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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).
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).