There is a path to preventing violence that starts with a simple step.
What if people on the left stopped calling people on the right racists, fascists and extremists? What if people on the right stopped calling people on the left scum, communists and lunatics?
It doesn’t mean we don’t stand up for our values or hold each other accountable. It means we make our case with facts — not with labels that can dehumanize.
Years ago, in my role as Chairman of Special Olympics, I led a campaign to end the “R-word.”
A lot of people laughed at us for that. First because they thought it was cosmetic — that words don’t really matter. Second, they laughed because they thought no one would listen.
In fact, people came on board quickly when they learned that the word “retard” increases mistreatment and violence toward people with intellectual disabilities. Our campaign was a joyous success.
What’s the connection? Last week, conservative activist Charlie Kirk lost his life in a political assassination. He was a dynamic figure on the American political landscape. Many people felt inspired and elevated by things he said. Many felt dismissed and excluded. Our political culture, which encourages and rewards contempt, amplified these differences so that the person who took Kirk’s life couldn’t see his victim as a father married to a young mother with small children. According to the bullet engravings, he saw his target as a “fascist.” Once you put a dehumanizing label on someone, it can become not only OK to kill him, but also virtuous.
This is the danger of labels. They make us forget that it’s human beings we’re talking about. And this is becoming clear to people across the country. In a recent Reuters poll, 63% of respondents said that “the way Americans talk about political issues did ‘a lot’ to encourage violence.”
We need to turn things around. How we treat each other and talk about each other is the most urgent issue of our times.
In 2018, I founded an organization called UNITE to ease divisions in our country. We created The Dignity Index — an eight-point scale that measures how we treat each other when we disagree. Do we treat each other with dignity, which means I can see myself in you? Or do we treat each other with contempt, which means I see myself above you?
This choice determines whether we come together or break apart. Because it’s not our disagreements that cause our divisions and our violence; it’s treating each other with contempt when we disagree.
Contempt is spreading in our society because it’s a soothing response to emotional pain. It is a pain-reliever, a mood-enhancer, an energy booster. It makes us feel so good that we think it’s the answer. But when I use contempt, I soothe myself by hurting someone else — then that person soothes himself by hurting me. And it escalates — sometimes to violence.
Contempt is especially dangerous when it becomes a requirement for group belonging. If I want to belong to this group, I have to hate that group. Then people try to increase their stature in the group by showing more contempt for the other group. And it escalates — sometimes to violence.
When we see that contempt is the cause of our divisions and our violence, the remedy should be clear: more dignity and less contempt. But there is a big hurdle to overcoming contempt. In many cases, we can’t reduce our contempt because we don’t even know we have it. Contempt disguises itself as virtue — as defending innocent people against evil. That gives contempt a shiny exterior as it operates under cover. So, if we want to reduce our contempt, we have to expose it — to ourselves. It’s easy to see contempt in others. But it’s our own contempt we need to see — because we can’t reduce other people’s contempt; we can only reduce our own.
Many resist giving up contempt because they insist what they say is true. But even if what you say is factually true, if you say it with contempt for the other side, you increase divisions — and increase the chance of violence.
Many of us believe we need contempt to hold people accountable. But it’s easier to hold people accountable with dignity — making your case with facts. Contempt distracts us from the facts. It creates a desire for revenge. It makes enemies for our cause. It makes all of us more extreme.
The death of Charlie Kirk has triggered a reckoning in this country. It’s the most recent tragedy in a rising wave of political violence. How did we get here? How do we get out? The answer is difficult, but it is not complicated. Contempt got us here. Only dignity can get us out.