What Is Contemporary Right-Wing Politics?
After Trump’s unprecedented and surprising election, to “break the liberal bubble” that it was accused of nurturing, the New York Times hired additional conservative voices (Bari Weiss and Bret Stephens) to its op-ed section. By providing a platform for right-wing politics in an otherwise liberal paper the objective was to promote ideas challenging typical liberal preconceptions and conformation biases, and entertain the viability of contemporary right-wing philosophy as argued and elucidated by contemporary conservatives.
But if the goal of this was to articulate a range of diverse, yet nevertheless conservative/right-wing ideas, then it seems safe to say that the New York Times opinion writers have failed. Since August, many have noted that the New York Time's op-ed page has been religiously devoted to condemning protests, social justice warriors, and liberal identity politics on college campuses, despite the fact that there is no campus free speech crisis.
There are a few excellent articles that dive into the intellectual poverty and myopia of the conservative side of the New York Times' op-ed section (for example, none of the columnists voted for Trump), but I want to focus on a recent article from Vox which argues that the New York Times' op-ed section simply does not reflect contemporary conservatism, which has morphed into Trumpism, White Nationalism, Anti-Feminism, Biological Essentialism, Race Realism, or other farther right ideas all founded on resentment towards left-wing politics, and fomented by publications such as Breitbart, InfoWars, The Daily Wire, Fox News etc.,
Taking this as our starting point for the question posed in the discussion title, what is contemporary right-wing politics? Or more importantly, who are the important intellectual leaders that represent these movements by building a systemic political philosophy that can serve as an alternative to liberal politics, rather than existing merely to counter liberalism?
To my mind, there doesn't seem to be any extant conservative who fits this mold. Ben Shapiro, the young right-wing commentator, whom the New York Times called "the voice of conservative millennials", may be a contender, but Shapiro is mostly concerned with bashing liberal identity politics, transgenderism, "black culture", or simply being hostile to liberalism in all its forms, than seriously guiding contemporary conservatism towards a novel political philosophy. How about Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who dabbles in politics, and was named one of the most influential public intellectuals in the West by The New Yorker? While Peterson's "self-help" psychology could be applied to politics in some ways, Peterson generally disavows political action, and is rightfully considered a "status-quo" conservative. He isn't offering anything new, politically speaking, and denounces activism generally. Is the mantel of contemporary conservatism being carried by the members of the more radical alternative right, such as Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, or Richard Spencer? It seems evident to me, however, than their influence as waned recently, and, more to the point, could we even appropriately call them intellectuals?
So, any idea as to where modern right-wing politics is moving intellectually? Who the intellectual architects are? Are there intellectual architects to speak of, or is it now just predicated on resenting and raging against liberal politics?
But if the goal of this was to articulate a range of diverse, yet nevertheless conservative/right-wing ideas, then it seems safe to say that the New York Times opinion writers have failed. Since August, many have noted that the New York Time's op-ed page has been religiously devoted to condemning protests, social justice warriors, and liberal identity politics on college campuses, despite the fact that there is no campus free speech crisis.
There are a few excellent articles that dive into the intellectual poverty and myopia of the conservative side of the New York Times' op-ed section (for example, none of the columnists voted for Trump), but I want to focus on a recent article from Vox which argues that the New York Times' op-ed section simply does not reflect contemporary conservatism, which has morphed into Trumpism, White Nationalism, Anti-Feminism, Biological Essentialism, Race Realism, or other farther right ideas all founded on resentment towards left-wing politics, and fomented by publications such as Breitbart, InfoWars, The Daily Wire, Fox News etc.,
Taking this as our starting point for the question posed in the discussion title, what is contemporary right-wing politics? Or more importantly, who are the important intellectual leaders that represent these movements by building a systemic political philosophy that can serve as an alternative to liberal politics, rather than existing merely to counter liberalism?
To my mind, there doesn't seem to be any extant conservative who fits this mold. Ben Shapiro, the young right-wing commentator, whom the New York Times called "the voice of conservative millennials", may be a contender, but Shapiro is mostly concerned with bashing liberal identity politics, transgenderism, "black culture", or simply being hostile to liberalism in all its forms, than seriously guiding contemporary conservatism towards a novel political philosophy. How about Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who dabbles in politics, and was named one of the most influential public intellectuals in the West by The New Yorker? While Peterson's "self-help" psychology could be applied to politics in some ways, Peterson generally disavows political action, and is rightfully considered a "status-quo" conservative. He isn't offering anything new, politically speaking, and denounces activism generally. Is the mantel of contemporary conservatism being carried by the members of the more radical alternative right, such as Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, or Richard Spencer? It seems evident to me, however, than their influence as waned recently, and, more to the point, could we even appropriately call them intellectuals?
So, any idea as to where modern right-wing politics is moving intellectually? Who the intellectual architects are? Are there intellectual architects to speak of, or is it now just predicated on resenting and raging against liberal politics?
Comments (256)
The problem with conservatives is that they're too scared of being called racist to move to the logical next step of the defense of Western civilization they so desperately want to mount: White identity politics.
Their enemies. the modern Left (and those who would be their friends, if they had their heads screwed on, the Alt Right) see clearly what they don't see: that White identity and the kind of classical liberal politics they like, are intimately connected, and that if the former falls, the latter will fall too.
There's a double irony here in that yahoos on the modern Left are used to twitting conservatives as racist, etc., but actually they're not, they resist race realism and are still enamoured of "color blindness" and the civic nationalist ideal. (The triple irony would be that even color blindness is called "racist" in some quarters of today's demented humanities :) .)
I have no perspective on conservatism as a whole, but I would like to put in a plug for "The American Conservative." Good writers. Moderate in language and at home with nuance and compromise. Strongly anti-war. Low on rabble-rousing and partisanship, long on understanding of political history. Not generally supportive of President Trump. Also great, well-moderated comments sections with very good commenters.
One of the founders was Patrick Buchanan. His writing here sometimes veers over toward rabble-rousing liberal bashing and Trump support, but I've been surprised at how reasoned and reasonable some of his columns have been.
I don't know the history of US politics, but it feels like TAC points back to what I have been told is the original base of the Republican Party - A party of farmers and small town businessmen. A focus on tradition, civic responsibility, and self-reliance. A belief in social, cultural, and political institutions, including the church and military. Also a belief in the possible effectiveness of well-run government. A desire to live their lives and participate in their communities without excess outside interference.
As a liberal, I find myself more at home on the TAC webpage than on Huffington Post or the Washington Post.
Trump is not conservative. The religious right are not conservative. Libertarians are not conservative. I am not sure there are many genuine conservatives in the US, or in other countries, of the type that Edmund Burke would recognise. Perhaps Angela Merkel is a true conservative.
Interesting discussion on this issue on this podcast: The Minefield: Is conservative politics having an identity crisis
Sanctimonious, maudlin, self-righteous, narrow, mean, petty, blustering, cretinous, jingoistic, hectoring, fearful, hateful, stupid, totalitarian and sectarian.
Nope.
I have to agree with this. Conservatism has mostly become a catch-all for people resisting some kind of social change. They're all reacting to various things: gay marriage, universal healthcare, emancipation of minorities, other cultures and countries etc. etc. Most self-styled conservatists are fundamentally afraid of losing autonomy or of being left behind. I think that the underlying reality is that for many people times are economically uncertain for most, especially in countries with low social safety nets.
In a sense, modern conservatism has become a fragmented whole and in the perception of others conversatism has become tainted with the worst aspects of the alt-right, race realists or outright racists, mysogynists et. al.
To answer the OP; nobody has a clue anymore what conservatism means nowadays. For most self-identified conversatists this is not informed by deep reflection on political philosophy. There are a few philosophical conservatists out there but they're being outshouted by angry people who don't want change or want to go back to when they were more or less guaranteed of a job.
In this country, I think it's more likely the case that the fear is of loss of status, or power. The fear is that people unlike them will be treated like them in ways they think is inappropriate.
Damn. I really thought that's what it is. Ah well.
You can't argue against such a well reasoned argument.
Yeah, a piece of unargued crap like the below deserves no better response:
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I think we can all agree that, to some extent, Conservatism has lost its allure within contemporary Right-Wing philosophy. The question then is, what is replacing it within mainstream thought, and does this thought have intellectual value?
No. I am slightly left-leaning and I'm a conservative. As was Russell Kirk or G.K. Chesterton for that matter. This thread is horrendously propagandistic, it's not even funny.
Yeah, constitutional Monarchy can be left-leaning.
"Right-wing" comes from the days of the French revolution. It's the free-market ideology. "Conservative" and "rightist" are frequently used interchangeably, but "conservative" can also reference a backward-looking attitude. 19th century conservatives were monarchists. IOW, the content of conservatism changes. Rightism doesn't change.
Both seem pretty robust at the moment (in the states, anyway.)
And there is the obvious fact that fascism is uncontroversially right-wing and yet is not especially pro-free-market, and has in fact often been explicitly against free markets.
Just like "liberal", in the American use of the term, hasn't much to do with true leftist thought of socialism and communism. American democrats aren't socialists and even if some Bernie Sanders can say he is a socialist, compared to Europe he is quite centrist socialist, for many quite right wing.
And the US is a special case compared to many other countries, were those view themselves "conservatives" would in the US fall in the category of being liberals, democrats or rhinos.
Hence as the Democratic Party in the US is a centrist right-wing party, it means that basically you will find conservatives also there,
Nope.
It exists in many forms. There are neocons and paleocons at the poles and lots of variations in between, not to mention overlap with libertarians and reactionaries. What most conservatives share in common, in the US at least, is a commitment to the principles of the founding.
Quoting Maw
This question is malformed according to a conservative sensibility. Conservatives value what is best in the past. You will, for this reason, not find it moving anywhere intellectually, except in the direction of a better understanding and articulation of its principles.
Also, I feel compelled to state that Trump is not a conservative, or not much of one.
The idea is that such regulations, tax schemes, and economic interventions are broken, and so require fixing.
The Democratic party is pretty far to the left these days, if you look at their most recent platform in particular. The last remaining pro-life Democrat barely got reelected recently as well, which is quite telling about how much it's changed.
Per the SEP, old school conservatism says to take only small measures no matter how bad things look. 'Don't intervene' is the rule. Conservatives didn't really care what the system is: socialist, capitalist, aristocracy. Whatever it is, honor the forces that brought it into being and leave it alone. Let the people suffer from time to time. That's normal. If we call Reagan an economic conservative because he favored a more free market, I think that means the older style conservatism died out. Maybe with Hoover? Is that true?
That said, while Trump is certainly not a conservative, he nevertheless transforming right-wing politics; moving it into a particular direction. The question is: does this boisterous form of politics, which flirts with white supremacy, race realism, advocates economic nationalism, America First priorities, etc., represent the new intellectual movement of right-wing philosophy? An overwhelming amount of Republicans approve of Trump, and we've recently seen the preeminence of public "intellectuals" (perhaps architects is a better word here) who advocate alternative right, or quasi-alternative right politics.
It is true that you can be conservative and far left leaning economically, as that was the case in the UK. The conservatives wanted to socialise economically, whereas the liberals wanted to privatise it.
Conservative "intellectuals" (although those people dislike that word) that are alive today, and decently influential, are Roger Scruton and Thomas Sowell. Peter Hitchens could probably also be added to that list.
My personal pick would be Angela Merkel. She is probably not an intellectual in the sense of the word you intended, but nevertheless a conservative in the classical interpretation -- namely none-ideological none-dogmatic pragmatist.
