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Background information: On January 13th, 2017, there was a serious protest held
by students in University of California, Davis, which lead the cancellation of
speech of Milo Yiannopoulous on that day. David Greenwald, the founder and one
of the main editors of Davis Vanguard, posts his article, Sunday Commentary:
Shutting Down Those You Disagree With Is Not An Answer, to criticize the
behavior of protesting by UCD students.
First, I want to talk about how Greenwalds article meets its rhetorical situation.
In What Is Rhetoric? (1995), the authors point out that an article or a speech is
successful while it meets the rhetorical situation which involve three factors, the
audience, the exigence, and the constraint. In Greenwalds article, the audience of the
article is the people who care about the activity of Milo Yiannopoulous, and most of
them have negative thoughts about Yiannopoulous, and the exigence of the audience is
how to lessen hate speeches. Though the article does not reveal the agreement with
Milo Yiannopoulous, the urge that allowing Greenwalds speech is unacceptable to the
audience. It is more difficult to convince people who are in anger, so, considering about
this constraint, a conversational tone can help to smooth protesters anger caused by
Milo Yiannopoulous so that the audience is more willing to listen to what the article
says. For example, in his article he says, I do not like the ideas of the students
protesting his (Yiannopoulous) speech to be belittled. Greenwald shows that he
understands the action of the students in UC Davis before he starts to argue that he
disagrees with their protesting. Even though the author owns more knowledge and
experience in politics than most people do, he does not speak strictly and sharply from
a higher position. Using a gentle tone eliminates the gap between the audience and
Greenwald, an editor, which also allows the audience to read his article peacefully so
that Greenwald can convince his audience more easily and successfully, and strengthens
his belief of free speech.
Third, Greenwald gives very illustrative evidence to show that blocking Milo
Yiannopoulous speeches can only bring bad effects. Even the most reasonable and
logical argument will not be trustworthy without a proof, so showing a good evidence
is an important basic of rhetoric. Greenwald shows the fact that Twitter permanently
banned Yiannopoulous; however, Yiannopoulous more than 300,000 followers rallied
posts with the #FreeMilo hashtag. The fact shows that the action of blocking ones
voice eventually raises the loudness of that voice. It not only motivates an enormous
amount of followers to start spreading Yiannopoulous thoughts, but also allows this
campaign to be shown on televisions, radios, and newspaper. The evidence is
illustrative because this is the fact happened recently and closely to the people who
were cautious of Milo Yiannopoulous. Greenwald infers that UCD students should not
repeat the fault that was made by Twitter. This connects to the idea of the author that
Yiannopoulous is expecting protesters to make him more famous. Once there is the
cancellation of his speech, more news will report about this incident, and more people
will know about Yiannopoulous. This evidence is talking about what happened nearly
to the audience, which is impressive and reflexive for them. Therefore, this evidence
helps people to reconsider that if blocking ones voice is a correct solution dealing with
hate speech.
So, what does Greenwald show to us? He believes that to make the protesters stop,
he must convince them that blocking ones voice enlarges that persons thoughts. I
studied how the rhetoric of his article works out. David Greenwald considers the
rhetorical situation well, and provides citations and evidence according to that
rhetorical situation. Eventually, Greenwald achieves to show his points of view
successfully, and his ideas make the audience evoke a deeper thought free speech. I
agree with his idea that we need to embrace out right of free speech, and this means we
need to accept even the ideas we disagree with. Then how should we do to those
thoughts we do not agree with? According to Greenwald we should ignore, or discuss
and come up with ideas to counterattack, and then we can lessen the spread of hate
speech.
Reference:
Greenwald, David. Sunday Commentary: Shutting Down Those You Disagree With Is
www.davisvanguard.org/2016/12/sunday-commentary-shutting-disagree-not-