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Welcome to America’s Cultural Revolution

63 points by drocer88 6y ago

sammaeliam 6y ago
If this is really the problem conservatives claim it is, there's a simple solution: Get a backbone and delete your social media accounts. Most platforms (unlike HN) provide account deletion functions (though some keep them well-hidden).
- alreadydeleted 6y ago
  Most of us moderates were shamed off social media years ago. I locked myself out of my HN account because I was tired of being flame baited by Woke tyrants. Don't use Facebook, don't use Twitter. This new ideology seems more popular than it is because the sane people have left the internet. Most of us keep quiet about this stuff because any wrong think will end our careers. Congrats, Woke people. You'll never know the size of your opposition until election day because you've made it too dangerous to question the narrative openly.
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    Maybe you aren't a moderate? I mean, you literally are calling anyone who participates in the internet these days insane. That hardly scans as a moderate take.
    - blueflow 6y ago
      I'm with him - the internet somehow works as competition for who is most extreme. Sane, healthy people neither have the need nor the time to engage with this.
      - happytoexplain 6y ago
        Consider that I couldn't agree more with your statement, yet to me, the GP post sounds exactly like (one side of) the extremists we're discussing.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      I don't have any hard data backing this up, but in my experience most moderates who are exposed to the state of discourse on Twitter agree it's kinda crazy.
    - downerending 6y ago
      The ground has shifted. Someone who was a moderate in 1995 would be considered "alt-right" today.
      - sammaeliam 6y ago
        I've been a moderate in 1995. At no point did I buy into ideology that we currently associate with the alt-reich.
        jeffreyrogers 6y ago
        > At no point did I buy into ideology that we currently associate with the alt-reich. With phrasing like that you've certainly bought into some ideology.
        happytoexplain 6y ago
        The alt-right has a strong relationship to Nazi ideologies, "ironic" or not, and the parent is therefore reasonable in pointing out that it's an inappropriate comparison to 1995 moderate politics, regardless of left vs right opinions. The GP could have just said "far right". Now, if the parent was accusing a specific person of being alt-right, you could absolutely have a case against him based on how reasonably the label was being applied.
        jeffreyrogers 6y ago
        You're using the term "alt-right" like it is a monolithic thing, but it's not. The person I was replying to obviously wasn't using the term "alt-reich" as a nuanced description. It was a bad-faith smear. Edit: policies that were once held by people like Bernie Sanders on immigration or Bill Clinton on crime are now considered "alt-right", but would have been considered well within the mainstream in 1995.
      - happytoexplain 6y ago
        This is pretty hyperbolic. Somebody who was "moderate" in 1995 could be considered left-leaning or right-leaning today, depending on their specific politics, and in fact, without any specific context like "internet free speech", I would think a majority of them would be considered more left-leaning on average today. And even if that isn't true, the alt-right is a pretty specific flavor of hate-motivated shitposters, not just "people who are heavily right-leaning".
  - dilandau 6y ago
    The silent majority is bigger than any of us think. Angry twitter mobs give misleading impressions. Watching company after company, institution after institution cave to demands from the outraged woke-culture has completely pushed me the opposite direction. I will never post any of these beliefs online under my real name. But I will vote.
    - archagon 6y ago
      If it was this easy to push you in the opposite direction, all it means is that you never had any core convictions to begin with. I find it easy to sympathize with people frustrated by the modern left, but I fundamentally don't understand the people who look at the horrendous, despotic, corrupt shit that the party in power is doing, and are more than happy to cover their eyes and ears just because they feel slighted by the other side. I know myself well, and no matter how "bad" the left gets, there is no possible future in which I could vote for a party built around venerating money, imposing control, flaunting their lack of empathy, and — yes — propagating white supremacy. If, at some point in the distant future, the Democratic party becomes "literally Soviet Communism" (in quotes because I find this laughably unlikely, but w/e) then I guess I'll just have to stop voting, or vote for a third party. Frankly, I'm much more concerned about the US turning into a fascist hellhole to worry about that remote possibility right now.
