The American left has been drifting into authoritarianism

[Unseen]

Autumn wrote:

Bleh. I was writing quickly between other things. A number of those sentences are more of a mess than normal.

Yeah, sometimes my mind is running a few yards ahead of my fingers.

[—]

The one that trips me up a lot is starting a sentence one way and then finishing it another. The pieces almost go together, but not quite. Sometimes it will just be one word that doesn’t match the rest of the sentence.

[Simon Paynton]

Autumn wrote:

Anecdotes mean little

Cancel culture is authoritarian.  The Right does it too, along with their delightful practice of doxxing.  Extremists are extremists.

[—]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Autumn wrote:

Anecdotes mean little

Cancel culture is authoritarian. The Right does it too, along with their delightful practice of doxxing. Extremists are extremists.

Deplatforming might approach being authoritarian depending on the circumstances. I mentioned the case of Meghan Murphy and the Vancouver Central Library. That’s a case where protestors excepted library administrators to place restrictions on room usage in a situation where they’d customarily be neutral.

But most cancel culture seems to amount to publicly withdrawing support in what is pretty close to boycott. And even at that, for many people it only rises to the level informed or ethical consumerism.

[Simon Paynton]

It’s interesting you mention boycotting.  Here is a 30-minute BBC Radio 4 programme that was on yesterday, that talks about “cancel culture” in a number of historical episodes, including the original Mr Boycott.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0014g04

[Davis]

Cancel culture is authoritarian

Ugh…again you have responded to Autumn’s well thought out reply with babble. “Cancel culture” is a label applied to people who don’t like being called out for bullshit that they have gotten away with for too long. Yes, sometimes people face an overly harsh backlash to things that may not even have been meant as they way they stated it. That is not a LEFT thing or a RIGHT thing. People have paid a social price for stupid things they have said forever and if anything, until recently was an almost exclusively conservative thing. There is nothing wrong with people paying a social cost to saying stupid shit. Just as you will be fired if you tell your boss their company is a piece of shit that came out of their ass, an MP would lose an election after saying “I hate the British flag and British troops can kiss my ass”, celebrities would lose sponsors if they said “I hate all of my fans and every product I ever endorsed is garbage” and most people would lose some friends if they said “I hate all n*****rs, faggots and in fact all of you”. Until recently, people didn’t give a shit about the price marginalised people paid for the flippant hateful comments people made and how unfairly it makes our lives more miserable and less equal. I find it kind of rich how people have always paid a price for doing and saying stupid shit, but that has only become an unsavoury thing when it is the result of hateful biggotry.

Once again, I am not a fan of over the top backlash be it from progressives or conservative folk (like how football players couldn’t find work after taking the knee or journalists lost their jobs during the Iraqi war for critiquing America’s participation in it). For the most part, people finding a backlash for saying stupid harmful shit has been reasonable and proportionate. I also find people like Jordon Peterson’s characterisation of “cancel culture” as some new out of control phenomenon fucking ridiculous, a new kind of moral panic, and Simon I think you are completely ridiculous to buy into this and parrot it here.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Davis.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Davis.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

[Unseen]

One of my favorite examples of deplatforming is by reframing the classic video game title Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?  into Where In The World Is Tulsi Gabbard? This Democrat, a congresswoman at the time, nominated Bernie Sanders to be President 2016.

Her sins: 1) in a one minute long attack, she destroyed the presidential hopes of Kamala Harris in the Democrat debates; 2) she was attacked as an “Assad apologist” in a Kamala Harris response because, basically, she she went on an official congressional fact-finding mission to Syria and didn’t take the opportunity to confront the Syrian strongman over his treatment of his own people. She argues that fact-finding and confrontation don’t mix well.

Hillary Clinton attacked her as a “Russian asset,” a ridiculous smear for anyone who knows Gabbard’s politics. An outraged Bernie Sanders called the smear outrageous. I think pretty clearly Hillary realized that Tulsi could be a serious threat to her own campaign and so she gave the signal to the left in general and Dems in particular to pile on in order to clear the way for here campaign.

Since then, Tulsi has been persona non grata as far as the Dems are concerned.

But it doesn’t end there. Tulsi also became deplatformed by the left wing press so that the only way she has a voice in politics anymore is to appear on right wing Fox News shows  which, predictably, is being used by the American left as evidence that, “See: She’s a conservative. She’s a regular on Fox.” Well, Fox books her for what passes at Fox for “balance” just because she represents left of center thinking.

The liberal/left press seems to be largely and extension of the Democrats, who claimed during the Trump administration that Fox was just a PR arm of The White House.

