op-ed 'Never Forget' rhetoric breeds ignorance

Author: Andrey Tolstoy

It is an old rhetorical trick to turn a debate of principle into a debate of detail, and vice versa. If successful, it drags the unwitting opponent into a battle he did not intend to fight, and which he is unlikely to win. In its magnanimous commentary on the defacing of a College Republicans poster, The Campus editorial board tries to do exactly that - but rest assured, EB, we have not lost our vigilance, and we will not be distracted by egalitarian polemics from the real issues at hand.

The debate is not, like the editorial board would have us believe, whether we endorse freedom of expression. The debate is whether we should condone the presence of dangerous, inflammatory material on our bulletin boards. In several European democracies, public display of Nazi symbology is illegal. In America, the likes of white supremacist Matthew Hale are tried in court for abuse of free speech to incite interracial violence.

There are tamer limits to freedom of expression, like yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre. Censorship of dangerous material is, therefore, a legitimate topic of debate, and the removal of such material does not necessarily constitute an infraction of freedom of expression.

The "Never Forget" poster strings together instances of America and Americans under attack by Muslim terrorists in different parts of the globe. The message it conveys is of an isolated America facing the menace of militant Islam. For a college that prides itself on a high percentage of international students, and of exemplary programs of international study, it is unbecoming of Middlebury to tolerate this kind of rubbish on its walls. Anyone with a sufficient knowledge of history could point to the dangerous errors embedded in the poster. The events illustrated on it - the Iranian hostage crisis, embassy bombings in Africa, September 11th, flag-burning, and others - are separated not only by time, but by motivation and political context. By weaving them into a unified chain - or, to be more precise, quilt - the College Republicans attempt to incite panic and muddle our understanding of the political challenges facing America, not to mention carelessly promoting racist - and, more importantly, false - generalizations about Arabs, Islam and their relationship to structures of international terrorism.

America is not alone, like the poster would have us believe. What about the bombings in Russia, England, Spain, Morocco, India and other places, that have occurred in the past eight years alone? It is called international terrorism because it affects the international community. Are the College Republicans deliberately ignoring the suffering of the "Coalition of the Willing" with whose support the Republican leadership took to fighting the "War on Terror?"

It is rhetoric of this kind that leads elderly women in airports to shudder at the sight of turbaned gentlemen. It is rhetoric of this kind that fails to counter growing anti-Americanism abroad. And it is this rhetoric that breeds the ignorant policy that loses America one geopolitical battle after another. Just as a child playing with a knife must be stripped of his dangerous toy before being explained its danger, the College Republicans' propaganda must be censored until they have learned to use historical imagery responsibly and constructively.

Andrey Tolstoy '10 is from St. Petersburg, Russia.