Intelligence specialists on language monitor when it is used for indications of bad things that are about to happen. Words matter. They reveal what and how people are thinking. Or if they are even capable of thought. A lot of people are not competent thinkers. Nevertheless, they blurt out the contents of their minds which reveals their intentions. When they make a serious threat or talk over plans to commit a destructive act, they are breaking the law by committing a criminal threat.
Many people in America misunderstand the First Amendment. If they are rebuked or disciplined for something they say, they invoke the First Amendment as conferring their right to speak their minds. They whine that they are being censored. What they fail to understand is that freedom of speech also gives others the right to respond to what they say. They have the right to say what they will, and others have the right to react. The First Amendment does not exempt anyone from responsibility for the consequences of what they say. They can be held liable for slander, libel, disorderly conduct and criminal threats. And employers and public venues have the right to set and enforce rules about what kind of speech may be used in places where they have jurisdiction. A person's speech may also be used to determine their fitness for a job or membership in an organization. Denying a person employment or membership and being fired for things posted on the internet happens frequently and is upheld in the courts if it is determined to be a matter of competence, honesty, or safety.
What is being said and how it is said are the primary concern of spies and intelligence analysts who are monitoring the affairs of the world. Their purpose is to get advance alerts on trouble brewing to prevent or be prepared for attacks like 9/11, in the case of American intelligence. Language is the human activity through which the plans for attacks on nations and people are devised and transmitted, so language is the prime focus of intelligence gathering.
When I served with the Army in Germany during the Cold War, the command in coordination with NATO gave training sessions to some troops in recognizing language which signaled danger in the making. I was sent to one of these sessions, where we were instructed on language that might belie subversive intentions. While being off post among the civilian population, we might be approached by people trying to get information from us or trying to influence us in damaging ways. At the time, NATO nations were wary of a Nazi revival or the attempts by Soviet communists to undermine trust in democracies and recruit people to their cause. We were taught to recognize verbal utterances that might reflect malicious designs or acts of betrayal in the making. We were also taught to be aware of problems that might be developing in our fellow soldiers. A few years earlier when the end of the Korean War was being negotiated, America faced a circumstance that stunned the nation. Some Americans held as prisoners of war by North Korea refused to be repatriated to the United States. They were labeled turncoats, and they chose to be sent to communist China. Most of them eventually came back to America, but the men were a matter of grave concern about what factors would make people held as prisoners defect to the regime that held them. We were instructed in what verbal symptoms would indicate a severe disaffection with America in its citizens.
The matter of American turncoats in the 1950s laid the groundwork for the civil rights movement of the 1960s. As the motives of the defectors were examined, racism, inequality and the consequent discrimination against classes of people emerged as compelling reasons. The defectors felt that the country they fought for betrayed its own people by denying them the equality, freedom, and justice it claimed to stand for.
During my time in the Army, I heard some discontented comments from some students in Germany. They didn't sound particularly threatening, but they fit some of the criteria for political hate speech. The complaints these people made were the issues around which the Red Army Faction later organized and terrorized West Germany in the 1970s. The Red Army Faction condemned the Naxi past but campaigned with violence for a Communist future.
Word watchers who listen and look for the verbal signs of violence are alarmed at the chatter going on in America currently. It has been building for some time and was put on parade with the presidency of Donald Trump. The insurrection of January 6, 2021, produced the kind of language and actions that comprise an attack on the nation. Some analysts regarded the insurrection as the first skirmish in a civil war. Although the news media reports on the political division in America in a low key manner, the language analysts see a deadlock between American factions that is giving way to violent actions. The insurrection is a case in point, but it is not clear to most Americans what the exact points of disagreement are. They think of it largely as the usual partisan squabble. But it is not something that can be resolved on the legislative floor or the ballot box.
Demonstrations of Black Lives Matter is a case in point in how the language associated with the protests relate to national security issues. The frequent occasions of black people being indiscriminately gunned down by law enforcement is what the movement is reacting to. A Washington Post editorial states its case:"Black Americans are killed at a much higher rate than white Americans. Although half of the people shot and killed by police are white, black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans. Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate."
When people respond with "all lives matter," they indicate that they either do not understand the disproportionate killings by the police or they are okay with it. It also identifies people who have no interest in racal equality and those who might wish to participate in racial extermination. Those who do not like the liberal trend of extending equality, freedom, and justice to all and those who ignore or reject the Black Lives Matter protest are candidates for recruitment into subversive groups that have formed around ethnic and ideological hatreds. The groups involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection are groups that openly espouse racism and fascism as their political cause. They have limits to their idea of democracy: they use the freedoms of democracy to gain power but then deny it to those they dislike. The language not only denotes a political divide; it denotes a political impasse that words can't resolve.
The press has noted recently the trend in America for people to move away from others they don't like and to cluster with people who think and act they do.. Politicians talk of uniting the country and getting along, but that is a futile proposition. America's left and right wings can't stand each other, don't want to live with each other, and don't want to speak to each other. After some decades of adopting the accusatory and disparaging abuse from conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, the right wing has defined itself in relationship to liberals in an extremely toxic way. The liberals have reacted in a way that conservatives call elitist. A former colleague said it is more productive to converse with a pile of rocks than to talk to a Trump conservative. He said he wanted nothing to do with them and his politics now was a matter of avoiding them and their anti-democratic ways. That's not elitism, he said, it is trying to salvage the benign elements of the republic, but if some think it's elitism, so be it.
Conservatives have adopted the attitude toward liberals that white supremacists held toward people of color. Consequently, political dialogue is not an exchange of ideas in these times; it is merely the recitation of hate speech. Those are the words that portray the intellectual and moral state of the nation. They are not the language of conciliation. But they are the words through which America has defined itself.
The first Civil War resulted between states that held opposing views on slavery. In the current division, race is just one of the issues that agitate the nation. The array of issues today includes abortion, public health policy, substance addictions, to name a few, but it is all marshaled by a mindless belligerence as represented by the personality of Donald Trump. That belligerence is demonstrated in the national legislature by some elected representatives, and it brings a toxic contamination to the processes of government that spreads throughout the national culture.
The national dialogue already shows a nation at war with weaponized language. What will be the choice of weapons when we realize where our words have led us?
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