(This week I'm going to try my hand at some social commentary. Wish me luck...
Content warning: cited NSFW language)
Here I go wading into politics waters without a whisper of training in commenting on them. Then again, Chomsky (who's never been afraid to shoot his mouth off, thank God) mentions that the self-designated ruling class often use their position as a tool to restrict discourse on politics to their own terms. Aka "You're a linguist, am I right in that? Yes, I am a political advisor. I believe I have more experience in these matters than you do." (Aka Let us do your thinking for you.)
So sod it. I'm going to say my piece and hope I get my point across. Politics is my business because it's everybody's business - it's got to be for democracy to have any meaning. My thought is, there are ways to use anger at oppression: ways that will help, and ways that will play into the hands of oppressors. This is a bleedingly delicate point that I'm going to try to qualify below.
The Tone Police [link]
One of the ways that privileged parties (consciously or otherwise) oppress is in what is called tone policing. I mentioned it previously in the context of people referring to Northerners who dislike Southern cultural and economic dominance as "chippy". Thankfully, the class-based cultural and economic oppression of the North seems mostly to have died a death; I don't mean that class-based oppression has disappeared in the UK, just that it's now no longer based on regional provenance in the way it once was.
Tone policing is, essentially, the refusal to listen to an oppressed party's grievances unless they are voiced in a manner that the oppressor approves of. People dedicated to fighting oppression in all forms come up against this frequently, amongst other derailing techniques. Tone policing attempts to delegitimise anger. If you're angry, this faulty logic goes, you aren't being rational, and so your complaints can be dismissed. This ability to stay detached, of course, is itself yet another manifestation of the privilege which is being complained about in the first place.
I bring this up because it's quite difficult to articulate my point without opening yourself up to accusations of tone policing. I agree wholeheartedly that this it is an insidious form of oppression that we have to be on our guard against, and I've put in the above partly as an acknowledgement that the burden of proof is at my end.
Looking Back In Anger [link]
Anger is the most useful force we have in fighting oppression. It's the natural reaction to injustice - why the hell have people put up with this situation? It's rare these days to find people who actively support racial/societal oppression; the opposite of anger (in this case and others) is indifference. Social and political apathy is what holds us back for the most part, not overt croneyism with privilege. When trying to encourage others to adopt a socially just cause, it's rare to find people who say "Actually, the oppression of X group benefits me quite a bit. I'm happy for them to suffer." Most of the time it's just the Internet's favourite word - "Meh".
There are reasons for this - it takes a non-trivial act of humility to come to the awareness that you are privileged in a situation. It's uncomfortable to realise that all along, you've been the bad guy in some way. That's not how we're sold the narrative of our own lives. Blame mass media if you like - Plato was in on the game when he noted that no-one considers themselves evil (or rather, unjustifiably evil). People might think that what they are doing is wrong on some level, but they will usually be able to provide a "but I'm not a bad person because..." clause. If someone thinks that what they are doing is unjustifiably harmful (without even the justification that they enjoy it) they will usually take steps to stop or to rectify what it is they've been doing.
This, to me, appears to be why some meet discussions of privilege and oppression with hostility and aggression. It's uncomfortable to be dragged out of our cocooning narrative where we're on the winning side. It's easier just to ignore or to attempt to delegitimise the complaints being levelled. Again, this is nothing new, with Plato's parable of the Cave describing the protagonist (by analogy with Socrates) discovering that there is more than the shadows on the Cave wall and being put to death by his neighbours on coming back to tell them the good news. It's a classic persecution narrative, one which any number of people (ironically including those who support oppression, whether actively or passively) can buy into, as it's also more comfortable than Oh Right, So I've Been Inadvertently Oppressing People This Whole Time.
Because it is a lot more effort. I mean, being aware of other people takes a lot more energy than only thinking about yourself and your wants and needs. My social activism mostly consists of consciously avoiding using oppressive language (as a male I refuse to use gendered insults where I can find replacements (I don't think the word "cunt" has any equivalent non-gendered insult, unfortunately, so I use it regardless of gender when I do), and slut-shaming is definitely out, for instance) and trying to call people on it when they do likewise, as well as signing petitions online because I'm a student stereotype. I can't claim I succeed perfectly at either of the former - trying to use my various strains of privilege to counter oppression doesn't mean that I magically don't have the privilege anymore, so it's more than likely that I'll still slip up occasionally. (There's no shame in being told you've got something racist stuck in your teeth.)
