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I have found myself going too deep into a critique of some radicalized group on a different thread, so I decided to start one here.
Before I start, I just wanted to point out that even though my critiques are aimed at some groups on what really is the far left, I'm not being critical of everyone on the left. Moreover, this is not a debate over the value of identity-based policies these more radical people propose. I want to focus on this wrongheaded attack of open discussions.
I have a problem with the kind of people that cost Berkeley $600 000 in security costs when Ben Shapiro showed up a few years. The reason I pick this example is that it is a perfect demonstration that at least some of those people are selling snake oil. For those who don't know, Ben Shapiro has a rule: if you disagree, you skip the line in the question segment. Michael Knowles and Denis Prager also use that rule when they talk on campus. Hell, Denis Prager once invited someone who called him a rape apologist on his radio show, giving him airtime and an audience of a few million people. If I am not mistaken, Dave Rubin also used it when he was touring with Jordan Peterson.
This means that if you have an objection of any sort, or want to offer a counterargument, you don't have to get colleges to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in security. If you are a group of students who disagree with any of these people, you have a guaranteed platform to challenge them. Prepare your argument, gather the facts and have many of your people sit in the room so you are sure that your group will monopolize the microphones during the question segment. If they're so wrong and so evil, it shouldn't be hard to stump them. Why even give Shapiro and the likes an escape hatch by using force? I know why. It's because they are selling snake oil. It's all smokes and mirrors. A lot of the defense between the ideas put forward by these radical groups of students and increasingly by some members of the media grew out of politically motivated research in academia. It tends to revolve around attacking the concepts of truth, facts, science, and logic as somehow "racist" which is an ironically racist thing to say. It's quite pathetic to be so unable to defend your own views that you have to mount an attack on the idea of verifying any claim. They plagiarized Marx's conscience of class, couched it in a broader context of group conflicts and didn't seem to realize the epistemic leap underlying Marxism extends here -- we're all blind to our race, gender, sexual, etc. struggles, except those who agree with the far left. Like the communists of Marx, those people see right through the veil of their position in society. That sort of "heads you win and tail I loose" game is just sad.
If you want an example, think about a new editor that was added to the New York Times team back in 2018. She wrote comments about killing and hating "white men" on her Twitter feed and, as predictably as the sun rises in the morning, radicals swoop in to explain that phrases involving explicit imagery of "white" genocide aren't really calling for violence. The same people will take completely innocuous phrases made by other people and call them "dog whistles," effectively putting words people never said in their mouth and attributing to them intentions they never contemplated. If you wanted names, Ezra Klein is guilty of engaging in that kind of pathetic display of intellectual ineptitude.
(to be continued).
(Cont.)
I think that the left in America today is making a huge mistake.
There are legitimate concerns to be had over race, gender, religion, and sexuality, among other things. Although the United States and most of the West has become far more tolerant in recent decades, it is beyond doubt that discrimination can still take place. However, when you leap from observing discrimination in some places to theorizing social interactions in a way that makes differences across groups incommensurable, you're not going to eliminate the problem. Obsessing over race increases tensions by drawing sharp lines between people, by constantly reminding them to look at the color of their skin and that of others around them. It makes differences salient and commonalities disappear in the background. You won't create a world where people get along. You'll create many worlds with people who can't exist with each other. Do you want to wake up one day and live in a world so divided that Google Map's new updates include blue and red tags so you can tell when a business is conservative or liberal?
You're not going to get people you don't like to shut up and you won't get everyone to agree with you. That won't happen. What will happen is that you'll create isolated cultural silos of people who can't stand being with each other. You'll create a world where sometimes even fathers and sons cannot talk, or brothers and sisters plan ways to hurt each other and mothers who refuse to see their kid because they voted for different parties. Utopia, right?
I remember back in 2009 or 2010, Bill Maher made a joke about conservatives. He said that conservatives cannot make political jokes because it's just cruel when a fat cat laughs at the misery of Joe Average. Of course, he's got his point of view and that shows, but the broader point is that today, I think the opposite is true. The only ones laughing are conservatives. You cannot make a joke about anything on the left without risking to enrage someone over "insensitive" comments.
