4 ms·

One the one hand, as someone more or less on the left, I am a little concerned with the political orthodoxy I see on the left, where there's a package of "corr

One the one hand, as someone more or less on the left, I am a little concerned with the political orthodoxy I see on the left, where there's a package of "correct" ideas of varying quality, and disagreeing with or having varying levels of enthusiasm about any of them is seen as almost worse than rejecting them all entirely. On the other hand, nearly everyone I see these days who talks about being really passionate about free speech and preventing groupthink seems to be an actual goddamned neo-Nazi whose idea of free speech is the right to scream racial slurs at top volume into the faces of "libtard cucks" until they're driven out of public spaces and they can resurrect the Third Reich without interference.

existencebox 8y ago
I realize your statement may be slightly hyperbolic, but I want to reassure you there are many moderate/centrally leaning individuals passionate about free speech and the power of questioning any status quo as a tool to seek truth. (obviously not as many as I might desire, but...) This _cannot_ be an issue that only becomes provenance of the worst kinds, because then it becomes easy to dismiss. One need only be a student of history to see the importance of the above for _breaking_ oppression and tyranny. (Sorry, not to distract from the OP and the primary discussion, I just felt strongly enough about the above statement to wave a "I promise we're out here" flag.)
krapp 8y ago
The problem is, racial realism and the alt-right are driving a resurgence in anti-Semitic and neo-nazi ideology, and the anti-globalist and anti-progressive movements around the world do feed into that, despite that not being their real genesis or purpose. Trump is (probably) not a white supremacist or neo-nazi but his election caused white supremacists and neo-nazis to come out of the woodwork and the left should not be the only ones concerned about that. Unfortunately, the left seems to have succumbed to the same sort of race-baiting, extremist paranoia that caused the right to meltdown over two Obama terms and they don't even see it. We can't come together over this issue because the right has embraced racism in the name of defending free speech causing the left to consider "free speech" to be a euphemism for supporting racist ideology.

existencebox 8y ago

I realize your statement may be slightly hyperbolic, but I want to reassure you there are many moderate/centrally leaning individuals passionate about free speech and the power of questioning any status quo as a tool to seek truth. (obviously not as many as I might desire, but...) This _cannot_ be an issue that only becomes provenance of the worst kinds, because then it becomes easy to dismiss. One need only be a student of history to see the importance of the above for _breaking_ oppression and tyranny. (Sorry, not to distract from the OP and the primary discussion, I just felt strongly enough about the above statement to wave a "I promise we're out here" flag.)

krapp 8y ago

The problem is, racial realism and the alt-right are driving a resurgence in anti-Semitic and neo-nazi ideology, and the anti-globalist and anti-progressive movements around the world do feed into that, despite that not being their real genesis or purpose. Trump is (probably) not a white supremacist or neo-nazi but his election caused white supremacists and neo-nazis to come out of the woodwork and the left should not be the only ones concerned about that. Unfortunately, the left seems to have succumbed to the same sort of race-baiting, extremist paranoia that caused the right to meltdown over two Obama terms and they don't even see it. We can't come together over this issue because the right has embraced racism in the name of defending free speech causing the left to consider "free speech" to be a euphemism for supporting racist ideology.