How have we ended up in a society where defender of the liberal cause, Jordan Peterson, can be widely (mis)characterised as a neo-nazi; transgender activist, Theryn Meyer, can be (mis)characterised as an enemy of transexuals; and Jewish Harvard professor, Steven Pinker, can be (mis)characterised as a supporter of anti-semites? Even the black writer of this article has been accused of being a “white person in virtual blackface” and “not really black”.

The anti-racism racist. The transphobic transgender. The jew-hating jew. The anti-black, fake-black white man.

Distill these propositions into their underlying concepts and it becomes clear just how contorted they are — a sign that something awful is happening to politics and it stems from language. There’s a popular arrangement of words which goes something like, “Never play chess with a pigeon. It will just knock over the pieces, sh*t all over the board and strut around like it won.”

This saying isn’t just funny — it’s insightful. It conveys the idea that for any mutually meaningful interaction to occur, all parties must connect through a shared interface. For example, if you’d like to enjoy a game of chess with a pigeon, you both must share the same understanding of games, of chess and of winning. This saying also conveys the idea that the party which places the least value on this shared interface is most likely to exhibit the most destructive behaviours. Finally, the saying suggests that the party which displays the most destructive behaviour is the most likely to exit the situation with a sense of superiority — presumably because no one stopped them from doing whatever they wanted.

This aphorism is often used to discourage us from arguing with people online but I believe the “chess pigeon” effect has spread from the virtual into the actual. This article is an exploration of why I believe many of today’s Western authoritarian movements begin their assault on free society by debasing language — the interface which enables inter-ideological connection.

The assault on language is usually executed using 5 non-sequential tactics, designed to lead the masses to the conclusion that the use of force is not only desirable but also unavoidable. The first tactic involves the misappropriation and wilful misinterpretation of commonly understood words and concepts. The second involves assaulting all objective frameworks of language and institutions built on them, so disagreements feel more like a “your-word-against-mine” scenario. As part of the third tactic, authoritarians attack the character and moral intentions of critics who see through and condemn this strategy. The fourth tactic asserts the supremacy of the subjective, once it has become too difficult for the average observer to distinguish the true aggressor from the victim of aggression. When deploying the fifth tactic, authoritarians shut down all avenues of reasonable discourse, creating the false impression that coercion is the only option.

I wrote this article days before Cathy Newman’s character assassination attempt disguised as an interview with Jordan Peterson, but I can’t now ignore the fact that it’s an exemplary illustration of my hypothesis.

Cathy Newman repeatedly pretended words mean something other than they do (tactic 1), mocked evolutionary biology when criticising Jordan Peterson’s observations on the similarities between human and lobster nervous systems (tactic 2), and mischaracterised Dr Peterson as being in trouble for refusing to call transexuals by their preferred pronouns, when it was actually because he resisted compelled speech (tactic 3).

Arguably, the cathartic climax of the interview came when Newman suggested the subjective feelings of Peterson’s critics were more important than his pursuit of objective truths (tactic 4), and Peterson pointed out that Newman’s own arguments would curtail her speech too. She was left speechless. Throughout the interview, Newman tried to paint Peterson as a mad ideologue with whom it is impossible to reason — a menace responsive only to force (tactic 5). However, my argument extends beyond a single interview and I provide a more robust analysis in the rest of this article.

1.) Misappropriate words

To hone our judicial skills, my law school enrolled us in a rigorous study of hermeneutics — the science of interpretation. One of the rules of statutory interpretation is the “noscitur rule” — it can be stated as, “A word is known by the company it keeps.” Statutory interpretation rules aren’t generally meant to be convenient fabrications for judges who are in a bind. They’re meant to be tools for decoding the natural usage of language so that the intent underlying general statements can be extracted.

