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What are examples of political topics you see people arguing about in a dehumanizing way? What kind of comments do you mean by “dehumanizing”? I keep hearing t

by zapita 7y ago

What are examples of political topics you see people arguing about in a dehumanizing way? What kind of comments do you mean by “dehumanizing”? I keep hearing this argument that the tone and style of political arguments are getting more vicious and causing harm to society, but nobody can give me concrete examples of what they mean.

jejones3141 7y ago
I'd say those who claim that speech is violence (and therefore merits a violent response) would be a really good example.
- zapita 7y ago
  That’s pretty vague, can you be more specific? What issue do you have in mind? What is an example of someone claiming that “speech merits a violent response”?
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/opinion/sunday/free-speech-social-media-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/opinion/sunday/free-speec... http://c8.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/NATL%20Undergrad%209-27-17%20Presentation%20(1).pdf http://c8.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/NATL%20Undergrad... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-sp... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-ris... Those are just a few.
    - zapita 7y ago
      All I see is a hodge podge of opinion pieces and the raw results of a survey I know nothing about. One opinion piece says that Antifa is too violent. Another argues that threats of violence can be harmful. I don’t see any example of someone saying that “speech merits a violent response”, which is what I was requesting.
      - big_chungus 7y ago
        You asked who holds the opinion that speech can constitute violence; I answered. The answer is that a "hodge podge" of people hold that opinion. If you don't know anything about the survey, read the survey. I intentionally linked the results because I didn't want to present a biased synthesis as fact. Antifa holds that opinion, and believes violence is justified in return. From the Atlantic piece previously linked: > the parade’s organizers received an anonymous email warning that if “Trump supporters” and others who promote “hateful rhetoric” marched, “we will have two hundred or more people rush into the parade … and drag and push those people out.” > An article in The Nation argued that “to call Trumpism fascist” is to realize that it is “not well combated or contained by standard liberal appeals to reason.” The radical left, it said, offers “practical and serious responses in this political moment.” > Antifascists call such actions defensive. Hate speech against vulnerable minorities, they argue, leads to violence against vulnerable minorities. But Trump supporters and white nationalists see antifa’s attacks as an assault on their right to freely assemble, which they in turn seek to reassert. The result is a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s. A few weeks after the attacks in San Jose, for instance, a white-supremacist leader announced that he would host a march in Sacramento to protest the attacks at Trump rallies. Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento called for a counterdemonstration; in the end, at least 10 people were stabbed. > A similar cycle has played out at UC Berkeley. In February, masked antifascists broke store windows and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police during a rally against the planned speech by Yiannopoulos. After the university canceled the speech out of what it called “concern for public safety,” white nationalists announced a “March on Berkeley” in support of “free speech.” At that rally, a 41-year-old man named Kyle Chapman, who was wearing a baseball helmet, ski goggles, shin guards, and a mask, smashed an antifa activist over the head with a wooden post. Suddenly, Trump supporters had a viral video of their own. A far-right crowdfunding site soon raised more than $80,000 for Chapman’s legal defense. (In January, the same site had offered a substantial reward for the identity of the antifascist who had punched Spencer.) A politicized fight culture is emerging, fueled by cheerleaders on both sides. As James Anderson, an editor at It’s Going Down, told Vice, “This shit is fun.” Did you read all of those pieces in the eight minutes between my comment and yours? Your arguments suggest you don't. You can't ask for examples and dismiss them, refusing to read the things I link.
  - gnode 7y ago
    Antifa use physical violence to confront fascism. They regard free speech not to encompass hate speech.
    - aphextim 7y ago
      Antifa used physical violence to confront any idea they did not like. Silencing an opposing political opinion through violence is a definition of fascism.
      - WaxProlix 7y ago
        Politically motivated violence is not synonymous with fascism, it's an actual political movement/"philosophy" with hallmarks and such. Plenty of violence happens in the world, both in response to speech and not, without being 'fascism'.
        aphextim 7y ago
        >Plenty of violence happens in the world, both in response to speech and not, without being 'fascism'. Politically motivated violence is not synonymous with fascism Correct we call that terrorism when it is to further your own political, religious, social, racial, or environmental views. Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature. https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism
      - ben_w 7y ago
        The ideas they believe they are opposing are genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, “women are property” levels of misogyny, and “they want our kids” levels of homophobia and transphobia. How correct they are about what they’re fighting is a separate question. As you have demonstrated, there are many different definitions of fascism. The Berlin Wall was described as the “anti-fascism protection wall” by the DDR. And, of course, “my opponent is literally Hitler” is widely dismissed as a melodramatic overstatement. However, if we presuppose that they are correct about who they are targeting — sadly plausible, given how many genocides followed the one in WW2 — then to say that Antifa as a movement is itself “fascist” is like saying that the Allied powers in WW2 were “fascist” for violently opposing the “political opinion” of Herr Adolf H. and Signore Benito M.
- wolf550e 7y ago
