I think the article restates Popper quite well on why a tolerant society must not tolerate intolerance. Free speech absolutists will drown Western society with their simplistic good intentions
Sort of a strange issue with the premise, right? On one hand, "I won't debate you because it only brings legitimacy to your hateful cause" is debatably valid (I disagree somewhat, but don't think the choice is wrong by any means) - but the post itself mentions the person she refused to debate six times. I'm not sure refusing to debate the person and then blogging about them is consistent with the point of not giving them the spotlight.
Also...
"Sunlight is neither literally nor figuratively the best disinfectant. Modern white supremacy does not grow like bacteria — it grows like a weed, aggressively, crowding out everything else that stretches towards the light"
That's not how ideas work. Ideas spread from human being to human being - they aren't infectious like bacteria, nor do they have their own life like weeds. This is -almost- McCarthy-esque - who would often suggest communism was like a "fever" or plague.
The idea that fascism is growing out of control is a popular one these days, but I have yet to see anyone present hard evidence that this is really what's happening. Does anyone here think this? What's your reasoning?
The people who say these things come of like they are acting in a way, like they want to play the hero in this super simplistic narrative where the bad guys are taking over the world. To me it's really off-putting because I can spot 100 of these self-righteous people for every bigot (and like 10000 of them for every actual nazi).
For concrete data, take a look at for example the Netherlands; where right-wing extremist parties led by Wilders and Baudet have shifted public opinion such that the 'moderate right-wing' parties have taken on considerably more xenophobic and fascist rhetoric over the past few years, because that was the only way for them to compete against Wilders' and Baudet's brand of populism.
This is fundamentally the problem with fascism; it doesn't come into power through people saying "I'm a fascist". It comes into power by 'infecting' everything around it, and gradually shifting the Overton window such that the populace will eventually willingly grant power to the fascists.
That also means that such a 'fascist takeover' can only be detected and interpreted through a trend in public discourse, not as an easily calculable single metric.
Brexit, Trump, 5-eyes surveillance, NSA's snooping on US citizens, China's... anything (social credit system being the latest in the headlines I've seen), Australia's proposed anti-encryption "stuff".
What I'll grant is that maybe it's not growing out of control. Maybe it's grown out of control. Maybe it's more highly publicised, the flip-side is that could mean transparency has improved. Maybe it's just the ebb and flow of complex human society after enough time without a world-scale war.
Pedantically, this is what defines infectious isn't it? Bad ideas spread to vulnerable people the same way as infections.
McCarthy provided a multi-generational innoculation to communism that was so effective it also innoculated against socialism, to the detriment of the US, pushing it towards the ultra-capitalism it's owned by today.
Here's an example of why it's useless to debate Ms. Penny --
> If Bannon has to have a public platform, make him work for it.
Fine.
> Have him stand on a stage and play the audio footage of the toddlers at the Mexican border screaming for their parents as they’re dragged away to detention.
Without examining actual data, how does she or anyone know the adults accompanying the toddlers were their parents? Or is that an assumption used for maximum emotional effect?
> Have him answer to the mothers of children who were gunned down by police because of the color of their skin
An assumption that we can read the minds of police officers.
> or to the friends and family of migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean.
Whose safety and happiness apparently rests solely on the shoulders of Europeans.
>That’s not a polite thing to say. It wouldn’t be a polite thing to do. But the idea that politeness and civility is owed to anyone in a position of power is one of the great gotchas of liberal thought.
No, it's not Ms. Penny. Moreover, it's as intellectually dishonest as anything Steve Bannon says. Because implicit in the statements is somehow we have to take extraordinary measures for children we've never met. To assert otherwise is to be labeled infanticidal. Not that Ms. Penny would ever use such a term. But that's the effect her statements intend to achieve.
> Because implicit in the statements is somehow we have to take extraordinary measures for children we've never met.
Yes, we do have to take extraordinary measures for children who arrive on US soil, because they cannot take care of themselves, and we can afford to do so.
The alternative is simply monstrous, and causes irreversible behavioral harm to the children.
This is a shame. The author offers reasons why they will not debate white supremacists, as it would "dignify them".
It is incredibly easy to defeat white supremacy in a debate. Just point out the arbitrary deficiencies of certain members who are generally agreed to be white.
> It is incredibly easy to defeat white supremacy in a debate.
If that were the case there wouldn't be that many white supremacist to be a problem.
It's easy to "defeat" them in the sense "Expose their logical fallacy so that most reasonable people can see it". Unfortunately, it doesn't do shit. So, in a sense, debating a white supremacist (and winning logically) is a pyrrhic victory, something that gives satisfaction to the practitioners but unlikely to make any difference in the society, at least not the kind you'd usually expect from "winning a debate".
Ironically, The author sounds super right wing in her critique of the right wing. She’s using incredibly conservative and right wing reasoning throughout this essay. She says she’s a liberal but her reasoning reveals that actually she’s conservative. She wants to conserve access to the public sphere, not dole it out liberally. The author is conservative, not liberal.
