Spoken words

by Will Walker, Hamilton

​​This letter to the editor is, in part, a riposte to Jerry Esmay’s “Speak Out,” which was published in the Bitterroot Star on December 6th, and was so astonishingly repulsive that I really could not help myself from writing a response – but it isn’t just that. This isn’t just a response to “Speak Out.” Such a letter would be incomplete. 

No, more so than that, this is speaking to you, the reader. The truth is that when vitriol like this crops up in our community, most of the work involved in addressing it is not simply debunking its claims and reproaching its author. We have to ask why it appeared here, and what we can- or should- do to prevent more like it from following.

Jerry Esmay begins his letter by quoting Martin Niemoller’s famous poem, “First they came,” perhaps the most renowned piece of prose ever written about the Holocaust. He then goes on to claim that the White Race (a direct quote), conservatives, Christians, and “believers in law and order” are suffering persecution in America just as the Jews did in Nazi Germany during World War II. He says that our country and society is under siege by nefarious forces seeking to destroy our way of life, and that now is the time to SPEAK OUT!

This is disgusting. Jerry has shown here that he has far more in common with the Nazis then he ever did with the Jews, and his lack of introspection is both comical and appalling. This is the exact same rhetoric that the Nazi party used to perpetrate the Holocaust in the first place. I hope that he is ready to stand by his words, because no person should ever willingly associate with him again after this naked display of hatred.

People like Jerry hide behind “Free Speech” when it is rightfully pointed out that what they espouse is repellent and wrong. To a certain point, they are not strictly incorrect; they do have a right to say these things, and I do not think that they should be jailed or fined for anything short of an actual call to violence. However, “Free Speech” does not mean what they think it means, and I am sorry to say that many of you have been fooled by them.

The right to free speech means that a person cannot be legally persecuted for anything that they say, write, or show their support for, no matter how unpopular it is. It does not mean that they are immune to the social consequences of their speech. When people are, for example, fired because they said that a black politician ought to be lynched, or banned from a social platform because they said that gay people will all burn in hell, their free speech is not being violated; in fact, that is how it works! Just because you have something to say, does not compel people to listen to you. 

We all must come together to make it clear that this rot is not welcome in Ravalli County. That means not associating with the people who espouse it, nor giving them a platform to spread it around. Martin Niemoller was right; silence makes us complicit. Silence will always turn on us in the end.