“Globalise the intifada.” Banning words no way to stop hate

The NSW Government’s plan to criminalize the phrase ‘globalising the intifada’ ignores obvious facts about how language works. Analysis from a professional linguist Nick Riemer.

Following the anti-Semitic massacre at Bondi Beach in December, the moral panic organized around the phrase ‘Globalize the Intifada’ has itself become global. These and other slogans are hate speech and incitement to violence, according to the terms of the currently ongoing parliamentary inquiry, which the government is picking up like fig leaves over its determination to criminalize Palestinian solidarity.

The phrase ‘Globalize the intifada’ was rarely used at the Sydney Palestine rallies.

This means it is unlikely to have played any causal role in the lead-up to Bondi.

This disturbing fact clearly will not shake the government’s determination to legislate against it. Nothing can come between the NSW premier and the Zionist mob: not even 70,000 dead Palestinians, and it’s absolutely real.

In a world where political power and the satisfaction of the Israeli lobby have become indistinguishable, it seems naive to declare that there is a fundamental error about the nature of language and meaning in the proposition that the ‘globalization of the intifada’ may inherently constitute hate speech or incitement. The discussion still needs to be had. I do this here as a Palestine solidarity activist currently facing vexing hate speech investigations and as an academic linguist working on issues of meaning and context.

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No ‘inherently’ hateful expression

The attempt to criminalize ‘globalizing the Intifada’ as inherently hateful or inherently sedition faces a major problem: no expression in any language has an inherently specific quality or a specific contextual impact. Nothing can be ‘inherently abhorrent’ or inherently threatening community security or ‘harmony’. The meaning of words is contextual.

The law generally recognizes the importance of context in determining hate speech or incitement. But appeal to context should not serve as a black box legitimizing any arbitrary interpretation of a statement to suit your political purpose;

If you are going to claim that a particular meaning emerges in a context, you need to provide an argument to show how this happens.

Doing this is the job of the branches of linguistics known as semantics and pragmatics. As is standard in these fields and also common sense, the meaning and impact of a statement on a particular situation is more than just the words used.

The meaning an expression has in actual use is a joint function of the meaning of the words in question and the situation in which they are uttered (who is speaking to whom, when, in what terms). In linguistics, this difference is captured by the contrast between ‘sentence meaning’ (the conventional literal meanings of the words used) and ‘utterance meaning’ (the contextual meaning of the utterance in a particular case of use).

What you see is not what you get

To correctly interpret the contextual meaning of any expression, including ‘globalizing the intifada’, it is important to recognize that sentence meaning and phrase meaning can easily differ.

When environmental protesters ‘used the slogan’kill coal‘ completely overrides the meaning of the literal sentence: coal is not a living entity that can be ‘killed’, so the phrase necessarily takes on the non-literal interpretation of ‘end coal mining’.

No one who hears this slogan would conclude that it incites anyone to violence. Such interactions between sentence and utterance meaning are not a special case; These are what make words meaningful in the first place.

They also have a very important consequence: Even if the ‘Intifada becomes global’ it could be It cannot be interpreted literally as an incitement to violence, which, as we will see, is not possible; This does not mean that the literal meaning of this word is contextually available. Each When used: as we just saw,

The literal meaning may be modified by contextual factors.

Feeling provoked yet?

It is useful to ask what it would take to define a phrase such as ‘globalizing the intifada’ as inherently incitement or hate speech. To achieve this success, it will be necessary to show that both the literal and sentence meaning necessarily constitute provocation, and that this meaning is never modified or overridden by the contextual (or ‘utterance’) meaning of the expression. Apparently this is impossible to do.

If ‘Globalize the Intifada’ is inherently hateful in its meaning, this means that it carries this quality whenever it is expressed. Otherwise, this meaning is not innate but context dependent. But if ‘globalizing the intifada’ is inherently provocative, then that should be the case with this sentence as well. If ‘globalizing the Intifada’ is inherently hateful, then what I write about it should be considered incitement to violence.

Frankly, this is ridiculous. You are not encouraged into anything when you read these words. And for obvious reasons, I use the phrase ‘globalization of the intifada’ to discuss its possible status as hate speech. I was analyzing, not provoking.

This point is so obvious that it is embarrassing to even mention it.

