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Because racists aren't interested in discourse or even slightly concerned with the hit to reputation in outing themselves. They're seeking platforms to reinfor
by bduerst 8y ago
Because racists aren't interested in discourse or even slightly concerned with the hit to reputation in outing themselves. They're seeking platforms to reinforce and spread their prejudicial bias, which Facebook and Twitter provide.
I think Jean Paul-Sartre said it best:
>Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
- ekianjo 8y agoFunny that Sartre said that after being a lifelong champion of Lenin and Stalin's way of dealing with power which had nothing to do with free discourse. And that, even after we all knew about the atrocities of the soviet regime, when the honeymoon stage was clearly over.
- bduerst 8y agoExcept he didn't. Sartre was a Marxist and was critical of Leninism, publicly attacking the Soviet Union's abuses of human rights and freedom. He was one the first to out the Soviet labor camps. Also, Sartre said that quote in the Anti-Semite and Jew in 1945, before most of his writing of the Soviet Union (not after).