This commentary is by Floyd Nease of Jericho, a former Democratic majority leader in the Vermont House who passes his retirement consulting, tying flies and, on occasion, actually fishing.
As enlightened 21st-century Americans, we look back at our ancestors’ use of stocks and pillories with bemusement. What kind of people thought justice could be served by locking citizens into pillories on the town green so their neighbors and fellow citizens could hurl insults, rotten vegetables, feces and rocks at their exposed heads?
Nonetheless, stocks, which held the feet in place, and pillories, which held the head and hands, were used in Europe and America from medieval times until 1905, when Delaware was the last state to outlaw the practice.
To our enlightened minds, stocks and pillories have gone the way of the Salem witch trials. which similarly punished people for real, perceived or merely rumored transgressions. In Salem, women were killed by their neighbors and fellow citizens through a process that included public humiliation and shaming, followed by “dunking” and/or burning at the stake.
According to the Societal History of Crime and Punishment in America, “historians have speculated as to why the witch hunts occurred and why certain people were singled out. These proposed reasons have included personal vendettas, fear of strong women, and economic competition. Regardless, the Salem Witch Trials are a memorial and a warning to what hysteria, religious intolerance, and ignorance can cause in the criminal justice system.”
In what we can agree was an unenlightened and ignorant time, people didn’t need to be guilty to be punished. Facts were not necessary. All that was needed to humiliate or even to kill your neighbor was a nasty falsehood and an equally nasty mob to believe it.
It would be nice to think that we now live in a different time, when the law requires the presumption of innocence, when justice requires due process, when facts matter. But we don’t.
These days, we have FaceBook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and all manner of social media replacing the public square, serving as virtual stocks and pillories.
These days, the mob is virtual and can be anonymous. These days, the insults, rotten vegetables, feces and rocks are virtual. These days, instead of traveling at the speed of a human throw, they travel at the speed of light.
We like to think things have changed since those unenlightened times. Yet every day we are reminded they have not. Social media reminds us minute to minute that what motivates the mob remains the same. The hysteria, intolerance, personal vendettas, fear of strong women and economic competition remain the same, amplified by political figures and talking heads who promote ignorance, lies, white supremacy and all manner of intolerance. The results are the same.
The difference is that no longer does someone have to lock his or her neighbor in physical stocks, pick up physical stones and physically throw them in the physical company of actual neighbors. No longer do you need to feel the rocks or smell the rotten vegetables or hear the thumps as they find their target or the groans as the trapped victims are struck.
As they are struck, the victims of cyberbullying and cyber slander are even more defenseless. There is no due process, no way to defend or refute that won’t simply make it worse.
These days, all you need is a keyboard and an internet connection. You can be anywhere on the planet and join the mob virtually and anonymously. From the comfort of your easy chair, you can cause pain and suffering without having to endure the discomfort of hearing their pain or experiencing their suffering. In fact, you can even encourage them to hurt themselves and feel powerful when they do.
From this citizen’s point of view, our postmodern virtual world is actually far worse than the primitive world of the Puritans. It is worse because layered in among the technological changes are the changes in how our First Amendment right to “free speech” is viewed. The government has an interest in restricting speech that encourages illegal action or intentionally spreads false information that harms someone’s reputation. At least two Supreme Court precedents establish this.
Yet internet trolls and cyberbullies are no respecters of any restrictions whatsoever. There is no holding them accountable, as technologically enabled anonymity has broken the chain of accountability.
And now, individuals with billions of dollars can decide that any speech, no matter how harmful or wrong, is “free speech” and can fund and promote it without fear of being held to account.
While stocks and pillories were still in use until the early 20th century, we outlawed them for what now seem like obvious reasons. It’s time to outlaw the virtual version. It is at least as inhumane as the physical kind. The pain it causes is as real as stone hitting bone.
It’s time to make it explicitly illegal to troll someone on the internet in ways that cause or encourage harm or illegal behavior. Current laws are not enough, as their impotence in the onslaught is obvious and borne out every day. It’s time to recognize that the outlawed barbarity of physical stocks and pillories is mirrored — and amplified — in cyberspace and pass legislation to outlaw it.
