Prof. William Jacobson: ‘Silence Is Violence’ Is Totalitarian, ‘Just Like USSR’

“Silence is violence” is a totalitarian slogan demanding compliance and reminiscent of political coercion within the former Soviet Union, said William Jacobson, professor of law at Cornell University and founder of Legal Insurrection. He offered his remarks on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak.

Jacobson is being targeted by leftists — both students and professors — following his examination of the false “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative pushed by the left in relation to the death of Michael Brown. He described a coordinated campaign involving faculty and students to terminate his professorship due to his criticism of left-wing axioms, highlighting two recent columns of his, titled “Reminder: “Hands up, don’t shoot” is a fabricated narrative from the Michael Brown case” and “The Bloodletting and Wilding Is Part of An Agenda To Tear Down The Country.”

The “silence is violence” motto goes beyond conventional left-wing intimidation into silence, observed Jacobson, as it pushes the frontier of “political correctness” into demanding expressions of support for leftist campaigns and stories.

Jacobson said, “My inbox has been flooded with hundreds [of emails] ever since I went public and got a little publicity,” said Jacobson. “Hundreds of people were saying, ‘I’m scared to death about speaking out at work,’ and it’s even worse than that.”

Jacobson continued, “This is different than political correctness because one of the mottos of the current push is ‘silence is violence.’ It used to be that if you are in a campus or in a workplace, you just did your work, did your studying, kept your head down, [and] tried to stay out of trouble. That was okay. That’s not okay, anymore. It will be insisted that you participate in this, just like in the Soviet Union and in communist countries. If you worked in a factory, you had to go to the rally to support the leadership, and your failure to participate was considered a crime against the regime.”

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Jacobson warned, “It’s not even just that people are criticized for speaking out. Now they’re criticized for keeping their mouths shut, and this is really different. This is really totalitarian. This is not just another campus work or societal political correctness push. This is very different.”

“The people who founded [Black Lives Matter] are basically Marxists and extreme radical leftists whose goal is to tear down our society,” noted Jacobson.

Pollak observed that “anti-Americanism” is at the “core” of the Black Lives Matter organization.

Breitbart News Sunday broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern.