“Silence is violence.” It’s one of those trite sayings that became very popular on the left side of reality.
For instance, the new ethos that recently emerged among the “woke” presupposes that marginal citizens are being victimized by a racist society. Therefore, being opposed to racism is not enough. Those who do not verbally or “mostly ’peacefully’” attack those who are part of a racist society are complicit in that racist society itself.
For instance, in the logic of the left, the police are actively killing unarmed African-Americans. For them, it is not enough for us to oppose such “genocide.” We must be “allies.” And, allies must affirmatively work to defund the police.
In their view, to do less makes us “racist,” too. It is abetting the crime. “Silence is violence.”
One problem for the left is American society is not systemically racist. Police officers are not actively engaged in the wanton and systematic killing of African-Americans or any allegedly marginalized people. In legal terms, the argument “assumes facts not in evidence.” It is like the old question, “Do you still beat your wife?” Regardless of the answer, “yes” or “no,” the response is incriminating. That is because the question assumes the respondent is a wife-beater.
Likewise, the left assumes that our society is systemically racist. Such a society, if true, would be so malevolent that the failure to dismantle it would constitute complicity. “Silence would be violence.”
But what if the underlying facts were true? What if there were issues, maybe different issues, where evil was endemic. Would “silence be violence?”
Recently, CNN reported that a 12-year-old child died of a fentanyl overdose. He bought counterfeit oxycontin from his school mate. The fatal pill was laced with the deadly dust.
The CNN reporter did her job as expected. She showed a picture of a cute little boy with a perfect complexion as he might have looked at his Boy Scout Jamboree. The camera quickly switched to the boy’s mother as her tears filled the television screen. The anchor then joined the reporter in ‘feeling her pain.” The reporter and the anchor cried out for the overdosed middle school teens all over America. I wanted to cry too.
But the reporter and her anchor were silent with regard to the real origin of the youngster’s death. They failed to say that his deadly fentanyl likely came from our border with Mexico. She failed to explain that ever since President Biden opened President Trump’s border fence, in the first five months after Joe Biden took office, fentanyl deaths immediately rose by more than 1,000 per month. And the deaths kept rising as the border enforcement became increasingly abandoned. Yet CNN reported only a tragic death. As to its cause, they were silent.
Was CNN’s silence, violence?
Over the past year, about 100,000 Americans, mostly young people, many BIPOC and poor, were killed by fentanyl. More young people were killed by fentanyl than were killed by COVID. Yet worthless masks became omnipresent. Conversely, the Border Patrol was emasculated. Fentanyl increasingly poured in. The result was rising death. And, they’re still dying. Predictably, they will continue to die in direct proportion to the expansion of illegal immigration. Yet CNN is silent.
Indeed, their silence is violence.
Long ago I learned that the most important part of communication has nothing to do with “what you say.” The most important part of communication is “what you don’t say.”
For journalists, author Ronan Farrow coined the technique ‘catch and kill.” But when the news media treats an open border responsible for thousands of dead youngsters with no more circumspection than the gossip pioneered by Farrow’s description of The National Enquirer, then we must condemn such journalism. We must agree that in the case of CNN and other legacy media, “their silence is violence.”
Robert Levy lives in Moore County