No, it's always existed, it's just gotten more publicity and the illusion of power with Trump. The fact that the alt-right has glombed onto Trump is ironic to me, given that Trump is an unprincipled New York liberal, so I don't quite understand it. I suppose the fashionable answer is that the alt-right appreciates his positions with respect to immigration, foreign policy, and law and order, but Trump's views on these issues aren't any different from the positions of both parties just a few years ago, so it's really just a personality cult it seems to me. I suppose Trump also appears as one of Moldbug's corporate executives in his technocratic utopia.
Right, so is this newfound publicity shaping it to be more of a mainstream movement rather than a mere underground coterie that it once was? And I would argue that, given Trump's election (or at minimum, his nomination as the Republican candidate) certainly does not operate on the level of illusory power.
No, but I'm not sure how that relates to anything I previously said.
Good. We need a longer-term view.
The US built some of the European style social programs like Social Security to reduce economic hardship among the elderly or Unemployment Insurance directed at on-going unemployment. Local level welfare programs were expanded. Other programs addressed the immediate problems of the Great Depression, like the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, Federal Housing Administration, and various other programs. Aid For Dependent Children (AFDC)--the "Welfare as we know it" dismantled under Clinton's administration followed. Thirty years later, Medicare and Medicaid programs were introduced.
There was strong opposition to the expansion of activist-government programs in and since the 1930s. There were other developments such as the expansion of unionism during the 1930s-1950s that was resisted by business interests. There are currently efforts to reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of public-employment unions, the strongest section of a much-weakened labor movement.
Whether we call the various forces involved left wing, progressive, liberal, Democratic, reactionary, conservative, right wing, or Republican or something else isn't the point. The point is that the roll of the central government in ameliorating suffering affecting individuals and families has been contested for 80+ years. The resistance has been framed in various ways -- individual responsibility for one's well being, state's prerogatives vs. federal mandates, business vs. unions, public spending vs. (Other issues have been contested too, longer, but that's another thread.)
The current political situation though muddled and muddy--perhaps more than usual--has continuity with the past. The current shape of the Republican Party also has a history. The 1964 candidacy of Barry Goldwater from Arizona vs. the more moderate Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller from New York marked the beginning of a major shift for the Republican Party which gradually became more conservative, or reactionary. The Republicans and Democrats changed places in the south. That change was really quite significant. It led to a redistribution of political influence and power.
Agree? Disagree?
Both sides of the aisle agree that the government has a responsibility to intervene. It's just a matter of degree. Is that how you see it?
Today's economic conservative would have been a liberal in the past. Today's rightist would have been yesterday's leftist?
Yes, but the difference in degree is significant.
Quoting frank
No. There have been political shifts rightward, but the Democrats (liberals) who passed Social Security in the 1930s are not todays conservatives.
But today's conservatives support Social Security, don't they?
Privatization would mean that retirees would bear personal risk that the value of social security would fall (perhaps sharply) when they needed it, given the vagaries of the stock market. Capturing social security in the stock market is just more of the transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the upper classes -- business as usual
It is true that fewer working contributors are supporting more elderly beneficiaries. That relationship isn't sustainable. There are, of course, non-privatizing solutions.
No.
Quoting Maw
I'm saying Trump has power, not the alt-right. The latter has more publicity, that's all.
Hmm.
Right-wing politics involves tradition, market, nation, and normativism. Left involves innovation, society, globalization, and application. All four variables are given in extremes and can be plotted on a chart.
And social security has never been, and won't be enough retirement income for most people IF they have no assets of their own. People living on the lower end of social security payments (like $700 a month) generally must live in public housing and must receive a food-security benefit. Medicare is obviously an essential piece.
It makes good economic sense (and good moral sense) to at least maintain the success of Social Security by widening the basis of contribution and assuring the stability of the system. It would also be eminently sensible for governments to assist people in saving and investing money throughout their lives so that they will have some additional income. It will require a share of the income from the richest 5% to accomplish this, and it is only fair that the richest should pay out more taxes.
Serious article, though.
I don’t see Trump as ‘right wing’, or any wing. Or maybe only one wing, therefore flapping around in circles. A lot of so-called ‘rightists’ have hitched their wagon to his peculiar star, without seeming to notice that he routinely trashes conservative positions and GOP policy. But the entire political spectrum is so complicated and so compromised, that it’s hard to identify anything consistent.
Strangely the Republicans now say nothing at all about much huger debt forecasts than were ever predicted under the previous administration. I guess that’s part of the policy of never disagreeing with Trump lest you be incinerated by tweet.
Listen, I'm going to give you a valuable tip: if you want to understand what the Right is doing, you won't get there by trying to fit them into the "villain" role in your political Manicheanism (e.g. Ciceronianus' post) and you won't get there by trying to sympathize with the plight of poor, rural white people. Neither of those will work.
Somebody posted a link to the article on First Things, and I think that's a good starting point.
In all seriousness: if you are convinced that the Right is a pod of unleashed hell-hounds, it would behoove you to understand them.
I'd go more for "a murder of mad crows".
There are plenty of sensible folks on the right out there, but sensible doesn't sell. It's not sexy enough, so the zanier voices tend to get amplified and the more sensible muted. I mean who even knows who George Will is? And who needs him when you've got David Duke, Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson fighting for your attention. And with new media much more so than the past. Then old media needs to compete with new media and before you know it Milo Yabbadickulous is on CNN and Trump is President. So, politics in general is moving further and further away from a special space for (somewhat) reasoned debate into a free for all for emotional venting that the most thoughtless can and do plug into at will to get their jollies before switching over to the ball game or the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Cue increased polarization, increased conflict and a slow but steady inversion of the natural political bell curve.
What? That's absurd. In the UK, only a small minority within the left support anything other than the constitutional monarchy we have. Over here, whether or not you're a constitutional monarchist would be a very poor means of determining where you are on the political spectrum, at least when it comes to affirmative answers.
Even Johnny Rotten was a fan.
"God save the queen
We mean it man
We love our queen
God saves"
Brings tears to the eye...
This would be harmless enough if kept within reasonable bounds, and prejudice seems a fairly universal characteristic. But those calling themselves conservatives now are inclined to do what liberals have been accused of for some time, i.e. to impose their desires using government and the law, and through activism.
I've considered myself a political conservative for a long time, as I'm suspicious of the power of the central government and think that power should be limited. Conservatives have traditionally preferred government to be local, but no more. I've practiced municipal law for many years, and now see the authority of local government more and more restricted by legislation adopted by Republican legislatures. Current conservatives wish to use centralized government in pursuit of their agenda, and to the extent it may be used to do so want a stronger government.
I haven't been a social conservative, though, and think contemporary conservatives are primarily social conservatives. Social conservatives want to prohibit people from doing things they think improper, and I don't mean from committing crimes, I mean things that aren't right.. They're moralists, of a sort. They don't think people should be free to do what they want to do if that means doing certain things. Their urge to dictate conduct is contrary to political conservatism, as it serves as motivation for use of the power of government tor that purpose, to do things like restrict states from deciding whether marihuana should be legal, or prevent trans people from serving in the military.
Well, if that sucks as well, then suck it does, or will.
I believe we call this process "democratization."
I find it interesting that you think that Peterson, of all people, is zany. I find his views pretty mild and banal. I'd have to be pretty sheltered to think that anything he says is particularly "out there." Even Milo says some over-the-top trollish stuff which is painfully easy to spot, and otherwise has pretty pedestrian center-right views.
So? If the result is the degradation of politics, polarization, and conflict, all the worse for democratization. It would be naive to think that feeding the masses' baser instincts in an uncontrolled manner is somehow going to lead to progress just because it's democratic.
Quoting Pneumenon
Zanier. He's one of the milder ones, but lately he's been getting more stridently anti-left/progressive. Of course, some of his opposition is significantly zanier than him. I'm not exempting the left from criticism.
Precisely.
I think where many sides in the debates can be faulted is in the reliance on the demonisation of differences - not only is the opponent incorrect, but he's actually evil, not even worth hearing.
But the only fly in the ointment here, is that it's possible at least some of those wishing to participate in civil debate are actually evil. I think, for instance, that neo-nazism and holocaust denial is not legitimately part of civil discourse. (There's been some coverage of an appallingly dark group called 'atomwaffen'.)
The problem is, though, that various interest groups will too easily depict their opponents in those terms. You see this very much in US politics now - there are examples across the spectrum, but the Fox News opinion writers, and the so-called 'conservative media', are particularly egregious at this point. But then, so are the student activist groups that howl down conservative speakers on campus.
They're all difficult issues made more so by the activities of those who exploit those very difficulties for mischievous or malevolent ends.
"The rise of the city-state meant that man received 'besides his private life a sort of second life, his bios politikos. Now every citizen belongs to two orders of existence; and there is a sharp distinction in his life between what is his own (idion) and what is communal (koinon)'. It was not just an opinion or theory of Aristotle but a simple historical fact that the foundation of the polis was preceded by the destruction of all organized units resting on kinship, such as the phratria (brotherhood) and the phyle (clan/tribe). (Arendt, The Human Condition, embedded quote from Werner Jaeger, Paideia).
Polite, as far as I can tell, has a Latin root, which at the very least, post-dates the Greek, and if it is related to it, would be derivative of it and not constitutive, as it were. Still, the idea of accommodating differences - I think I'd prefer to say negotiating, which has a less conciliatory air - seems about right, even though I quibble about the etymology.
OK, we agree then.
Apropros my last couple of posts, this is worth a read/listen.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2018/02/26/yanss-122-how-our-unchecked-tribal-psychology-pollutes-politics-science-and-just-about-everything-else/#more-5803
I quite enjoyed the piece. It's enlightening and thought provoking. The sort of neither relativist nor absolutist conception of pluralistic 'nations' as repositories of values and traditions that it recommends got me to think of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre. They haven't been mentioned in this thread as serious 'conservative' intellectuals, have they?
Taylor and Macintyre are both, after all, Catholics at the end of the day (I've got both their books in my To Read pile, but Taylor's book is a real door-stop). Catholicism has its issues, and I am not at all inclined towards conversion, but oddly enough I find I am in a lot of agreement with Catholic philosophers on a lot of things.
I am not a Catholic either, not even a Christian (and not even a theist, for that matter, although I am certainly not a militant atheist). I've read large chunks of Taylor's Sources of the Self (plus a couple papers on the philosophy of language), and it had seemed to me that his own religion is very much bracketed out from his philosophical analysis. I plan to read MacIntyre's After Virtue, eventually, because I want to find out in what way he combines narrativism and Aristotelian virtue ethics. I don't expect either that his being a Catholic should inflect his project in any objectionable direction.
In response to a Justin Trudeau tweet commending those who came out to march in support Women's Rights, Peterson tweeted that such support leads to a "murderous equity doctrine".
This type of acidic vehemency isn't atypical for him, and it's anything but mild or banal. I don't know how long Peterson will last as a "public intellectual". He seems to have been abruptly placed in the spotlight, and so can disappear just as easily, especially given the fact that he likely has exhausted his philosophy, which, inherently, is unlikely to evolve or be tweaked. Perhaps this is true of conservatism as well, which, having retained the same talking points for decades, has exhausted itself, has fallen out of fashion.
He's really losing it.
Only by American standards the Democratic party seems pretty far to the left.
Likely Americans would be simply shocked about how "leftist" conservative parties in Europe are. This is something that goes unnoticed. It starts with those parties being in favour of the established social welfare systems. How many European conservative parties support universal health care, for starters? They might raise the question of government finances, but they aren't at all so hostile as the American Republicans are about the issue.
