You can't censor away extremism or any other problem • Hacker News Board

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#501

Post by justaman » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

morpheos137 wrote: post #289

clusterfish wrote: post #219

Earlier 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…

Ever try listening to NPR in recent years? It is really approaching the point of self parody. I would say that at least 80% of NPR "stories" have an explicitly stated racial angle and probably greater than 90% have a gender or race angle. It is literally almost the only thing NPR commentary and analysis segments talk about these days. Yes racism is bad. No it is not reasonable that every single segment is about how s…

I listen most every morning. It has absolutely become this. "Fresh Air" in particular more often than not has a racial/gender slant to it.

The radio is different from the website.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#502

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

api wrote: post #268

ctdonath wrote: post #232

Earlier 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.

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!"…

This game is fun:

> "The social contract applies equally to all instances of human life."

Clearly you're making an argument against abortion.

> "We should eliminate shame in connection with anyone's race, heritage, or other aspects of their origin over which they have no control."

Pedophiles make this argument to justify their urges.

> "There is nothing inherent in markets that perpetuates racial prejudice."

This one might as well be All Lives Matter. It's the common retort against claims of algorithmic racial bias and was used historically in the South to oppose government-mandated desegregation.

These are the claims you're using as examples of neutrality, until somebody puts them in a frame where they're not.

You can do that with everything because even an actually neutral claim is an opposition to a non-neutral claim by someone else, and therefore has political implications.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#503

Post by hn_in_shambles » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #425

karaterobot wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only would they disagree with you, but their strategy actually works. Leftists, "wokeness", and social justice wouldn't be the hot topics they've been if the strategy of leftists weren't effective. Is the goal of social justice movements just to be hot topics? Your statement makes it seem like success is measured by the amount of retweets or something. Clearly that can't be true, but if global fascism and ethni…

I think the current primary strategy is to destabilize Western liberalism. Every tenet of liberalism is actively under attack, and successfully so. Individualism? Long gone, the name of the game is collectivism and your identity groups are everything. Color blindness? It's officially considered to be an outdated, laughable mode of thinking. If your identity collective is paramount, how can you be blind to the paramet…

Western liberal democracy is collapsing because the right wing reactionaries were right about diversity destroying society, but their mistake was attempting to focus on things like racial and religious diversity. Diversity of ideas is not sustainable.

Now we can see multiple “factions” each with different ideas about the direction to take society with many of these ideas being excluding of or outright hostile to a different faction. So the solution? You have to kill them before they kill you (not in a literal sense, or at least not yet). Some of these factions will band with others (see right-libertarians typically siding with reactionaries and the progressive adoption of various leftist ideas) though it will be interesting to see what happens there when whichever group comes out on top.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#504

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

sir_bearington wrote: post #440

DanHulton wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This kind of reaction is what phrases like "it's okay to be white" and "all lives matter" are meant to elicit. It's exactly what trolls want you to do. The other 90% of the population is appalled. Is it not okay to be white? Do some lives not matter? You're being played.

There are people explicitly saying that no, it's not OK to be white - that if you're white you are automatically racist, and automatically guilty for what happened in the past. White Fragility is an example.

"It's OK to be white" isn't just a dogwhistle. (It may be that, but it isn't just that.) It's an explicit rejection of that kind of "all whites are guilty racists" baloney.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#505

Post by cassalian » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #481

cassalian wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people on the left that assume that if you have white skin, then you must act a certain way, and that way of acting is wrong. This is based solely on the person's race, no individual characteristics need be considered. If you disagree, then please explain what happened here with coke: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/366132 "Coca-Cola Asks Its Workers to Be 'Less White' to Fight Racism"

Which people on the left? Coca-Cola is very much a capitalist institution and you have to stretch real hard to think of them as left-wing.

edit: Misread the article and grabbed the first name I saw. This edit fixes the reference:

"The seminar entitled 'Facing Racism' , given by Robin DiAngelo , was presented through LinkedIn Education publicly, although not free of charge. The company admitted that, in effect, it invited its workers to take the course, but they clarify that it was not mandator"

I would assume that Robin DiAngelo would be on the left.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#506

Post by penetraitor69 » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

kbelder wrote: post #422

watwut wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no "all lives matter" until there was "black lives matter" and people wanted to say they don't like the message. It is quite dishonest to claim that this phrase is neutral and not a political slogan.

