Normalising hate speech – on John Berger, the Irish Times, and the recontextualisation of meanings
I watched the first episode of Ways of Seeing, the BBC John Berger mini-series from 1972, last night. Explaining how images are given new meanings in different contexts, carrying ideological biases depending on their presentation and contextualisation, Berger ends the episode with a warning: “But remember that I am controlling, and using for my own purposes, the means of reproduction needed for these programmes. The images may be like words – but there is no dialogue yet. You cannot reply to me. […] You receive images and meanings, which are arranged. I hope you will consider what I arrange – but be sceptical of it.”
The alt-right article and glossary* by Nicholas Pell published yesterday in the Irish Times has been called many things – propaganda, a shit storm, an utter disgrace. It is safe to say that readers were sceptical of it, and indeed, when the opinion editor justified the decision to publish the piece by arguing** that the stance of the paper itself has previously been made abundantly clear on its leader pages, Berger’s theses appear highly relevant. In the context of the paper, the words of an alt-right advocate on the opinion pages should not be interpreted as propaganda, the editor’s argument went, but rather as democratic viewpoint airing and an opportunity to face the debate head on. Clearly, readers were not convinced.
We are often fed a hands-off interpretation of our media outlets, told that involvement and meddling equals censoring, that no-platforming is discrimination, and that a laissez faire approach is always the most democratic. After all, the public reads what the public wants; as was pointed out, readers have the ability to make their own minds up. And it’s no coincidence, of course, that a media exposed to market forces adopts the language and logic of the market. It’s perhaps got less to do with consumer satisfaction than it tries to convey – or else the so-called shit storm would have justified the taking down of the original piece and not just the creation of another one in response – but sure enough, the clickbait must have brought home impressive figures for a decent advertising revenue boost, thus justifying the piece in purely financial terms. As readers, we voted with our clicks.
Yet the Irish Times stance in relation to the debacle remains far from unambiguous. The context of the paper as known by the public extends far beyond any position on far-right extremism expressed on the leader pages; for example, a range of articles dubbing both pro-choice and anti-abortion campaigners extreme have been published of late, boasting similar views of these campaigners as must have led to the opinion editor’s using their messages as examples of previously published material deemed just as questionable and contentious as the alt-right glossary. And perhaps this is exactly why I – while gobsmacked by the fact that said glossary was even considered for publication, and while entirely in agreement with others, including the paper’s own columnist Una Mullally, who insist that it was a terrible mistake – still struggle to back up my position with what feels like a reasonably rational argument. Because in the context of Ireland, in a highly conservative, Catholic country, what is there to say that the extreme, shrill pro-abortion brigade won’t be denied a platform next, should a paper like the Irish Times decide to turn away an extremist like Pell? While the difference is crystal clear to me, it clearly is not to the paper.
The bare minimum purpose of the controversial article, it was argued, was to decode the language of the alt-right movement. Not that the racism is ever explicitly labelled as such, and the sexism is allowed to pass by all but unnoticed; in fact, the refusal to label the so-called alt-right sympathisers as fascist, neo-Nazi, sexist, racist, misogynist, white supremacists tells a tale – they’re extreme, a bit like the abortion fanatics, and here they are explaining their funny little extreme views. Enjoy! While the Irish Times seems unwilling to go anywhere near the words describing the true ideologies behind the alt-right movement, it seems to find the expressions and worldview behind it just fine – somewhat extreme, but legitimate all the same.
I think the clue is in the fear of labelling. If the ideology you’re trying to decide whether or not to provide a platform for is one the name of which you wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, it’s probably one you shouldn’t amplify. The reason you shouldn’t publish Pell’s work is that he’s an unapologetic racist neo-Nazi – but no one’s explicitly admitting that, are they? And in failing to label him for what he is, the publishing of his glossary far from decodes the language of his movement – it normalises it. A pro-choicer, a socialist, an alt-righter – the Irish Times might be a tad uncomfortable with all of them, but each to their own, right? If the alt-right guys are everywhere – on Twitter, in the White House, in our biggest dailies – they can’t be that bad.
