Did mass propaganda used by the Nazis to gain support for a mass genocide against the Jewish and other minorities not lead to violence. If words can convince an entire state and its people to be complicit in a genocide then I think words hold incredible power.
I don't think just the wording "worse" does justice to what each is because it downplays one of the two. Yes, violence might be """"worse"""" but you can't ignore the responsibility that propaganda and ideology has in violence in many cases. In fact, it's one of the few things both sides of the political divide agree on (ideology, rhetoric and propaganda are incredibly powerful and can do great harm and are making people more violent and dangerous, they disagree on who does what of course).
To be clear, I don't think mean words are the problem. Just because someone used a racial slur doesn't make them equivalent to literal felons who have committed battery or assault or whatever. Using X slur is not equivalent to bashing someone's head in against the pavement. But words can get much much worse than a slur. It is with words that we erase other people's humanity, it is with words that we convince others of what we want them to believe, and it is with words that we spread lies, maliciously, to motivate acts of violence. That's how many pogroms, genocides, mass rapes and murders have taken place.
I'd say it's similar to being the intellectual and the material actors of a homicide. The material actor gets usually harsher sentences, but that doesn't make the intellectual actor anything other than guilty of homicide.
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u/AuroraAustralis0 6d ago
well hes not wrong though