[Simon Paynton]

Davis wrote:

Ugh…again you have responded to Autumn’s well thought out reply with babble.

Always with the ad hominems.  It’s not civilised behaviour.  You’re supposed to be a moderator.  Can you find a way to make your points, without insulting people?  That would be better.

To be honest, it’s authoritarian to throw a paddy if someone disagrees with your ideas.  This is exactly the kind of woke behaviour I’ve been “grumbling” about: if you disagree with them, they scream the place down and call you every name under the sun.  There are better ways to disagree with people.

The main thing I’ve got against cancel culture is that people enjoy it too much, whether Left or Right.  On the Left, they get into hysterical purity spirals, like the Puritans of olde.  Then you get a situation where nobody can say anything at all if it’s not part of the pile-on.

[—]

To be honest, it’s authoritarian to throw a paddy if someone disagrees with your ideas.

What do you think ‘authoritarian’ means?

…if you disagree with them, they scream the place down and call you every name under the sun. There are better ways to disagree with people.

Historically, the ‘better’ ways seem to be the ways that are easier to ignore. Really, is it ‘authoritarianism’ that’s the issue, or just discomfort from things that are upsetting?

I am going to steal a wikipedia footnote because it’s at least in the ballpark of what authoritarianism means to me:

 Furio Cerutti (2017). Conceptualizing Politics: An Introduction to Political Philosophy. Routledge. p. 17. 

Political scientists have outlined elaborated typologies of authoritarianism, from which it is not easy to draw a generally accepted definition; it seems that its main features are the non-acceptance of conflict and plurality as normal elements of politics, the will to preserve the status quo and prevent change by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power, and lastly, the erosion of the rule of law, the division of powers, and democratic voting procedures.

Now, I understand it is used more colloquially than that, and that’s fine, but if you remove the ‘authority’ aspect to ‘authoritarianism’ you’re just left with ‘-tarianism’ which isn’t much of a word on its own. I am aware that joke borders on an etymological fallacy, but I don’t think the word has strayed so far from the meaning above yet that being vociferous, adamant, or even insulting fits the bill.

 

[Simon Paynton]

Autumn wrote:

What do you think ‘authoritarian’ means?

OK then, bullying is what it is.  People don’t respond well to it.  Any protest is met with “you don’t like it because you’re a bigot”.  This does not make the message look attractive.  There are legitimate ways to make a noisy fuss, and stupid annoying ways to make a noisy fuss, such as ad hominem attacks, accusing people of all kinds of ideologically unsound neuroses when they are just objecting to being bullied.

Autumn wrote:

discomfort from things that are upsetting?

This I am willing to handle.  I am up for having my ideas challenged.  I am not up for being accused of this and that when I might bridle at attempts at domination and humiliation.  Even when I was joining in JP’s Facebook Frontline, I still entertained and introduced into the debate, ideas on intersectionality from the “other side” because they were put in a reasonable and sober way.

[—]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Autumn wrote:

What do you think ‘authoritarian’ means?

OK then, bullying is what it is. People don’t respond well to it. Any protest is met with “you don’t like it because you’re a bigot”. This does not make the message look attractive.

People may not like it, but it makes its dent, albeit with a cost.

Autumn wrote:

discomfort from things that are upsetting?

This I am willing to handle. I am up for having my ideas challenged. I am not up for being accused of this and that …

All the while you constantly cry ‘bullies’ and ‘authoritarianism’ with VERY broad brush strokes. Be the stopping point. You’re adding nothing to rational discourse with this.

[Simon Paynton]

Autumn wrote:

People may not like it, but it makes its dent, albeit with a cost.

I think you’re in denial that this kind of thing is not worthwhile, that it’s counter-productive.  People can scream and shout all they like: toxic behaviour doesn’t get anyone anywhere.

[Davis]

toxic behaviour doesn’t get anyone anywhere

…and yet Simon, you don’t seem to realise that overgeneralising about people, obsessively going on about cancel culture and “leftist bullying” and other moral panics is toxic.

[Davis]

Always with the ad hominems.

You don’t seen to understand what ad hominems are. I highly recommend familiarising yourself with fallacies before quoting them.

Nor do you seem to understand insults. Telling someone they are being ridiculous is not an insult. Calling them a fucking idiot is (which I have not done). When someone is obsessed with an exaggerated moral panic and engaging in hyperbolic overgeneralisations, they are being ridiculous. Consider not being ridiculous.

And yeah, try to stop deflecting so much. My response was 95% arguments which you ignored. Consider addressing the arguments and not always responding with red herrings, repeating the same nonsense and evidence free claims. I wouldn’t call any of that civilised.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Davis.

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