How Far Are the Words from the Deeds?

People in the United States are considering whether the aggressive conservative rhetoric in Arizona during the midterm elections may have led to the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Giffords. They’re thinking about vitriol in daily discourse — and how that should be defined.

In Germany as well, people are asking whether there may be a connection between attacks on mosques in Berlin and the verbal discrimination against Muslims. As speculative as the assumptions remain, there are two completely correct conclusions at the heart of them. First, violence rarely occurs in the absence of verbal incitement, and secondly, verbal expressions themselves may contain violent characteristics. Both of them are an attack on the values of our democracies, warns Deidre Berger, director of the Berlin branch of the American Jewish Committee. She says the highly important public debate over integration and immigration policy should not be subject to the poisonous effects of such language.

Poison in the language — how should we define that? How is it recognized? How should it be punished? Americans define hate speech as incendiary verbal expressions capable of inciting others to commit hate crimes. These are generally understood to be those crimes perpetrated against entire groups based on sex, race or religious belief, such as homosexuals, Jews or blacks. But other groups may be caught in the same net, such as the hippie motorcyclists in the film “Easy Rider,” communists during the McCarthy era or pro-choice activists. Unlike here in Germany, hate speech is considered a crime in the United States.

Any European with knowledge of history is aware that collective power can lead to wars or civil rebellions. And they witnessed that again in May 1991 when the Yugoslav publisher Mirko Klarin appealed to Europeans to institute an international tribunal to prevent a looming war in his nation. He argued that the language being used in the media was marked with increasingly hateful ethnic and religious references. He claimed they constituted a crime against peace.

No one listened to him. A tribunal wasn’t convened until the war was well underway and war crimes were discovered. The U.N. recognized Klarin for his efforts as an alert prophet but that certainly brought him little satisfaction. These days everyone beats the drum for freedom of thought and against so-called “political correctness,” arguing that there has to be sufficient elbowroom for language. We hear, “One should certainly be permitted to say …” And not just since the Möllemann and Sarazin controversies. Both the downplaying and the condemnation of such barroom chat may well disguise dangerous intentions.

None of this is likely to incite a civil war neither in the USA between radical conservative tea partiers and the liberals, nor in Germany between the mob and the Muslims. Our democratic institutions are too strongly implanted in our consciousness. But it is time for a more serious awareness of our words and how we use them. It won’t be good enough to merely forbid certain words in our schools. We have to spotlight the connection between violence and rhetoric.