Lindy West expressed it very well in the Guardian earlier this week when she wrote about her decision to ditch Twitter:
The white supremacist, anti-feminist, isolationist, transphobic “alt-right” movement has been beta-testing its propaganda and intimidation machine on marginalised Twitter communities for years now – how much hate speech will bystanders ignore? When will Twitter intervene and start protecting its users? – and discovered, to its leering delight, that the limit did not exist. No one cared. Twitter abuse was a grand-scale normalisation project, disseminating libel and disinformation, muddying long-held cultural givens such as “racism is bad” and “sexual assault is bad” and “lying is bad” and “authoritarianism is bad”, and ultimately greasing the wheels for Donald Trump’s ascendance to the US presidency.
Lo and behold, our broadsheet print media is next in line.
In the context of an alt-right propaganda leaflet, the views of men like Pell are what they are: highly offensive, incredibly ignorant, but at least more-or-less clearly labelled. I wonder what Berger would have thought about the recontextualisation of these messages as presented in the Irish Times, told as part of the Irish media story, one that boasts about a commitment to provoking strong debate – even if the provocation comes in the form of something a little extreme. Perhaps a word of warning is in order: there is no dialogue yet; you receive meanings, which are arranged. Consider what they arrange – but be sceptical of it.
*I will refrain from linking to it for, I think, obvious reasons.
**As above.
Why politics needs passion: on tone policing, Repeal jumpers and rational reasoning
Is tone policing the new master suppression technique?
What is a master suppression technique? you ask. It is a way to suppress and humiliate an opponent, according to Norwegian psychologist and philosopher Ingjald Nissen, who articulated the framework of such techniques in 1945.
And tone policing? A tone argument is one which isn’t strictly concerned with what is being said, but rather with the tone in which it is expressed. Tone policing, consequently, is a strategy of dismissing arguments irrespective of their legitimacy or accuracy. It’s a derailing tactic and, I would suggest, a master suppression technique on the rise.
Ireland boasts an impressive selection of recent examples of the latter, thanks to a series of articles published across various national dailies arguing that the problem with the public conversation on reproductive justice and a repeal of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution is not in its sheer existence or even the motivations behind its existence, but rather in what it sounds – and looks – like.
“Abortion is, understandably, an issue that arouses deep passions but that shouldn’t preclude an effort by all sides to listen to opposing views and try to understand the reasoning involved,” argued Irish Times columnist Paul Cullen yesterday. He was writing in the hope that today’s debate wouldn’t have to resort to “plumbing the depths” the same way it did in the 1980s – yet, he noted, “the signs aren’t good”.
Much of the recent criticism of the pro-choice movement has engaged in some or a great deal of tone policing. In the most literal sense, those who fear for the outcome of the debate have pointed out that shrill tones and anger won’t win over middle Ireland, that extremists with fists in the air are not exactly attractive. Similarly, Cullen dismisses the “strident voices on the two ends of the spectrum, each group deeply attached to absolutist views on the subject”.
Others have pointed to a naivety, suggesting that the pro-choice campaign doesn’t engage with the important moral debates, instead increasingly resembling a trend-conscious clique. “The push for liberalising abortion law sometimes feels more like a marketing campaign than a political debate,” Cullen chips in, pointing to the Repeal jumpers and focus on personal stories.
But that’s exactly where the tone police get it wrong: this very much is personal.
I was thinking a while back about why I felt so angry when a friend – a male friend, I should say – told me he identified as pro-life. It wasn’t exactly a surprise, and I’m sure there are plenty of his kind in my network of friends and acquaintances. But then it hit me: the privilege of putting the opinion out there, of making me aware of his stance against my right to bodily autonomy, and then suggesting that we agree to disagree in this supposed ‘debate’ about my life and health, is absurd to the point of being offensive. In saying it, he didn’t just side with the people who insist it is right to see me endure pregnancy against my will, give birth against my will, and parent a child against my will just to allow for a potential life to develop; he also equalled his right to staying true to a principle to my right to make decisions about what happens to me, my body and my life. An opinion against a feeling; an argument versus a lived experience.
