What does “self-defense” mean?

In general, I think of it as the protection of one’s self against an attacker. It can be against verbal/social attacks, or it can be against direct physical violence. In either case, the “defense” bit means that the primary goal is to make the attack stop, or to at least avoid harm from it. The defense is generally expected to be proportional to the attack, so where it might cover lethal violence in response to a lethal attack, it certainly won’t cover killing someone to “defend” yourself against slander, or in response to a thrown snowball.

There’s another perspective, though, that has been normalized in the US, and that is that self defense can or even should be disproportionate. The reasoning is generally that the goal is not just to stop the current attack, but also to stop all future attacks. It is also an opportunity for violence, for sadism, and for domination. One example from recent US political history was given to us by the Senate candidacy of Maine politician Graham Platner. He allegedly told a girlfriend that his plan, should a burglar ever break into his home while he’s there, was to rape that burglar as an act of domination. I don’t know how widespread that specific “self-defense” fantasy is in the US, but things of that scale are pretty common. Think the numerous death traps offered to us as innocent comedy by Home Alone. Think the “stand your ground” laws that allow people in the US to use lethal force in self-defense, and all the guys who fantasize about doing just that. Think Trayvon Martin being killed in “self-defense” by an armed man who stalked him through his neighborhood.

Or think bigger. Think the War on Terror, supposedly waged to defend the US against future terrorist attacks by invading and occupying Afghanistan, and then Iraq. Think about the people in America who are still insisting that Israel is merely defending itself against Hamas as it commits genocide.

Think about America’s punitive approach to crime, where even fairly minor transgressions can get you thrown into prison, where everyone expects and accepts that you will be abused and possibly killed by guards or fellow inmates.

Our understanding of what behavior is appropriate is generally shaped by the messages and actions we see repeated around us, and sometimes those messages are put there deliberately, to influence us, and to adjust our expectations and beliefs.

Those deliberate messages are called “propaganda”.

Propaganda is any form of communication designed to spread or reinforce a particular message or idea. The term is most often associated with lies, but it’s really a value-neutral thing. Propaganda is a tool that can be used for good or for ill, and it is a very powerful tool at that. Nobody is immune to it, yourself included, even when you know it’s propaganda.

It’s also something that, in my lifetime, has been used far more effectively by the right than by the left (in the American political spectrum), which has been a source of frustration for me for at least a decade. It often seems as though the study and use of propaganda is seen by Democrats as dishonorable, and for a long time I saw that as part of the incompetence and fecklessness of the party’s leadership. These days I think the reality is that they’re fine using propaganda, or any other tool, it’s just that they didn’t want to use it to further progressive causes.

They’ll go all-in on insisting that every conversation about Israel begin with an almost ritualistic denunciation of Hamas and affirmation of Israel’s right to defend itself, ensuring that Palestinians are always framed as the aggressors. From there any suggestion that Israel might have done something wrong, or that the US should stop funding its war machine leads to a repeat of the opening ritual, and all of that rests on the preexisting assumptions about the meaning of self-defense, and about the appropriate use of violence.

They use propaganda when it comes to progressive causes too. Take universal healthcare. When Medicare for All has been brought up with people like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden, their response has been to talk about the cost and taxes, sometimes with a wistful “it’d be nice, but…” It sounds like they’re just avoiding the conversation, but what they’re actually doing is repeating the (false) notion that universal healthcare would be a huge financial burden on top of those already weighing down the American people. They could point out the obvious fact that most of the world gets better results for much lower prices, and that it’s actually far cheaper and more user-friendly to have a universal system, but instead they talk about obstacles that primarily exist in people’s minds because of how often they’re repeated.

And repetition is the core of propaganda. If your propaganda isn’t getting repeated and spread, then it fails as propaganda. For something that’s less part of the air we breath than how society views defensive violence, take the famous line from the OJ Simpson trial: “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit!”. It’s catchy. It’s easy to remember and to repeat, and it carries with it the message that the jury doesn’t have a choice in the matter. If the glove doesn’t fit, (none of the other evidence matters, therefor) you must acquit.

With the 2003 invasion of Iraq, even as the justifications shifted from one lie to another, there was one consistent justification that hinged on one truth, repeated constantly: Saddam Hussein was a really bad person. He was an oppressive dictator who had used chemical weapons! Are you seriously defending him?

Never mind that the US routinely partners with sadistic, brutal dictators. Never mind that the US used to work with Hussein, and was actively helping him as he used those chemical weapons.

The fact that all of this has been more effectively used by the right has been a subject of some discussion, but I have a new (to me, at least) perspective on it.

The general explanation is that reality is complex and sometimes difficult to understand or explain, and the right is just far more willing to lie. This means two things. The first is that those of us who care about the truth are faced with the much more difficult task of debunking the lies. The second is that, having shed the need to be truthful or accurate, the right is free to focus all of their energy on crafting material that are easy to understand, remember, and repeat. These are both true, and it is also true that the right effectively has infinite money with which to pay people to come up with propaganda to further their goals. When you are representing established wealth, power, and culture, you’re playing propaganda on easy mode.

There is, however, another factor, and that is capacity for endless repetition.

I’ve seen a couple versions of a message floating around (good propaganda, it seems), addressing the age-old conservative complaint that academia is full of liberals and leftists. There are absolutely conservatives in academia, even in the social sciences, but it’s true that they’re in the minority. Some of that is because studying the world and being exposed to a diversity of thoughts and opinions tends to pull people to the left, but some of it is simply that conservatives generally aren’t drawn to academia. They may have curiosity about cultural critique, or ecology, or historical analysis, but they don’t generally have enough to want to make a career studying it. As others have pointed out, complaining about the fact that there aren’t as many conservative humanities professors is a bit like complaining about the fact that the owners of car dealerships are more likely to be on the right than the left. It’s not that there’s some plot to keep people on the left out of the industry, it’s that people on the left don’t usually want to do that.

In general, in addition to their difficulty with the truth, people on the right seem to be far more willing to do and say the same thing, over and over and over again, sometimes for their entire lives.

I’ve been struggling to write for the blog the past couple weeks, because I can’t think of anything to say I haven’t already said many times. The UN announced that it is no longer possible to keep the planet’s warming at or below 1.5°C, and I started writing about it, but I had this overwhelming feeling that I was just writing because I felt pressure to post something, and that seemed like a good subject. I didn’t really have much to say about it. I think they should have made that call years ago, accounting for climate science plus our political and economic systems. I think they’re downplaying the state of things, as they have done for longer than I’ve been alive, and they should treat this as the biggest crisis in our species’ history, because it is. We need to be doing more, and at the individual level, that means solidarity, and organizing with others so that we can wield our collective power.

And frankly, it’s boring to keep finding slightly different ways to say that, especially when it’s to roughly the same audience. I lack Cato the Elder’s tenacity, it seems, and when it comes to spreading any message, that’s a problem.

The upside is that we tend to have much better art on the left, partly for the same reason, and good art can also sometimes be good propaganda, especially if the ideas you want to spread are things like justice, hope, introspection, empathy, and equality.

Anyway, the answer to all of this is to organize, build solidarity, build community, and do art. We have the power to change the world, but only if we can get enough of us working together.