I think the distinction is that Democrats in the US seem to be moving more and more to the left culturally while simultaneously moving to the right on economic issues. Never thought I'd hear Dems singing the praises of free trade, challenging the idea of protectionism, etc. but they've done this recently in large part (it appears) as a reaction to Trump's (likely feigned) populist economic nationalism.
They no longer emphasize class antagonisms - even to the relatively limited extent they did previously under the New Deal platform - and focus their attention instead on improving the plight of marginalized racial (and other) groups. The two things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but it does seem like a tough juggling act and the white lower and lower-middle classes are increasingly viewed as the enemies of the social progress desired by most on the American left.
That's how it seems to me at least. I happen to be one of those few remaining a "pro-life" and somewhat socially conservative Democrats who harbors strong "progressive" economic inclinations. It's a pretty lonely place to be these days.
What you actually do in legislation is what counts, not what kind talk you give.
But on the discourse side, yes, the Democratic party is basically what here in Europe we would call social-democrats, which are basically socialists who are totally fine with the fruits that capitalism gives them and just want to micromanage wealth distribution with various programs.
I think what is really taking Place is that some Americans simply think that social-democracy would work as they think it hasn't been tried already.
Quoting Thorongil
Expand on that
But Erik said:
Quoting Erik
Whereas you called the Dems "far left" and say they have moved "very far" to the left socially. You're not saying the same thing at all as far as I can see. There is a difference between moving "more and more" to the left socially, which is apparent with the Dems support for gay marriage and so on, and moving "far left." There is no policy I know of on which the Dems are currently far left. And the real far left in America (who do exist though they get no platform there) are absolutely opposed to the Dems on almost every issue you could mention. But most likely we have a different conception of what counts as "far left". Feel free to list the policies you're speaking of.
Quoting Thorongil
...was on the right in other words, which is why Wall St. was throwing so much money her way, as they did Obama, who got more in Wall St. donations than both Romney and McCain. Wall St. are not in the habit of supporting the left, obviously (to underline the point you seem to have conceded anyway in this sphere).
With regards to healthcare, Clinton, by not supporting universal healthcare, was to the right of every European conservative party, and only to the left of Republicans. And still, the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi doesn't support it nor do the majority of Senate Democrats (although it's becoming more popular).
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/12/16293016/sanders-single-payer-health-care
That poll gives 25% of senate Dems in favour. The numbers may have increased a bit in the past six months, but again we're talking here about a policy that even the extreme right support in Europe, so certainly nothing left-wing about the Dems position on this.
Military policy? Hard to identify what would count as left and right here seeing as both interventionism and isolationism could be considered right-wing. Certainly, Clinton was hawkish and, to take policy towards Israel as an example, all parties are on the right.
Spending? Both parties are now big spenders, happily and cynically ballooning the debt to buy votes. Sure, the Dems will favour social security and the Republicans the military, but social security payments while representing a large part of the budget are still lower on the whole than in Europe.
Taxes? Neither party espouses a highest tax rate of more than 50%, as is routine in social democratic Europe, so nothing left-wing to be found here either.
So what policy can we find on which the Dems are uncontroversially left-wing not to mention "far left"? Abortion? Sanders does appear to be far left on this (no interference with what a woman wants to do with her body) and a proportion of his followers are, but not the Dems on the whole, who support the status quo. Gay marriage? That's a centrist position globally now though I suppose we could call it left-wing at a stretch. Anything else, specifically?
Tbh, I suspect the term "far left" when used in the context of US politics is mostly meaningless hyperbole of the type Fox News commentators and their ilk use to scare conservatives away from any policy they disagree with no matter how moderate it is. As I said, the left (e.g. the Green Party) and the far left (e.g. Socialist Party USA) do exist in America, but when you label moderates like the Dems "far left" the consciousness of anything left of them easily disappears. And that's hardly accidental nor is the fact that the Greens and Socialists are given no media platform over there.
Anyway, I'll leave you with a radical super-far-loony-left idea of the Socialist Party USA:
Let's create a:
""radical democracy that places people's lives under their own control—a non-racist, classless, feminist socialist society [...] where working people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically-controlled public agencies, cooperatives, or other collective groups; where full employment is realized for everyone who wants to work; where workers have the right to form unions freely, and to strike and engage in other forms of job actions; and where the production of society is used for the benefit of all humanity, not for the private profit of a few"
Shocking, eh...?
I have already. There is only one remaining actively pro-life Democrat politician. That's a massive shift. You could also take a look through here: https://www.democrats.org/party-platform. It boasts of being the party's "most progressive platform" in history, and I am wont to agree.
No, I said they were pretty far to the left, not that they were "far left." There is, in fact, a difference in meaning. I associate the latter with various strands of communism, which the Democratic party is clearly not the vanguard of, though it is moving in that direction. With respect to social issues, however, the party is definitely on the far left. It has embraced groups like BLM, for example, which is a far left terrorist organization.
Quoting Baden
No. Why do you think I would find it thus?
I can't help you if you don't want to see the obvious.
Okay, so criticizing the feminist movement makes you "acidic" and "vehement?" The over-the-top hyperbole you're using here is precisely what you're accusing him of doing.
Quoting Maw
That's clearly why Trump got elected!
No. Trump is the least conservative president the US has had since at least Nixon.
As with any large-scale social movement, there are valid, or justifiable criticisms of particular elements in modern-day Feminism (e.g. Feminist Epistemology). But it's not clear to me that "criticizing the feminist movement" is meaningful, because the movement itself is not homogeneous. If Peterson had as accurate a pulse on the feminist movement as he claims to have, he would recognize this and perhaps act accordingly. Instead, he delivers "over-the-top hyperbole", i.e., modern feminism as a "murderous equity doctrine". If this isn't "acidic" or "vehement" as I said, I shudder to think what remarks would qualify as such...
Not the case within the post you quoted, as evidenced by the fact that I think other forms of right-wing politics are "in-fashion" so to speak.
Red herring. Very few movements are homogeneous. Your opening post made some general criticisms of right-wing politics, and right-wing politics aren't homogenous, either.
More generally: the "it's not monolithic!" defense is a red herring because it doesn't add anything to the discussion. If you want to criticize someone for not being specific enough, then make an argument.
Yeah, nothing to do with the the 'murderous' quip at all.
Calling for someone else's murder is "acidic" and "vehement." Calling someone else "murderous" is not.
Perhaps there are statements which are generalized in the OP, but I nevertheless recognize, within the OP, that as a whole, "Right-Wing politics" includes a multitude of views, the aim in my OP was to pinpoint which aspect of right-wing politics is growing in dominance (as distinct from the Never-Trump conservatives within the op-ed pages of NYT). For Peterson, the heterogeneity of modern-day Feminism isn't acknowledged; leading him to craft ridiculous denouncements, like that supporting a global Woman's Rights march leads to a "murderous equity doctrine".
Ironically, your argument is a red herring, because you're distracting from the real issue: is stating that modern feminism is "a murderous equity doctrine" valid criticism, or acidic hyperbole? That's the question I'd like answered. And if not, what would?
Irrelevant, as Peterson never said this. He didn't even directly state what the doctrine was. Herrings within herrings....
No, but then, if you think that caricature is the crux of the issue, then you have a very shallow read of his standing.
Here are the last two posts:
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting Pneumenon
This isn't worth engaging except to point out that it isn't.
In the US I would say that genuine American conservatism is depicted extremely well in Goldwater-Republicanism, that has deep roots in libertarianism and US history. There is also a difference between this kind of conservatism and the religious-right, which even if conservative in it's values, has more to do with religion than conservatism. Conservatism to be true to it's logical definition has to have a link to earlier times and history. Yet that kind of Republican conservatism is muted today and attacked by the right-wing populists as being RHINOs. First came right wing talk radio, then the unfortunate success of the small cabal called the neocons.
I see it as the dumbing down of political discourse in the US to a lousy talk show. The next stage would be when the politicians themselves will have literally fist fights on Capitol Hill during sessions. Likely we will see that.
Well I'm almost positive you'll dispute my interpretation (straw man) given the ambiguity of the topic, but my sense is that there's less tolerance among leftists these days towards those who challenge the guiding values underlying our increasingly fast-paced, scientifically-oriented and technology-obsessed world. Proponents of this system appear to be tying their identities in with its continued advancement while those who urge caution are seen as opponents of progress. (and probably racist, sexist, homophobic...)
I trace this general issue of left vs right back to the Enlightenment and the reaction to it in the Counter-Enlightenment. My personal views represent a hybrid of sorts between the sides and while I do appreciate many aspects of the modern project (e.g. increased political equality, advances in science and medicine, etc.) I also think there are some potential drawbacks which were initially articulated by 18th and 19th-century Romantics. I'll hold off on listing those here and get back to my belief that Dems are moving more and more to the left.
Some quick personal examples include: getting blasted for pulling my younger son out of the public school system in favor of a charter school which takes an unconventional approach to education and child development; my wife being made to feel like a complete failure of a woman for choosing to prioritize our children over career goals (I did the same lest anyone assume ours isn't an equal relationship); getting mocked for expressing an openness to insights found in religions; being attacked by a mob (not literally) for white privilege because I criticized aspects of an article which demonized all white people as being incapable of anything other than racism, destruction, evil, etc.
Anecdotal evidence like this may not be convincing but I just don't recall the level of intolerance coming from Dems, especially as related to cultural issues, being anywhere close to what it is today. Not even a decade ago. Incidentally, I originally moved to the political left (significantly) around seventeen years ago, just a few months after joining the RATM message board and engaging in debates with some really sincere and thoughtful posters.
Through those lively exchanges I began to question many of my basic assumptions about economics, patriotism, and other politically-related issues - I was a staunch Republican until then - and began to see things much differently. And while posters did take on issues of racism, sexism, militarism, etc. quite often they did not (to my recollection) focus on my racial and sexual background but treated me with respect and kindness, and they did so despite significant ideological differences. Could that sort of political transformation `happen today? It wouldn't be as likely, I'd say, although I wouldn't place the blame entirely on one side for this.
I'd also point out that within the ranks of those forum members were a surprising number of religious, pro-life anarchists, socialists, and more traditional progressives. Anti-consumerist, pro-family, pro-'spirituality' positions were actually well-respected among many of them just as they would have been within counter-cultural hippies from the 1960's. But within today's neoliberal Democratic party of the Clintons, Obama and Pelosi, those who have reservations about this narrow conception of 'progress' are generally seen as reactionaries ("clinging to their religion"), even among the rank and file members of the party.
The length of this post notwithstanding I feel I left way too much out to prevent misunderstandings - my highly qualified use of the term 'spirituality' for instance - so I'm anticipating criticisms of my views on social conservatism, the trajectory of the Democratic party, and other stuff that would take a lot more time and effort to make clear(er).
This. So much. :up:
Yes, some of the reaction is a little hysterical, but not nearly as hysterical as foaming about women marching for equality as representing "murderousness" or calling BLM far left "terrorists" or worrying that the Dems are heading towards "communism". There's hysterical nuttiness on both sides I think you'll agree, but a few more tin-foil hat Alex-Jones types on the right as far as I can see. And this type of childish buzzword rhetoric just closes down debate. Peterson is as guilty of that as his opponents. (Lately at least—he used to be more sensible).
You are deliberately misreading his tweet. He was talking about a certain doctrine of equity.
Quoting Baden
The FBI's counter-terrorism division has recently declared that "black identity extremists" pose a violent threat. The Dallas and Louisiana shooters were inspired by the BLM movement, certain tendons of which have called for the murder of police officers. The official BLM organization is directly influenced by and praises as a hero, Assata Shakur, a black extremist, cop killer, and armed bank robber on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list.