The problem of when to call someone out, and how you should do it, is complicated; in the video I mentioned Jay Smooth offers one way out. I myself try to be detached and to the point. (Prejudicial assumptions, for instance, seem mostly to collapse under the strain of being explicitly questioned. "So what makes you think that all X group people are Y?" "What grounds do you have for thinking that?" etc) I think it's vital that it isn't a point-scoring exercise - you're helping someone out, ideally, not delivering a put-down couched in social justice rhetoric.
Spitting Fire [link]
So we come back to anger. What I hope I've demonstrated above is that I do not oppose expressing anger at oppression, nor do I think that expressed anger invalidates action against it. As I said above, anger is the source of social progress. What I am saying is that there are ways to use your anger that are productive and ways that are counterproductive.
The example that sparked this thought was a chant that was used on a march protesting the current unelected Conservative regime's cuts to education funding. We were marching in solidarity with out lecturers and tutors, who were being given a pay increase below the rate of inflation, i.e. a wage cut in real terms. I don't need to spell out the horrifying disregard for the welfare of the country that the current government has shown in favour of lucrative privatisation under the guise of austerity; suffice it to say that their cost-cutting measures have systematically targeted the most vulnerable in our society, who by definition have little power to protest.
After chants like "No ifs, no buts, no education cuts!", the organiser holding a megaphone announced that they would lead us in an old favourite: "I say Tory, you say scum!" There wasn't much I could do at the time (being in the middle of a crowd), but it gave me a feeling of real unease. Before, we were demonstrating for something - in this case, showing that we were against the cuts to education in solidarity with our lecturers. On starting what is effectively name-calling, I felt that this undermined our position.
This expression of our anger has no rational aim. The oppressors can look at it, say, "Well, you see, we can't engage with them, they can't be reasoned with" and refuse to attempt further dialogue. It invalidates the previous statements, not because of its anger, but because it has no positive content - worse, it affects the rest of the message negatively by relinquishing the high ground of mature discourse for attempting to engage in a slanging match. As cathartic as it may be, it absolutely harms the cause that it is trying to fight for. Look at the riots in 2011 - there was anger and momentum, but it led to people smashing and looting their own communities and justified all manner of oppressive governmental measures.
Unless we want a blood-soaked revolution (which I think it's worth any price to avoid), this formless anger can have no place in civilian protest. We are protesting the discrimination of the government against particular groups (teachers, those on benefits, the poor generally), and if we compromise ourselves by indulging in statements that effectively promote the same kind of group-based discrimination we weaken our cause fundamentally. I don't think it would have been as bad or even a problem if the chant had started from within the marchers; a large part of my problem was that it was given by the same means and with the same endorsed authority as our grievances with the regime themselves.
No grievance is enough that it justifies dehumanising its perpetrators. We may disagree virulently with a person or group's views or ideas, but as soon as we stop respecting their fundamental, universal humanity we start to become as bad as any oppressor. The fact that someone disagrees with you does not in itself invalidate their opinion. Any number of cyclical wars and acts of violence have shown that oppression never justifies oppression. And by that, incidentally, I don't mean that hate speech has to be protected - any private individual or enterprise can choose whether to listen to or to promote an opinion without in any way oppressing its holder's freedom of speech.
In Summary...
I think that it's vital that we put our anger caused by oppression to good use. In civilian protest, we have to use our anger for putting our case to those in power in undeniable terms - those opposing oppression have the moral high ground, and to abandon it for momentary catharsis is an awful injustice in itself. If the oppressors start using violence, then that's another situation entirely; but we have to play by the rules, even if the oppressors don't - not for them, but for us, and for the rules themselves. I reject the proposal that this is the same as tone policing - I don't want to delegitimise anger, rather suggest that there are unconstructive uses of political anger.
In another regard, I think I agree with John* on the narrative of class warfare - it becomes a method of control. So long as the different hereditary factions are kept at each other's throats the real societal injustices those perpetrating them are free to keep right on oppressing. And we can't let that happen. Never before have we had such a great voice - if we can use our anger positively we could really accomplish something.
* I showed a draft of this post (believe it or not, I do those) to a friend who is actively involved in this field, and they objected to my inclusion of John Lennon because of his history of domestic violence. I may do a follow-up post on this topic (for now see the excellent Being A Fan of Problematic Things), but suffice it to say that I have little respect for his personal life - there's some indication that he later became a functioning human being under Yoko Ono's influence, which I think is what makes it possible for me to engage with him at all. My gut reaction to Sean Connery's unrepentant misogyny is mostly "Dear God, you should be in a museum. I will never voluntarily give you another penny and will discourage others from doing so."
(I hope that made sense. Join us next week for more linguistics malarkey as per.)
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