  I have seen multiple times from different people that conservatives care deeply about civility, vulgarity, tone. In my experience conservatives tend to believe that people who civilly discuss rolling back protections for non-male, non-white, non-christian, non-straight, etc. people cannot be guilty of anything, because they did not hit anyone, did not raise their voice, did not say a word that is prohibited on television. Thus, saying "fuck that" and being the first to "be vulgar" means you "lose the argument". I'm Jewish. I believe the correct response to people calmly suggesting killing Jews as a way to fix what ails the country is a punch to the face.
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    You're clearly drawing paralells to nazi germany and the holocaust, but it's not as though it was years of peaceful planning followed by a sudden outburst of violence. A quick timeline: * Jan. 1933 Hitler took power * Feb. 1933 civil liberties of Jews "temporarily" curtailed. This is a key step. * Mar. 1933 Dachau created * May 1933 Books nazis disliked burned * Sept. 1935 Nuremberg Laws; gypsies and others sent to concentration camps * July 1938 Hitler tries to sell German Jews to the rest of the world at $250/head * Nov. 1938 Kristallnacht; Jewish kids kicked out of public schools * Dec. 1938 nazis seize Jewish businesses * Sept. 1939 Germany invades Poland * Oct. 1939 "euthanasia" starts * Dec. 1940 Mass murders at Treblinka Look at the timeline and tell me where you think we are. Then please point to the currently-elected American politician who is "calmly suggest[ing] killing Jews as a way to fix what ails the country". I get fed up with the argument that current leadership is "literally hitler". It's intentionally dis-ingenuous, put forth in bad faith, and designed to incite unrest with no reasonable backing of the points. Source: https://isurvived.org/cronology.html https://isurvived.org/cronology.html
    - zapita 7y ago
      We are somewhere between February 1933 and November 1938. The analogy to Nazi Germany is not perfect (no analogy is), but we are in fact witnessing a transition from democracy to xenophobic totalitarianism in the US, among other places. I invite you to question your own reaction. Why does it bother you so much that people make this comparison? How could making this comparison “incite unrest”? Would you recommend forbidding anyone from making this comparison?
n4r9 7y ago
Here in the UK, we're going through a phase where right-wing middle-aged men are dismissed as "gammons" and progressive young people are dismissed as "snowflake millennials". People that don't buy into Brexit hype are remoaners, people that want to nationalise services are commies/marxists/trots, people that think the free market would be good for the NHS are neoliberal scum, people that are uncomfortable with current immigration levels are fascists etc... . All in the service of categorising and not having to apply any real thought or empathy. I don't know if it's significantly worse than the situation 50 or 100 years ago, but it does get on my nerves.
deleted 7y ago
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Doingmything123 7y ago
If your talking about the US, I would say the way some politicians paints illegal immigrants. Especially when the discussion about them centers around (what I think are exaggerations of) crime and drugs instead of the reality of how hard we have made it for them to come and help farm/pick our produce and do other manual labor.
gnode 7y ago
On either side of various political disagreements, you commonly find each side regards the other's position as immoral, and the other person thus morally bankrupt. I think this is what's here referred to as dehumanising. Arguments over abortion rights commonly frame the opposition as condoning infanticide on one side or violating bodily autonomy on the other. Each framing creates a morally bankrupt opposition. Both those for and against socialism / redistribution of wealth see their opposition as wanting to take unearned wealth.
- deleted 7y ago
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Ididntdothis 7y ago
To me it’s calling people “racist”, “socialist” or just “haters” whenever they say something slightly off the accepted opinion . In certain camps a person with one of these labels can’t even be talked to, listened to or work at the same company (or any company).
- zapita 7y ago
  What is an example of something “slightly off the accepted opinion” which I might say, that would get me called “racist”? And what would be the consequences for me of being called that?
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    People who object to affirmative action programs or special hiring programs for people who aren't white are often called "racist". Same with people who don't support illegal immigration. The consequence can be an angry social media mob that demands your employer fire you.
  - stale2002 7y ago
    Sure, an example would be the opinion that "people should have the right to assemble and engage in free speech, even if they have offensive opinions". Such an opinion could get accused as being a defense of horrible people, as opposed to a defense of everyone's universal rights. And some people believe that if you even think that people who are engaging in offensive behavior should have rights, then that makes you just as bad as the offensive people, and therefore deserve to be the target of violence. Even arguing in favor of free speech, solely in support of these rights, can get you accused of being a terrible person, and therefore a deserving target of violence.
virmundi 7y ago
Remy has a song about it. https://reason.com/video/remy-people-will-die/ https://reason.com/video/remy-people-will-die/
bart_spoon 7y ago
Abortion is a great one. Pro-choice advocates are painted as baby killers and murderers as opposed to those concerned with the rights of women, and pro-life advocates are portrayed as evil power hungry individuals who want nothing more than to control and degrade the rights of women, rather than people genuinely concerned about ending life at its most helpless stage. Honestly abortion is one of the messiest, no easy answer issues out there and yet the vitriol and extreme rhetoric is completely over the top.
mrtaway90210 7y ago
>> I keep hearing this argument that the tone and style of political arguments are getting more vicious and causing harm to society, but nobody can give me concrete examples of what they mean. Just visit twitter and search for "muslim" or "jew" or "african american" and you'll find plenty of vicious and dehumanizing rhetoric. In any hour-long surfing session, you'll see accounts calling for all sorts of ethnic cleansing.