Ben Shapiro, like Ann Coulter and a few others, are not and never have been interested in rational debate of a subject. Shapiro is a professional troll and should be treated as such. If a college wants to invite a speaker they will invite someone with a rational point of view instead of someone who just throws verbal bombs and seeks to ignite and inflame tensions. A college has no requirement to invite people of his ilk because they add nothing to the culture, intellectual record or the educational process any mpore than inviting a member of the Klan or the Neo-Nazis. If they want to invite a rational conservative who seeks to have a rational discussion and educate people about their conservative points of views then they are welcome.
Shapiro tends to storm out when held to the facts such as what happened when he was interviewed by the BBC, so if you invite him then they also have to invite someone to counter his fast-talking lies. I doubt he would accept that invitation because he knows that he will lose. I would force him to pay for the added cost of security because of his antics, and I doubt he would be willing to do so.
What antics that he should be responsible for the added cost of security? The security isn't there because he is any kind of danger no matter how imposing his 5 foot nothing frame is.
Ben Shapiro, like Ann Coulter and a few others, are not and never have been interested in the rational debate of a subject. Shapiro is a professional troll and should be treated as such.
A college has no requirement to invite people of his ilk because they add nothing to the culture, intellectual record or the educational process any more than inviting a member of the Klan or the Neo-Nazis.
If they want to invite a rational conservative who seeks to have a rational discussion and educate people about their conservative points of views then they are welcome.
Shapiro tends to storm out when held to the facts such as what happened when he was interviewed by the BBC, so if you invite him then they also have to invite someone to counter his fast-talking lies. I doubt he would accept that invitation because he knows that he will lose. I would force him to pay for the added cost of security because of his antics, and I doubt he would be willing to do so.
The added security is because of his followers feel emboldened by his trolling and the antics of his that willfully inflame emotions between groups of people in the same way that public Klan rallies do.
Ben Shapiro, like Ann Coulter and a few others, are not and never have been interested in rational debate of a subject. Shapiro is a professional troll and ...a member of the Klan or the Neo-Nazis. If they want to invite a rational conservative who seeks to have a rational discussion and educate people about their conservative points of views then they are welcome.
The added security is because of his followers feel emboldened by his trolling and the antics of his that willfully inflame emotions between groups of people in the same way that public Klan rallies do.
The added security is because of his followers feel emboldened by his trolling and the antics of his that willfully inflame emotions between groups of people in the same way that public Klan rallies do.
There is a problem which can obtain in a debate/discussion of an issue. It is the question of the debating 'tool kit' which will be used. If the debate is a rational exploration of facts and concepts, with logic as the main 'tool', there's usually little need for bouncers and band-aids(r). If, on the other hand, one or more of the debaters relies on emotional appeals, it can become a 'Nellie, bar the door!' event.
Lol, it isn't "his" followers that the security is for.
You think the people that trashed Berkeley were "fans" of Milo Yiannopoulos when he spoke there?
If you believe what you are typing then you are truly delusional.
Lol, it isn't "his" followers that the security is for.
You think the people that trashed Berkeley were "fans" of Milo Yiannopoulos when he spoke there?
If you believe what you are typing then you are truly delusional.
LOL, it only took 1 reply in this thread to liken an Orthodox Jew to a Nazi or Klan member by a virtue-bleeding Progressive. New record!
@Lisa
Maybe the tone of the discussion is starting to derail a bit. We're losing the forest in the trees.
My core complaint is that some people take it upon themselves to decide what others should be allowed to say, watch or perhaps even read. Every single time, the attack is mounted against people who didn't encourage any violence -- please, let me explain.
What I mean is that in the hundreds of hours of videos you can dig up from conservative pundits like Shaprio, you will not find a single explicit call to things like attacking other people or terrorism and you will find calls to the exact opposite. To say that this little dude incites violence, you have to interpret everything he said in the worst possible light. He never cheered for violence and cheered for the opposite, so you have to put words in his mouths he not only never said, but which runs at 180 degrees from things he actually said.
