Words Are Violence’s First Step

The Free Speech Union’s latest blog insists that “words are not violence, but violence is.” On the surface, it sounds neat, even clever: speech is harmless, only actions matter. But scratch that veneer and you see the rot. It’s one of the most disingenuous lines anyone could write.

Because words don’t exist in a vacuum; they are the soil in which violence germinates.

The Pretence of Harmless Speech

The idea that words are somehow insulated from harm rests on a very convenient fiction. It allows people to say: “I’m just talking, I didn’t swing the fist.” But ask anyone who has lived through the lead-up to violence: it never begins with fists.

It begins with rhetoric.

With repetition.

With stories that paint people as a threat, a disease, a danger to “the children” or “the nation.” It begins with slogans that strip individuals of their dignity and reduce their lives to a caricature. It begins with memes that dehumanise. It begins with the constant drip of “just words.”

And then, slowly, those words move from the margins into the mainstream, until violence seems not only acceptable but inevitable.

How Speech Creates Conditions

Words shape beliefs. Beliefs shape actions.

Every atrocity in history has its speeches, its pamphlets, its posters, its talk-radio hosts. Before there are camps or pogroms, there are columns, sermons, and jokes. Hate speech doesn’t immediately draw blood. What it does is something more insidious: it lowers the cost of violence. It creates a moral permission slip.

When someone is repeatedly told that a neighbour is a parasite, a criminal, a pervert, or a danger to children, the threshold for attacking them shrinks. Suddenly, the violent act looks like self-defence. Suddenly, a beating is framed as protection.

This is how speech works in the real world. It builds the scaffolding for violence long before anyone climbs it.

Why “Words Are Not Violence” Is Dangerous

So when the Free Speech Union says “words are not violence,” they’re not defending free speech. They’re stripping away responsibility. They’re handing every would-be demagogue a blank cheque: say what you like, stir up as much hatred as you want, and wash your hands when someone finally takes the bait.

That’s not free speech. That’s a licence to incite.

And it’s cowardly. Because deep down, everyone knows that words matter. They know that slurs wound, that threats terrify, that campaigns of dehumanisation corrode the fabric of community. To deny that is to lie in the service of power.

A More Honest Debate

If we were serious about defending free expression, we’d start from a place of honesty: words are powerful. They can build or destroy. They can challenge injustice or whip up mobs. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make us freer. It just leaves us defenceless.

This doesn’t mean banning every offensive phrase. It means recognising that speech has consequences, and that societies must balance rights with responsibilities. That’s the real debate. But the Free Speech Union wants to skip past it. They want to pretend that language is inert, like pebbles thrown into the void.

It isn’t. It’s kindling. And kindling catches fire.

Final Word

So no, words are not literally a fist. But they are the spark, the accelerant, the script for the fist. To deny that is to deny the testimony of history, the reality of politics, and the lived experience of anyone who has been targeted.

The line “words are not violence” is not a defence of liberty. It is an abdication of responsibility. And the sooner we call it what it is — disingenuous, dangerous nonsense — the sooner we can have an honest conversation about the world we actually live in, where words kill long before weapons do.