You wouldn't hesitate to call the white supremacist organizations in Charlottesville, some of whose members were inspired to committed murder, terrorist organizations. And neither would I. But if that's the case, then there's no reason not to paint BLM with the same brush.
Trudeau: We see you, we hear you, and @MaryamMonsef and our government will keep fighting for gender equality in Canada
Peterson: Is that the murderous equity doctrine @JustinTrudeau?
It's not even close to being ambiguous. And you agreed with him.
As for your comments on BLM. They are totally unjustified. You've admitted above that they are not actually a terrorist organization, and no official body in the US considers them so. And only the nuttiest of the far right refer to them that way .
E.g. Alex Jones:
"Black Lives Matter’ is a domestic terrorist organization that has been given legitimacy by the media and the Obama administration, and is part of a much bigger plan to destabilize America and bring in UN control to take over." Link
This is your current level (and it's not shared by the vast majority of conservatives, thankfully). And as long as you're that hysterical about a black activist group that was formed to protect its community against unjustifiable state violence and a group of women marching for equality, you have no right to talk about hysterics on the left, and there is no possibility of sensible dialogue with you.
What does "murderous equity doctrine" even mean?
You're right. Peterson is asking whether Trudeau has in mind a certain doctrine of equity. It's this specific doctrine that is murderous.
Quoting Baden
I never said such a thing. However, the category of "black identity extremists" would include, in my opinion, BLM. And the BLM leaders and defenders themselves have interpreted this designation as directed at them, so my interpretation clearly isn't crazy.
Quoting Baden
A broken clock is right two times a day. But this is a cheap shot and you know it. It's just the guilt by association fallacy.
This doesn't seem right. If I say something disparaging about "right-wing lunatics" on this forum then you might interpret this as a veiled attack on you, but it doesn't then follow that you're actually a right-wing lunatic. So that BLM leaders and defenders interpret "black identity extremists" as being directed at them, it doesn't then follow that they're actually black identity extremists.
What he actually said originally was:
Quoting Thorongil
Obviously BLM don't consider themselves terrorists as they are not terrorists, and even more obviously it's childish and hysterical rhetoric to use. But Thorongil thinks it's fine when he and Alex Jones do it, but if the left uses inflammatory language they should be condemned.
Your use of "women's equality" is a bit hand-wavey, though. That's like claiming that antifa can't be a terrorist organization because they call themselves "anti-fascist." The fact that a group of activists canvasses what they do as "women's equality" doesn't mean that what they're doing is good, and your uncritical acceptance of their self-imposed label worries me.
As to tinfoil, I see more of that from established media outlets than from independent pundits. For exampl, the Russia collusion nonsense, the claims of Austrian politics being infiltrated by "shadowy far-right fraternities," and several news outlets blaming the Mafia for the Italian elections. Whenever one of these populist political changes takes place, all of the sudden it's because of Russia or the Mafia or Austrian fraternities or whoever. What's next? Trump is a reptoid alien?
Nor does appealing to what the organization considers itself to be entail that that is what it is, as @Baden has just done. I gave my own opinion, as I said.
Sure, you don't, because it's the right that did it. The rest of your post is kind of sad at best. It worries you that I think gender equality shouldn't be equated with a murderous equity doctrine? Because that is all I've said here despite your odd attempt at a strawman. Here's what it boils down to, I can admit to some hysterics on the left (@Erik did a good job giving examples) but you can't admit to that happening on the right even with blatantly obvious examples, and would prefer to distract with talk about hypothetical "reptoid aliens". Yawn. Same old boring tribal support mental block. Good luck with that.
And they speak of rhetoric.
Yes, you gave a paranoid hysterical opinion that rules you out of intelligent conversation with the other side. Congratulations on digging into your bunker. I'm sure even you will realize that accusing your opponents of supporting terrorism is not a route to productive conversation, so I presume that's not what you want.
OK, but I don't know what that has to do with my comment.
And I was just pointing out that that part of your defence of your opinion is a non sequitur.
It's right here folks in all it's glory.
When you stop using childish and hysterical rhetoric (that would involve actually admitting you were wrong to call BLM terrorists—instead of trying to cover for it and then expect me to dignify that) I'll gladly engage. We'll see if that ever happens.
Several things here. Even if the FBI did explicitly consider BLM to be a terrorist organization, that wouldn't necessarily mean it was one. I was not making the claim that the FBI's designations settle the matter. However, I use the fact that 1) "violent extremism" can be viewed as synonymous with "terrorism" and 2) that BLM people have reacted to said designation as being about them, as evidence that one, not necessarily the FBI (but who knows), may regard them as a terrorist organization.
Well I'm sorry you and your wife have had these experiences, but it remains unclear to me how these incidents have been extrapolated and constructed into modern tenets of the Democratic platform, e.g. that whites are incapable are anything other than evil etc., or that women must choose a career rather embrace motherhood.
No, my point was that calling yourself a "woman's equality" activist doesn't mean that what you are doing is good, or even that it has anything to do with equality; antifa, for example, call themselves anti-fascists, but really just engage in terrorism. Slapping a nice-sounding label on something does not make it a good thing, and I know you're not dumb enough to be fooled by that.
Quoting Baden
No, that remark was in reply to your assertion that there is more conspiracy theorism on the right than on the left. My reply cited three examples of widespread conspiracy theorism on the left.
Are you even reading my posts, Baden, or just skimming them and firing off a reply?
Is it childish and hysterical rhetoric to call the white supremacist groups present in Charlottesville terrorist organizations, as I also did? I'm sure you could find spokesmen for the organizations claiming not to condone murder. Does that prove they aren't terrorist organizations?
You're the one playing the tribal game here, Baden.
And that's the non sequitur. That you might react to "right wing lunatic" isn't evidence that others may regard you as a right wing lunatic.
The distinction between sense and reference is important.
But nor does it mean I'm not a right wing lunatic. Sometimes the shoe fits. I say it fits for other reasons provided above.
We have a stubborn refusal to recognize the violent extremism of groups like BLM and antifa, and pointing out the violent extremism of such groups immediately makes you the target of ridicule (sans argument). Also, there is a lot of conspiracy theorism about Trump being a Russian puppet, shadowy right-wing fraternities controlling Austria, and so forth.
Several times in this thread I have tried to coax some kind of argument out of SLX and Baden. But at one point I (gently) made fun of SLX by typing "woof woof" and he took that as a reason not to defend his position. Meanwhile, I also (gently) made fun of Baden with a reference to David Icke, and he decided that that meant he didn't need arguments to support his point. I'm a little disappointed, guys.
Show me where I said calling yourself a women's equality activist means what you are doing is good? Please quote me. As I said, strawman. We are not arguing over whether said activists are "good", we are arguing over whether "gender quality" can be legitimately referred to as "a murderous equity doctrine" and whether that kind of rhetoric can be considered "hysterical".
Quoting Pneumenon
So these are (according to you) three examples of conspiracy theory on the left. Fine, but so what? We don't even have to argue over whether the left or the right is more unreasonable overall actually because it's not all that pertinent, and we're unlikely to agree. The point I'm focusing on is consistency. I have no problem describing those left-wing activists who shouted at JP that he was a "transphobic piece of shit", for example, as being hysterical and criticizing "my" side if you want to put it like that. But trying to get some quid pro quo is like pulling teeth.
And I was typing this you make your next purely rhetorical post. As if anyone is going to fall for any of it. Your audience is not a JP YouTube video stream. I mean, you are actually claiming if we don't admit BLM are "terrorists," though factually they are not, we are being "stubborn". And again, no recognition whatsoever of any fault on "your" side. Can you try to get there? At least once?
Such as? The FBI report that @Thorongil referred to only has mention of 6 individuals engaged in "Black Identity Extremism" since 2014, and doesn't mention BLM at all. It does mention other groups like "BLA" and "Moorish Sovereign Citizens", though.
Probably the only thing this discussion will achieve is to show how foolish it is to throw the word "terrorism" around when you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
If we look at the "official" organization, then I would again point to the influence of Assata Shakur on the BLM founders. Shakur was a member of the BLA, which you note the FBI singles out. I don't know what else to call her except a domestic terrorist, which is not a controversial statement, so that if BLM's intellectual and spiritual founder was a terrorist, then I don't know what else to call BLM except a terrorist organization.
You went from "she had an influence on their founders" to "she was their intellectual and spiritual founder" and she was a terrorist, therefore they are terrorists. The problem is, of course, the second one is a lie, which you just made up on the spot. And this after accusing me of peddling "guilt by association." Farcical. But, go on, it's instructive in some sense.
Sanctimonious? Check. Self-righteous? Check. Hectoring? Well, there's a limit to the extent to which it can reasonably be claimed blatant sarcasm is just gentle ribbing, and so...Check. Sectarian? Check. Maudlin? Well, expressions of self-pity and claims of sad disappointment probably qualify, and so...Check. Blustering? Well, certainly indignant, at least, and the use of uppercase can be said to be "loud", so...Check.
You're well on your way. Almost there.
Just some gentle fun on my part.
But, I think it's true overstatement and outrage permeate what passes as political discourse and debate in these dark times, and that is unfortunate, though sometimes outrage is appropriate.
Alicia Garza (born January 4, 1981) is an African-American activist and editorial writer who lives in Oakland, California. She has organized around the issues of health, student services and rights, rights for domestic workers, ending police brutality, anti-racism, and violence against trans and gender non-conforming people of color. Her editorial writing has been published by The Guardian,The Nation, The Feminist Wire, Rolling Stone, HuffPost and Truthout. She currently directs Special Projects at the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Garza also co-founded the Black Lives Matter movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Garza
Patrisse Cullors (born 1984) is an African-American artist and activist from Los Angeles, an advocate for prison abolition in Los Angeles and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. She also identifies as a "queer activist".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrisse_Cullors
Opal Tometi is a New York-based Nigerian-American writer, strategist and community organizer. She is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter. She is the Executive Director at BAJI (Black Alliance for Just Immigration). Tometi collaborates with staff and communities in Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York City, Oakland, Washington D.C. and communities throughout the Southern states. Her work has been published by The Huffington Post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opal_Tometi
The founder of Unite the Right and organizer of the Charlottesville protest, on the other hand, is Jason Kessler, who tweeted the following about the lady who his friends murdered.
""Heather Heyer was a fat, disgusting Communist. Communists have killed 94 million. Looks like it was payback time."
I hope most people can see the distinction here that goes over Thorongil's head.
Sure. And there are violent extremists who take themselves to be in support of Christianity. But it doesn't then follow that Christianity or the BLM movement are terrorist organizations.
If the organization were to define itself in terms of violence (or I guess if a critical mass of its supporters were to engage in or condone violence) then there would be a good case to label it terrorism, but I don't think that's the case here.
This has more standing, but I don't think because a co-founder praises Assata Shakur (although not necessarily for violence) that it would be right to tarnish the entire (decentralised) movement as being violent extremists. That's guilt by (a very loose) association.
Well, no, because Peterson did not specify which belief he thought was a "murderous equality doctrine." I went over this with Maw. You can read that sequrnce of posts if you would like to see how that discussion went.
Quoting Baden
But you invited that discussion by saying that there were more conspiracy theorists on the right. This is what puzzles me: when I make an argument, you respond that you're not interested in a discussion, despite the fact that I was addressing one of your points.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I typed the words "woof woof" and got this in response. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, but this seems a bit exuberant in response to "woof woof."