by zapita 7y ago

jejones3141 7y ago

I'd say those who claim that speech is violence (and therefore merits a violent response) would be a really good example.

zapita 7y ago
That’s pretty vague, can you be more specific? What issue do you have in mind? What is an example of someone claiming that “speech merits a violent response”?
- big_chungus 7y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/opinion/sunday/free-speech-social-media-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/opinion/sunday/free-speec... http://c8.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/NATL%20Undergrad%209-27-17%20Presentation%20(1).pdf http://c8.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/NATL%20Undergrad... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-sp... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-ris... Those are just a few.
  - zapita 7y ago
    All I see is a hodge podge of opinion pieces and the raw results of a survey I know nothing about. One opinion piece says that Antifa is too violent. Another argues that threats of violence can be harmful. I don’t see any example of someone saying that “speech merits a violent response”, which is what I was requesting.
    - big_chungus 7y ago
      You asked who holds the opinion that speech can constitute violence; I answered. The answer is that a "hodge podge" of people hold that opinion. If you don't know anything about the survey, read the survey. I intentionally linked the results because I didn't want to present a biased synthesis as fact. Antifa holds that opinion, and believes violence is justified in return. From the Atlantic piece previously linked: > the parade’s organizers received an anonymous email warning that if “Trump supporters” and others who promote “hateful rhetoric” marched, “we will have two hundred or more people rush into the parade … and drag and push those people out.” > An article in The Nation argued that “to call Trumpism fascist” is to realize that it is “not well combated or contained by standard liberal appeals to reason.” The radical left, it said, offers “practical and serious responses in this political moment.” > Antifascists call such actions defensive. Hate speech against vulnerable minorities, they argue, leads to violence against vulnerable minorities. But Trump supporters and white nationalists see antifa’s attacks as an assault on their right to freely assemble, which they in turn seek to reassert. The result is a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s. A few weeks after the attacks in San Jose, for instance, a white-supremacist leader announced that he would host a march in Sacramento to protest the attacks at Trump rallies. Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento called for a counterdemonstration; in the end, at least 10 people were stabbed. > A similar cycle has played out at UC Berkeley. In February, masked antifascists broke store windows and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks at police during a rally against the planned speech by Yiannopoulos. After the university canceled the speech out of what it called “concern for public safety,” white nationalists announced a “March on Berkeley” in support of “free speech.” At that rally, a 41-year-old man named Kyle Chapman, who was wearing a baseball helmet, ski goggles, shin guards, and a mask, smashed an antifa activist over the head with a wooden post. Suddenly, Trump supporters had a viral video of their own. A far-right crowdfunding site soon raised more than $80,000 for Chapman’s legal defense. (In January, the same site had offered a substantial reward for the identity of the antifascist who had punched Spencer.) A politicized fight culture is emerging, fueled by cheerleaders on both sides. As James Anderson, an editor at It’s Going Down, told Vice, “This shit is fun.” Did you read all of those pieces in the eight minutes between my comment and yours? Your arguments suggest you don't. You can't ask for examples and dismiss them, refusing to read the things I link.
- gnode 7y ago
  Antifa use physical violence to confront fascism. They regard free speech not to encompass hate speech.
  - aphextim 7y ago
