Words in their complex cultural, racial, and political nuances frame everything the ego of humanity seeks to conceptualize and demonstrate. Equal vehicles of creation and destruction.
Synchronously, they are a foundational aspect in the evolving experiment of our humanity. They epitomize the struggle to express externally, our complex, internal emotions. Intricately woven with unconscious nuances and personal experiences they direct and solidify ideas and definitions capable of defining collective identities across generations. They outline personal and social interactions, behaviours, and cultural morals. They are powerful. Each. And. Every. One. Of. Them. In or out of context they can be interpreted individually as allies or, enemies.
From the story-laden poetry of Homer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s open-hearted protest embraced within his “I Have a Dream” speech, the written language seeks to give voice to a DNA-level battle within humanity for communication and, power. A complex, multi-layered human desire for unity, underscored by blinded self-destruction in the face of opposition. We are led to believe that our personal and cultural existence relies on defined quantification of a temporarily assigned “enemy”.
Identical words seeking to inspire and unite can be equally twisted into tools of oppression and division. Our deepest human desire to connect with others can be suborned by politics, religion, and our own limiting fears.
Clever phrases consciously scattered into our social psyche evolve into weaponized language manipulating the truth, dividing societies, and eroding social freedoms. In the name of -freedom. In the cause of – justice.
Previously, we labelled this as “propaganda”. Now, we designate it as “political correctness” without referencing any inherent censorships. In both cases, writing or speaking against the temporary, social majority it is perceived by the collective powers as heresy and perhaps correctly, a threat. The voice of dissent is cancelled, sometimes with a bullet. Silence ensues.
History is littered with examples of fanatic propaganda masterfully deployed to justify atrocities while elevating the perpetrators as defenders and/or heroes. We are again living in such times. Literature such as Orwell’s 1984 (newspeak) warned of language’s power to control society by redefining and limiting the ability of people to communicate through the creation of controlled, targeted fears. “Us vs Them” policies are as time-worn as our most primal instincts, endlessly recycled across centuries. Political correctness bled into the Woke Movement and an Orwellian practice of “cancelling” people who disagree with the moral minority.
Books are burned, journalists shot and we are left with a litter of trivialities after resisting, alternative voices are bound into deeper silence.
In today’s digital age, words escalate as catalysts for change and weapons of authoritarianism. They go “viral “ and can be more dangerous than any real, pandemic virus. We lack the ability to vaccinate ourselves against the fury and hate of an exclusive minority. Intellectuals, journalists, and educators disappear, and average citizens are fired from their jobs or ostracized and caste out of their social and familial groups. We are left in a void directed by the absolute and terrifying power of enforced – silence.
Which begs the question- what are governments, politicians, and religious fanatics so very afraid of? Is it perhaps the realization that we do not need violence to reverse the power dynamics, but simply an agreement amongst a global majority?
Perhaps their fear is greater than ours. As writers, we balance on our fingertips the words that can reach into a collective desire for peace. We can unbind and release humanity’s innate horror of violence to unleash a wave of unity against war.
We can craft words that uplift and illustrate our combined, global histories of peace and cooperation. Words that rise, like the morning sun, above the dark, imposed silences of night. We hold that power. The ability to balance every word to -peace, while undermining the business of war and the created hate that supports it.
Humanity inherently seeks the light. Like sunflowers following the sun, we pursue our ideas of justice and human rights. They warm us. Then, we lock them into cold, legalise words and phrases that bear little connection to human reality or experience. We laud them beyond their ability to support any global definition on what freedom or justice actually are. We build fortresses of words and phrases portrayed to protect us from tyranny by an equally undefinable idea of “equality”. We bind ourselves into a slavery of cemented laws.
Instead of freedom, these words imprison us in their vagueness and complexities. International law is a mudpool of conflicting interpretations and laws that have been given presumptive powers. Words bound into expensive tomes that are worthless when challenged. Reality beyond the courtroom arguments clearly illustrates the futility of unenforceable laws and global treaties. Look up. Daily examples reveal how laws meant to safeguard human rights are subverted to benefit and support powerful tyrants. We see the folly laid bare before us drenched in human blood. Today, it is “over there”. Tomorrow, it will be here.
Words are the magical elements that formulate all languages. Religion binds them, politics subverts them but writers, in their truest form, seek to unbind and free them.
At every turn, we find that ‘freedom” can be suborned by the very real threat of personal violence if we “step out of line”. We are politically and personally forced to choose between the “lesser of two evils” without benefit of legitimate debate. Hammered and manipulated by the interests of secular powers or political agendas vying for power.
We are enticed into a consumerist slavery through the bribery of temporary conveniences and grandiose, advertised promises. Pretty words laced in the arsenic of “us vs them”. There are no defences under any laws. We are in survival mode. Wars within wars.
Back in the “good ole USA” the Citizens United ruling (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310), as an example, equated corporate spending with free speech, allowing money to flood politics and skew democratic representation. In other words, all you need to become President and commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military is- money. How much does a President or Prime Minister cost these days? After paying the exorbitant purchase price tag attached, the only way to recoup it seems to be by dragging a collapsing economy into -war. War, the biggest money-making and wealth re-distribution model humans have invented.
Meanwhile, the escalating rise of global, consolidated corporate powers and natural resource ownership combined with an inconvenient climate crisis, are becoming the least observed threats to personal freedoms, life, and justice we have ever witnessed.
The ongoing weaponization of language, by both political and corporate actors is shattering the very concept of intellectual debate and resistance. Criticism and/or opposing social movements are targeted as morally subversive or criminal. The Black Panthers and Greenpeace are classic examples of peaceful, underground movements going against political agendas. They were quickly portrayed as “terrorist organizations”. Will the “ UnBound/ Rock The World To Peace” movement become the next target?
