Heather Higgins, chairwoman of the Independent Women’s Forum, suggested that the left’s current narrative of “unity” is coming across to the other side as being asked to “accept guilt” and “shut up.”
“There’s a lot of ‘we need to unify,’” Higgins told Jan Jekielek, host of The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders program on Jan. 20. “That’s the language now.”
But she said the unity they’re talking about is “‘you need to accept guilt for anything that we say that you need to accept guilt for,’ even if you’re not guilty; ‘you need to shut up, and you just need to go along with and comply with our point of view,’” Higgins pointed out. “Which is extremely unhealthy.”
“If you really want to unify the country, you have a level playing field in terms of the rules that apply,” Higgins continued. “And when it came to speech [it] was, you were judged by what you say and what you intended to say.”
But Higgins said that nowadays, the left judges people not by their words, but by a subjective interpretation of their words.
“Pretty much anything can be interpreted in a way where offense or incitement can be found if you just stretch it far enough,” Higgins suggested.
“And we’re starting to see that. And what that means is the loss of speech because if you can’t be understood for saying what you meant to say, then you really can’t talk at all.”
“He never said that. He wasn’t talking about drinking Clorox. You interpreted that, and you cut video to make it sound like he said that. He didn’t say that.”
“Unfortunately, you look at our social media, etc. It is replete with mind reading. So much of the toxicity that comes is from people who assume mal-motive. They assume … what you were thinking or what your intention was when they have no clue.” Higgins continued.
“It’s their own projections. But it has nothing to do with that reality.”
Higgins also talked about the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“What happened in the Capitol was appalling. The rioters behaved in hideous ways,” Higgins made it very clear. “And everyone has condemned that, as they should.”
But she pointed out that the concern is how rapidly the narrative changed.
Higgins explained that it started with Trump and what Trump said, and then when it was found that Trump hadn’t said anything incendiary, it became “well he should have known,” then it became “anyone who supported him was, in fact, an enabler of this.” Then “to people who have been silent and not critical of Trump were also enablers because of their silence.”
“And then we finally saw the analogies to conservatives as Nazi.”
“This has a purpose,” Higgins pointed out. “It is in order to do several things.”
Higgins explained it’s to make sure that nobody questions whether there might have been some issues with election transparency that need to be addressed. And also to extend blame to anyone on the right, try and discredit their ideas, and force compliance with the next agenda, “whatever that happens to be.”
“The rioters were some fringe group that does not represent the average Trump protester, and certainly not the average Trump supporter and Trump policy supporter,” Higgins pointed out.
When talking about the recent de-platforming of Trump and Parler by Big Tech companies, Higgins rebuked the idea that since they are private companies, “if you don’t like this platform, go create your own.”
“Well, they did,” Higgins said, referring to how Parler was created but was still de-platformed. “And the response was, we can’t have a platform that we don’t control and agree with. That’s too dangerous.”
Higgins said she’s not surprised to see it coming from Poland.
“If you’ve lived in a repressive society, where only permitted, allowed thoughts are tolerated, then you see this for what it is, whether the mechanism to get there is the same or different.”
Higgins went on to say that the Big Tech companies are cutting off the people “oxygen of liberty.”
“Part of what makes our country so remarkable is that we start with the idea that government is from the people and responsible to the people,” said Higgins.
“People can’t have you be responsive to them unless they’re free to say what they think. People can’t let you know that something’s wrong if they’re not allowed to point out what’s wrong.”
Higgins suggested the “best solution” is a neutral application of roles fairly to everyone and “relying on what was actually said, not the subjective interpretation” of what was said.