Can you elaborate? I do not see any of the textbook talking points or perceptions attributed (usually in a biased way, such as yours) to either extreme. Why the need to extrapolate some ideology when the topic is clearly defined? This increasinly is what modern bigotry looks like.
I’m not extrapolating anything. The crux of her argument is a desire to CONSERVE resources (access to the public sphere), not dole them out liberally. She is quite literally making a conservative argument because her entire position is based on CONSERVING resources instead of doling them out liberally. Thus it’s extremely hard/impossible to understand her position because she is actually adopting the same emotional stance (wanting to conserve resources) as the people she claims to oppose who also want to conserve resources. The liberal argument would be to allow anyone into the public sphere but she is arguing AGAINST that. Which is a fundamentally conservative argument.
I’m not extrapolating an ideology I’m calling a spade a spade and a conservative argument a conservative argument.
It's a very interesting conundrum and highlights the invalid stereotype of conservative = right-wing and liberal = left-wing.
Avoiding using the left/right terms because it simplifies a hugely complex set of behaviours, I think part of the problem is that the current global state of confected fear is pushing the average-joe to blaming all the ills of the world on 'the unfamiliar' (those who are superficially different by skin colour, language, culture, religion etc.).
The Bannons and Trumps of this world both encourage that fear and play up to the blaming of "the unfamiliar" because it is popular (populism?), and if nothing else, politics is a popularity contest.
Moderate folks aren't bombastic. People that believe in a cooperative society aren't bombastic. People that are scared of "an invasion of the unfamiliar" feel they need to be bombastic as "identity self-defence" - this is correctly categorised as 'conservative' because it's seen as a conservation of the status quo.
The biggest, loudest people seem to be those with the most to gain from a fearful, compartmentalised, under-educated society, and because of the loudness and bombast and overall 'theatre' that goes along with it, these people get more air-play than is representative of their numbers, but also more influence than is representative of their numbers - popularity plays (sells) in media, which flows into political influence.
The author is requesting better forms of discourse that don't play into the hands of bombast, which is essentially not possible, so the author then moves to a restriction of the air-play these loud minorities receive, which is what radiantswirl is saying, not incorrectly, is a conservative position. It's also just as impossible as improving the style of discourse.
What I see as the solution is that the moderates need to adopt the same strategy of theatre. It feels 'spinge-tingly icky' to suggest it, like marketing cigarettes and sugar to children, but if your message isn't getting through, then your methods of communication must change.
Climate Change, as a nicely divisive example. Would you believe Exxon (cue images of oil slick covered penguins), or BP (cue images of oil volcano in the Gulf of New Mexico), or would you believe what 90% of scientists are saying (cue images of clean, white laboratories with test tubes of bright colours and people with glasses in lab coats with clip boards).
>What I see as the solution is that the moderates need to adopt the same strategy of theatre. It feels 'spinge-tingly icky' to suggest it, like marketing cigarettes and sugar to children, but if your message isn't getting through, then your methods of communication must change.
I think this change is happening already, the press surrounding the migrant detention centers is definitely an example of an increased level of showmanship on the part of the Democrats. I basically think the democrats are playing a word game but the republicans are playing an image game, and images are more powerful than words. When Hilary talks about “our democracy,” no one understands because democracy is a complex idea that is impossible to fully grasp —- she’s playing a word game. Meanwhile trump is showing off all the women with big tits that he’s fucked. If the dems want to win they need to have a lot more big breasted women on stage and a lot less talk of “OUR DEMOCRACY!” which is the equivalent of a nonsense concept because it means different things to everyone. Basically they need to stop playing word games and start playing image games because images win elections and words just confuse people. Why do you think trump uses tiny words lol, he knows no normies care about words, they just care about the image he presents.
while this is one of the worse political commentaries i've read, you have a point in that the education system in the US has been so mishandled for so long a significant number of people can't critically analyse language
No dude. It’s not the fault of the people for failing to “critically analyze language”. It’s the fault of the language for being so counterproductively nebulous and hard to understand.
Democracy is a nebulous concept. There’s millions of different variations of it. No one cares about “our democracy” because it literally has no actual meaning that anyone can point to. But a lot of people care about big tits.
Your blaming the US education system is just laughable because “democracy” is actually the one thing my teachers DID spend way too much time trying to explain to our class — yet still, literally no one understood it enough to form an emotional attachment to it, because it’s an inherently nebulous concept and impossible to emotionally attach to.
Your claiming that 20+ years of teachers earnestly trying to explain democracy to earnest students and failing miserably is somehow a result of the educational system and not a fault of the language itself is a massive LOL. The explanation of democracy is literally the ONE thing our school system does well, and still it’s not enough — because it’s literally not possible to explain democracy in such a way that people become emotionally attached to it. It’s just not a stirring concept. The concept of democracy does not stir up emotions in anyone except the most out-of-touch philosophers who only understand it abstractly anyway. Democracy does not stir up emotions.