I mention this because it exposes one of the linguistic tendencies of authoritarianism. For example, when religious extremists seek to promote homophobia, they don’t simply describe homosexuality — they conflate it with perversion and child molestation. That way, whenever you think of gay people, you also think of victims of child sexual abuse. It was the same mechanism at play when Nigel Farage used “Romanians” as a synonym for “criminals”.

But the linguistic mechanism underlying the noscitur rule is also behind the conflation of “feminism” with “equal rights”. The two have often coexisted but they are not interchangeable — equal rights is a legal concept while feminism is a socio-political movement. Feminism often includes, but is not limited to, the concept of equal rights, therefore it is possible to be a supporter of equal rights without being a feminist. If you are morally averse to other concepts adopted by today’s feminist movement, it is not unreasonable to distance yourself while supporting women’s rights.

Why do people abuse language in this way? So they can enjoy carte blanche to treat critics with unrestrained aggression. What society allows us to do to “people who have a different opinion” is much tamer than what society allows us to do to “sexists”. Hence, the increasingly fractious feminist movement has become an unlikely, yet no less dangerous, source of authoritarians.

Historical context: The Third Reich conflated Jews, homosexuals and other supposedly “genetically inferior” people with alcoholics and drug users, in an effort to evoke feelings of disgust and repulsion for them. This would help legitimise the sub-human treatment of these groups, in the eyes of nationalist Germans who didn’t want to see themselves as bad people.

2.) Assault objective frameworks of language

This tactic is about the elimination of any intellectual or evidential advantage which might be possessed by those who challenge the authoritarian movement. The thinking goes, “No one can prove I’m wrong if I undermine the very concept of evidence.” It’s why we see “liberal” extremists on university campuses trying to undermine the framework of education. How can they be bad students if the very concept of education is a symbol of white oppression?

It’s also why some feminists proclaim that logic and science are sexist constructions of men, and some gender studies advocates believe the same. Academic institutions are a tantalising target for authoritarians because these are built on knowledge and knowledge is stored through language. If authoritarians can compromise existing knowledge which is unpalatable, then they can create new knowledge in their own image. Unfortunately, this world view has farther-reaching consequences than its proliferators realise.

For example, the feminist who maligns the concepts of logic and science fails to realise that her ideas being correct would also make them irrelevant. Both logic and science are grounded in objectively demonstrable facts. If she says this idea is dubious, she’s also saying that her act of trying to *prove* that science and logic are flawed is dubious. But since we know that science works, she’s making the even more damning claim that women and minorities simply have a lesser capacity to grasp it.

Authoritarians don’t care about the opportunity cost of this tactic. As long as they believe destroying existing structures will “level the playing field”, they’ll happily do so.

Historical context: Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime took aim at intellectuals and intellectual institutions, painting them as sources of oppression—even though he was part of that “elite” and studied in France. Sound familiar? The real problem was, of course, that Pot’s incoherent ideology could be more easily dismantled by a highly educated person. He thought an agrarian and less educated populace would be easier to control.

3.) Attack the character of critics

This tactic hinges on the fact that authoritarians don’t need to prove that their ideas are sound. They just need to create enough chaos to prevent the average observer from being able to tell what is the soundest idea. Once our tools of critical thinking—words, as well as physical and conceptual institutions built on language—have been gutted, it becomes much easier to impose authoritarian ideas which do not stand up to scrutiny.

Criticisms of these authoritarian ideas are not met with counter-arguments, they’re met with personal attacks, physical violence, obscurantism and outright lies. When Jordan Peterson argued that Bill C-16 violates his personal freedoms, most who disagreed didn’t respond by laying out arguments as to why he was wrong. They responded by calling him transphobic and trying to get him fired.

Dr Peterson said, “I’ve studied authoritarianism for a very long time — for 40 years — and they’re started by people’s attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory.” His statement then seems prescient now.

This tactic is what led impressionable ideologues on the far left and far right to believe that a prominent Jewish professor, such as Steven Pinker, supports anti-semitism. Their critical thinking and linguistic faculties were so debilitated that they couldn’t perceive the obvious flaws in the information they were consuming.