At a high philosophical level, the words justice, equality, and human rights are often championed as universal ideals, yet in reality, definitions vary dramatically. Globally, we cannot define or agree on what these concepts mean in simplified words. Therefore, do they even exist beyond a generalized hope?
Justice, for some, may mean strict adherence to law and order, while others view it as rectifying systemic inequalities without hard, structural boundaries. Equality might be framed as providing everyone the same opportunities, But, it can also be seen as demanding equitable outcomes, concepts that very often clash. We are challenged to define what ‘equality’ means at a very basic level.
Human rights, while generally upheld as “inalienable,” lack any cross-cultural parameters or agreed definitions. They have become a battlefield of their own verbiage. This is particularly apparent in women’s issues. Some may argue they extend to social, physical and economic rights, while others insist on limiting them to political or religious freedoms. These contrasting definitions frequently pit like-minded movements against each other, as seen in the polarization of debates on race, gender, and economic inequality. We kill each other with bullets fired in the name of human rights.
Black Lives Matter, is another example. As a movement, it claimed to seek justice for systemic racism. Yet it evolved into an exclusive movement primarily highlighting the historical issues of Black Americans.
Other races found themselves sidelined from the comprehensive history of US racism that includes Native Americans, Asians, South Americans, Irish immigrants, and so many others.
Those designated with the privilege of defining justice in a society can be in direct opposition to others demanding “equal” treatment under current laws. The MeToo movement now stands accused of undermining due process in the name of “equality and human rights” for women. Additionally, it could be accused of fracturing the legal concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty”. We have stopped demanding facts or proof of the same and devolved into lynch mobs fuelled by words of divisive hate.
Divergent definitions and views not only fracture public discourse but lead to the breakdown of social behaviours and laws meant to protect these agreed “rights,” Legal systems are stretched to breaking in seeking to accommodate incompatible interpretations of a society’s foundational principles. We are left in a state of chaotic silence unable to speak for fear of “triggering” someone. Isn’t a trigger the firing mechanism of a gun? Words…
Throughout history, literature has been a powerful force in challenging political authority, often leading to the persecution, imprisonment, or death of the writers who dared to speak out. Yet, we continue, as if compelled by our own search for the soul of humanity.
A prominent example of literature challenging political and religious orthodoxy is Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses provoked deadly, outrage amongst many Muslims for its perceived blasphemy against Islam. A book’s controversial portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad led Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s execution, forcing him into hiding for years. Though Rushdie survived numerous assassination attempts, translators and publishers of the book were attacked, and one, Hitoshi Igarashi, was murdered.
In Iran, Simin Behbahani, known as the “Lioness of Iran,” used her poetry to criticize government oppression, enduring harassment and censorship. Similarly, Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed in 1995 after his environmental activism and literature condemned the Nigerian government and multinational oil companies for exploiting the Ogoni people and destroying their land.
In Turkey, Nazım Hikmet, a poet and playwright, was imprisoned for years for his revolutionary Marxist ideas that opposed the government. Spanish poet Federico García Lorca was executed in 1936 by nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War due to his outspoken views and his identity, which clashed with fascist ideology. Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was exiled and persecuted for his novel The Gulag Archipelago, which exposed the brutal realities of Soviet labor camps.
Another Iranian, Sadegh Hedayat, author of The Blind Owl, faced immense pressure for his critical depiction of society under autocratic rule, and while not directly executed, his work contributed to his isolation and eventual suicide.
Nobel laureate, Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese writer and human rights activist, was imprisoned for his pro-democracy essays and involvement in the Charter 08 manifesto, ultimately dying in custody. Meanwhile, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, was assassinated for her courageous reporting on the Chechen war and her critique of Putin’s regime. These writers, by using literature to confront political oppression, paid the ultimate price for their commitment to truth, reminding us of the inherent danger in speaking truth to power under authoritarian rule. Words…
Recently, a growing trend of targeting journalists in conflict zones underscores the fears of politicians in allowing the public to access facts that clash with their rhetoric and power. Acting In stark violation of international laws and conventions that protect them as neutral observers. (Specifically: Geneva Convention Article 79 of Additional Protocol I (1977),” journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict “shall be considered as civilians” and must be protected from attack unless they take a direct part in hostilities”) Government directed militaries are literally, shooting journalists. Current conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and now Lebanon illustrate a disturbing rise of journalists being directly targeted, kidnapped, or killed. There still exists the politicians’ underlying fears that “the pen is mightier than the sword” or, in modern times, the deadly drone. What they forget is that death is a human condition, words live on.
The murders of Marie Colvin in Syria, Jamal Khashoggi, and Mohamed al-Tanani, are names on a growing, global list highlighting the increasing fear of governments and power groups in the neutral, reporting role of the press. A growing hostility, (despite the protections outlined in international law), that has turned journalism into a frontline profession, where bearing witness can mean becoming a casualty of truth.
Truth, however, we choose to define it is, disturbing. To governments, it can be the destabilizing force that brings them down. To those who write the words, truth can carry a death sentence.
The peril faced by writers reflects a broader danger to any who challenge government rhetoric and propaganda. International laws, designed to protect free expression and the right to pursue truth, lack any power of enforcement. The United Nations, issuing condemnations and resolutions, is frequently hamstrung by political gridlock and internal power conflicts, rendering it ineffective at holding criminal violators accountable. An organization for peace built on words that have become, powerless.
As the world around us explodes, we are left facing an epidemic of imploding silences that threaten to destroy us all.
I will continue to speak out and, write. You may silence me, but not my words…
