Sympathy for the devil: Amala Ekpunobi and the free speech dilemma

| Staff Writer

For better or, frankly, for worse, our political discourse is like a field of weeds: the same debates and controversies bloom and recede with every season, and new fads take root or are outcompeted by the impenetrable thicket of new debates as we hack and slash our way through tired talking points. Such a crowded ecosystem leaves little opportunity for an issue to remain in the public eye for long before it is supplanted by another species of controversy, so it is noteworthy when one does survive. In particular, I have always been interested in that perennial flytrap of writers, “concerned intellectuals,” and pundits: the campus free-speech debate.

Recent events have once again brought this issue into sharp relief. Amala Ekpunobi’s arrival on campus last fall stirred the expected fights over “civil discourse” that so recently filled the pages of this newspaper. Then, in late February, the Division of Student Affairs announced the creation of a course called “Dialogue Across Difference” that is dedicated to fostering “open dialogue.” The donor funding the new course extolled the virtues of campus free speech and lamented that “The concept of ‘cancelling’ someone because of their opinions and viewpoints is anathema to the fundamental purposes of higher education and human advancement.” It is yet another clash between the ideals of the free marketplace of ideas and the enforcement of safe spaces.

Basically, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.

On the face of it, Ekpunobi appears to be yet another in a long line of conservative influencers spouting talking points — talking points which others have rightfully criticized as blatantly incorrect. But if Ekpunobi is now an adherent of conservative talking points, it is only because she was once an adherent of leftist talking points. As Ekpunobi tells it, she followed in the footsteps of her activist mother, joining her mother’s group as an organizer. Spending so much time around fellow left-wing advocates, however, exposed her to what she describes as rampant, casual anti-white racism. The event pushed her to think more critically about the positions she inherited from her mother and eventually turned her into an acolyte of Thomas Sowell, a defender of the free market, an opponent of wokeness, a veritable Saint Paul — in other words, a “free thinker.”

From this perspective, we might easily conclude that this is an example of triumph over leftist indoctrination. But how, exactly, was Ekpunobi indoctrinated in the first place? Presumably, she was not threatened by her parents or peers — simply put, she just had never given the ideas much thought. We are left, then, with the oxymoronic possibility that her former earnest belief in left-leaning values did not imply genuine contemplation — that an idea can make others believe it even if they have not really thought about it. As benign as this concept seems, it holds serious consequences for our endless debate about free speech. Perhaps Ekpunobi would dismiss it as another example of leftist indoctrination. I prefer the term coined by former Vice writer and commentator Sam Kriss: this is an example of a “demon.”

Kriss begins his review of Dostoevsky’s “Demons” with, well, a history of demons. Not the traditional Christian demon, a figure of winged, fiery fury, but rather the demon of the Torah. In the Jewish tradition, these demons are not terrifying monsters, but a silent, invasive species of the mind that “[changes] the way you act, or the way you look, or the way you speak. A demon possesses you: it speaks its own words out of your mouth.”

Dostoevsky’s book tells the story of a murder plot by a group of Marxist revolutionaries scheming during the twilight of the Russian Empire. Dostoevsky was a staunch conservative and no doubt would have denounced the socialists as demons had they really existed. But Kriss suggests a far subtler demonology. Each revolutionary, Kriss points out, declares their loyal commitment to the revolution in flowery, grandiose manifestos and monologues, and yet each and every one is revealed to privately contradict socialist thought. For example, Varvara, one of the plot’s supporters, proclaims that only “inveterate old men” ignore the popularity of socialist ideas. Varvara, ironically, is herself a wealthy landowner, the exact enemy of the socialist cause.

Is it accurate to call them pretenders and hypocrites? In some sense, yes. And yet, these people really do slay a man for the sake of the undying revolution. And while much of their thought reflects no genuine socialist ideology, it does, at the very least, reflect their own genuine ideology, even if, like Varvara, they cobble it together from external sources. Kriss expresses this contradiction best: “‘Demons’ isn’t the nightmare of vicious ideologues taking over the world. It depicts a far subtler horror: an ideology that is everywhere, but that nobody really believes.”

