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I completely disagree. Taking away diversity of political thought is an incredibly dangerous thing. The right is performing a very useful role in playing devil’

I completely disagree. Taking away diversity of political thought is an incredibly dangerous thing. The right is performing a very useful role in playing devil’s advocate - there’s a huge amount of increasing extremism on the left, and it’s important to have people calling it what it is. And no, Trump’s daily tweets aren’t hate speech. I think he’s an idiot, but he’s not spouting hate speech on there.

kllrnohj 9y ago
> The right is performing a very useful role in playing devil’s advocate Can you elaborate on this? Playing devil's advocate is not inherently useful, in fact it can be extremely destructive. For example playing devil's advocate on saying "hey, maybe slavery wasn't so bad" is at best a waste of time, but if you manage to convince anyone you've just made things worse. There is no value in that role. Similarly suggesting that being a literal Nazi is "all sides are to blame, many sides" is destructive and not in the least bit a valuable role. Trump, and the alt-right in general, is regularly in the destructive end of playing devil's advocate. What would you characterize as being useful in countering "extremism on the left"?
jack9 9y ago
> Taking away diversity of political thought is an incredibly dangerous thing. Equity of content isn't a practical goal. Any view can be split infinitely into sub-viewpoints. Diversity, in this context, cannot be enforced without setting limitations on discourse. All platforms (including reality, where proximity is a limitation) of speech suffer from this. Pragmatically, modal groupings form, appealing to human mental models. Humans choose to throw away diversity of political thought to focus on more immediate needs and goals. It's a borderline tautological statement that all human political activity is "dangerous" because humans are "dangerous".
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
et-al 9y ago
> there’s a huge amount of increasing extremism on the left, and it’s important to have people calling it what it is. there’s a huge amount of increasing extremism on both sides, but I doubt Twitter is going to actually unify people as much as polarise.
mikeash 9y ago
The extreme left has no voice in this country. Nobody with any power is talking about collectivizing farms or nationalizing industries. Meanwhile the extreme right has immense power. Mainstream politicians talk about prosecuting the press, carrying out mass murder and other war crimes to crush our enemies, and making law based on their ideas of religion. I agree that we need diversity of political thought, but I see the problem as being in the opposite direction: there are almost no left-of-center voices being heard. Bernie Sanders is just about the only one, and he barely qualifies. We currently have a center-right party and a batshit-right party. The latter isn't playing devil's advocate in any useful way, they're just attracting the crazy.
- jrs95 9y ago
  I think in the more traditional view of left and right political thought you're correct, but there seems to be a huge shift away from that towards identity politics. And to say that there aren't extremists on this front on both sides of the aisle is disengenious in my opinion. They feed off one another and ignore the reality that vast majority of the country has no interest in genociding one another or abolishing the nuclear family or any other insane thing either side is always so paranoid about. I actually think the more traditional Marxist view on identity politics is correct. It's toxic to leftism because it divides the working class.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  Politically you're correct, but culturally, the left is becoming extreme. Anyone in a university or at work who's not pro-diversity, pro-affirmative action, pro-multiculturalism, or anti-Trump is met with disdain and hatred. Just spend some time on /r/TumblrInAction and see how extreme that side is becoming.
- remarkEon 9y ago
  >The extreme left has no voice in this country. The fact that one could gather a bunch of open communists and they'd be able to march in any major city in the US declaring their wishes to install Communism, and no one would have a problem with it should give you pause as to whether or not the "extreme left" has no voice. Rightfully we get quite irritated when the "extreme right" does that. >We currently have a center-right party and a batshit-right party. Seems like it's the exact opposite. A center-right party (the GOP) and a batshit-left party (The Democrats).
krapp 9y ago
Trump is hardly making rational, intellectually cogent or even factually correct criticisms of the left on Twitter. He's just making an ass of himself, so the loss of his account would probably help the right more than it hurts them. I don't think he should be banned, because he's actually quite tame as far as Twitter goes. Sure, his spleen-venting is probably doing real harm to the cultural and political climate of the country, but that is one of the reasons he was elected... brick through the window of the establishment and whatnot. But if he hasn't violated the terms of service, then he has as much of a right to pop off tweets as anyone else.
deleted 9y ago
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jrs95 9y ago
This is why even the phrase "hate speech" is dangerous -- it ultimately has no concrete meaning so it's definition is ever-expanding. It's an ideal term to use as a basis for censorship and political violence.
lobf 9y ago
I've seen data about the right becoming more extreme, can you point to any similar data about the left?
chipotle_coyote 9y ago
there’s a huge amount of increasing extremism on the left... I'm not convinced this is really what's going on. At least, not precisely. The United States has become more progressively politically polarized over the last two or three decades: the left has gotten more left and the right has gotten more right. But the polarization hasn't been symmetrical over that period; the right has moved much farther to the right overall. https://www.google.com/search?q=asymmetrical+political+polarization https://www.google.com/search?q=asymmetrical+political+polar... I think what's happening now may be the left catching up, so to speak. The lesson of the modern Conservative Movement, for better or worse (I would say worse), is that polarization works. Demonizing your opponents--not merely disagreeing with their policy positions--well, it works. The enemy isn't a political philosophy. It isn't even an ideology. It's your fellow countrymen. And there will be no peace unless they are driven out or utterly disenfranchised. And, as much as I'd like to blame my fellow travelers on the Left, I can't. A lot of the folks who get real shrill about the (so far largely theoretical) threat of Antifa are curiously silent about how Trump has emboldened some of the absolute worst tendencies in far-right American politics. Antifa is, arguably, a reaction to that. I don't think resistance to fascism is a bad thing, either. (That's not to say that I advocate "punching Nazis," per se, but I think conservatives are correct in finding a right to self-defense that extends, if necessary, to violence.) But we're definitely seeing a much greater polarization happening on the left, a movement akin to the Tea Party. I don't know where this ends, but it doesn't seem like a positive thing to me. I don't think anyone should take away a diversity of political thought. But I think taking away polarization and demonization would be terrific for the country. And I admit that, right now, having the President himself spending more time encouraging that polarization and demonization than he does running the country strikes me as a grave problem. I wouldn't explicitly encourage Twitter to replace Trump's login with a placeholder page reading "Don't you think you could spend a bit more time healing rifts than creating them, Mr. President?"...but you know what? I wouldn't censure them for it, either.
knowaveragejoe 9y ago
I'm blown away that I'm hearing this rhetoric on HN. The left has problems, but it is nothing like the insanity of the right. Conspiracy theories abound, and "right" media tends to be extremely right. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16588964/america-epistemic-crisis https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/11...