What happened is that people heard the phrase "black lives matter", and were uncomfortable with the racial specificity. They wanted to _clarify_ it with the true fundamental principle. Why do black lives matter? Because: All lives matter. That is a non-racist perspective, and it was attacked viciously because it undercuts a propaganda effort.

> They wanted to _clarify_ it with the true fundamental principle.

I don't think that's an honest portrayal of the actual actions that took place or their motivations. In the context of disproportionate black deaths, mischaracterizing focusing on that specific issue:

1) does not inspire any positive change itself,

2) prevents positive change by demonizing those who are bringing awareness to and proposing solutions to the problem.

Rarely do you see the "all lives matter" crowd calling for increased police accountability; in fact, given their close association with Blue Lives Matter, I believe those who throw the slogan around tend to fight for quite the opposite.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#507

Post by chmod600 » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

caslon wrote: post #436

chmod600 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 remai…

What's good about liberalism? They seem more progressive than ever; an open socialist nearly won their primary last year.

Socialism, liberalism, and progressivism are all different ideas.

Leftism tries to combine these ideas into a coherent political ideology. Liberalism (the part about individual rights) is a check on the abuses of socialism, and progressivism is supposed to make it all work (experts in control making good decisions).

I'm not a Leftist, but I can acknowledge that it's a coherent ideology.

When you take Leftism and take away liberalism and progressivism, you are left with rebels that have no solution to anything. Like BLM and antifa which are always recruiting to attack a mysterious "system" rather than making serious proposals. (It's always easier to get people to agree on a problem than a solution.) If they were to win, it would look more like Venezuela or Cuba than Denmark or Sweden.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#508

Post by mywittyname » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

throwaway316943 wrote: post #448

mywittyname wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that society has a mechanism for for enforcing social norms: laws. Premarital sex might seem like an evolutionary advantage, unless you live in a society that murders you for such activities. You are right though, which is why high-status in a society are "allowed" to break social norms with no consequence.

You can pass all the laws you want but if they aren’t backed up by a general consensus in the society they will be defied at every turn.

Counter-point: authoritarian regimes.

The general consensus in such countries is that the laws are terrible and oppressive, the the brutal enforcement largely ensures compliance.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#509

Post by heterodoxxed » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

splistud wrote: post #469

heterodoxxed wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of Americans understand that Black Lives Matter is an inclusive statement, not an exclusive one. Those who make hay out of the name and have ignored the movement itself for almost a decade now are a small, ineffective minority. The largest civil rights protest movement in American history doesn't need to spend its time focus-grouping and hand-wringing about people like that.

No, the vast majority of Americans do not believe that at all

After 10 years of a movement that culminated in protests in 2000 cities in all 50 states and 5 territories that had supermajority support in polls, the people who are still ignorant enough, feigned or otherwise, to say BLM means Black Lives Only Matter are numerically and politically insignificant.

No movement has ever changed anything by seeking to get 100% of everyone on board, least of all those most uninformed, hostile, and acting in bad faith.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#510

Post by throw_nbvc1234 » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #496

tanseydavid wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder out loud whether many commenters actual took the time to read the article. Because the responses seemed heavily skewed towards "Yeah, but..." responses that sort of ignore the article's main point.

The article's main point is that apparently, 10-15% of the population voting for unabashed fascists is a colossal policy failure. Whereas I don't actually see that as a problem. In any given population, about ~10% of it is going to be sympathetic to fascism. That is what it is. It's an appealing ideology for a lot of people. The problem is when you get closer to 40%, or 50%, and unabashed fascists start making their…

And when the systems/mechanisms for them to oppress their opposition were already put in place in an attempt to limit them from getting that power in the first place.

If you go down the path of "censorship", you better get it right. Otherwise you'll probably be worse off in the end.