Dostoevsky’s horrors, as subtle as they may be, are not far removed from us. In 2017, Kriss, known as an outspoken feminist on Twitter, admitted to allegations of sexual harassment. Kriss was a committed Marxist himself, had surrounded himself with social justice advocates, and had more than proven his commitment to feminist causes. And yet here he was, felled in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Are we to pronounce Kriss nothing short of a liar? Or do we see in his biting critiques of anti-feminism the shadow of a demon that manufactures the illusions of true belief even in the face of hypocrisy?

Who can really say? A demon possesses you. It speaks its own words out of your mouth, of an ideology that is everywhere, but that you don’t really believe.

Despite the sheer magnitude of their political differences, Kriss’ example provides an insight into Ekpunobi herself. Because if Dostoevsky’s “Demons” is a story of succumbing to political demons, then Ekpunobi’s story is one of resistance. In her YouTube video “Amala Ekpunobi REACTS To Her 2018 Speech As A LEFTIST Activist,” Ekpunobi watches her younger self delivering a speech at the March for Our Lives protest in Orlando in response to the shooting at Stoneman Douglas — along the way, laughing at the younger Ekpunobi’s misguided zeal.

Yet, I wonder: when Ekpunobi looks into her younger eyes, does she see a young woman who simply is too foolish to see the truth? Ekpunobi is many things, but she is not foolish. No — when she looks into those eyes, she sees a demon of leftist illusions. In that sense, she was once no different from Dostoevsky’s gullible socialists except in the fact that, for all her cliche conservative bluster, she eventually recognized the phenomenon just as clearly as Kriss does. She just has different words for it. What Kriss calls a demon, Ekpunobi labels woke leftism. Where Kriss needs an exorcism, Ekpunobi embraces free thought.

And yet, horrifyingly, this so-called free thought looks exactly like a demon. Ekpunobi says that it was the racism of her fellow leftists that convinced her to join the right. But it begs the obvious question: why does Ekpunobi believe that “anti-white racism” implies deregulation, implies anti-trans attitudes, and implies anti-feminism? Isn’t it far more likely that those are simply opinions she has adopted from her network of conservative allies?

Like Kriss, a demon has possessed her. It speaks its own words out of her mouth, of an ideology that is everywhere around her. This is, ultimately, the tragedy of Amala Ekpunobi. She has staked her career, her life’s work, and her own childhood on one concept: that the exposure of our political demons will restore truth and reason to our political discourse. Yet, to commit to this idea is merely to trade one demon for another.

We might take solace in the fact that Ekpunobi is only one pundit of many. But our investigation into demonology holds larger conclusions about the free-speech debate because it explains why the tired dichotomy between unrestricted speech and safe spaces has failed to create meaningful progress. To the free speech absolutists: your dream to turn every space into a public forum will not produce the high-minded Socratic dialogues you think it will. It will empower people like Ekpunobi, whose ardent convictions spring from the demons of our nature. And to the safe-space advocates: the hope that advocacy, education, and regulation can inculcate shared values of tolerance will not produce the allies you think it will. It will empower people like Kriss whose allyship is as earnest as it is flimsy.

Demons possess us. They speak their own words out of our mouths, of ideologies that are everywhere, regardless of what we believe.

Bluntly, there is no good way to resist a demon but to ruthlessly examine what we believe and why we believe it, lest we uncritically accept ideas that are not ours. Such a process would be long and arduous. It would involve careful and sensitive discussions, admissions of ignorance, and the willingness to accommodate opinions that clash with our perspectives and even attack our very ways of being. Such a process would also inevitably open us to new vectors of conflict and harm, particularly to those whose very rights are regularly called into question. It would force us to acknowledge the difficult truth that our disagreements, whether they are the work of demons or not, strike at our very conception of what it means to be good, to live well, and to serve each other.

But acknowledging the fraught reality of politics can also open us to the possibility of new, healthier discourses. What if we stopped advertising debates like boxing matches and conversations as spectacles? What if, instead of sloganeering, we collectively fostered a culture of thoughtful conversations? What if we equally valued a commitment to facts and to listening to marginalized voices? What if we taught the skills necessary to introspect on our own biases and values? What if we did everything in our power to expose our demons to the light?

Yes, WashU’s new course might just be the beginning of a culture that values meaningful, careful discourse, but it is still just the start. We must commit to building this future. Otherwise, we once again leave the questions of rights and politics to our demons. One day, if we are not careful, we might find ourselves possessed, speaking words out of our own mouths of an ideology that is everywhere, but that we never understood.

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