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You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
261–270 of 863 posts
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#262My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…
The winning approach is obviously in waiting for the other side to die off; the left is currently the majority, and the right is, on average, old. In this regard, it's absolutely a "viable approach": By making it low-status to be right-wing, or even by not carrying right-wing views on popular private platforms, it makes the right-wing destined to lose out somewhere along the line simply due to the youth not wanting t…
What does "winning" even mean for the left? The people who choose leftism will win against everyone else for the reasons you say, but like all political victories, winning is (comparatively) the easy part. Keeping your values intact and governing a successful society is the hard part.
The Left seems to have given up on liberalism in persuit of victory. They are in the process of giving up on progressivism. What remains?
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#263My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…
Every society exerts social pressure in the form of norms and shaming. People are only sensitive to the shaming they won't accept, which always seems to come from the people they disagree with, and they are completely blind to the shaming that goes on in their in-group.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the risk of entertaining the no true Scotsman : A leftist that doesn’t empathize with the masses, is not a true leftist.
Unfortunately it can be difficult to tell who empathizes with the masses and who is just pretending to in pursuit of power.
In the US today, you're a real dumb dumb if you try to attain power via a left platform. A handful of people did it (AOC, Omar, Taleib) but by far if you want a successful career you take a mainstream R or D position and just try to outdo everyone else in culture war takes. I'll point out that "the squad" is social democratic in nature, they aren't as far left as you can go by far.
A left position calls for redistribution of wealth and transfer of control of the means of production, which gets you attacked from nearly all establishment sides.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Try saying, with genuine honest neutrality, “all lives matter”, “it’s ok to be white”, or “capitalism doesn’t care about race/gender” and see what happens.
Because there is no "genuine honest neutrality" behind those phrases. They're shibboleths. They're commonly understood slogans, used to indicate what side you're on (or at least what side you're opposed to) while SOUNDING innocent. The people who know, will KNOW what you mean when you say them. (And in the incredibly unlikely situation where you'd somehow been exposed to enough of the discourse to come up with these…
If you define away neutrality, there is no neutrality, yes. But does everyone agree with your definition?
This seems more like a "you're with us or against us" trick.
"I care about protecting all children" is still neutral, right? But if someone popularized "ICAPBC", by your argument "ICAPAC" would innately become a shibboleth? Something doesn't seem right here, where neutral positions automatically get converted to dog-whistles without any proof.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#266Eliminate? No. Reduce to the point of practical irrelevance? Yep. Deplatforming works.
Deplatforming solves a problem. And only temporarily in the abundance of VPN & encrypted technologies. IMO it makes things even worse since these groups will congregate in secret much further away from the public eye where they can perpetuate unbalanced and unhealthy ideas.
> IMO it makes things even worse since these groups will congregate in secret much further away from the public eye where they can perpetuate unbalanced and unhealthy ideas.
That result makes it more difficult for law enforcement to follow their movements, but it also has the effect of making it more difficult to recruit new members and spread their ideas.
The whole reason social media has been so powerful in spreading ideas, good and bad, is because it reduces communication friction and effort while promoting discoverability. If extremists have to move to Signal and Telegram, it makes them less discoverable, and requires more effort on the part of their members. Over time that makes it less likely they'll be able to grow or maintain their numbers.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#267If you cannot censor away opinions, if suppression of ideas doesn't work then why in exactly these kinds of articles do people bemoan it as dangerous? I may agree that most censorship is wrong but it does work. It worked for centuries to help maintain systems of inequality. It worked for centuries to maintain familial control and enforce sexual monoculture in many countries. Information control works so well, it prev…
>If you cannot censor away opinions, if suppression of ideas doesn't work then why in exactly these kinds of articles do people bemoan it as dangerous? I've read a screenshot of some anonymous post that goes like: "There's a general phenomenon I've noticed on the internet. Any forum with free speech and little to no moderation becomes right wing. Leftist ideas cannot exist without censorship and moderation." Which I…
>"There's a general phenomenon I've noticed on the internet. Any forum with free speech and little to no moderation becomes right wing. Leftist ideas cannot exist without censorship and moderation."
I've noticed similar and I'm not entirely sure it's right wing but more of extremism of ideas in general. Essentially, the "loudest" people (or ideas) win the conversation without moderation.
