When hate speech becomes an accepted norm, we have a problem.
Milo Yiannopoulos, vulgarian, alt-right’s telegenic token gay and Breitbart’s polemical senior editor, may have finally come the last appearance on a national stage. And, the bridge too far for even his audience wasn’t Yiannopoulos’s misogyny, xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or homophobia, to name a few, but rather his flippant and snarky remarks condoning if not giving a sly and coquettish nod to pedophilia and pederasty in a January 2016 clip of his interview on “Drunken Peasants.”
“I’m grateful for Father Michael,” Yiannopoulos told his audience, defending his molestation. “I wouldn’t give nearly such good [oral sex] if it wasn’t for him.”
In a moment of contrition or perhaps a last-ditch effort to salvage his job, after a tsunami of criticism from even his co-workers at Breitbart, Yiannopoulos went on Facebook and uncharacteristically took responsibility for his faux pas.
“I’m partly to blame. My own experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous,” Yiannopoulos wrote.
For too long, Yiannopoulos felt unstoppable regarding his unfettered free speech as an exercise of his First Amendment right. And why should Yiannopoulos not with a $250,000 book advance for his memoir “Dangerous,” an exploration of the issues of “political correctness” and free speech, with Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, as the grand prize for trash talking? Simon & Schuster has now cancelled Yiannopoulos’s “Dangerous.”
Before Yiannopoulos became alt-right’s perfect poster-boy- gay and Jewish- who denounces identity politics and “political correctness”, a backlash from the Tea Party movement had been afoot for over a decade. But Tea Party and now alt-right folks are not alone in expressing how “political correctness” infringes on their life, like the war on Christmas. The controversy first shows its face every early December with the inanity over the new design of Starbucks holiday cups that don’t have a Christmas theme or the greeting “Merry Christmas.” The ongoing feuding back and forth revealed in a July 2016 Pew Research Poll that 59 per cent of Americans agree that “too many people are easily offended these days over the language that others use.”
Liberal colleges and universities have been in the bull’s- eye of this ongoing debate, with conservatives now emboldened by Trump’s presidency to challenge the politics of “political correctness aggressively.” Yiannopoulos’s cancelled visit to Berkeley due to student protests was spun by conservatives as antithetical to free speech and viewed by liberals as hate speech.
“An epidemic of speech suppression has taken over college campuses,” Matt Schlapp, chairman of the group which sponsors CPAC told the Hollywood Reporter of Yiannopoulos’ cancelled appearance at Berkeley.“ Milo has exposed their liberal thuggery, and we think free speech includes hearing Milo’s important perspective.”
Yiannopoulos has been uniquely positioned in transforming his public vitriol and provocation as the symbolic voice and victim of the not “politically correct” oppressed. He has deliberately exploited the tensions between the two camps, employing his brand of hate speech to stretch the perimeters of how far he can go, protected not only under the First Amendment but also by his audience.
For example, as an infamous internet troll, Twitter suspended Yiannopoulos’s account only after an onslaught of targeted racist and sexist diatribes hurled at Saturday Night Live comedian Leslie Jones was derided by an explosion of celebs coming to Jones’s defence.
I believe free speech not only has its limits but also has a level of responsibility to promote the civil discourse for the welfare of others and reject hate speech which is a precursor to violence. While we know we cannot scream “fire’ in a crowded cinema because of the potential harm it could create, it is equally inappropriate to hurl epithets and threats, which Yiannopoulos did unapologetically. And he engages in hate speech aimed at historically disenfranchised groups and individuals with the sole purpose of enflaming divisions not only on college campuses but also across the country.
Hate speech is not a passive form of public speaking. And one of the signs of an intolerant society is its hate speech, whether used jokingly or intentionally, aimed at specific groups of people.
Also, when this form of verbal abuse becomes part and parcel of the everyday parlance and exchange between people, we have created a society characterized by its zero-tolerance of inclusion and diversity and where name-calling becomes an accepted norm.
Language is a representation of culture. It perpetuates ideas and assumptions about race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation that we consciously and unconsciously articulate in our everyday conversations about ourselves and the rest of the world and consequently transmit generationally.
The liberation of a people is also rooted in the liberation of abusive language in the form of hate hurled at them. Using epithets, especially jokingly, does not eradicate its historical baggage, and its existing social relations among us.
Instead, using them dislodges these epithets from their historical context and makes us insensitive and arrogant to the historical injustices done to a specific groups of Americans.
They allow all Americans to become numb to the use and abuse of the power of hate speech because of the currency these epithets still have.
And lastly, hate speech thwarts the daily struggle in which many of us engage in trying to ameliorate human relations – something Yiannopoulos was antithetical to.