kllrnohj 9y ago

> The right is performing a very useful role in playing devil’s advocate Can you elaborate on this? Playing devil's advocate is not inherently useful, in fact it can be extremely destructive. For example playing devil's advocate on saying "hey, maybe slavery wasn't so bad" is at best a waste of time, but if you manage to convince anyone you've just made things worse. There is no value in that role. Similarly suggesting that being a literal Nazi is "all sides are to blame, many sides" is destructive and not in the least bit a valuable role. Trump, and the alt-right in general, is regularly in the destructive end of playing devil's advocate. What would you characterize as being useful in countering "extremism on the left"?

jack9 9y ago

> Taking away diversity of political thought is an incredibly dangerous thing. Equity of content isn't a practical goal. Any view can be split infinitely into sub-viewpoints. Diversity, in this context, cannot be enforced without setting limitations on discourse. All platforms (including reality, where proximity is a limitation) of speech suffer from this. Pragmatically, modal groupings form, appealing to human mental models. Humans choose to throw away diversity of political thought to focus on more immediate needs and goals. It's a borderline tautological statement that all human political activity is "dangerous" because humans are "dangerous".

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

et-al 9y ago

> there’s a huge amount of increasing extremism on the left, and it’s important to have people calling it what it is. there’s a huge amount of increasing extremism on both sides, but I doubt Twitter is going to actually unify people as much as polarise.

mikeash 9y ago

The extreme left has no voice in this country. Nobody with any power is talking about collectivizing farms or nationalizing industries. Meanwhile the extreme right has immense power. Mainstream politicians talk about prosecuting the press, carrying out mass murder and other war crimes to crush our enemies, and making law based on their ideas of religion. I agree that we need diversity of political thought, but I see the problem as being in the opposite direction: there are almost no left-of-center voices being heard. Bernie Sanders is just about the only one, and he barely qualifies. We currently have a center-right party and a batshit-right party. The latter isn't playing devil's advocate in any useful way, they're just attracting the crazy.