I agreed to disagree with you on that point because it's not that important and your response was pretty much irrelevant anyway. Naming what you believe to be three conspiracy theories of the left doesn't demonstrate that there are more conspiracy theories on the left. I could point out that we don't have a left-wing version of Alex Jones or that Russian interference is not necessarily a conspiracy theory (we won't know the full facts until the investigation is complete). And so on. But it's not the salient part of the argument for me. The salient part is the part you completely ignored in your answer just now.
Quoting Pneumenon
It's curious the way you repeatedly use this strategy of pretending to be disappointed and sorry and so on about the posts of your interlocutors here. And I suppose you'll respond to this comment by feigning more heartbreak. Here, have a hankie in advance. Or even better, just answer the rest of my earlier post. Nobody's interested in your emotional state.
Is this honest-to-God that complicated for you? It's astonishing just how far you are willing to bending over backwards in order keep up with this facade of ignorance. Trudeau tweets his support of the Women's March and that the Canadian Government will keep fighting for gender equality. Peterson's response: Is that the murderous equity doctrine? For God's sake, how is this not hyperbolic? Or are you just unable to accept that fact that Jordan Peterson is capable of saying stupid shit on Twitter?
But I'm sure Pneumenon and Thorongil would make just as much effort to find a positive way to construe a hysterical tweet made by someone on the left. Fair and balanced™.
1) There is a lot of hysteria around at present on both the right and the left.
2) Examples on the left include some of the names JP has been called during protests. (And probably in tweets too).
3) Examples on the right include some of JPs tweets, along with Thorongil's claims regarding BLM.
4) BLM is not a terrorist organization. And if you want to make a case for that very serious accusation, you need strong evidence. Smears, fallacious reasoning and attempted rhetorical tricks aren't going to cut it.
5) Hyperbolic rhetoric on either side leads to polarization, and is a bad thing. Let's not do it.
Well, a few of you told me I was being mean, so I apologized for it. And now you're angry at me for apologizing! You have invested considerable apparent effort into yelling at me for being a meanie, so the "grrr I'm too tough for this Mickey Mouse crap" thing comes off a little weird.
Also, why do you say you want to "agree to disagree" and then start arguing about the point you said you wanted to drop? This is inconsistent. I addressed the point you raised previously in the discussion with Maw.
Quoting Maw
Well, Peterson has a history of criticizing student activism of this kind so I imagine that's where his critique is aimed. I'd say the context makes that pretty obvious.
Let's just call "cut" on this scene.
Quoting Pneumenon
I presume there's no need now to argue about what we argued about what we should argue about. I wrote out what I think is important just now to avoid that. You might even agree with some of it.
~
I think it was Wayfarer who said that, "all paths lead back to the Donald," and I'm now thinking that, "all paths lead back to the Jordan B."
This is precisely the impression I get from the people who use this hashtag and support the organization.
Quoting Baden
Well, here is some (from one David Horowitz's websites):
- In February 2017, former BLM activist Trey Turner reported that his comrades had planned to burn down the Minnesota state capitol in Saint Paul and the governor’s mansion if Saint Paul-area police officer Jeronimo Yanez -- who fatally shot a black man named Philando Castile during a July 6, 2016 traffic stop -- was not prosecuted.
- During an anti-President Trump protest in Seattle in late January 2017, a female activist associated with BLM took a megaphone and, for four minutes, shouted obscenities, anti-capitalist rhetoric, and incitements to violence against white people and President Trump. Among her remarks were the following: "Fuck white supremacy, fuck the U.S. empire, fuck your imperialist ass lives. That shit gotta go. Fuck that shit. You know what America thrives off of? Capitalism. We use our mother fucking, fucking black and brown bodies to live and survive while white people own fucking properties after that.... White people, give your fucking money, your fucking house, your fucking property, we need it fucking all. You need to reparate [sic] black and indigenous people right now. Pay the fuck up, pay the fuck up. It ain’t just your fucking time, it's your fucking money, and now your fucking life is devoted to social change.... We're all operating under white supremacy.... And we need to start killing people. First off, we need to start killing the White House. The White House must die. The White House, your fucking White House, your fucking Presidents, they must go! Fuck the White House.... Capitalism is ... fucking racism...."
- Shortly after former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016, BLM published an article titled "Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante." The piece began by stating: "We are feeling many things as we awaken to a world without Fidel Castro. There is an overwhelming sense of loss, complicated by fear and anxiety. Although no leader is without their flaws, we must push back against the rhetoric of the right and come to the defense of El Comandante. And there are lessons that we must revisit and heed as we pick up the mantle in changing our world, as we aspire to build a world rooted in a vision of freedom and the peace that only comes with justice. It is the lessons that we take from Fidel."
The article praised Castro for having taught people "that to be a revolutionary, you must strive to live in integrity." "As a Black network committed to transformation," it added, "we are particularly grateful to Fidel for holding [cop-killer/fugitive] Mama Assata Shakur, who continues to inspire us. We are thankful that he provided a home for [cop killers/airplane hijackers] Brother Michael Finney, Ralph Goodwin, and Charles Hill[;] asylum to Brother Huey P. Newton[;] and sanctuary for so many other Black revolutionaries who were being persecuted by the American government during the Black Power era." Expressing gratitude to Castro for "attempting to support Black people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina when our government left us to die on rooftops and in floodwaters," BLM lauded the late dictator for having "provided a space where the traditional spiritual work of African people could flourish." The piece closed by saying: "As Fidel ascends to the realm of the ancestors, we summon his guidance, strength, and power as we recommit ourselves to the struggle for universal freedom. Fidel Vive!"
- In August 2015, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) officially endorsed BLM by approving a resolution that condemned "the unacceptable epidemic of extrajudicial killings of unarmed black men, women, and children at the hands of police"; stated that the American Dream "is a nightmare for too many young people stripped of their dignity under the vestiges of slavery, Jim Crow and White Supremacy"; demanded the "demilitarization of police, ending racial profiling, criminal justice reform, and investments in young people, families, and communities"; and asserted that "without systemic reform this state of [black] unrest jeopardizes the well-being of our democracy and our nation."
- On August 13, 2016, BLM activists in Milwaukee engaged in violence after police in that city shot and killed an armed man with a lengthy criminal record who was carrying an illegal gun that had been used in a burglary. One video clip of the violence showed rioters chanting “black power!”, vowing to "beat up every white person," and trying to drag white drivers out of their cars and assault them. The rioters also targeted local reporters for violent assaults, including one Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter who was thrown to the ground and punched. In another video clip, rioters could be seen burning down a gas station while chanting “black power!” This was just one of numerous businesses that were set on fire. In a Facebook post the following day, the Black Lives Matter Coalition For Justice wrote: "What happened last night was not the result of greed or an ignorant display of anger as some have called it, but rather pain and frustration built up from over 400 years of oppression. The rioting and looting that occurred last night in the city of Milwaukee is a demand for justice on every level.... What happened last night was a revolt and an uproar, not just a disturbance.... The people are angry. The people are fed up, and the people are demanding their freedom."
- In September 2016, BLM activists rioted in Charlotte, North Carolina after a black police officer there had shot and killed a gun-wielding black criminal named Keith Lamont Scott. Prior to that killing, Scott had been: convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in two different states, convicted of assault in three states, charged with “assault with intent to kill” in the 1990s, and spent 7 years in jail for “aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.” In multiple requests for domestic violence protective orders, one of which had been filed in 2015, Scott's wife claimed that the man had stabbed her, hit one of his children, and threatened to kill his entire family. The woman also reported that Scott carried a 9mm handgun but had no permit for it. (According to Fox News: "The gun recovered at the scene of Scott's shooting had been stolen and later sold to Scott.") At least 20 police officers were injured in the Charlotte riots, and National Guard troops were called in to help restore order. During the mayhem, protesters threw things at police, sometimes shot one another, looted and destroyed local businesses, set vehicles on fire, attacked white people who happened to be in the vicinity, decorated the landscape with BLM graffiti, and chanted slogans like “Black Lives Matter” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”
- On July 7, 2016, BLM activists held anti-police-brutality rallies in numerous cities across the United States, to protest the recent shootings of two African American men by white police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana. At a rally in Dallas, Texas, demonstrators shouted “Enough is enough!” while they held signs bearing slogans like: “If all lives matter, why are black ones taken so easily?” Then, suddenly, at just before 9 pm, a gunman opened fire on the law-enforcement officers who were on duty at that rally (in Dallas). Four policemen and one transit officer were killed, and six additional police were wounded. The perpetrator, Micah Xavier Johnson, subsequently told a hostage negotiator that he had acted alone, was angry about the recent police shootings of two black men, and was determined to kill white people -- "especially white officers."
- In the wake of the carnage in Dallas, a number of BLM activists taunted uniformed police officers who were standing guard in front of a gas station. Some Twitter users posted footage of a local news report that showed approximately 300 to 400 protesters dancing, shouting at police, and raising their middle fingers to them. Moreover, BLM sympathizers posted numerous online tweets to express their approval of the mass shooting. Some examples:
“Y’all pigs got what was coming for y’all.”
"GIVE A FUCK ABOUT DALLAS AND THEM PIGS FUCK EM ALL"
"wtf! Is when whites think their superior than us! Dallas must burn,black lives matter now, got the message pigs!"
"These fucking pigs deserve Dallas, and every incident after Dallas until reform. Fucking disgusting animals."
“Next time a group wants to organize a police shoot, do like Dallas tonight, but have extra men/women to flank the Pigs!”
“dude hell yeah someone is shooting pigs in dallas. solidarity”
"Shout out to them Dallas shooters !! rapping pigs in blankets"
“DALLAS keep smoking dem pigs keep up the work.”
- On July 9, 2016, activists participating in a BLM protest in Phoenix threw rocks at police officers and threatened to kill them.
- On August 29, 2015—just hours after a lone black gunman had murdered a white sheriff’s deputy in Texas while the latter was pumping gasoline into his car—demonstrators affiliated with the St. Paul, Minnesota branch of BLM disrupted traffic as they marched—with police protection—to the gates of the Minnesota State Fair. Carrying signs bearing slogans like "End White Supremacy," they repeatedly chanted in unison: “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.” “Pigs” was a reference to police officers, and "blanket" was a reference to body bags. The slogan echoed what gunman Ismaaiyl Brinsleyan had posted on the Internet—"Pigs in a blanket smell like bacon"—in December 2014, just before he murdered NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.
- During the September 1, 2015 airing of a blog-talk-radio program associated with BLM, the hosts laughed at the recent assassination of Texas Deputy Daron Goforth, a husband and father who was shot 15 times at point blank range from behind while he was gassing up his patrol car. One host, a self-described black supremacist known as King Noble, said the execution of that "cracker cop" was an indication that "it's open season on killing whites and police officers and probably killing cops, period." "It’s unavoidable, inescapable," he added. "It’s funny that now we are moving to a time where the predator will become the prey." After claiming that blacks were like lions who could win a “race war” against whites, Noble declared: “Today, we live in a time when the white man will be picked off, and there’s nothing he can do about it. His day is up, his time is up. We will witness more executions and killing of white people and cops than we ever have before. It’s about to go down. It’s open season on killing white people and crackas.”
- On September 14, 2015, BLM supporter/demonstrator Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks, a 25-year-old convicted felon, shot and killed a rookie Kentucky state trooper named Joseph Cameron Ponder after a high-speed chase. The perpetrator lived in Florissant, Missouri, near the town of Ferguson, and had participated in local demonstrations protesting the 2014 death of Michael Brown, a young black man killed by a white Ferguson police officer after he had tried to take the officer's handgun. (Click here for details of that case.) Johnson-Shanks was so preoccupied with the Brown case, that he even attended Brown's funeral and graveside service in August 2014.