I'd say this has more to do with group think and populism. If there is any moderation it's going to steer the ground in a specific direction of populism. The more aggressively shared an idea is, the more successful it tends to be. It's not a linear relationship, but ideas tend to pick up steam (the flat Earth phenomenon blows my mind to this day). Extremists seem to be the ones most willing to verbalize and share these ideas that make them "loud." There's probably some overlap here on how effective propoganda is through repetition. Just look at how ads tend to focus on spreading an idea through repetition and seem to work.
Sometimes modern "right wing" ideas are difficult to discern from other extremists because the spectrum has slid and much of the modern right wing is extremist. To be fair, we have a lot of left wing extremists verging on being bananas as well. I know plenty of conservatives who feel fairly disenfranchised by the current right wing we've been seeing. I don't agree with many of their ideas but they make good points and have civil discussions about their different opinions and perspectives.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're the same racists on the left and the right extremes. It's just, we had decades of wars and (justified) propaganda that thoroughly discredited fascism and their style of racism so it's easy to see how the right extremes is bad. What the extreme left is doing on the other hand is a more modern variation of racism and totalitarianism. It's ostensibly driven by noble concepts like social justice but in reality de…
Yup. Try saying, with genuine honest neutrality, “all lives matter”, “it’s ok to be white”, or “capitalism doesn’t care about race/gender” and see what happens.
All three of these are reasonable statements if you remove all contemporary social context. Nobody does that, and the people who use these slogans know that. They're using the difference between abstract context-free understanding and contextual understanding as a gaslighting technique, making obviously political statements and then pretending there is no context and hiding behind "but that's a reasonable statement!"
Consider, alternately, these three statements:
"The social contract applies equally to all instances of human life."
"We should eliminate shame in connection with anyone's race, heritage, or other aspects of their origin over which they have no control."
"There is nothing inherent in markets that perpetuates racial prejudice."
These mean about the same thing but are formulated in a way that avoids this kind of gaslighting doublespeak. It's not hard to do. I doubt those statements would offend anyone.
I assume anyone saying "all lives matter" is racist precisely because it is so damn easy to say the same thing neutrally.
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Try saying, with genuine honest neutrality, “all lives matter”, “it’s ok to be white”, or “capitalism doesn’t care about race/gender” and see what happens.
Because there is no "genuine honest neutrality" behind those phrases. They're shibboleths. They're commonly understood slogans, used to indicate what side you're on (or at least what side you're opposed to) while SOUNDING innocent. The people who know, will KNOW what you mean when you say them. (And in the incredibly unlikely situation where you'd somehow been exposed to enough of the discourse to come up with these…
I'd be curious what you think of "Ghettoside" - a book from the left that examines the claims implied by your linked comic about the nature of the suffering we are trying to prevent: https://www.vox.com/2016/8/26/12631962/ghettoside-jill-leovy...
Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're the same racists on the left and the right extremes. It's just, we had decades of wars and (justified) propaganda that thoroughly discredited fascism and their style of racism so it's easy to see how the right extremes is bad. What the extreme left is doing on the other hand is a more modern variation of racism and totalitarianism. It's ostensibly driven by noble concepts like social justice but in reality de…
Yup. Try saying, with genuine honest neutrality, “all lives matter”, “it’s ok to be white”, or “capitalism doesn’t care about race/gender” and see what happens.
A quick search of 'Marion Gerald Hood Emory University rejection letter' will show how even in 1959, blacks were treated like scum.
There are ways to get an idea of the reality of black people. For those who are ok with videos, here are some good but enjoyable ones. You may use 'NewPipe' from fdroid or the youtube-dl command line utility to download them:
[1] How to pretend systemic racism does not exist? (with eng subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ciwjHVHYg
[2] Let's talk about what it's like to be a black person in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD8mWq0Hdcw
[3] Let's talk about being armed and black. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL_IX8yX_JU
[4] How cops are trained to shoot you in your home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuzQrbio2Qw
Other resources include James Baldwin's books and documentaries. His 'The Fire Next Time' is just 120 pages [5].
'The Price of the Ticket' and 'I Am Not Your Negro' are good documentaries [6][7].
[5] https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Next-Time-James-Baldwin/dp/06797...
[6] https://www.amazon.com/James-Baldwin-Price-Ticket/dp/B01M25W...
[7] https://www.amazon.com/I-Am-Not-Your-Negro/dp/B01MR52U7T
[8] Also the 1965 Baldwin and Buckley debate on the theme "Has the American dream been achieved at the expense of the American negro?" > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLUbKebYvc
English subtitle download: https://amara.org/en/videos/dGI1henIPVYS/en/1338731/