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How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

nytimes.com

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Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#151

Post by stcredzero »

ryanobjc wrote: post #133
monksy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note I'm not the best one to provide you with numerous examples because I don't know where the document is that has detailed all of the examples in the last few years. But hearing about this is fairly frequently. 1. There have been protests about conservative speakers at campuses and universities whom have pulled shady stuff on trying to prevent the speakers from coming. (there was a Dave Rubin one where he was magic…

So a lot of the argument about how "right wing commenters" are unfairly, well, whatevered, is based on some very serious anecdotes. And you know what we say to those - not today. A few things: - Protests are valid free speech expressions. - Holding an entire protest as invalid due to a small number of individual's actions is unfair. - Many of those conservative speakers aren't trying to spread discourse, but trying t…

...aren't trying to spread discourse, but trying to create an outrage and play off of that (evidence exists of the malignant intent).

Playing off of outrage is heavily rewarded by our current societal systems. It happens at all points of the political spectrum, but happens more at the extremes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

The portland professor was being brought up based on academic dishonesty, human experimentation, process, and ethics

It's a hoax. It's a time honored means of expression, particularly when the subject heavily deserves ridicule.

Lack of data, cherrypicking stark examples, and the reuse of the same events over and over again

There's a list of well over 600 incidents of violence, vandalism, and threats, instigated by the far left. If you do some searching, you'll find over a hundred with just a bit of sincere effort, and in pretty short order. There's also the father and son republicans who were chased down by black block demonstrators. There's the time when a mob was calling for Tim Pool to be chased down and beaten. There's the Florida local news video crew attacked, his smartphone knocked out of his hand. The bike lock professor. That's all just off the top of my head. True, such things are also done by elements of the far right. All of it is bad.

In any case, it's certainly not the case that there are only a few cherry picked examples from the Far Left. There's an epidemic of political harassment and assault in 2019, and a majority of the incidents up to the level of vandalism and minor assault comes from the Left. If anything, there's a bias against talking about that in the media.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#152

Post by ng12 »

itsgrimetime wrote: post #135
tomohawk wrote: post #51

Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? Evicting professors and others from universities. Blocking access to social media. Closing down newspapers and other new outlets. And it doesn't matter who's doing it. Erdogan. Carlos Maza. Antifa. None of them are doing anything constructive.

> Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? You're wrong about this. If you think that the best ideas naturally win out you're either ignorant (think of how fast bad ideas can spread), or purposefully pushing this "both sides"/horseshoe theory/false equivalence to further impede those who are actually trying to stop fascism. The…

> If you think that the best ideas naturally win out you're either ignorant

So who gets to decide which ideas are the ones that deserve to win and which ones get snuffed out?

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#153

Post by dragandj »

ng12 wrote: post #121

HN is the only place I've seen people outright defending the PRC's human rights abuses. Something about HN really brings out the ultra-nationalists.

Oppressive regimes usually /employ/ people to do the propaganda. HN could be just large or influential enough that it gets on the radar at some tiny office, and there might be people whose task is to watch it and kick in with comments/upvotes/downvotes when necessary.

It does not have to be many people, and it can be only a tiny part of their daily watch on larger media.

Moderators would know better about whether this is true on this particular site, but this happens regularly on mainstream channels.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#154

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

ng12 wrote: post #121

HN is the only place I've seen people outright defending the PRC's human rights abuses. Something about HN really brings out the ultra-nationalists.

Do keep in mind that PRC citizens are much more common in technical circles than the general American public.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#155

Post by stcredzero »

Steko wrote: post #139
stcredzero wrote: post #4

The takeaway for those in the US: To detect nascent authoritarianism, look at who in particular is getting persecuted in academia. Another good heuristic: Look at who's over-serious and who is best wielding ridicule.

Or you could just look for the anti-intellectual movements seeking to marginalize academia in general, which your comment itself appears to stem from.

which your comment itself appears to stem from

Another heuristic: Look out for people who would "argue" purely from resemblances. (And primarily by tarring.)

[citation needed]

I'm not out to marginalize academia in general. My wife is a former college professor, and a Stanford PhD. However, I would like to call out those in academia who would marginalize others in academia purely for their opinions. If anything, the threat to academic freedom is even more potent, when it comes from within.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#156

Post by philwelch »

itsgrimetime wrote: post #135
tomohawk wrote: post #51

Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? Evicting professors and others from universities. Blocking access to social media. Closing down newspapers and other new outlets. And it doesn't matter who's doing it. Erdogan. Carlos Maza. Antifa. None of them are doing anything constructive.

> Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? You're wrong about this. If you think that the best ideas naturally win out you're either ignorant (think of how fast bad ideas can spread), or purposefully pushing this "both sides"/horseshoe theory/false equivalence to further impede those who are actually trying to stop fascism. The…

> Antifa: organization with no leadership structure, composed of citizens who are dedicated to preventing fascism from spreading, using means that are historically proven to work.

"Historically proven to work"? Since when have leftist street gangs ever stopped a fascist movement from rising to power? It was the fear of leftist street violence that won whatever small degree of public support the SA had, bolstered the official narrative about the Reichstag fire that led to the passage of the Enabling Act, and the Nazi anthem "Horst Wessel Song" capitalized on the killing of the aforementioned Horst Wessel by the "antifa" of the day.

Setting that aside, what the fuck is the point of making excuses for political street violence anyway? "Sure, we act like a bunch of brownshirts, but at least we're not fascists!"

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#157

Post by TeMPOraL »

sgnelson wrote: post #127
ng12 wrote: post #121

HN is the only place I've seen people outright defending the PRC's human rights abuses. Something about HN really brings out the ultra-nationalists.

Over the past few years, it seems to me, that HN is suffering a bit from the eternal september effect. It seems (again, to me) that many HN commentators are very technically knowledgeable, but are sorely lacking in understanding politics, social sciences, liberal arts, etc. It also seems (again, to me) that there has been a lot more authoritarian beliefs expressed by the comments. Take my opinion and observations for…

In my experience, it's usually the people who've been here for long that tend to express views differing from what we're all supposed to believe. So maybe it's a reverse eternal September? Maybe it's a reflection of a growing disillusionment with geopolitics and its reporting in western media?

I mean, the story looks pretty damning on the face of it, but you have to consider that the last time the same media called a ruler a "bad guy" and people acted on it, it ended up completely wrecking a perfectly fine nation (Libya). Some time before that, the US wrecked another nation (Iraq), justifying it by fabricated stories people bought into at the time. I think you can excuse people for their lack of trust.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#158

Post by tomohawk »

itsgrimetime wrote: post #135
tomohawk wrote: post #51

Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? Evicting professors and others from universities. Blocking access to social media. Closing down newspapers and other new outlets. And it doesn't matter who's doing it. Erdogan. Carlos Maza. Antifa. None of them are doing anything constructive.

> Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? You're wrong about this. If you think that the best ideas naturally win out you're either ignorant (think of how fast bad ideas can spread), or purposefully pushing this "both sides"/horseshoe theory/false equivalence to further impede those who are actually trying to stop fascism. The…

Carlos Maza is not a journalist. He's an activist posing as a journalist who advocates deplatforming people, covers for antifa, and is ok with violence being used to silence people.

Antifa is a group who thinks it is OK to use violence against people they disagree with. They end up actually being a fascist organization.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#159

Post by philwelch »

ng12 wrote: post #152
itsgrimetime wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? You're wrong about this. If you think that the best ideas naturally win out you're either ignorant (think of how fast bad ideas can spread), or purposefully pushing this "both sides"/horseshoe theory/false equivalence to further impede those who are actually trying to stop fascism. The…

> If you think that the best ideas naturally win out you're either ignorant So who gets to decide which ideas are the ones that deserve to win and which ones get snuffed out?

See, you're overcomplicating things. If you just had the correct opinions to begin with, you wouldn't have to bother with wondering whether other people might know something that you didn't, or that you might be wrong. You would just realize that, by having the right opinions in the first place, you were totally in the right to violently suppress anyone who might disagree with you.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#160

Post by TeMPOraL »

madez wrote: post #66
blfr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We weren't really oppressed by our government. The March events, as they're know here, were mostly homegrown commies pushing out the Jewish wing of the party with decent people getting caught in the purge and following protests. But it was all happening with two hundred thousand Soviet soldiers stationed in the country. The communist government wouldn't have lasted a month without the Soviet support. The situation is…

Given that history, are there common opinions and feelings in Poland regarding Russias ongoing war with Ukraine?

Me, my relatives and some people I know were scared during the first weeks of the invasion, as we feared Russia will steamroll through Ukraine and we'll suddenly find ourselves facing tanks on the eastern border. Over time, we realized that the Russians aren't even trying to advance too far past Crimea, so as the whole thing fell off the media cycle, we all slowly forgot about it over the years.
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