Speech is not violence. Or is it?

Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire had an exchange with a faculty member during a Q&A session following a lecture he gave on immigration. During this exchange, the assertion was made that speech is violence.

Speech is not violence. There is an objective difference between using words to try to persuade someone to think or act a certain way and using force or the threat of force to coerce them against their will. Hans-Herman Hoppe used this distinction in his Argumentation Ethics to demonstrate that denial of the non-aggression principle is self-refuting.

The non-aggression principle holds that it is wrong to initiate violence or coercion. When it comes to influencing other people, it, therefore, follows that persuasion through speech is the ideal method. So to use words to make an argument that the non-aggression principle is false is a performative contradiction. If you really believe in the superiority of coercion, why bother trying to convince someone that the non-aggression principle is false? Just violently remove the person who believes it.

Those of us who are sane and rational understand this almost implicitly. To logical people, the idea that speech is violence bothers us in a visceral way because it’s so obviously wrong, but it’s the kind of wrong idea that we have never thought we would need to confront, and we don’t know how.

So what do we say to the idea that speech is violence?

It helps to understand the worldview of the person who asserts this. Invariably, those who claim this are on the left side of the political spectrum. This means that in some way they believe in the necessity of government. In fact, it’s so bad that they cannot conceive of anything being done without involving the government. This changes everything.

See, for you and me, speech is not inherently violent. There are ways to speak violently. Like if I make a credible threat of violence toward you in order to coerce you in some way – that would be violent speech. But just to make claims about factual information like Michael Knowles would not be violent for a regular person to do so.

But for the government? For the government, speech is violence. Every time the government speaks, it carries the implied threat of violence. Because that’s what government is, by definition. Violence. Even when they are just citing factual information, it’s usually in conjunction with some policy or law that is being enforced. Look no further than the things Dr. Anthony Fauci said about COVID-19. There was a direct connection between his speech and the policies that were forced on the American people: lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, etc. Government speech is always violent.

Since these people cannot conceive of applying your speech to the world by any means. besides the government, they conclude that your speech must be inherently violent. Take note. This is confession through progression. It is really the progressives who seek to impose their ideas on society through violence.

The rest of us are very content with letting the truth speak for itself and for those who are interested and who have ears to hear. We’re confident that truth will win out in the end.