Provocations of Virtue

Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing

University Press of Colorado

Contents

Toxic Discourse

Character, Causes, and Consequences

"Founder of Civility Project Calls It Quits" — Headline in The Caucus, the Politics and Government blog of The New York Times, January 12, 2011

On September 24, 2013 at 8:15 AM, the online editor at Popular Science, the monthly magazine that has been publishing articles on science and technology for the general reader since 1872, posted a brief announcement stating that the publication would no longer accept reader comments on its website. While Popular Science was "committed to fostering a lively intellectual debate" about the world of science, wrote editor Suzanne LaBarre in a post titled, "Why We're Shutting Off Our Comments" (LaBarre 2013), its website had become overwhelmed by "trolls and spambots," inhibiting the magazine's mission of informing the public about science and technology. Citing studies indicating that angry and ad hominem online comments, regardless of their source or credibility, skew readers' perceptions of an article and lead to polarized and negative interpretations of the text (Anderson et al. 2014), Popular Science felt "compelled" to shut down its online discussion section. The insults and epithets that passed for debate, wrote LaBarre in evident frustration, had the effect of undermining the mission of the magazine, and scientific knowledge generally:

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science. (LaBarre 2013)

Reasoning that reader comments shape public opinion, which influences public policy, which contributes to decisions about what kinds of research get funded, LaBarre declared, "Comments can be bad for science."

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What is "toxic rhetoric"? How do we define the phrase? What are its features, its boundaries, its tropes? How has such rhetoric been characterized in popular and scholarly writing, and what reasons have been offered to explain its origins, growth, and influence? What are the consequences of toxic discourse? Why does it matter? What effects does it have upon our politics, our communications, our civic relations? How does it affect our students? Before we can articulate for Writing Studies an ethics responsive to conditions of contemporary public discourse, we should try to speak with some precision about the nature of that discourse to which we are responding. That is the aim of this chapter, in which I attempt to clarify the meaning, causes, and consequences of toxic discourse, or just what makes toxic discourse "toxic."

What Is Toxic Rhetoric?

The strident and confrontational nature of contemporary public argument in the United States has been characterized in different ways, with greater and lesser degrees of precision and partisanship, depending upon the purposes of those who would describe it. So, for example, toxic rhetoric may be defined as "incivility," a loosely defined term that can refer both to rude speech and boorish behavior (Forni 2008; Herbst 2010; Fritz 2013; Makau and Marty 2013), or it can be the subject to more exacting definitions, as in attempts to codify it as "hate speech" (Matsuda et al. 1993). Discussions of what I have termed toxic rhetoric can have frankly partisan overtones, as when those on the Right decry hypocrisy in Liberal appeals for civility (Hanson 2010), or they can be disinterested and scholarly, as in attempts by social scientists to provide empirical accounts of the features, appeal, and effects of toxic rhetoric (Berry and Sobieraj 2014). Let us now consider a few of these characterizations, drawing upon them in an effort to build a robust description of "toxic rhetoric."

Incivility. Perhaps the most widely accepted characterization of angry and abusive discourse is "incivility," or rude speech, which is commonly represented in the discourse of crisis. So, for example, Stephen L. Carter laments the "crisis" of incivility exemplified by the negative character of political campaigns, the maliciousness of "public moral argument," and the bitterness of campus debate over curricula, but also by rude motorists, pornography, and offensive heavy metal music (Carter 1998, 9–10). Janie M. Harden Fritz writes of the "crisis of incivility" (Fritz 2013, 1) with reference to the workplace, characterized by "unthinking or deliberate rudeness, cutting remarks, lack of attentiveness, and violation of expectations for interpersonal interaction" (71). For their part, legal scholars Eli Wald and Russell G. Pearce argue that lawyers are responsible for what they term "the current incivility crisis" as a result of neglecting their obligation to the public good in favor of a self-interested understanding of the legal profession (Wald and Pearce 2011). Perhaps the central theme of incivility is disregard for others, which, P. M. Forni writes, is "to look elsewhere, to withdraw attention — and, with it, respect and consideration" (Forni 2008, 7).