We talk about reason and rational deliberation as cornerstones of a functioning democracy, about needing to prevent emotions from running high and stopping us from thinking sensibly. This notion of emotions as the antithesis of rational thought is nothing new, especially not for anyone familiar with rational choice theory, which sees citizens voting to maximise individual utility, completely free from emotional and societal bonds. But is this really a useful interpretation of society?
Studies of citizens and different social contexts have shown that, perhaps unsurprisingly, passion and talk of personal experiences are mostly seen to belong in the domestic, private sphere, while rationality should prevail in the political, public sphere. Activists are painted out to belong to an extreme fringe of society, while power and leadership is almost exclusively represented in media by serious figures of authority with no feelings and no displayed personal interest.
But the notion of rationality and passion as mutually exclusive has time and again been questioned by political engagement theorists. ‘Apathy’ means ‘without passion’, argues researcher Cheryl Hall, so the problem with apathetic citizens is a lack of political passion. Cognitive attention is not enough to spark political engagement – citizens need to care about something and have a vision in order to act. Put bluntly: politics needs passion.
At the end of his opinion piece, Cullen writes about Kathleen Sebelius, Barack Obama’s former health secretary, who identifies as anti-abortion but pro-choice. She believes that life begins at conception but accepts that it is not her business to impose her views on others. “Perhaps it is time we started hearing more of those voices,” the Irish Times columnist concludes. Ironically, those voices are very much heard throughout the pro-choice campaign: for instance, the work of Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, has been circulated and celebrated widely of late, and she too is almost coldly rational about how the notion of life from the moment of conception is compatible with passionately pro-choice views; and many others, myself included, have written extensively about the complexities of notions of life and pregnancy loss, yet without for a moment compromising on our pro-choice conviction. Perhaps it is time we started listening to more of these voices – even if they are angry. Perhaps it is time the mainstream media started amplifying them – even if they are shrill.
It is easy to write calmly, sensibly and rationally about just about anything, irrespective of how passionately you feel about it; you may notice how I haven’t been interrupted once in the almost 1,000 words in this post thus far. But the “productive national conversation” Cullen is calling for won’t take place on the opinion pages of our national newspapers – it will have to be a two-way thing, and it will cause friction.
I’m convinced that the huge majority of people agree that we need a productive national conversation on reproductive rights, but I think that the liberal rational choice ideal has sold us a lie about what such a conversation should look like.
Passions are informed by reason, and personal experiences inform our political beliefs. Show me a supposedly superior moral principle and I’ll show you the door; wear your heart on your sleeve and I’ll listen.
From #NotAllMen to #AllVictimsMatter
I started writing a piece the other day called ‘From #NotAllMen to #NotAllMedia’, which I had yet to publish. I wanted to clarify yet again how my criticism of the reporting of the Cavan murders was a structural critique of sorts, aiming to start a conversation around the wider media climate and its impact on the real-life experiences of its audiences, and how making it personal and debating individual journalists’ performances and accomplishments would be to drastically miss the point. Naturally, I responded to requests to debate individual tabloid journalists on air with a firm ‘no’. I wasn’t going to engage with that level of debate at all.
Then the Crime Editor of the Irish Times went and published an opinion piece entitled ‘How #HerNameWasClodagh missed the media’s real failing’, launching the hashtag #AllVictimsMatter, and here I am. I will assume that I was at least to some degree included in the group he defends himself against, dubbed “one ill-informed corner of social media”, “spectacularly wrong” and an “echo chamber of social media and blogging” – and I would happily accept those monikers if it seemed as if the editor had understood at least the most basic ideas behind the criticism of the coverage he writes about, but alas. What this is, then, is not so much a defense of my views as it is an attempt to highlight the privilege behind such hashtags of blind self-righteousness.
“We were told journalists – all of them, it seems – wanted to package this case as a family tragedy and quickly move on.”