- At a December 2014 BLM rally in New York City, marchers chanted in unison: "What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now."
- On a BLM-affiliated radio program the following month, the hosts laughed at the recent assassination of a white Texas deputy; boasted that blacks were like lions who could prevail in a “race war” against whites; happily predicted that "we will witness more executions and killing of white people and cops than we ever have before"; and declared that "It's open season on killing white people and crackas.”
In November 2015, a group of approximately 150 BLM protesters shouting "Black Lives Matter," stormed Dartmouth University's library, screaming, “Fu** you, you filthy white fu**s!," "Fu** you and your comfort!," and "Fu** you, you racist sh**!”
- In July 2016, a BLM activist speaking to a CNN reporter shouted: "The less white babies on this planet, the less of you [white adults] we got! I hope they kill all the white babies! Kill 'em all right now! Kill 'em! Kill your grandkids! Kill yourself! Coffin, bitch! Go lay in a coffin! Kill yourself!"
- A co-founder of BLM's Toronto branch is a young woman named Yusra Khogali, who in late 2015 posted the following message on Facebook: “Whiteness is not humxness. infact, white skin is sub-humxn.... White ppl are recessive genetic defects. this is factual. white ppl need white supremacy as a mechanism to protect their survival as a people because all they can do is produce themselves. black ppl simply through their dominant genes can literally wipe out the white race if we had the power to.”
- In the spring of 2016, Khogali issued a Facebook threat against a Toronto police officer: “The police officer who killed Andrew Loku. We. Are coming for you. U better believe it. You are going to spend the rest of your life without your family like how Andrew Loku’s 5 children will have to go on without their father. Justice will be served.” Around that same time, she tweeted: “Plz Allah give me strength to not cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today. Plz plz plz.”
- In February 2017, Khogali participated in a protest in front of the U.S. consulate where she shouted into a microphone that Canadian Prime Minister “Justin Trudeau is a white supremacist terrorist,” and she exhorted the crowd to “rise up and fight back.” “Look at us, we have the numbers,” she added.
- At all BLM events, demonstrators invoke the words that the Marxist revolutionary, former Black Panther, convicted cop-killer, and longtime fugitive Assata Shakur once wrote in a letter titled “To My People”: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” (The fourth line was drawn from the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.) In Shakur's original letter, she described herself as a “Black revolutionary” who had “declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heart-less robots [police] who protect them and their property.”
- Another figure greatly admired by BLM is Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who in the 1960s was renowned for threatening that blacks would "burn America down," and for urging blacks to murder "honkies." In the spring of 2000, Al-Amin shot two black law-enforcement officers in downtown Atlanta, killing one of them.
- Born in 1981, Alicia Garza is a self-described “queer” social-justice activist who reveres the Marxist revolutionary, former Black Panther, and convicted cop-killer Assata Shakur for her contributions to the “Black Liberation Movement.” Garza is likewise a great admirer of Angela Davis (another Marxist and former Black Panther), Ella Baker (an avowed socialist who had ties to the Communist Party USA and the Weather Underground), and Audre Lorde (a black Marxist lesbian feminist).
- In May 2015, Garza characterized the recent protests and riots in Baltimore—which erupted after a local black criminal named Freddie Gray had died under disputed circumstances while in police custody—as “Black Spring” demonstrations akin to the massive “Arab Spring” actions that had threatened and/or toppled a number of Middle Eastern regimes beginning in early 2011.
- In July 2015, Cullors spoke at the annual Netroots Nation convention in Phoenix. In the course of her remarks, she exhorted fellow blacks to “rise the fuck up” and “burn everything down!”
- Cullors herself was trained to be an activist by former Weather Underground leader Eric Mann.
First of all, before I even look this, link to the source.
Cue condemnations because David Horowitz is on the right. All the incidents are documented, though.
So, you went and copied a wall of text from a right wing website expressly dedicated to discrediting the political left by David Horowitz who has a history of misinformation and on top of that is an alleged racist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Horowitz
"Horowitz has been criticized for material in his books, particularly The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, by noted scholars such as Columbia University professor Todd Gitlin. The group Free Exchange on Campus issued a 50-page report in May 2006 in which they take issue with many of Horowitz's assertions in the book: they identify specific factual errors, unsubstantiated assertions, and quotations which appear to be either misquoted or taken out of context."
"Chip Berlet, writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), identified Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture as one of 17 "right-wing foundations and think tanks support[ing] efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable." Berlet accused Horowitz of blaming slavery on "black Africans … abetted by dark-skinned Arabs" and of "attack[ing] minority 'demands for special treatment' as 'only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others".
It's instructive to know where you get your ideas from but this source is trash. If you say these instances are documented though, go find them from a reliable source and I'll deal with them.
:lol:
Quoting Baden
Or you could actually read the articles and follow the links they provide.
I knew you would react in this way. Instead of addressing the information provided, you just trot out genetic fallacies to absolve yourself from having to consider it. Fine. In the future, I'll just state my opinions and disregard your pleas to substantiate them.
So, if I claimed the Republican party is a terrorist organization and provided the antifa website as a source, you'd be fine with that? Why don't you just make an effort and provide evidence from a reliable source? Is it laziness or what? I'd like to seriously address this issue if you're capable of that.
Sorry, but have you two jokers ever even written a paper in your lives? You know where you need to provide evidence from a source that can be taken seriously? When your professor told you, you can't just copy-paste from anywhere on the internet? I'm happy to deal with this issue, so please get your act together, get some info from a source that's not polluted and we'll deal with it.
My source just compiles quotes and events. You fallaciously dismiss it because you don't like the people who compiled it, dredging up irrelevant accusations against Horowitz and even comparing the man to antifa activists. So be it, but that shows you're not actually "happy to deal with this issue," so spare us such patronizing insincerity.
I just made an observation about the present behavior of the left. How does this response address that, besides proving my point by being defensive?
I've marked them and taught sourcing. That was my job for a long time. Your attitude is a bit bizarre. You want me to verify the information from a clearly biased source by having to go to the website and check it rather than simply provide information from a non-biased one. How about you go there, find the links, and put them in your post. That would be fine by me as long as the links point to reliable sites. OK?
Something constructive for you to do would be to find some reliable sources to back up the claim BLM are a terrorist organization presuming you agree with it. These side comments don't really add anything to the discussion.
If an ideology has a high degree of sociocultural dominance, then massive retaliation against even moderate dissenters serves as a means of cementing that ideology's hold, because ideological dominance relies on the perception that the ideology is universal or near-universal. If you think that everyone agrees on X, you won't dare to contradict it, especially when you see even mild disagreement being quashed with extreme prejudice. This last serves as evidence that the given ideology (whatever it is) really is (near) universal.
Once this dominance is lost, however, attacking even mild dissenters is no longer a winning strategy, because the cat is already out of the bag; you're not going to convince anyone that your way of thinking is the default by viciously attacking all dissenters, because the jig is up and we all know that dissent is now socially acceptable. In fact, the massive retaliation against any and all dissenters now has the opposite effect, because it simultaneously vindicates those who claim to have been previously suppressed and makes people reticent to agree with you instead of compelling their agreement.
The sociocultural dominance of an ideology is self-sustaining when strong (perception of being the default --> nobody challenges --> stronger perception of being the default), and this reciprocal self-strengthening inverts into a spectacular meltdown once dominance is lost, since the tactics that formerly made it strong and became stronger with it now do the opposite.
Of course, the source of information is important in a serious debate, and the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones and David Horowitz are not reliable sources of information about the left. Why would you think they are? And it's not my job to find reliable evidence to support your accusations. I made you a reasonable offer to provide links in your post to acceptable sources (you don't even have to change the information) and your refusal to do that suggests you can't find any. So, you have no case. That's your loss not mine.
If, as the logical consequence of your position, you will literally deny that person X said Y or that event Z took place in the real world on account of the fact that the source reporting on such things has political opinions you don't like, that's nuts, but also extremely tribal (Horowitz didn't actually write the articles, by the way; he pays others to research and publish information on the website). It also assumes that you are in possession of all the trustworthy sources. But you shouldn't need a peer reviewed journal confirming that a riot took place in Baltimore, for goodness' sake, so your position is absurd, not to mention fallacious (it commits the genetic fallacy).
Yawn. It's standard procedure to link to an unbiased source in any serious written debate that requires evidence to be analysed. That's the first step. I don't know if the information is correct or not and I'm not presuming it is or not. So, let's dispense with the strawmen. I'm asking you to link to a reliable source in your post because I'm not going to trawl through an obviously biased right wing site to try to find forward links to a reliable one.
Do you want me to explain the genetic fallacy to you before you run?
Saying it is a compendium of links is irrelevant. I bet a lot of the links are to similarly unreliable sources. If they were to reliable sources i expect you would have posted some by now.
For anyone to spend time trawling through the tainted website to see how much, if any, references to actual verified events and measurements it contains would make as much sense as a physics professor reading somebody's 100-page plan for a perpetual motion machine to see if there were any good ideas in it.
And it's not the genetic fallacy. That would be to assert that everything on the website is wrong, because of the bias of the source. This is simply saying it would be a waste of time doing the work to discern which bits are wrong, because there is no reason to expect we would learn anything new.
I may just have to research it myself if he can't back up his claim. I'm actually interested why anyone would call BLM terrorists.
Cheers. That saves me time. :up:
Fair enough.
Party platforms seem to be in perpetual flux so it's hard to pin down specific positions - especially concerning cultural issues - which can be considered essential to the left or the right in an ahistorical, decontextualized way. Those Counter-Enlightenment thinkers, and even some essential figures of postmodernism (e.g. Nietzsche and Heidegger), are widely identified with the right. And yet their primary influence today is on the academic left, which in turn has shaped the way the younger and possibly more radical generation understands the need to deconstruct dominant frameworks, to reconfigure power relations, etc. Very confusing stuff.
It's way easier, I think, to identify those things which fall on the left or right on political and economic matters. It's more black and white in those cases. But I did make the claim that there's a cultural shift to the left taking place in the US and should therefore be able to back it up with more than just personal experiences and gut feelings. Maybe some actual, tangible evidence supporting the tentative idea that heterosexual white supremacist patriarchy (or some such - I'm not trying to make it sound ridiculous and I do think there's some truth to the social justice platform as I understand it) is the new(ish) cultural enemy which the left rallies around? Can we agree on something like that?
I'm talking about things like gender-neutral bathrooms, the desired elimination of Confederate statues, the ending of Columbus Day celebrations in favor of (I believe) Native American Day, etc. These are all relatively new changes to the culture landscape that were not around when I was a kid, and imo they clearly indicate that shift to the left that I mentioned originally. It seems to be a cumulative, incremental process which has picked up significant momentum at the grassroots level over the past 10-15 years. I would say this is especially true since the day of Trump's election and the subsequent equating of his supporters with lingering racism, sexism and xenophobia allegedly at the heart of America.
Good topic though and I've enjoyed the testy back and forth between participants. Oh and by the way I'm only vaguely familiar with Jordan Peterson so I'm not tying my position in with his; not because I disagree with him, but because I'm almost entirely ignorant of what his positions actually are. I've seen the somewhat recent and well-known 'gotcha' interview but that's about it. Nothing he said there struck me as particularly crazy or radically conservative, but you likely have more knowledge of his views than I do.