Hate Speech. The concept of "hate speech" provides another, often controversial lens for characterizing abusive public discourse. While the boundaries of what is considered hate speech are often hazy, the term has been defined as "speech attacks based on race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation or preference" (Walker 1994, 8, quoted in Gould 2005, 14 n5). Like incivility, hate speech can refer both to speech, such as racist jokes made at the expense of minority populations, as well as conduct, such as cross burning or spray-painting a swastika on the side of a synagogue. Abusive or uncivil speech is considered hate speech when directed at historically marginalized or persecuted groups or peoples, such as African Americans, Muslims, or Gays. Opponents of hate speech contend that it causes both emotional and physical damage to its victims, ranging from nightmares to post-traumatic stress syndrome to hypertension to suicide (Matsuda et al. 1993, 24). Legal scholar Patricia Williams has called hate speech a form of "spirit murder," given its effects on its targets (Williams 1987, 129; qtd. in Matsuda et al. 1993, 24).

In the 1980s and 1990s, US colleges and universities became testing grounds for the legal status of hate speech, as administrators attempted to respond to the increasing number of racially motivated incidents on campuses, which according to one study increased an astonishing 400 percent between 1985 and 1990 (Uelmen n.d.). In 1989, for example, The University of Wisconsin responded to a series of blatantly racist activities on campus by enacting, after much debate, a campus speech code prohibiting "Racist or discriminatory comments, epithets or other expressive behavior" that "intentionally demean" or "create an intimidating or hostile environment for education" (Siegel 1993). Other colleges and universities adopted similar policies to address "words that wound" (Matsuda et al. 1993), with the result that between 1987 and 1991 approximately one-third of all US colleges and universities had developed some form of hate speech codes (Gould 2005, 78).

Such codes have been repeatedly challenged in US courts by what scholar Jon B. Gould has describes as "an unusual mix of activists, including representatives from the civil libertarian left and the socially conservative right" (3). At issue is whether speech codes, however well intentioned, infringe upon the First Amendment right to free speech and so constitute a form of censorship. While the Supreme Court is not absolutist on the question of free speech — the 1942 decision Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire prohibited the use of "fighting words," or words that would provoke imminent physical harm — speech codes have been consistently overturned in the lower courts as "vague, over-broad, and ultimately illegal" (Gould 2005, 3). These decisions have not, however, settled the broader questions of what forms of speech are permissible in which social and institutional contexts, and what kinds of speech should be protected under the First Amendment. On such questions, writes Legal scholar David L. Hudson Jr. the courts have been "maddeningly inconsistent" (Hudson 2003).

Nor have these issues been resolved in the twenty-first century. Debates on college campuses about "free speech" frequently turn on the question of whether such professional provocateurs such as Milo Yiannopoulos or Ann Coulter, or controversial scholars such as Charles Murray or Ward Churchill, should be barred from speaking on the grounds that they are practicing forms of hate speech. Appearances by these and other controversial speakers have resulted in violent protests at Berkeley, Middlebury, and elsewhere.

Eliminationist Rhetoric. The journalist David Neiwert offers the concept of "eliminationist rhetoric" to describe the language of the violent, far-right wing of US politics — the white supremacists, neo-Nazis, radical militias, and similar groups (Neiwert 2009). "Eliminationism," Neiwert contends, describes, "a politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either though suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination" (11). In such rhetoric, which is typically directed at "enemies" that include liberals, African Americans, Latinos, and Muslims, the targets are not merely objectionable, but "the embodiment of evil, unfit for participation in [the eliminationist vision of] society, and thus worthy of elimination" (11). Recurrent tropes in eliminationist rhetoric include the enemy as vermin or cancers that must be eradicated from the body politic. Neiwert argues that while such rhetoric has been a recurrent theme in US history, exemplified by the Ku Klux Klan among others, it has been amplified in recent years by mainstream media figures such as Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Ann Coulter, who have profited by marketing fantastical conspiracy theories and other forms of misinformation derived from far-right sources.

Venomous Speech. In his two-volume edited collection Venomous Speech: Problems with American Political Discourse on the Right and Left, Clarke Rountree offers an operational definition of venomous speech, characterizing it in terms of actions such as South Carolina Republican Representative Joe Wilson shouting "You Lie!" at President Obama during a speech to a joint session of Congress, and Florida Democratic Representative Alan Grayson claiming that the Republican plan for health care is for patients to "die quickly!" (Rountree 2013a). The essays in Venomous Speech illustrate, Rountree declares in his afterword, that we live in a "particular time in American political history where novel forces have converged into a perfect storm for spawning political gridlock, incivility, and demagoguery" (440).

