On being silent
“Its silence stems only half from the triumph of its opponent, and half from the boredom and indifference which tend to result from the continual awakening of expectations through unfulfilled promises”
Hegel, Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit
[Green Muse, Albert Maignan, 1895]
From the very beginning, it was quite puzzling (if not disconcerting) to observe a barrage of online indignation against those ‘who are being silent’ towards the ongoing catastrophe.
To begin with, it was always rather unclear who exactly the subject of that ‘criticism’ was, as most accusations were all too often abstract. They came from the online void and were equally directed to the online void. An eerie feeling that it had been somehow agreed that being online is the de facto public space pervaded. Online: the terrain where all is measured, judged and decided and, therefore, one’s absence from it (even better: one’s reluctance or refusal to engage in its algorithmic rituals) a direct indication of complicity with the horror.
It soon became hard to ignore that there is something about this accusation of silence that fits all-too-well into our digitally-mediated contemporary predicament. Not only does it demand constancy, repetition and automated responses (resulting in an inevitable exhaustion that clumsily hides itself behind phrases such as “there are no more words”; surely there must be), but it also presupposes that one does not really exist outside the online world. The prevailing assumption that one’s online ‘silence’ also meant they are quiet in their everyday lives (at school, in the workplace, in the streets) was initially entirely incomprehensible. Unless, of course, one knew these people personally - an afterthought that in fact rendered the accusation worse. Why not confront them at that level? Opting for an online castigation of someone you know only reinforces the same logic of prioritising online (in)activity. Because, let’s face it: manifesting your moral indignation online means nothing. It only acquires meaning and consequence when it is nothing but an echo of some actual activity taking place. Curiously, people were not criticised for failing to organise a demo, a sit-down, an occupation or a blockade. They are being reprimanded for being ‘silent’.
Performativity has acquired many meanings but here it can be used literally: such a framework does a lot of work for the very subject doing the criticism. Their focus serves, performatively, in clearing themselves against similar accusations. Since attacking others for being silent surely means you are not, being constantly online is circularly justified. That one can easily imagine incessantly online characters who have never set foot in any collective endeavour has slipped in the background.
Concomitantly but equally unobserved, an expected uniformity of content crept in at a discursive level, capable of moulding wider perspectives. If moral indignation is reserved for those who are being silent, those who aren’t must be allies. We are therefore force-fed spasmodic waves of admiration towards various celebrities (whose opinions should, ideally, be irrelevant) for “using their platform”; we are meant to acquiesce to a ceaseless online feed of the most horrifying footage of human suffering, a type of ‘awareness raising’ that seems phenomenally oblivious to the normalisation of horror to which it contributes; to refrain from any objection towards those who equate opposition to the horror with support for other horrors. Towards such things, we are being told, one should remain silent.
That such levelling works against building collective strength is somehow missed. And yet all of this is nothing but a direct consequence of the absence of collective strength. It is hard to miss that the enthusiasm that accompanied the bravery of initial mass actions has slowly given way to a desperation over our powerlessness to halt the continuation of the horror. Yet, instead of this frustration leading to a critical self-reflection towards our inadequacies, one observes a doubling-down on the very means that epitomise our ineffectiveness.
Online exchanges have become more hostile, accusations of complicity abound, introspective gate-keeping through exclusion proliferates. As Sennett noted in the Fall of Public Man,
[…] this process of fraternity by exclusion of ‘outsiders’ never ends, since a collective image of ‘us’ never solidifies. Fragmentation and internal division is the very logic of this fraternity, as the units of people who really belong get smaller and smaller. It is a version of fraternity which leads to fratricide.
Set in the context of the atomising and alienating structure of the social media void, it resembles an attempt to solve a public problem (the absence of collective strength) while denying the existence of the public itself.
Can one stop a massacre? History offers some lessons, but they quickly fall short. Not only is modern warfare qualitatively and quantitatively different, but the underlying authoritarian shift which sustains the ongoing terror is articulated through a boastful indifference towards both public expressions of discontent and appeals to humanitarianism or international law. However dismal, this perspective is a reminder that our powerlessness to stop the horror there is a reverse image of our inability to fight here. It is not a call to remain online.