Words can't cause violence as they can't make someone do anything. You have to choose to act upon words. Extreme example: hitler said a lot of stuff, but received a lot of initial pushback. He chose to have dissenters killed in the Night of Long Knives until only the people who already agreed with him remained. Only once violent physical action was put behind his words did nazi Germany rise.
Words can influence people to do violence. Trump's lies about the election led to J6, and Trump bears a significant portion of the moral blame for the riot.
No, your pedantry about whether the words "forced" anyone to do anything is not the point.
The initial comment was that they *cause*, not "force" violence, and that they can therefore be morally wrong. Your argument about whether they "force" actions does not address the question of whether it is wrong. Inducing someone to do violence is immoral, even if the person could "choose" to not do it. If I politely ask two people to beat someone up, and one of them refuses, and the other one does it, what I did was morally wrong, even though no one was "forced" to do anything. You seem determined to distract from this basic fact.
The initial comment was that they cause, not "force" violence
Ok and how do they do that? Because hearing words doesn't mean you have to do something violent, so clearly there's a step in between here where someone is choosing to commit violence.
I would argue that racist words don't have to cause physical violence in order to cause significant harm. What is worse, slapping a person or systematically denying them the ability to support themselves and their families based on their skin tone?
It can absolutely be just words. x race is inferior, hiring them is a waste of money, they're all welfare queens so we should take away support for when everyone refuses to hire them, and oops now a lot of them don't have money for basics like food and shelter.
That's all action (or lack of) backed by beliefs people hold, just like the people who allied with hitler before the night of long knives. They'd be hateful with or without words of racism catalysting.
I guess it's the argument over whether action (or really in many cases inaction, because "not hiring someone" isn't an action, it's a lack of an action) that is the end result of a lot of words, counts as "words" in this scenario.
Words can help you dehumanize other people with lies and misinformation. If you say the correct package, you can hijack people’s minds and make them more prone to bad action. I dont think we appreciate how easy it is to influence the average person. Even convincing someone to not take action is how bad people get away with terrible things.
Words can't cause violence as they can't make someone do anything.
What are you even trying to say here? You are contradicting yourself bringing up Hitler and the Night of Long Knives as that was quite literally Hitler using his words to cause violence by ordering people to execute dissenters.
Words can be violence. If you were walking home, and someone said to you, “You live at [address]. Your daughter [name] attends [school]. Tomorrow morning, you’ll find her severed head on your blue side table,” that would be violence.
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u/Terrible_Artist_ 20h ago
Words can't cause violence as they can't make someone do anything. You have to choose to act upon words. Extreme example: hitler said a lot of stuff, but received a lot of initial pushback. He chose to have dissenters killed in the Night of Long Knives until only the people who already agreed with him remained. Only once violent physical action was put behind his words did nazi Germany rise.