I think the most fertile area on which to establish a new conservative movement, if anyone's interested, would be to incorporate those prior critiques of our technological commercial civilization in an endeavor to transform the way we understand ourselves and our world. In other words the 'revolution' would be ontological in origin rather than political or economic, although those too would change accordingly. To be a bit more specific, this shift would combine the best of our current situation's focus on speed, efficiency, productivity and the like - so no 'Ludditism' - with an increased openness to less 'reductionist' and less calculative/instrumental ways of relating to things.
Not necessarily an either/or situation and ideally we could draw upon the benefits of modern science and technology while also ameliorating some of the pernicious social, environmental and psychological effects. That's a rough outline for a future conservatism. Actually, this hypothetical shift in paradigm could render the traditional left and right divide obsolete, so maybe 'conservatism' isn't the right way to describe it. Those terms only make sense, it seems, given the current framework, and by altering that framework those terms would no longer apply. On top of that the terms 'conservatism' and 'right-wing' conjure up negative associations for many, so as a practical measure it's probably best to leave them behind.
Wishful thinking perhaps, but I do think the possibility is there, even if not likely anytime soon (if at all). That's the direction I would go in at least. Crazy talk? Probably lol.
How funny... on the one hand you tell me that you have a problem with people on the right claiming, for example, that there are biological differences in IQ between black people and white people on average, because it ends up resulting in discrimination, even though logically there is no link between that fact and discrimination. And on the other hand, when it comes to the narratives of the left, you say it's okay, the damage isn't their responsibility, it's not their fault - these are not their tenets. So which is it? You should adopt the same attitude across the board, and you don't. Why is that?
You clearly were part of the PF community back when you were in your early 20s, probably the period of time when your views most clearly solidified. And so, you've read the works and books recommended by the overly left-leaning PF, you've immersed yourself in the material, and haven't looked with the same intensity into other material.
Also, this community, back at old PF, had an even stronger bias for the left than it does here. Here it's not as easy to ridicule people on the right, thanks to the continuous efforts of people like, for example, Thorongil. When you have returned to TPF here, you seem to have brought back with you some of the old dismissive attitudes as the 'right way' to play the game. But things have changed a little in the meantime.
This is question begging. The reason you expect not to learn anything new is because of the biased nature of the compilers and sources of the information. Ergo, genetic fallacy. You and Baden have rejected the content provided on the basis of the political persuasion of the source.
Does this mean you've a doctorate, then? How'd you go from being a professor to being a janitor? Seems a strange turn of events for someone who seems to view himself as some intellectual paragon.
Precisely. "This is an unreliable source, so I won't look at it, so I have no reason to believe it's a reliable source."
The Vox point is interesting as well. Vox is (strident) propaganda but it passes the sniff test because of the obvious left-wing editorial policy. One can high-mindedly expound on the virtues of critical scrutiny, but this falls a little flat when one refuses to critique anything from one's own side.
Whoever came up with all the new genders should get started on a much more granular set of political identities - those might actually have some utility. Politics should definitely be less binary than gender.
Vox
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/vox/
Discover the Networks (David Horowitz)
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/discover-the-networks/
Because there is no "narrative of the left", or more focally, tenets of Democratic Party which assert women must value careers over motherhood, or that all whites are destructive. It. Does. Not. Exist. Can card-carrying members of the Democratic Party hold such beliefs? Sure. I'm sure that they exist, and I never doubted the veracity of @Erik's experiences, and I find such beliefs similarly ludicrous. I do "have a problem with them". But do these ideas form the foundation of the modern Democratic Party? NO.
Scientific Racism, however has, in fact, had a long history in America, in practice supplying "scientific" verification to discriminate against Black Americans. Undeniably, discrimination against Blacks continues to exist today, and no doubt there are those who leverage such "science" to validate such beliefs, as history shows us. Additionally, the scientific connection between race genetics and intelligence have been widely discredited, so it's pseudo-science to boot. I not only have a problem with people holding deleterious ideas, but I have a problem with people holding wrong ideas based on bad science. Further, I never claimed that belief in biological differences is a "tenet" of the Right. It certainly may be a tenet of White Supremacists, or the Alt-Right in particular, but not of the Republican Party. No hypocrisy on my part, merely incomprehension and misreadings on yours, as usual.
Quoting Agustino
Stupid ideas are stupid ideas, and bad philosophy is bad philosophy regardless of where the advocate stands on the political spectrum. I've been happy to call out bullshit ideas that have been held by liberals. It just so coincidentally happens that most forum members promoting bad arguments happen to identify on the Right.
Ok.
I'll explain again the genetic fallacy and the basic principles of gathering reliable evidence for use in a debate, particularly in supporting an accusation of criminality, and I ask you to please try to take the blinders off so we can have a sensible dialogue: My objection is to the extra work I would have to do to verify the information from a clearly biased source. I have not dismissed any argument on the basis of its origin, which would entail the genetic fallacy.
As in, if I dismissed Thorongil's argument that BLM are a terrorist organization based on the fact he is a biased right-winger I would be committing the genetic fallacy. But not only did I not dismiss it, I asked him for evidence so we could debate it. If it were the case, however, that any attempt to assess the credibility of evidence (which is all I did and I did visit the site—as did andrewk) automatically made you guilty of the genetic fallacy, our court system and science itself would as a whole be guilty of a continuous genetic fallacy for demanding that evidence be credible. This is how bizarre it is for you to claim it is a fallacy to question the reliability of a source. It happens all the time in academia and the courts for very good reasons which should be obvious.
On top of that none of the so-called evidence is analyzed, it's simply copy-pasted there. So, there is no argument from Thorongil to deal with in that post. Usually when you are giving evidence for an argument, you need to make the link between the evidence and your argument explicit. In other words, tell your interlocutor why the piece of evidence does the work you want it to do, i.e. support your claim.
So, I did look through the questionable information anyway and could find nothing but instances where members or associates of members either behaved badly or allegedly committed crimes or allegedly said other members were going to commit crimes etc. By that standard it would be easy to prove both the Tea Party and the Republican Party are terrorist organizations. In fact, the Tea Party has been labeled terroristic by the left and even the mainstream media. Again, unhelpfully.
https://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/60202_Page2.html
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/news_columnists/gilbert_garcia/article/Democratic-ad-brands-tea-party-Republicans-5864039.php
And this is the irony of all this, I could go to a left-wing website and copy walls of text concerning bad things Tea Party members have done in order to prove the Tea Party is a terrorist organization, and of course you would dismiss it. The difference is that I would not make the claim, not because I couldn't do exactly the same thing that Thorongil is doing, but because that's the type of hysterical polarizing language I object to on both sides. And you said you did too—until Thorongil did it. Remember, this is how we got into all this, through a discussion of hysterical language. Yet you two continue to try to justify it on your side simply because it's on your side while at the same time writing (in the case of @Pneumenon) unintentionally ironic posts about circling the wagons and so on.
"Circling the wagons" is a social phenomenon. The right isn't circling the wagons, as evidenced by its steady advances. Also, I see no response to Thorongil's point about the Vox op-ed....
Thanks, that puts the final nail in a coffin that was already six ft under. I presume we'll now get an ironic and amusing questioning of the source of the bias check, and a convenient forgetting of all the fake genetic fallacy claims.
Quoting Michael
Now respond to my post.
I did.
OK, well if you are happy to concede all but that point, then fair enough, we agree and can move on.
Anyhow, on a note unrelated to that previous discussion but still keeping with the general question of the thread, deconstruction of the prevailing narrative always meets with a peculiar kind of doxastic opposition, which is that evaluative standards (and even intelligibility) are reciprocally determined by the status quo. Institutions play into this, of course.
And I didn't see any legitimacy for the right-wing propaganda site (and I had much more justification for doubting it imo). Glad we understand each other now.
Quoting Pneumenon
What point specifically do you want to make in relation to the OP?
Because I agree in not seeing a basis for the legitimacy of the fact checking website, and notwithstanding your longer post, the comment I quote above demonstrates the futility of continuing this conversation.
So, having dropped your claims of the "genetic fallacy" applying to questioning information based on the source of that information—now that it suits you to question the source of the information we have provided, you have no evidential basis for your comments about BLM, so those claims fail. And maybe you can explain why you wasted so much of our time by arguing for a position concerning the genetic fallacy you are willing to drop the second it becomes inconvenient for you to hold it. That suggests you were being disingenuous from the start.
I'll only add that the source @Michael provided explicitly sets out to question both left and right-wing websites whereas the source you provided expressly sets out to discredit the left. So, on what basis do you question its legitimacy? So far it seems to be merely because you don't like the information it provides. That's not a tenable position (i.e. you need to provide actual reasons for doubting the source as we did).
At least, if nothing else, stop misrepresenting my position.
Quoting Baden
That's actually the third time I've posted that. Not only that but I actually dealt with the information on the presumption it could be true and responded to it in that way in my recent long post. Are you reading the discussion?
As well as that, I already explained the genetic fallacy to you several times. It's one of the easiest fallacies to understand and I'll bet there's not one other person reading this who doesn't get it by now. On top of that, if you think it applies to us for doubting your source, it must also apply to you for doubting ours. I honestly don't know what your mental block is here. The fact is that neither of us is committing the genetic fallacy by questioning the reliability of our respective sources. It's a perfectly legitimate position to take in principle. What it comes down to is the reasons for our questioning and how strong they are on either side.
So, here are my reasons. I deem your source untrustworthy because:
a) According to its front page It explicitly sets out to attack the left.
b) Horowitz is known for providing misinformation and is an alleged racist
c) It gets the following report from a site checker that deals with both left and right-wing sites:
QUESTIONABLE SOURCE
A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, overt propaganda, poor or no sourcing to credible information and/or is fake news.
Bias: Extreme Right, Hate Group
Now why do you deem our source unnacceptable? If you are not willing to provide reasons, and want to end the conversation before doing so, you are simply conceding that your position that it's not legitimate is baseless.
Equivocation.
Quoting Baden
Doesn't mean what it says is false or *ahem* untrustworthy. It might mean that, but then you'd have to demonstrate that.
Quoting Baden
Ad hominem.
Quoting Baden
That site doesn't infallibly determine the reliability of sources.
Now give your reasons for distrusting our source.
But...
Quoting Thorongil
(To break it down for you:
If you think that in order for us to reject the information on a source as reliable we must demonstrate that it's false then until such a time as you demonstrate that the information on our source is false then you need to accept it, i.e. you need to accept that Horowitz's website is "A questionable source that exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, overt propaganda, poor or no sourcing to credible information and/or is fake news."
But given that your argument then requires you to accept that your source is untrustworthy, you've made our argument for us.)
Your only alternative is to admit that there is no positive reason for us to consider the source you provided as legitimate. And again, your case falls apart.
When did I say that? Now you're putting words in my mouth. Michael's site did not purport to document things people said or real world events that occurred. When I have spoken of my site's reliability, it has always been in the context of the quotes and events it compiled, not the reliability of the author's opinions, which are clearly biased and on the right. Because the page I linked to isn't anything like Michael's site, your attempt to trap me in hypocrisy won't work.
The events compiled and edited and presented by an author you now admit is "clearly biased and on the right". So, obviously it's reasonable to suspect he may not have compiled and edited and presented that information in an unbiased way. QED.
In other words, information compiled, edited and presented by someone who is clearly biased is clearly unreliable. That's self-evident.
(I want to reiterate that I am still not taking a position on how much if any of the information is true or false. We can't know that for sure. I'm restricting myself to making a point about reliability).
So, you have our reasons. But you have still provided no reason to doubt the information on the site Michael presented. What is your reason?
Information compiled, edited and presented by someone who is clearly biased (on any side) is significantly more likely to present a biased viewpoint than that compiled, edited and presented by someone who is not clearly biased. Again, self-evident.