But this is essential and should be sufficient to refute the idea that ‘globalising the intifada’ could inherently constitute hate speech.

What a statement means is a contextual matter – a matter of who said it, when, to whom – and no accurate assessment of its meaning can be made without taking into account these parameters: precisely the parameters that Chris Minns and Susan Ley want to turn a deaf ear to.

‘Intifada’ in NSW

If the context for ‘globalizing the intifada’ is pro-Palestinian protests, then it might be a good idea to ask what these protests actually were like. Who attends and speaks to them? What do they want? What do they say? How do they behave? This would provide the best evidence regarding the general beliefs and intentions of the protesters and, consequently, the possible interpretations of their slogans.

As I documented before MWMAt Palestinian demonstrations in Sydney, slogans reading ‘intifada’ were used by the same demonstrators carrying humanitarian banners calling for peace, justice and equality. In this light

It is illogical to interpret the people using the ‘Intifada’ as wanting violence against anyone.

What about the real meaning of the Intifada? As everyone except the NSW state cabinet and their counterparts elsewhere understand only too well, ‘intifada’ means ‘uprising’ or ‘convulsion’. Like ‘insurgency’ itself, it is a fairly general term. It can refer to a wide variety of very different situations: participation in protests and marches, children throwing rocks at soldiers, armed uprisings, civil disobedience, non-violent direct action, etc.

The general principle of banning any word that could be interpreted as incitement would require banning a number of political slogans, including the slogan ‘Cancel Russia’ for Ukraine and the environmental slogan ‘Kill pollution, or it will kill you’.

None of these slogans could reasonably be seen as provocation. Interpreting the phrase ‘globalizing the intifada’ as hate speech is an approach that is equally distant and distant from everything that is on the protesters’ minds.

Antisemitism Act. Same shirt. Different stairs. Years of imprisonment.

What do the protesters mean?

Another way to determine the intended meaning of an expression is to ask people who use it what they mean by it.

As representatives of the Palestinian solidarity movement have repeatedly explained, calls for an ‘intifada’ in the West should be understood as follows:

It calls for political opposition in solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide.

Aspirations for peace, justice and equality for all in historical Palestine, regardless of ethnicity, religion or background, were regularly expressed by speakers at demonstrations.

They are always greeted with enthusiastic applause. While many Jewish participants chanted ‘Long Live the Intifada’, they were not calling for violence against themselves or other Jews; They call on society to support Palestinians in their fight against genocide.

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Demonstrations and terrorist attacks

It is important to take into account another aspect of the context of any slogan used at a demonstration: the fact that that slogan was used at exactly one demonstration. Demonstrations are non-violent political means of supporting particular points of view. People take part in demonstrations to ‘show’ others their priorities, in the hope that it will lead to political change. This means,

Demonstrations are the opposite of direct action and even terrorism.

If the protesters had intended ‘intifada’ to mean a violent uprising against the Jewish people here, would it really make sense to chant that slogan at rallies every week and then go home and sit on their hands? Frankly not. There is no evidence that the Bondi attackers participated in Palestinian protests.

The fact that the protesters’ activities are limited to protests and other forms of non-violent political action is clear evidence that they do not desire any – of course, disgusting – uprisings against the Jews.

It is noteworthy that the main criticisms of the Palestinian protests come from people who have never participated in the protests in principle and therefore have no direct experience of them. In this, Minns and other politicians once again absolved themselves of any responsibility to facts and any obligation to make policy about the real, actually existing world.

The disgraceful slurs used to justify Randa Abdel-Fattah’s expulsion from Adelaide Writers’ Week are the latest example of this. The fantasy principle holds the reins when it comes to Palestine and the Palestinians.

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The murders in Bondi in December were criminal atrocities. Governments owe it to victims and their families to objectively and accurately identify the factors responsible for them and not to get caught up in fly-by-night policies marked by bogus investigations.

Protesters against genocide should not be stigmatized and slandered because of prejudice, moral panic, or fabrications. Far from benefiting anyone, this brings us closer to the dark path of censorship and authoritarianism that the governments of Minns and Albania have already led us into with their Pavlovian restrictions on freedom of protest and expression.

via Port Arthur to Bondi via Oslo. History repeats itself, lessons are ignored and we take risks