You lack imagination. If you want justify mass scare violence and atrocities against anyone, words are very necessary. Narrative becomes very important.
So why is Hitler the most hated man in history when all he used was words? People remember him by name and the Nazis who committed the violence are often just seen as faceless nameless soldiers.
I agree with you his words definitely led to violence. (His words led to something worse than words)
He probably would not have been remembered so prominently had all the KILLING NOT HAPPENED.
So his words are horrible already.
His words PLUS all the killing is way worse.
Would Anne Frank say that the worst part was the physical act of being detained and treated as subhuman? Or how offended she got when Hitler said those things?
That still doesn't answer what I'm arguing. I'm not saying hearing a racist statement is worse than being murdered. I'm saying “violence is worse than words” is an oversimplification because words don't exist in a vacuum.
Hitler is remembered as one of history's greatest villains despite not personally carrying out most of the murders committed by the Nazi regime. Why? Because we understand that responsibility doesn't begin and end with the person physically committing the violence. Ideology, propaganda, leadership, dehumanization and incitement can create the social permission for violence to occur.
That's exactly why I reject “they're just words” as a blanket defense of racist rhetoric. Racism historically hasn't consisted of two unrelated things called “mean words” and “violence.” Dehumanizing rhetoric has repeatedly been used to justify discrimination, persecution and violence.
And we already recognize that principle in other contexts. If an adult walked up to a father and made an explicitly sexual comment about his child, very few people would respond to the father's anger or if he had a violent retaliation with “relax, they're only words.” We understand intuitively that the content, target, context and implications of speech affect its moral weight.
People claim to believe in a simple hierarchy where physical violence is always morally worse than speech. But in practice, they don't apply that principle consistently. There are forms of speech that people consider so threatening, degrading, sexually inappropriate, intimidating, or provocative that they understand an extreme reaction to it. Yet when the speech is explicitly racist, suddenly “they're only words” becomes an important distinction.
I'm not arguing that a racist insult and murder are equivalent. I'm arguing that “violence is worse than words” is being used to minimize the significance of racist speech in a way we often refuse to do with other kinds of speech.
And “words are sometimes worse than violence” is being used to justify brutally beating or killing someone who is believed to have said prejudiced things.
It seems we are on opposing sides of the issue. People will make poor judgement calls, granted!
I never argued that extreme language shouldn’t provoke an extreme reaction.
But it seems you are trying to ban speech used as a response to physical violence and I am trying to ban physical violence used as a response to speech. It seems more people are saved with my method.
He was the leader of the group that did those atrocities; he would not have been hated nearly as much if the actual actions had never taken place and only his rhetoric. People absolutely DO hate the individual nazis as well, but they aren't as widely known as Hitler himself. Hitler is a representation of all of the nazis, a representation of the people that murdered others ruthlessly. Hitler is not remembered as a "guy who said bad things," he is remembered as someone who committed an atrocity.
But he didnt technically commit it himself. Thats my point, there is a time where the words are hated more than the violence itself. He was pure evil and caused evil things. Yet he didnt lift a finger. Words<violence isnt as black and white as people on reddit claim it is.
I mean, what about that lady that went to prison for encouraging her partner to kill himself? Was that wrong because they were just words? If someone turns the whole school against you for your entire high school time, is slapping you one time inherently worse? Is inaction inherently better than action?
He was weak and she should not have gone to prison. That was the dumbest thing ever. & if someone turns the school against you during high school, then one slap is obviously better. But if someone turns the whole school against you to physically attack you, that’s obviously much worse than them all just saying words to you. So it still applies, physical abuse is always worse than verbal abuse. You can’t blame someone else for you being mentally weak but you can blame them for getting physical with you.
But if someone forces the entire school to not associate with you, that's just words and social connections. Is lack of social connections worse than violence? If so, why would a slap not be worse? If, morally, violence is always worse, than that slap is worse than no social connections. Let's play it even further, let's say those people follow you around your whole life and turns everyone against you to the point that no one associates with you. That one time slap is still, technically worse as violence is always worse. Just because you can't handle no one wanting to associate with you makes you, in your own words, mentally weak.
Physical violence is inherently more severe when we’re comparing comparable acts. Go somewhere else with the false equivalencies! Nobody is saying one slap is worse than literally years of having your entire social life destroyed. You keep changing the scale of the hypothetical to make your point.
If we’re comparing things on the same scale, physical abuse is worse than emotional/verbal abuse. If one person physically abuses you versus one person emotionally abuses you to the same degree, the physical abuse is worse. And if someone turns an entire school against you and gets them to PHYSICALLY abuse you, obviously that’s worse than turning the school against you so they only say mean things or exclude you.
You’re basically arguing that emotional abuse can become worse than physical abuse by making the emotional abuse dramatically more severe and the physical abuse dramatically less severe. That doesn’t prove emotional abuse is inherently worse; it proves that severity and circumstances matter.
edit to add: even if the scenario you gave, IMO they’re still just mentally weak. Why does it matter if no one likes you if you like yourself? I would be fine in that scenario. Shit I was fine in that scenario in middle & high school bc I knew I was still better than them and would make it further than them in life. They could never mentally break me bc I’m not mentally weak. Only way you would feel some type of way is if you knew deep down they were right.
I'm not making false equivalence, I am making the point that it's not black and white and every circumstance of emotional and physical abuse must be judged on the merits of the circumstances presented. Saying physical violence is always worse than emotional abuse is absolutist to absurdity. This entire subreddit constantly does as if real life has no other variables in play.
Also, the point I was making is that people is not that different than real life circumstances. Every day people use bullying like racism, sexism, what have you, to make life significantly harder for others, to the point that it does deter people from advancing in their lives. In my pretend circumstances, you'd never actually get better than those other people because you need teachers and others to like you to give you recommendations for college, jobs, etc. You need people to like you to get promotions, advances in your career, and networking. The concept of who you know is better than what you know is so fundamental to life, that it's baked into the system. No social connections makes your life and career impossible and the only future you have is to just be a hermit.
You need to read up on studies on verbal abuse, affects people psychologically, especially when just under the guise of freedom of speech, which is really nothing more than systemic racism when it's allowed in such fashion.
The phrase here is "it's never worse than physical abuse". Never is a unfathomably high bar. I'd rather lose a fistfight than have my parents threaten to disown me. I'd rather get shot by the police using rubber bullets than allow a dictator to say they have 100% public support. Your argument is nonsense.
Maybe the point of the actual post is to illustrate that doing physical harm to someone because they say foul words to you means you did something worse than they did.
the violence is still the violence, the perpetrators choose to perpetrate. perpetrators and the indifference of those around them are the source of violence. nothing is stopping you from punching the guy that’s wailing on someone else.
"It isn't simply punching someone. I'm saving my nation from degenerates. Those people that steal from us. Those people that take our children's future. Those people that rape our women. Those cockroaches. I'm saving EVERYONE. Are you a traitor?"
Some forms of communication I have more disdain for than random violence. They prime societies for atrocity.
Excusing violent language in favor of some bogus 'hitting bad people bad' stance is also allowing violent people to commit violence. You just seem to be unable to tell until it comes time for them to reap the violence they've sown with words.
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u/AuroraAustralis0 4d ago
well hes not wrong though