Outrage Discourse. Perhaps the most empirical account of what I am calling toxic discourse is to be found in Jeffrey M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj's book, The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility (Berry and Sobieraj 2014). Over a ten-week period in 2009, Berry and Sobieraj, a political scientist and sociologist, respectively, led a team of researchers in cataloging instances of what they call "outrage discourse," which they describe as discourse intended to provoke emotional responses such as anger, fear, and moral indignation through "the use of overgeneralizations, sensationalism, misleading or patently inaccurate information, ad hominem attacks, and belittling ridicule of opponents" (7). Such discourse, the authors contend, is "political theater with a scorecard," and offers a very different conception of the public sphere than that described in "normative theories of deliberation, which value political dialogue that is rational, inclusive, impartial, consensus oriented, and fact-based" (19). Given the vast and lucrative audiences for outrage discourse, the authors sought to understand its character and appeal.

To that end, Berry and Sobieraj coded the discourse of cable talk shows hosted by, among others, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity of News Corp's Fox Cable Division, and Rachel Maddow and Keith Olberman of MSNBC. They tracked instances of outrage discourse on talk radio, following right-wing personalities Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, and those whom Berry and Sobieraj characterized as liberal-leaning hosts, Allan Colmes and Diane Rehm. They followed ten leading right-wing and ten leading left-wing blogs, among them Townhall and Powerline on the right, and the Huffington Post and Daily Kos on the left. Finally, Berry and Sobieraj mapped outrage discourse as it appeared in syndicated newspaper columns by conservatives such as Charles Krauthammer and George Will of the Washington Post, and liberal columnists including Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post. From these sources, Berry and Sobieraj identified thirteen types of recurring speech and behaviors that they contend constitutes outrage discourse:

insulting language, name-calling, emotional display, emotional language, verbal fighting/sparring, character assassination, misrepresentative exaggeration, mockery, conflagration, ideologically extremizing language, slippery slope argumentation, belittling, and obscene language. (Berry and Sobieraj 2014, 36; emphasis in the original)

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Such characterizations — incivility, hate speech, eliminationist rhetoric, venomous speech, and outrage discourse — suggest commonalities and differences in the nature of toxic rhetoric. Both incivility and venomous discourse, for example, draw attention to rude and boorish speech and behavior, whether in everyday life or in political discourse. Eliminationist rhetoric is the frightening rhetoric of violence directed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other such groups at minority populations. Outrage discourse emphasizes the hyperbole and sensationalism of political opinion media.

Drawing on all these, I define "toxic discourse" as language that is disrespectful to strangers, hostile to minorities, contemptuous of compromise, dismissive of adverse evidence, and intentionally untruthful. It is the use of language to harm, demean, or dominate others. Toxic rhetoric seeks to invoke a world of anger, fear, exclusion, violence, and unequivocal moral judgments on cultural and political questions. The rhetoric is "toxic" in the sense that it has the capacity, as do toxins in the body, to cause illness, psychological or physical, to the individuals and groups at which it is directed.

What Are the Features of Toxic Rhetoric?

Toxic discourse is the product of the specific language practices that generate and sustain it. While these practices and their purveyors are diverse, there are commonalities that, collectively, comprise the toxins in toxic discourse. To name them all would require another book, perhaps several, but some of the most frequent examples of toxic language practices include the following:

Dishonesty. Dishonesty is the essential and encompassing practice in generating toxic discourse. Dishonest discourse involves the intentional use of language to deceive, dissemble, or manipulate by distorting or falsifying empirically verifiable facts, resulting in harm to others, either individuals or groups. So, for example, Donald Trump's claim that he personally witnessed thousands of people cheering as the World Trade Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001 — "There were people over in New Jersey," said Trump, "that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down" — were repeatedly debunked by objective analysts, who could find no evidence that such an event ever took place (Carroll 2015). Mr. Trump's persistence in spreading this untruth was toxic in that it stigmatized Muslim Americans and aggravated racial tension.

Unaccountability. A form of dishonesty, unaccountability refers to the practice of making assertions without providing relevant and sufficient evidence to support the claim. When a man drove a car into a crowd of people protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one women and injuring nineteen, the notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones blamed Democrats for instigating the violence, claiming without evidence that the Southern Poverty Law Center had gone to "central casting" to hire actors to "dress up as White Supremacists" for the purpose of embarrassing President Trump (Sharockman 2017). Jones's assertion was echoed by California Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who asserted, also without supplying evidence, that the violence in Charlottesville was "a total hoax" staged by liberals (Garofoli 2017). Unaccountability becomes toxic when claims potentially damaging to individuals or groups are made in the absence of credible evidence.