jrs95 9y ago
I think in the more traditional view of left and right political thought you're correct, but there seems to be a huge shift away from that towards identity politics. And to say that there aren't extremists on this front on both sides of the aisle is disengenious in my opinion. They feed off one another and ignore the reality that vast majority of the country has no interest in genociding one another or abolishing the nuclear family or any other insane thing either side is always so paranoid about. I actually think the more traditional Marxist view on identity politics is correct. It's toxic to leftism because it divides the working class.
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
Politically you're correct, but culturally, the left is becoming extreme. Anyone in a university or at work who's not pro-diversity, pro-affirmative action, pro-multiculturalism, or anti-Trump is met with disdain and hatred. Just spend some time on /r/TumblrInAction and see how extreme that side is becoming.
remarkEon 9y ago
>The extreme left has no voice in this country. The fact that one could gather a bunch of open communists and they'd be able to march in any major city in the US declaring their wishes to install Communism, and no one would have a problem with it should give you pause as to whether or not the "extreme left" has no voice. Rightfully we get quite irritated when the "extreme right" does that. >We currently have a center-right party and a batshit-right party. Seems like it's the exact opposite. A center-right party (the GOP) and a batshit-left party (The Democrats).

krapp 9y ago

Trump is hardly making rational, intellectually cogent or even factually correct criticisms of the left on Twitter. He's just making an ass of himself, so the loss of his account would probably help the right more than it hurts them. I don't think he should be banned, because he's actually quite tame as far as Twitter goes. Sure, his spleen-venting is probably doing real harm to the cultural and political climate of the country, but that is one of the reasons he was elected... brick through the window of the establishment and whatnot. But if he hasn't violated the terms of service, then he has as much of a right to pop off tweets as anyone else.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jrs95 9y ago

This is why even the phrase "hate speech" is dangerous -- it ultimately has no concrete meaning so it's definition is ever-expanding. It's an ideal term to use as a basis for censorship and political violence.

lobf 9y ago

I've seen data about the right becoming more extreme, can you point to any similar data about the left?

chipotle_coyote 9y ago

there’s a huge amount of increasing extremism on the left... I'm not convinced this is really what's going on. At least, not precisely. The United States has become more progressively politically polarized over the last two or three decades: the left has gotten more left and the right has gotten more right. But the polarization hasn't been symmetrical over that period; the right has moved much farther to the right overall. https://www.google.com/search?q=asymmetrical+political+polarization https://www.google.com/search?q=asymmetrical+political+polar... I think what's happening now may be the left catching up, so to speak. The lesson of the modern Conservative Movement, for better or worse (I would say worse), is that polarization works. Demonizing your opponents--not merely disagreeing with their policy positions--well, it works. The enemy isn't a political philosophy. It isn't even an ideology. It's your fellow countrymen. And there will be no peace unless they are driven out or utterly disenfranchised. And, as much as I'd like to blame my fellow travelers on the Left, I can't. A lot of the folks who get real shrill about the (so far largely theoretical) threat of Antifa are curiously silent about how Trump has emboldened some of the absolute worst tendencies in far-right American politics. Antifa is, arguably, a reaction to that. I don't think resistance to fascism is a bad thing, either. (That's not to say that I advocate "punching Nazis," per se, but I think conservatives are correct in finding a right to self-defense that extends, if necessary, to violence.) But we're definitely seeing a much greater polarization happening on the left, a movement akin to the Tea Party. I don't know where this ends, but it doesn't seem like a positive thing to me. I don't think anyone should take away a diversity of political thought. But I think taking away polarization and demonization would be terrific for the country. And I admit that, right now, having the President himself spending more time encouraging that polarization and demonization than he does running the country strikes me as a grave problem. I wouldn't explicitly encourage Twitter to replace Trump's login with a placeholder page reading "Don't you think you could spend a bit more time healing rifts than creating them, Mr. President?"...but you know what? I wouldn't censure them for it, either.

knowaveragejoe 9y ago

I'm blown away that I'm hearing this rhetoric on HN. The left has problems, but it is nothing like the insanity of the right. Conspiracy theories abound, and "right" media tends to be extremely right. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16588964/america-epistemic-crisis https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2017/11...