I have explicitly repeated over and over again that the journalists pointing out that they in fact did something right are catastrophically missing the point. I have also said explicitly on more than one occasion that I don’t think that journalists consciously went out on a mission to erase the memory of Clodagh. In fact, I have said the complete opposite: that we’ve all grown up as part of a society full of patriarchal tropes, and that what we need is a discussion around how we can avoid perpetuating said tropes. There is a narcissistic streak in the urge for a journalist to take my critique personally, similar to the narcissism that has fuelled hashtags such as #NotAllMen.
“Many of them hopelessly mistook the placing of Alan Hawe at the centre of the coverage as misogyny in a world where the actions of violent men are somehow accepted by the media and their female victims do not matter. The truth is that the case of the Hawe family was treated no differently to any other; with the media focused on the perpetrator over, and at the expense of, the victims. This has nothing to do with gender, no matter how hard some people try to make it so.”
The crime editor is privileged enough that he can compare the reporting of one case with the reporting of another like for like, completely disregarding the context in which those crimes take place and the role of media in augmenting or undermining certain accepted narratives in society. To think that the reporting of a case of brutal domestic violence has nothing to do with gender is not just naïve, but frankly irresponsible and, yes, misogynistic. But then again, that inability to see the bigger picture is inherent to all the aforementioned hashtags.
“Having had the same conversation with many people on the periphery of such cases, I have found that when people speak of a killer’s talents and strengths, they are not condoning or minimising their violence. They are pondering – often in shock – how the life of the perpetrator was apparently so “normal” and at odds with the violence they committed in their final moments.”
No one is criticising the people behind the quotes, those grieving and those in disbelief. It is the blind regurgitation of such quotes by media that is problematic. There is a reason why a seemingly ‘normal’ person committing such a horrendous crime is met with such disbelief and shock; and a media discourse that doesn’t silence but rather trust and support the voices of women who have experienced domestic abuse could significantly help us understand the culture that creates men like Alan Hawe. If we remove the spotlight from the Cavan killings for a moment and point it to the editorial offices of our mainstream media instead, we can start to talk about considered narratives as opposed to spontaneous reactions of shock, and we might be onto something.
“In these cases, local people who knew the family often feel freer, in my experience, to say more about the perpetrator, to whom they understandably have less loyalty, than the victims. This is especially so when, like Kilkenny man Alan Hawe, the perpetrator is not originally from the area where the murders and suicide have taken place but the victims and their extended family are, as was the case with Clodagh Hawe and her Cavan-based extended family.”
The entire history of tabloid coverage of murders, disappearances and similar goes against this theory, but even if it were true, media do not just choose what questions to ask; they also choose what to print. Is a ‘We just wrote what they said!’ kind of media really the kind the editor wants to associate himself with?
“It is interesting that the deaths of forgotten victims – women and men – from poorer social circumstances have not whipped up the same strength of feeling in the past from those most vehemently behind the #HerNameWasClodagh campaign. There are huge lessons in this case for the media, but not the gender-based ones suggested by the echo chamber of social media and blogging; the media needs to focus more on victims. #AllVictimsMatter”
Oh no he didn’t. But of course he did, in one punchy finishing line proving all his critics right. Because this is exactly what this is about: the privilege that won’t give way for scrutinisation; the literal interpretation of the notion of equality that refuses to accept that equal treatment of those without equal starting points does not equality make.
What does #AllVictimsMatter have in common with #AllLivesMatter and #NotAllMen? That people in positions of power and privilege accuse those criticising the status quo for forgetting to care about those already cared for by the status quo: women’s rights activists are accused of not spending enough time campaigning for men’s rights and #BlackLivesMatter spokespeople are accused of discrimination – but those lashing out, naturally, have never bothered to campaign for either cause. All victims do matter, but not all murder victims potentially represent thousands of other victims who are still alive and reading the papers, told that their side of the story won’t be heard. I was told when my piece went viral that Alan Hawe is the centre of attention because he had agency while the others didn’t. Oh the irony of the fact that journalists – those holding the pens that write the stories of how we view ourselves – consider that an unquestionably, already cemented starting point.