On the other hand, I don't concede that Michael's source is clearly biased. In fact, because it presents criticism of both the right and the left, it would seem more likely to be unbiased.
Again, I haven't ever denied this.
Quoting Baden
Again, you're missing the point. I have been talking about the reliability of the information itself. Now you have shifted to talking about how the presentation of that information might be biased. I'm sure it is, as it comes from a position of opposition to BLM, but I haven't ever denied that either. And one would expect that a source opposed to BLM would compile information about it that cast it in a negative light, so the bias isn't surprising. But that doesn't mean the information it compiles is false. You accuse me of not reading your posts, but you apparently don't read mine.
Irrelevant. Apples to oranges.
There is no shift at all. Is it hard for you to understand that the way you collect (compile), present and edit information can change the content, context and reliability of the information? For example, you might collect information that was not true or properly vetted, or you might change the context of some true information through selective editing to make it appear in a different light etc etc. This is done all the time by governments and news organizations the world over. It's called propaganda. To put it another way, would you consider news that came from a left-wing website that explicitly set out to attack the right reliable?
Just present your objections to Michael's source. I've asked you several times for them. Or, we'll have to presume you don't have any.
Yes, in conjunction with right wing sources on the same topics.
Quoting Baden
I'm not doing that until you acknowledge you understand the distinction I made between the two websites, although it should be obvious why I dismiss it.
And I'll consider the information you presented as reliable in conjunction with left wing sources on the same topics. Please present them and we can continue.
Quoting Thorongil
I acknowledge that there is a distinction in the format of the information (one is in the format of "news" and the other in the format of a review). Now give me your objections. Why is this website unreliable in your view?
You mean to tell me you haven't done so already? You're just a blank slate with respect to BLM? Come now. The left wing view of BLM is not hard to find or being suppressed. It is, in fact, the default view of most media outlets. You already adopt it. It's just a question of admitting it.
Quoting Baden
David Horowitz is not on the "extreme right." Nor does he support any "hate group."
You can cut the nonsense now. You've just admitted I should consider your right-wing source unreliable until there is another left-wing source to back it up. That's your problem. It's not my job to find reliable evidence to support your claims.
So, go get the specific left wing sources for the specific information you presented in your posts or you have no reliable evidence to present by your own determination, and you've wasted four pages of both our time before admitting that.
Quoting Thorongil
Meaningless bare assertion. To consider a site unreliable solely on the basis that you disagree with its conclusion is obviously to say nothing at all unless you can present evidence as to why you are right and it is wrong.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/david-horowitz
No, go to hell. This is becoming farcical. You know very well what the left wing position on BLM is and where one might easily find it. I'm not going to submit to such a ludicrous demand.
Quoting Baden
It is a fact that Horowitz is not on the extreme right. Here's your precious Wikipedia on the extreme right: "The term is often associated with Nazism, neo-Nazism, fascism, neo-fascism and other ideologies or organizations that feature extreme nationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, racist or reactionary views. These can lead to oppression and violence against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority, or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group, nation, state or ultraconservative traditional social institutions." None of that applies to Horowitz. Say what you want about the man, and I'm not actually the biggest fan, but to apply that label to him is sheer slander.
The report “profiles 15 prominent anti-Muslim extremists, many of whom are associated with organizations identified by the SPLC as hate groups,” who appear frequently in the media, “where they spread falsehoods that too often go untested.”
The 15 anti-Muslim extremists profiled in the report are Ann Corcoran, Steven Emerson, Brigitte Gabriel, Frank Gaffney Jr., Pamela Geller, John Guandolo, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, David Horowitz, Ryan Mauro, Robert Muise, Maajid Nawaz, Daniel Pipes, Walid Shoebat, Robert Spencer, and David Yerushalmi."
https://www.mediamatters.org/people/david-horowitz
That's not what the genetic fallacy is. Look it up.
I mean, you don't have to get past the title to put the fact-checking meter in the negative!
Have you blown a fuse or something? You said I cannot trust your source unless it's backed up by a left-wing source. So, your source as it stands is unreliable. That's not my problem.
Ad hom. Genetic fallacy. (According to your definitions). And let's add in (disingenuous) "appeal to authority".
I have. You're wrong. Why don't you look it up?
http://www.islamophobia.org/islamophobic-individuals/david-horowitz/83-david-horowitz.html
Saying it's not worth wasting time on the website is not saying that all its claims are wrong. Indeed, I expect that some of them will be right, just as some of the statements in the physics crank's 100-page perpetual motion machine design will be right. But I'm not going to waste my time looking for them.
I did explain this several times. He keeps getting confused over the issue of reliability of information which pertains to the likely level of truth in a source and a specific determination of the truth of a particular argument or claim based on its source. I don't think he's ever going to get it tbh.
I think you are mixing up Baden with unenlightened. I'm not aware that un was ever a prof. Based on the depth of insight displayed by un's posts on here, I reckon he could have been if he'd wanted to aim at that, but he chose a different path.
BB was just trolling. He refers to all the mods as janitors. He needs some new material. He doesn't have anything to add to this conversation.
Baden's very first comment was: "David Horowitz who has a history of misinformation and on top of that is an alleged racist." And then he quoted from Wikipedia. That's it. I don't know what else he wanted me to infer from saying such a thing.
Quoting andrewk
Which induces one to ponder just why you believe it not worth your time, if not because you think its claims are false. I was asked to substantiate a claim. I did. You don't want to address the evidence I offered? Fine, then stop replying.
CAIR? Are you serious? I almost suspect I'm being trolled at this point.
David Horowitz? Are you serious? I suspect I'm being trolled at this point.
You really are an odd individual. You expect us to take your sources as reliable and even accuse us of committing fallacies when we don't accept them, and then scream indignantly at every source we present as if somehow your biased sources are fine when you won't even give our sources a second look. The level of hypocrisy is so farcically high that there's nowhere else to go with the discussion. So, if your goal was to shut this thread of argument down, you've succeeded.
The fuck is wrong with CAIR?
No he didn't.
You need to go and read the preceding discussion.
Quoting Thorongil
Obviously the point of the question was to establish a principle we both abide by. i.e. if he would not accept my left-wing sources without corresponding right-wing sources, I should not accept his right-wing sources without corresponding left-wing ones. Understand? Thorongil, however, is a one way street.
Simply because I expect the ratio of time spent, to interesting, useful and reliable information learned, to be very low. It's the same time-allocation algorithm as most people I know use.
Why spend time reading an obviously biased source when I could be reading from a reliable, unbiased, informative one like bbc.co.uk or nasa. Why bury myself in the internet rants of an angry blogger when I could be finally learning what the deal is with quantum computers, or improving my german?
And don't complain about your evidence not being addressed. You posted a link to a rant website which, contrary to your suggestion, is not meticulously sourced at all. Nearly all of the hyperlinks backing strong opinions on the pages I looked at were either to pages on the same the site, or to fellow-travellling extremist sites or tabloid trash, like torontosun, frontpagemag or breitbart. Your evidence was addressed by that investigation and found completely wanting.
It is still open to you to post links to reports from reputable sources that support your fantastical claims about terrorism, should any such reports exist.
*Shrug* I didn't think it was too much to ask that a non-far right site be used as a source for an accusation of terrorism against a left-wing group. Horowitz is an Islamophobe at the very least (though I dealt with the information anyway). But, whatever, I'm happy to move on to a less controversial topic. It's not worth banging on about I suppose.
Not in France, at least not as of right now. Louis de Bourbon is a full-blown reactionary who excuses Franco, and a Spaniard to boot. No way in hell he's getting a crown, even the most hypothetical of crowns. Henry d'Orleans is an entitled ass who has nothing better to do with his time than to create yet another Very Holy and Very Distinguished Office of the Left Buttcheek of our Lady of Paris. Jean-Christophe Napoleon (or Napoleon VII) seems like the better choice between the three, but that's mostly because he doesn't seem to care about the throne at all.
Are you a legitimist, an orleanist or an imperialist?
And an article that's more to the point: Conservatives Will Never Get the Respect They Crave. They Don’t Deserve It.
My previous question still stands.
No, clearly not. Who would ever think that? The only question is what to do with the poor bastards once the glorious revolution ushers in utopia. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew. We shall have to decide, comrades.
I know this will sound like a platitude, but equally decent, intelligent, and well-intentioned people can have honest disagreements over guiding values, over the "common good," over the role government should be allowed to play in peoples' lives, over which economic policy is more conducive to meeting peoples' needs, over which needs should be prioritized, over whether a more centralized or decentralized system of governance is preferable, over how to balance individual rights with the community's needs, etc., etc., etc.
There are obviously some positions (e.g. proponents of slavery or genocide) that don't deserve a hearing, that no decent human being defends these days, but however much we may disagree with them I think it's hyperbole to place basic conservative ideas and values within that category, and this seems to have been the author's intent. Like if you hold those views you're not only wrong, you're evil. There's an oddly religious quality to this sort of thinking, going so far as to incorporate the "history is on our side" narrative which I erroneously assumed was suspect among progressives, at least of the postmodernist sort which he seemed to identify with in certain passages.
Be that as it may, I continue to be an economic progressive who largely agrees with his basic assessment of Republican greed, militarism, environmental indifference, etc. through the years, but I would also acknowledge that this is not the only conservative position imaginable, and that most people - on both sides of the political aisle - are more complex than self-righteous political propagandists (again on both sides) portray them to be within their narrow and dogmatic Manichean worldview.
And there you go, now I've just hypocritically reduced this group of political agitators to caricature, and I'm almost certain that most, if not all of them, would neither agree with nor appreciate it. What they typically do - create simplistic narratives - does seem to be a more effective strategy than one involving, say, the humanization of people who think differently, or seeking to understand why others think and feel the way they do, etc. So I can see why they do it, but that doesn't make it right.
Maybe I'll give it another read though lest it turns out that I'm the one who's being uncharitable. I would finally add that I hate it when conservatives engage in absurd caricatures and ridiculous distortions of progressives and their positions, too, and would prefer that they sincerely address the many strengths and achievements of the modern progressive movement(s).
Curious that you've repeated this mantra interminably, despite conservatives holding all three branches of Government. The article questions the respectfulness of modern conservative ideas. It isn't questioning whether conservatives should be respected as dignified humans, or that their fundamental human rights should be scrapped. It's this crass ignorance, this hasty hyperbole of gulags and "glorious revolution", that is so profoundly stupid as to warrant dismissal and derision.
Curious as to what is respectable with conservatism as practiced; that with the three branches under their control, conservatives have moved forward in sapping wealth away from the poor and middle class to the extreme upper echelons of society. They will further deplete needed social services in the name of balancing the deficit which they increased through tax cuts. They have split immigrant families, and gleefully dismantled regulations that protect the environment and curtail climate change.
:rofl:
What was that about crass ignorance and hasty hyperbole? Why, it's the sound of your own words flying through the air like a boomerang, smacking you in the face.
Quoting Maw
Yes, we conservatives are a bloodthirsty lot. For it is written in the fifth book of the conservative: "put under the ban everything the poor man and the immigrant has. Do not spare him; kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys, regulations and air quality. Thus saith the CONSERVATIVE."
This article caused quite a splash when it first appeared, and reactions have ranged from utter ridicule and derision to fanatic praise. While I doubt many, if any, of these people (which include Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, the digital magazine Quillette, Dave Rubin, Christina Sommers) have any meaningful impact in the Republican party, they are nevertheless extremely popular with hordes of mostly young, mostly male, mostly white, digital savvy demographics.