He's not a dangerous sociopath trying to get radicals to beat trans people in parks. Did you ever watch him talk about that issue? He routinely says that whatever he thinks of their choices, that doesn't make them any less human and that doesn't grant anyone a right to decide on their behalf what they should do or not do. He also usually adds that he would never misgender someone in private because that's just rude and, every single time he expressed concerns that transitioning won't help most of those people, he also adds that he wishes them the best of luck and can't even begin to understand how horrible it must be to feel like you're in the wrong body... The only thing that little meager dude won't do is lie about his moral views. His basic premise is that, as much as possible, live and let live is a good rule.
You can disagree with Shapiro. You can consider that his arguments aren't solid. You can question the validity of his sources. You can think he overlooks important facts. And you can even think that some people might listen to his claims regarding trans people, for example, and use it in ways that Shapiro never would. All of this is perfectly fine.
What I'm saying is that it's not your place to have him shut up. If you want to shut him up, do your homework, own your debate skills and go challenge him in public. You won't need sticks, just words.
@Lisa
Maybe the tone of the discussion is starting to derail a bit. We're losing the forest in the trees.
My core complaint is that some people take it upon themselves to decide what others should be allowed to say, watch or perhaps even read. Every single time, the attack is mounted against people who didn't encourage any violence -- please, let me explain.
What I mean is that in the hundreds of hours of videos you can dig up from conservative pundits like Shaprio, you will not find a single explicit call to things like attacking other people or terrorism and you will find calls to the exact opposite. To say that this little dude incites violence, you have to interpret everything he said in the worst possible light. He never cheered for violence and cheered for the opposite, so you have to put words in his mouths he not only never said, but which runs at 180 degrees from things he actually said.
He's not a dangerous sociopath trying to get radicals to beat trans people in parks. Did you ever watch him talk about that issue? He routinely says that whatever he thinks of their choices, that doesn't make them any less human and that doesn't grant anyone a right to decide on their behalf what they should do or not do. He also usually adds that he would never misgender someone in private because that's just rude and, every single time he expressed concerns that transitioning won't help most of those people, he also adds that he wishes them the best of luck and can't even begin to understand how horrible it must be to feel like you're in the wrong body... The only thing that little meager dude won't do is lie about his moral views. His basic premise is that, as much as possible, live and let live is a good rule.
You can disagree with Shapiro. You can consider that his arguments aren't solid. You can question the validity of his sources. You can think he overlooks important facts. And you can even think that some people might listen to his claims regarding trans people, for example, and use it in ways that Shapiro never would. All of this is perfectly fine.
What I'm saying is that it's not your place to have him shut up. If you want to shut him up, do your homework, own your debate skills and go challenge him in public. You won't need sticks, just words.
He knew exactly what he was doing when he throws bombs, just as the Klan and the Neo-Nazis do. If the cops weren't there to protect him those people would have taken care of him and his followers if it were on equal terms, just as they would to the handful of Klan or Neo-nazis who show up and use racist rants on the courthouse steps. These twits know that the cops will prevent that from happening all the while allowing them to continue their partisan schtick.
Our free speech rights only cover the right not to be arrested or fined by the government for our speech. They don't protect us from others who disagree with them, but the cities have the cops there to prevent the riots from happening that trolls like Milo, Ben, and Ann Coulter seek to start. Maybe if the cops turn their backs while these trolls get what they have coming they would stop trying to claim that they are interested in debate and rational discussion and are outed as the troll that they really are when they insulted and attack people but claim that others can't reply in kind.
He uses the same verbal bomb tossing shtick as they do. I didn't criticize his religious beliefs.
He can say what he wants but he must be held intellectually accountable and others must be able to fact check him and reply to him. Ben and others of his ilk don't like this and either they won't appear when this is going to be the situation or they run away when ambushed with facts, as he did in the BBC interview.
Its a political/partisan variation on this idea.........Can you provide examples?
Here is a video of Ben Shapiro answering questions after his lecture and then letting the original person who asked them follow up, on multiple occasions.
I don't suppose you'll start posting anything truthful in this thread any time soon?
He uses the same verbal bomb tossing shtick as they do. I didn't criticize his religious beliefs.
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