Historical context: When Nigeria was under the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha, the country got an everyman hero in Ken Saro Wiwa who stood up to the government. His character was constantly under attack and he was repeatedly falsely accused of crimes. This eventually led to his hanging. His arguments against the military dictatorship were never addressed—the focus was on proving how much of a “bad person” he is. Incidentally, I lived under this military dictatorship, hence my alarm at many of the authoritarian tendencies I see in today’s liberal extremists.

4.) Assert the supremacy of the subjective

This part doesn’t need much discussion as it’s the natural conclusion of all the stages which come before. Once an authoritarian movement has established a framework which makes it easy to silence critics, the only audible voice becomes its own. This is the point when the proverbial pigeon starts sh*ttng all over the chess board. Those who attempt to continue playing by the rules are perceived as idiots — or worse, as weak (a common criticism of today’s “centrists”).

“Can’t you see there’s sh*t all over the chessboard? Why are you still trying to play chess?”

The exaltation of the subjective is how we’ve ended up with the truly ridiculous notion of “microaggressions”. This suggests, for example, that a white person isn’t racist because they think and do racist things — they can be racist simply because a black person thinks they are. This notion led to the ill-advised declaration by Oxford University that “not looking minorities in the eye” can make people guilty of racism.

At this point, the authoritarian movement isn’t simply stopping individuals from expressing themselves, it’s also defining parts of their identity for them.

Historical context: When Idi Amin expelled Asian families from Uganda, he didn’t do it based on facts and reason. He did it based on feelings. He was angry and he needed to take it out on someone—he didn’t care on whom. Sure, black Africans had suffered great discrimination (including from some Asians). But was the Asian minority that lived in Uganda interchangeable with the racists who had historically oppressed black people? Idi Amin was part of a “victim group”, so his feelings were apparently more important than due process. Sound familiar?

5.) Resort to coercion

All other tactics exist to set up the ultimate one — the justification of coercion by creating the false impression that it’s the only remaining option. This section has no “historical context” pull quote because it doesn’t need one. From the old English monarchs to the Kim Jong Uns of today, authoritarians have given us no shortage of examples of their willingness to apply violence.

If you can get people to abandon their apparatuses of critical thinking (e.g. language and logic), surrender to your subjective interpretation of the world and see their environment as perpetually threatening, then you can get them to permit unjustified violence.

If you can get people to think that education and science are corrupt patriarchal institutions, and that feelings supersede facts, and that racist white men are constantly plotting to destroy them, then you can get them to permit physical violence against an innocent professor. I wish I could call this an isolated incident but it’s not.

The false narrative goes, “We’re trying to help the oppressed, so anyone who challenges us must be an oppressor — and oppressors need to be stopped, by force if necessary.” The authoritarians forget that you can desire the outcome but disagree with the method. And that you can agree with the message but disapprove of the messenger.

For example, the problem with the “punch a nazi” movement is that many of the people who were “punched” (figuratively and literally) were not at all nazis. Just like Jordan Peterson, Allison Stranger and Steven Pinker are not nazis. In fact, an interest in the topic which left Allison Stranger with an injured neck — IQ and race — is not an inherent indicator that a person is racist. The question can be driven by pure scientific or intellectual curiosity.

Desi-rae, host of the increasingly popular political channel “Just Thinking Out Loud”, has also discussed the topic of IQ and race, as have many other minority intellectuals. She’s not only palpably intelligent, she’s also black. Somehow, I doubt her motivation is to prove her own inferiority. As Allison Stranger explained, the way to undermine bad ideas is by studying and refuting them — not by overreacting to them.

Had I said a few years ago what I’m about to say now, I would’ve chastised myself for being sensationalist. But, these days, I genuinely worry that people like Desi-rae might be getting punched next and too many of us will be cheering, “Punch a nazi!”