Alex Jones is in the midst of a lawsuit regarding his promoting the conspiracy theory that Sandy Hook was a hoax, perpetrated by the parents of dead children. One of his attorneys (Mark Enoch) has tried to argue that Jones was engaged in “rhetorical hyperbole:” According to the LA Times,
“Maybe it’s fringe speech. Maybe it’s dangerous speech,” Enoch said after playing portions of an Infowars episode. “But it’s not defamation. That is rhetorical hyperbole at its core.”
Because it’s rhetorical hyperbole, Enoch is arguing, Jones can’t be held responsible for the actual damage his actual words did, including that members of Jones’ audience have relentlessly harassed and targeted people whose children were murdered by someone who should never have had access to a gun.
This attempt at deflecting responsibility–Jones isn’t responsible for the consequences of what he said because he was just engaged in rhetoric–is common in demagoguery. Jennifer Mercieca has noted that Donald Trump regularly relies on the rhetorical device “paralipsis”: a rhetorical “device that enables him to publicly say things that he can later disavow – without ever having to take responsibility for his words.”
That specific rhetorical figure is part of a larger strategy that people engaged in demagoguery almost always use, which is that they make claims in the public sphere for which they refuse to be accountable. It’s a kind of rhetorical “plausible deniability,” which is when someone in power wants to order something to happen while maintaining the cowardly escape hatch of being able to deny they actually wanted it. If things go wrong, or the act gets exposed and condemned, the person who made the command can say that I didn’t really mean that. One of the most famous instances (which James Comey alluded to in his testimony) is when King Henry II wanted Thomas Becket killed, but didn’t want to say so explicitly. So, instead of saying, “Go kill him,” he is supposed to have said, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Several of Henry’s courtiers understood what he meant, and did what they knew he wanted. His later attempt to claim that isn’t what he meant didn’t work, and he had to do penance.
Most people don’t do penance for it, as all of us know who have ever had a bad boss, cowardly co-workers or relatives who wanted to say things for which they wouldn’t be held accountable. They either engage in indirection, as did Henry, or they refuse to put things in writing, make sure there are no third parties on phone calls or at meetings, use dog whistles. Or, and this is really the most pathetic claim, they say it was “just rhetoric” or “I was just making a joke.” That is, they are claiming they didn’t literally mean what they literally said. They’re saying they meant to be understood figuratively, except they did really mean what they said. They just don’t want to be held accountable for it.
Imagine that I hit your car. And you said, “Hey, you hit my car,” and I said, “I was just kidding,” or “It was just driving hyperbole.” You’d say, correctly, that, regardless of my intentions, I hit your car, and I’m responsible for the damage.
Jones is trying to argue that, although his rhetoric totaled peoples’ cars, he isn’t responsible because he was engaged in rhetorical hyperbole. But he wasn’t. Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration meant to show that the rhetor is so committed to a position (or the in-group) that s/he is willing to say irrational things. It’s only rhetorical exaggeration if the rhetor believes that the audience is recognizing it as such. The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times (334) defines it as:
“A figurative device using self-conscious exaggeration to emphasize feelings and intensify rhetorical effect.” So, if hyperbole is a rhetorical figure, it’s self-conscious and deliberate exaggeration. If what Jones was saying about Sandy Hook was self-conscious exaggeration, and he didn’t mean it literally, then, once he realized that people were taking it literally, he would have made it clear that he was speaking figuratively. But he didn’t. So, either he did really mean it, or he was rhetorically reckless. It’s like giving someone a gun and telling them to use it for target shooting, but not taking it away (although you could) once you know they’re using it for threatening people.
Jones was trying to dodge responsibility for the harassment, but his attorney’s argument that it was rhetorical hyperbole makes him consciously responsible.
John Mulaney, in an episode of The Sack Lunch Bunch, answers a kid’s question about the show, about whether it’s sincere or ironic. He says something along the lines of, “If people love it, then it’s sincere; if people hate it, then it’s ironic.”
