calls linguistic strategies for stealing the voices of others, silencing people. Making bizarre claims that President Obama is a secret Islamist agent, or was born in Kenya, painted the US President as grossly insincere. His voice was stolen, not by a legitimate objection to his platform or a logical argument, but by undermining the public's trust in him so that nothing he said could be taken at face value. Simply put, when Fox News carried a story charging Obama with being a secret Muslim it damaged everyone's sincerity, and any opportunity for reasoned debate evaporated.
It's a simple tactic: When the public doesn't trust you and you can't rely on your own credibility to argue your viewpoint, when the public doesn't share your values or interests, when facts aren't on your side, why not attack and undermine your opponents' integrity while making them appear to have a vested interest?
When no audience or viewer expects truth in the media, only bias, political candidates cannot be held responsible for lying. Stanley made the case that it becomes possible for everyone to lie with impunity; there is no downside to deceit. Every person has an "everyone's doing it" defense. People start to believe that no one is speaking authentically, that even scientists are massaging data to suit their ideological agendas.
Jason Stanley says this is an attack on objective speech. When scientists' facts aren't clear, when everyone is trying to either complicate issues unnecessarily or promote a political agenda, public dialogue becomes confused. People start to believe that "Climate scientists are just trying to get us to wear healthy clothing, or eat vegetarian food ... They are just trying to sway you, not inform you about what is going on."
Stanley believes right wing media, such as Fox News, is not trying to communicate accurate, well-researched stories, but is intentionally scrambling information, broadcasting noise so that it becomes difficult to hear the truth. This insight came to him a few years ago, when he was watching Fox News and began thinking about its claim of being "fair and balanced," something he and his friends thought nobody believed, including Fox News. He decided that the right wing news media is not trying to deliver fair and balanced coverage of events or reportage of issues. Instead, the message of Rupert Murdoch's media corporations goes something like this: In a world where everyone is trying to manipulate everyone else for their own interests and where no one can believe anything they hear, there is no point in being fair, no possibility of balance. This results in a silencing of all news sources by suggesting everyone is grossly insincere.
Stanley warned that democracy is in danger when we no longer expect truth or demand accountability from public figures, when there is no longer even a pretense of integrity. One early warning sign of this is when an institution is "having a problem" with facts, when the facts don't align with its interests and rivals may have more credibility. The climate change debate is rife with examples of this, Stanley told me.
Public discourse has deteriorated to such an extent that the traditional debating model -- based on accuracy, evidence and proof -- isn't happening, so the typical fallback position is to tarnish another person's reputation. When it comes to climate change, for instance, the new technique is to first criticize the research and scholarship, then undermine and discredit scientists. How is this done? Rather than challenging facts, Stanley believes the general strategy is to co-opt vocabulary.
"It is difficult to have a reasoned debate about the costs and benefits of a policy when one side has seized control of the linguistic means to express all positive claims." This kind of dexterous management of language was brilliantly highlighted in the writings of George Orwell, whose Newspeak was designed by a one-party state to prevent freethinking. Stanley said the diaries of Polish-born journalist and comparative literature professor Victor Klemperer are another rich resource when detailing this kind of propaganda.
Drawing on his experience in Germany from 1933 to 1945, the linguist recorded how propaganda changed the value of words. For instance "special treatment" became a euphemism for murder; "intensified interrogation" another name for torture and words such as "fanatical" were elevated to the rank of high praise. It is difficult to have a sensible debate about a policy's benefits versus costs when the policy is labeled "Operation Iraqi Freedom" or "tax relief."
Co-opted language takes many forms, including oxymorons such as "clean coal" or "ethical oil." Stanley explained that seizing control of positive vocabulary makes naysayers appear to oppose something that is clearly beneficial. "It's possible to silence people by denying them access to the vocabulary to express their claims."
Democracy only works if reasoned debate in the public square is possible. If everything is mislabeled, then conditions for deliberative democracy do not exist. If people are deluded into thinking there is such a thing as clean coal, or ethical oil, if their ability to apply correct facts is circumvented, and the credibility of experts is undercut, where is the basis for reasoned debate? It's like trying to design a building without a level.
Stanley became concerned about the role of silencing in the public sphere through analyzing right wing media and its reliance on truthiness -- a word coined by satirist Stephen Colbert to describe the "feeling" of truth based on a gut reaction, rather than evidence or logic. Stanley explained when citizens have no access to reliable news they become suspicious and untrusting: "The effects of a belief in general gross insincerity are apparent in societies in which the state media delivers only propaganda. Citizens who grow up in a state where authorities deliver propaganda have no experience with trust." In such an authoritarian society, "The public's trust in public speech, whether by politicians or in the media, disintegrates to such a degree that it undermines the possibility of straightforward communication in the public sphere."
Stanley used the example of North Korea: "Clearly something is really wrong with discussion in the public sphere in North Korea." Democracy only worksif you have normal, reasoned debate...so you need to set the conditions where that's possible. We would hope that free speech guarantees the conditions for deliberative democracy, but if that is true: "How did we end up with public spaces in North America where nobody trusts what anyone says, and that look in certain aspects like North Korea -- even though we've got free speech? That's a real mystery."
The answer is, when everyone has the right to make up his or her own facts it weakens everyone's ability to speak with integrity. He concluded: Free speech alone is not sufficient for delivering the conditions for reasoned debate. It is impossible without trust and sincerity, and Stanley suggests this is the first critical piece in the puzzle he calls The Ways of Silencing.