NOT ENOUGH VIOLENCE
FINALLY — MAKING THE ALLEGATION OF “SILENCE ON GAZA” MAKE SENSE.
Silence is violence.
This is a slogan that has always irked the hell out of me.
Silence is not violence. Silence in the face of evil is a bad thing. It may be lots of things. Complicity. Consent. Collaboration.
But it is not violence.
And if we start calling things that are not violence violence, we risk diluting the meaning of the term and therefore the seriousness with which society confronts actual violence.
I raise this now because one of my brilliant readers posited a theory about something that was confounding in its irrationality. And it relates to the concepts of “silence” and “violence” but kind of turns them on their heads.
I wrote recently about how there are people who literally (and apparently seriously) claim that nobody is talking about Palestinians and their plight.
As I said then, this has got to be some sort of socio-psychological disorder. It is practically impossible to turn on an electronic medium, scroll social media, go to a comedy show, attend a Pride parade or simply walk down the street observing the graffiti and stickers — anywhere on this planet — without being bombarded by messages about Gaza, Israel, alleged “genocide” and assorted slanders.
There are 305 million people facing immediate humanitarian crises in the world today. Fewer than 2 million of these live in Gaza. But there is a tsunami of outrage and an inexorable roar about the latter 2 million while the 303 million others evoke hardly a whisper of humanitarian concern.
I’ll come back to those numbers in the coming days.
For now, let’s focus on the idea that the wall of noise about 2 million people experiencing (admittedly absolutely genuine) crises attracts — I’m just spitballing here — 90–99% of the attention of global activists, diplomatic statements, NGO proclamations, commentaries and dinner table yammer.
And a not-insignificant number of people in the world see this avalanche of obsession about one conflict — mostly or entirely eclipsing crises affecting 150 times as many other human beings — and declare that it, in fact, represents “silence” or a “cover up.”
A person can literally not escape saturation-level commentary about Gaza everywhere, but erstwhile legitimate organizations like Reporters Without Borders claim a “media blackout.”
A media blackout!
This is not the fog of war. This is not mere propaganda.
This is a psychological disorder on an endemic scale.
It can’t be made to make sense.
Or can it?
An extremely astute reader posited a theory that makes more sense than any other. Her idea, in fact, is the only one that squares this ludicrous circle of absurdity.
If people can look at a world in which a deluge of noise about Palestinians and their condition drowns out every other people and issue on the planet and still, in their deluded minds, observe “silence,” maybe it’s not people “speaking out” they’re looking for.
Maybe they are looking for people to act out.
As my friend commented, maybe the “silence” they perceive is actually a lack of violence.
This brings us back to the slogan I detest.
Many of the folks claiming silence on Gaza are among the same people who carry signs declaring “Silence is violence.”
So maybe it’s not a lack of condemnation against Israel they perceive (no lucid person can deny there’s plenty of that).
Maybe it’s the fact that there are still Jews who haven’t been assaulted and synagogues that have not yet been firebombed.
When people complain about a lack of action on Gaza, we need to consider the action they would consider adequate.
My reader’s theory makes so much more sense. No one in their right mind can deny that there is no “silence” on Palestine.
A person who declares that “silence is violence” already has a distorted compass around morality and violent behavior. They literally cannot discern inaction from criminal action. They have falsely conflated two extremely different things. Silence is violence. (As Bill Maher has said: “Why? Because it rhymes?”)
They can somehow look at a global screamfest about Gaza and hear crickets. Since they do not seem to understand the definition of silence (or violence), my friend’s explanation is the only one I can think of that makes sense.
Perhaps the “sounds” they want to hear breaking the “silence” are not condemnatory words.
Maybe they want the silence broken by the smashing of glass, the crackling of flames, the wails of “Zionists” being beaten in the streets.
Their profoundly perverted perceptions of silence and violence indicate an already tragically corrupt morality.
If there is anything rational at all in the assertion of “silence” around Gaza, this is the best explanation.
Perhaps it is not the absence of words that upsets them.
Maybe it is the absence of smashing windows, breaking bones and screaming victims.
These are, after all, the people who also chant “Globalize the intifada.”
Finally, their idea of “silence” makes sense.
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I think the greater problem is mobs. We are dealing with group psychology, and what we have seen over and over again is antisemitic mobs. So proclaiming that silence is violence is way of telling people that they must join the mobs against Israel and against Jews. Take action! Yes, it’s absurd to say that people have been silent about Israel and the Palestinians, but I think that is not as important as noticing that this is an attempt to encourage the mobs. People in mobs act differently from individuals because the psychology of the mob essentially destroys individuality. People then become herds, sheep. They can hide in a mob and do what they ordinarily wouldn’t do. For those who have read C S Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, it’s easy to hear the old devil Screwtape giving out orders to the devils in training for how to get people to do bad things and think they are doing good. That’s what I see in mobs.
We shouldn’t forget that this first took hold in the universities. October 8 was university driven. This is very important because it tells us a great deal about what higher education has been doing to young students, the future leaders of Western countries. Where it should be developing independent thinkers, it is doing exactly the opposite. It is developing sheep. This is key to the whole enterprise. It’s a theme of the modern left in particular, though we can see it on both sides. When I was in the university back in the 1960s, my university had a great many speakers. Back then, the speakers were from both the left and the right, but it was the very beginning of the leftward march through the institutions. I was left of center but went to see them all. I went to see a prominent leftist speak before an overflow crowd in the gym. Thousands. He riled the crowd up, stirring their emotions. As the students exulted, he raised his right arm up in the fascist salute but with the fist closed. This was also a black power salute. Everyone joined in that salute, and I immediately got shivers and walked out. That day is still with me. It was my vaccination against mobs and against group think.
For the left, everything is "violence" except actual violence.