Except for a brief period in college when I was living places that wouldn’t allow cats, I have had cats my whole life. I love them. And anyone who lives with cats knows their enviable ability to recover quickly from disgrace. No matter what they’ve done—missed a jump, fallen off a table, gotten entangled in blinds—they immediately adjust themselves, look you straight in the eye, and very clearly say, “I meant to do that.” Mulaney is advocating the cat strategy for handling failure—refuse to admit it was failure, and just claim you meant it all along.
I think it’s hilarious when cats do it, but really sad when humans try to make the same move. Humans do it through claiming they were just joking or teasing or triggering the libs, but they weren’t. They were only joking when they realized they were hopelessly entangled in the blinds and look like fools.
In a culture of demagoguery, when large numbers of voters have abandoned thinking like citizens and have just become fanatically attached to doing harm to “the other side,” then a political figure who wants to succeed needs to out-fanaticize every other candidate. So, one candidate says, “We’ll hold firm on this,” and another says, “We’ll secede over this!” Perhaps that advocating secession was just intended as hyperbole, but if all the political figures of that group make the same claim, it’s no longer hyperbole. It’s a policy on the table. And then all the political figures are hopelessly entangled in the blinds. The responsible thing to do would be to try to walk it back. The cat approach to politics is to pretend you really meant it all along.
I’m completely willing to believe that Alex Jones promoted a narrative about the Sandy Hook shooting he didn’t believe, but that doesn’t make it rhetorical hyperbole. That makes it lying. He was willing to endanger the families of children killed at Sandy Hook because promoting a lie even he didn’t believe would profit him. It wasn’t rhetorical hyperbole; it was the nastiest version of Machiavellian careerism. He is claiming rhetorical hyperbole because he was just brave enough to put forward a narrative he liked, but not brave enough to own that he had put forward that narrative.
He’s a rhetorical coward.
I spend too much time crawling around dark corners of the internet arguing with assholes or watching them argue, and this is one strategy of trolls. They make claims they really mean, like the cat deciding to take on the blinds, and only claim it was all deliberate when they are thoroughly entangled and looking like idiots for what they said. A lot of trolls who suddenly claim they were just triggering the libs are just cats pretending they meant to get caught in the blinds. These people are argumentative cowards. They aren’t argumentatively brave enough to do the hard work of rationally supporting their arguments (which is why, if they really lose, they threaten violence—an admission that their position is unarguable). If you can’t make a real argument, you don’t have real arguments to make.
This is why I would not actually want any of my cats to be in a leadership position, even the one named Winston Churchill. They’re all about their dignity, and not about policy. Besides, all cats are anarchists.
There are other people who make claims from which they later walk back (sort of), but it isn’t the “Shit, this attacking the blinds thing was a bad choice.” These are people who use hyperbole or humor to test the waters.
People who are testing the waters say, “Segregation now! Segregation Forever!” or “I’ll go to Canada if this person is elected!” or “We’ll bomb them!” They want that policy, but they also want plausible deniability if it turns out that policy is unpopular.
These people are a different kind of coward. Unlike the cat who attacks the blinds and then is not willing to admit they made a bad decision, they’re deliberately cowardly about their own arguments. The cat is brave until things go wrong, and then a coward about its dignity. These people are cowards from the beginning. They know that they want to advocate a policy they can’t defend, so they make that argument in a way that maintains plausible deniability. They present a policy they want to support, all the while intending to disavow their advocacy of that policy if the reaction is too critical (something that happens all over the political spectrum).
And, if you ask me, that’s one thing that Alex Jones and Donald Trump have in common. Jones advocates conspiracy theories about a lot of things, perhaps something like anyone who disagrees with him, or any event that conflicts with his scapegoating narratives about who is good and who is bad. Trump dabbles in calling for violence against his critics, going for a third term, making the government openly single-party, inciting civil war. Neither is engaged in rhetorical hyperbole. I think we should consider that both have been testing the waters for just how far their base will go.
But, also, this means that those of us who engage with trolls should point them out for who they are—people who aren’t willing to argue. If they had a good argument, they would make it. If they can’t make a good argument, it’s because they don’t have one.