What I find most reprehensible about this whole situation is that more and more members of the left regulate political discourse, no make that any discourse, by defining any opposing view as illegitimate, bigoted, and now violence.
As in, they are taking the position that their moral superiority is without question and anyone who does not ascribe to this has no rights and we are nearing the point of the same having no protection from retribution of any sort.
I seriously doubt people understand what is happening to their rights because if this type of moral superiority takes hold you will be on the receiving end more often than not. Welcome to 1984.
I’m not following this logic. People are expressing themselves and others are responding as they see fit: agreement, condemnation, silence, etc. It sounds like a marketplace of ideas in a free society. No one is having their basic human rights taken away from them because someone else called them a bigot.
If you’re uncomfortable with someone’s ideas making them a pariah, you’re describing a basic social dilemma that many can sympathize with, but not an Orwellian future being pushed upon us by the political left.
My ideal view of the marketplace of ideas is that it engenders discussion about those ideas, responses to them, and ultimately deepens the view to a more nuanced, accurate place. One problem, undoubtedly, is that discussing anything through some means of communication is difficult, especially when we prefer short form communications to long form ones. So instead of discussing, we tend to think in terms dog whistles & a few short words are connected to an argument that we've heard from the other side and that is where things start to go downhill. People do not seem to be engaging the actual arguments in this marketplace of ideas, but rather with the people presenting the argument & what they think those arguments are.
>People are expressing themselves and others are responding as they see fit: agreement, condemnation, silence, etc. It sounds like a marketplace of ideas in a free society.
So to you, a marketplace of ideas is one side dictates what is allowed to be said, and anyone who deviates from this deserves to be a pariah? What about that is free or a marketplace of ideas?
>No one is having their basic human rights taken away from them because someone else called them a bigot.
You are literally calling for the removal of basic human rights when you say that silencing people is a reasonable response to them saying something you don't like. Do you even realize what you're suggesting?
>I’m not following this logic.
Not surprising. The operative word is free. People are allowed to hold opinions they want, not ones you or your group approve of. You are completely within your rights to dislike any thoughts and speech you see fit. But that is where your free speech rights end - you're not allowed to use those rights to limit the rights of others. That is cowardly anti-intellectualism and it's a hallmark of internet 'liberalism'.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. This thread is managing to stay barely on the ok side, and your comment here crosses noticeably closer to flamewar hell. Please step the other way instead. You'll make a better argument that way, have a greater chance of persuading others or at least connecting with them, and maybe even feel better too.
Well, unless you consider the violence coming with the Antifa driven riots. There have been many cases where dissenting voices, including journalists, have been physically attacked in the last couple of weeks.
The same could be said of mobs in universities, cancel culture, etc.
There are plenty of examples on both sides of politics right now of peoples' basic human rights being violated.
The videos are easy to access. The people who the Trump administration attacked were peaceful. The fact that someone half a mile away might have been looting a store or a random person might have thrown a Poland Spring bottle does not justify assaulting the public so you can take a stroll for a two minute photo op.
The church clergy themselves were teargassed and pushed off the property to make way for Trump. The US Government forcibly seized a church without warning from its clergy to provide a photo op for the president.
Or it's in response to and a reversal of the moral superiorirty Christians and conservatives have held over this country for several hundred years. Maybe it's an overcorection, but that's how these things always work.
Except it fails. Look at how and why Trump was elected. All the polls showed Clinton being elected, because everyone was afraid to espouse their opinions. And yet they voted the way they wanted and NO ONE KNEW because true conversation was squashed. And this will keep happening over and over again until the fascist left finally understands that real conversation is what educated people, not cancelling anyone who dares to question their moral authority.
To be fair the whole election hanged on a stadium full of people flipping. If Trump wins in November (like Johnson this year) it will be a better sign that people are pissed off at idpol.
Moral superiority is straight from the playbook of the right. Look at the justifications for opposing abortions and supporting xenophobia: doing right by God. Many conservatives in the U.S. operate with their views supposedly ordained by their deity and backed up by 2000 year old verse, and it doesn't get any more morally superior than that.
All these high-minded ideals you're appealing to sound wonderful. Who would be opposed to individual rights? The idea of suppressing opposing viewpoints seems insane. And nobody likes people who act like they're morally superior.
But hang on. What rights, and which viewpoints, and what are people acting morally superior about? Your appeal to those ideals is not as universally applicable as you make it sound. I mean, this is pretty self-evident - one can easily pick examples of completely reprehensible beliefs that almost no one would tolerate.
Let's make this concrete. Someone who supports a policy of the government killing all American Jews could make an impassioned argument about the injustice done when a tyrannical moral orthodoxy imposes its views on a free man and vilifies him for daring to think differently, and about the tragedy of the fact that in its zeal to stamp out the dissenter it would betray its own cherished value of free thought. But it wouldn't be a very convincing argument.
And similarly the left is increasingly unconvinced by people who say that their reasonable disagreements are being demonized and complain that the usual framework of liberal democracy should protect them from that kind of treatment. When someone - anyone - finds a position monstrous enough, they're no longer going to be willing to tolerate it. That's what's happening. The human costs of our current status quo are so emotionally and ethically explosive that people come to see these issues as non-negotiable. Your appeal to those norms of civil disagreement and compromise is just not convincing if you're no longer willing to accept the consequences of playing by those rules.
As in, they are taking the position that their moral superiority is without question and anyone who does not ascribe to this has no rights and we are nearing the point of the same having no protection from retribution of any sort.
I seriously doubt people understand what is happening to their rights because if this type of moral superiority takes hold you will be on the receiving end more often than not. Welcome to 1984.