    Antifa used physical violence to confront any idea they did not like. Silencing an opposing political opinion through violence is a definition of fascism.
    - WaxProlix 7y ago
      Politically motivated violence is not synonymous with fascism, it's an actual political movement/"philosophy" with hallmarks and such. Plenty of violence happens in the world, both in response to speech and not, without being 'fascism'.
      - aphextim 7y ago
        >Plenty of violence happens in the world, both in response to speech and not, without being 'fascism'. Politically motivated violence is not synonymous with fascism Correct we call that terrorism when it is to further your own political, religious, social, racial, or environmental views. Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature. https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism
    - ben_w 7y ago
      The ideas they believe they are opposing are genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, “women are property” levels of misogyny, and “they want our kids” levels of homophobia and transphobia. How correct they are about what they’re fighting is a separate question. As you have demonstrated, there are many different definitions of fascism. The Berlin Wall was described as the “anti-fascism protection wall” by the DDR. And, of course, “my opponent is literally Hitler” is widely dismissed as a melodramatic overstatement. However, if we presuppose that they are correct about who they are targeting — sadly plausible, given how many genocides followed the one in WW2 — then to say that Antifa as a movement is itself “fascist” is like saying that the Allied powers in WW2 were “fascist” for violently opposing the “political opinion” of Herr Adolf H. and Signore Benito M.
wolf550e 7y ago
I have seen multiple times from different people that conservatives care deeply about civility, vulgarity, tone. In my experience conservatives tend to believe that people who civilly discuss rolling back protections for non-male, non-white, non-christian, non-straight, etc. people cannot be guilty of anything, because they did not hit anyone, did not raise their voice, did not say a word that is prohibited on television. Thus, saying "fuck that" and being the first to "be vulgar" means you "lose the argument". I'm Jewish. I believe the correct response to people calmly suggesting killing Jews as a way to fix what ails the country is a punch to the face.
- big_chungus 7y ago
  You're clearly drawing paralells to nazi germany and the holocaust, but it's not as though it was years of peaceful planning followed by a sudden outburst of violence. A quick timeline: * Jan. 1933 Hitler took power * Feb. 1933 civil liberties of Jews "temporarily" curtailed. This is a key step. * Mar. 1933 Dachau created * May 1933 Books nazis disliked burned * Sept. 1935 Nuremberg Laws; gypsies and others sent to concentration camps * July 1938 Hitler tries to sell German Jews to the rest of the world at $250/head * Nov. 1938 Kristallnacht; Jewish kids kicked out of public schools * Dec. 1938 nazis seize Jewish businesses * Sept. 1939 Germany invades Poland * Oct. 1939 "euthanasia" starts * Dec. 1940 Mass murders at Treblinka Look at the timeline and tell me where you think we are. Then please point to the currently-elected American politician who is "calmly suggest[ing] killing Jews as a way to fix what ails the country". I get fed up with the argument that current leadership is "literally hitler". It's intentionally dis-ingenuous, put forth in bad faith, and designed to incite unrest with no reasonable backing of the points. Source: https://isurvived.org/cronology.html https://isurvived.org/cronology.html
  - zapita 7y ago
    We are somewhere between February 1933 and November 1938. The analogy to Nazi Germany is not perfect (no analogy is), but we are in fact witnessing a transition from democracy to xenophobic totalitarianism in the US, among other places. I invite you to question your own reaction. Why does it bother you so much that people make this comparison? How could making this comparison “incite unrest”? Would you recommend forbidding anyone from making this comparison?

