Across the Internet, a Game of Whac-a-Mole Is Underway to Root Out Extremism

MLK recognized that people are, and are always going to, judge others as they are and like people who are similar to them. This is human nature, and it's important for our survival. People are always going to be different, but they can however, make a decision to treat others with basic dignity and respect, to set boundaries around dignity and respect, and not use those diffrences as a reason to persecute or take advantage of them. It was that humility and basic desency that he advocated for.

It's easy to look at someone and pass judgement. It's expensive to get to know someone, especially if they are very different than you are. Learning to judge someone by the content of their character is a difficult thing to ask of someone.

Imagine having to get to know Ed Gein. At the very least if you listened to the mans life, you'd be questioning if there really was a god or if nature really had any sanity, given the developmental trauma he experienced. It's way easier to see a guy wearing his mother's skin on his face and go "yep, crazy". It's harder to look beneath that and go "How the hell did society fail you?".

That is the reason why his message resonated so well. Not because he was color blind, that is naieve. It is because he pointed out, and very rightly, that ignoring the black community or any community of people over racism creates a lost opportunity.

>That is the reason why his message resonated so well. Not because he was color blind, that is naieve. It is because he pointed out, and very rightly, that ignoring the black community or any community of people over racism creates a lost opportunity.

What did or didn't resonate well is not really the point of the discussion but now that you bring it up, you'll remember one of King's least popular positions was one of his least color-blind ones: worker quotas.

>The reason the MSM puts out news is to sell advertising

I'm pretty skeptical about that. The major media outlets have significant influence over the political ideas that circulate through the electorate. In a democracy, that means having a lot of influence over which candidates are viable in elections, which, given how powerful governments are, is worth quite a lot more than ad revenue.

Why do you think Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post? Do you think he was after the ad revenue?

The Antifa flag bears obvious similarity to the Antifaschistische Aktion flag.

"Antifaschistische Aktion...was a militant anti-fascist organisation in the Weimar Republic started by members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1932 to 1933." [1]

"In the United States, antifa of the early 21st-century has drawn its aesthetics and some of its tactics from Antifaschistische Aktion." [1]

The link between Antifaschistische Aktion and Antifa was drawn within a detailed article [2] published in Jacobin, who is "a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture" [3].

Given that "insurgent" is defined as "a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government" [4], and CHAZ/CHOP were revolts against civil authority, Antifa is clearly a left-wing insurgency.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistische_Aktion

[2] https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/antifascist-movements-hit...

[3] https://jacobinmag.com/about

[4] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insurgent

I think the salient point is that there are extremists on both sides but the article only concerns itself with right-wing extremists. In effect, this isn't a campaign against "extremism", it's a campaign to combat right-wing extremism while left-wing extremism continues to proliferate unfettered.

The OP characterizes this as a cultural revolution, but I don't think he made a particularly good case for it. Notably, I think "passively tolerating left-wing extremism while cracking down on right-wing extremism" is pretty weak evidence for CR. Rather, I would argue that CR begins when left authoritarianism begins--when the mainstream, majority viewpoint (the Overton Window) takes a back-seat to the left-wing extremist viewpoint due to intimidation.

If I were to argue that we're on the brink of a CR, I would sooner invoke cancel culture: threatening to get someone fired for espousing mainstream viewpoints (e.g., advocating for nonviolent protest or Tweeting an interview with a black man concerned about black-on-black crime). I would invoke BLM riots (no, I'm not talking about peaceful protests) and a media that refused to challenge the predominant narrative with obvious questions (e.g., "How are we collectively so sure that the cause of the shooting disparity is 'racist police' and not some other factor, to the extent that we are ready to burn neighborhoods to the ground rather than entertain dialogue?") and instead spent months rationalizing the violence. I would also note how remarkable it was that nearly every business in the hardest-hit areas were quick to hang "This business supports BLM" or "PoC owned business" signs, while their suburban and rural locations felt no such compulsion. I would invoke surveys showing chilled speech in newsrooms and the academy or an explicit willingness, pride even, from the same institutions to discriminate solely on the basis of politics.

Ultimately though, while left-wing extremism is concerning, I'm less interested in arguing over the threshold at which it becomes "Cultural Revolution". I think we should content ourselves to note that it is fundamentally illiberal and anti-human and continue advancing the causes of peace, justice, equality, and prosperity.