A Distortion or ‘Our’ Default?

This paper considers Lynne Tirrell’s analysis of toxic speech using examples epitomizing speech that is misleading, outright false, and without compelling justification. It is toxic in polluting and eroding democratic functioning. However, I argue that Tirrell’s two epidemiological models (the common source model exemplified by poisons and the propagated transmission model that viruses exemplify) fail to make good sense of my examples, which are deeply insidious without being overtly invidious. The limitations of the epidemiological models suggest that toxicity is part of our default form of thinking and talking, rather than being an ‘outside’ pathology like a poison or a virus.