n4r9 7y ago

Here in the UK, we're going through a phase where right-wing middle-aged men are dismissed as "gammons" and progressive young people are dismissed as "snowflake millennials". People that don't buy into Brexit hype are remoaners, people that want to nationalise services are commies/marxists/trots, people that think the free market would be good for the NHS are neoliberal scum, people that are uncomfortable with current immigration levels are fascists etc... . All in the service of categorising and not having to apply any real thought or empathy. I don't know if it's significantly worse than the situation 50 or 100 years ago, but it does get on my nerves.

deleted 7y ago

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deleted 7y ago

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Doingmything123 7y ago

If your talking about the US, I would say the way some politicians paints illegal immigrants. Especially when the discussion about them centers around (what I think are exaggerations of) crime and drugs instead of the reality of how hard we have made it for them to come and help farm/pick our produce and do other manual labor.

gnode 7y ago

On either side of various political disagreements, you commonly find each side regards the other's position as immoral, and the other person thus morally bankrupt. I think this is what's here referred to as dehumanising. Arguments over abortion rights commonly frame the opposition as condoning infanticide on one side or violating bodily autonomy on the other. Each framing creates a morally bankrupt opposition. Both those for and against socialism / redistribution of wealth see their opposition as wanting to take unearned wealth.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Ididntdothis 7y ago

To me it’s calling people “racist”, “socialist” or just “haters” whenever they say something slightly off the accepted opinion . In certain camps a person with one of these labels can’t even be talked to, listened to or work at the same company (or any company).

zapita 7y ago
What is an example of something “slightly off the accepted opinion” which I might say, that would get me called “racist”? And what would be the consequences for me of being called that?
- malvosenior 7y ago
  People who object to affirmative action programs or special hiring programs for people who aren't white are often called "racist". Same with people who don't support illegal immigration. The consequence can be an angry social media mob that demands your employer fire you.
- stale2002 7y ago
  Sure, an example would be the opinion that "people should have the right to assemble and engage in free speech, even if they have offensive opinions". Such an opinion could get accused as being a defense of horrible people, as opposed to a defense of everyone's universal rights. And some people believe that if you even think that people who are engaging in offensive behavior should have rights, then that makes you just as bad as the offensive people, and therefore deserve to be the target of violence. Even arguing in favor of free speech, solely in support of these rights, can get you accused of being a terrible person, and therefore a deserving target of violence.

virmundi 7y ago

Remy has a song about it. https://reason.com/video/remy-people-will-die/ https://reason.com/video/remy-people-will-die/

bart_spoon 7y ago

Abortion is a great one. Pro-choice advocates are painted as baby killers and murderers as opposed to those concerned with the rights of women, and pro-life advocates are portrayed as evil power hungry individuals who want nothing more than to control and degrade the rights of women, rather than people genuinely concerned about ending life at its most helpless stage. Honestly abortion is one of the messiest, no easy answer issues out there and yet the vitriol and extreme rhetoric is completely over the top.

mrtaway90210 7y ago

>> I keep hearing this argument that the tone and style of political arguments are getting more vicious and causing harm to society, but nobody can give me concrete examples of what they mean. Just visit twitter and search for "muslim" or "jew" or "african american" and you'll find plenty of vicious and dehumanizing rhetoric. In any hour-long surfing session, you'll see accounts calling for all sorts of ethnic cleansing.