This chapter surveys and critiques the three major viewpoints on the ethics of communication, which I label Civility, Victory, and Open-mindedness. For Civility, activism must be governed by a set of rules for respectful engagement. For Victory, the ends justify the means, and for the sake of one’s political goals, one may need to mislead audiences, dismiss opponents, and use ad hominem attacks. For Open-mindedness, it is violent and immoral to impose one’s views on others. I argue that all three perspectives have serious shortcomings, but that each voice expresses a valuable concern. People want their advocacy to be moral, effective, and nonviolent, but often feel like it is impossible to have all three.

Most people believe there are rules of civility that ought to govern our discourse in moral and political disagreements. These rules operate like the rules of just-war theory: easy to adhere to in theory, but in practice routinely abandoned by all parties for the sake of winning. Drawing on conflict theory and social psychology, I explain how social conflicts make it possible for people to break their own rules of engagement without recognizing that they are doing so. Indeed, the same public figures who speak of the need for civility and unity are often the ones most willing to resort to uncivil and intentionally divisive speech. In any “us versus them” conflict, the perceived necessity for “us” to prevail over “them” tends to outweigh other ethical considerations. The rules of civility, whatever their merits as an ethical theory, are largely ineffective at constraining immoral practices when the chips are down.