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    You claim to be a moderate, but you speak as though you are quite politically biased, and emotionally so (though I can only go on tone here, since you didn't give specific examples). Lately there is a lot of usage of the word "moderate" to simply mean "I have clearly left or right ideologies, but want to sound like I'm above the rabble", and you should consider this pitfall.
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  Tom Cotton's editorial was not run in social media. This is much, much bigger than social media. Also, do you understand that you're advocating self-censorship? How is that a positive development for a liberal democracy, when large swathes of the population just remove their voices from the public debate out of fear for the "shoot first, don't ask questions" social justice mob?
  - sammaeliam 6y ago
    You call it self-censorship. I call it opsec. In case you haven't noticed, we don't live in a "liberal democracy". We live in a police state, where anything you say or write can be held against you, and you're lucky if it happens in a court of law.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- solotronics 6y ago
  I am very liberal in my politics and there should definitely be a way to moderate people's opinions on platforms.
asdfman123 6y ago
Not being racist seems to be an awfully hard adjustment for some people. Don't worry, a generation or two will die off and it won't seem quite so onerous.
- ativzzz 6y ago
  Pretty sure that's what they were saying in the 60s as well
  - asdfman123 6y ago
    Yes, exactly. And do you know of any people of color who want to go back to the sixties in America? Change is uncomfortable but necessary.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  This strikes me as awfully glib. My parents aren't racists and they empathize with the police reforms that BLM is advocating for (so do I). But they were raised with the belief that racism was due to prejudice. To them, racism is judging someone by their skin color / background rather than the actions of that individual. They don't buy into the idea of microaggressions and implicit bias. To many nowadays that makes them racist individuals. To me that begs the question, what behavior today might be seen as racist decades from now?
  - montagg 6y ago
    We're absolutely doing things that future generations will find abhorrent. And as our thinking as humans evolves, I hope we'll also change our behavior. But let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good. When we are aware that behaviors and symbols are hurtful to other humans, and we genuinely believe that other people should be able to live without fear, then we should change both. We're not going to get it 100% right, or find 100% of the situations where we're screwing it up, or even come up with the right solutions right away, but it's too often that conservatives simply want to throw their hands up and either downplay or outright ignore the problem in order to say it's not solvable or not worth solving. That's just cowardice, and we can do better.
Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
Important and topical article about Google Ads and monetisation.
ihm 6y ago
This is absurd. The New York Times opinion section is primarily for right-of-center opinions that support the ruling class. They let in center left and actually left ones from time to time to be able to claim it isn’t. They went a little too far right on this one for their readership. Have you ever seen an op-ed in the Times with a communist perspective on current affairs? To those who think I am being hyperbolic, here is an op-ed they published in 2018 to no backlash. Why We Miss the WASPs: Their more meritocratic, diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well. If you want to understand more, here is an article in which Bennet (now resigned editor of the op-ed section) describes his ideology explicitly: https://fair.org/home/top-nyt-editor-we-are-pro-capitalism-the-times-is-in-favor-of-capitalism/ https://fair.org/home/top-nyt-editor-we-are-pro-capitalism-t...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- naravara 6y ago
  While the article itself is kind of an exercise in dumb self-pity, and I don't think it hits the mark at all when talking about the Times, I will say I am noticing a pattern of "mind closing" in Leftist spaces over the past year. I think it really kicked into gear with the Democratic primary where a lot of the "New Left" media went into the tank for the Sanders campaign. Being too personally invested into a political campaign (especially a losing one) has a way of shorting out people's analytical brains. There's just a very strong ego-preservation incentive to shut naysayers up and to engage in obviously motivated reasoning to explain away failures, insist there is still hope even when there isn't, and to point fingers and deflect blame. These are all bad for keeping any sense of perspective, keeping an open mind about things, having a movement that can actually assimilate new facts as situations evolve, or be able to talk to people outside who aren't already bought in. It's kind of like a fractional distillation, eventually the heat starts boiling off different groups of people, who might have added vitality or useful intellectual perspective to the movement, until you're left with kind of a burnt-out sludge on the bottom. Of course, those outlets actually have really small readerships in the grand scheme of things. This dynamic mostly happens in smaller groups chats, forums, subreddits, discords, etc. But these groups do tend to punch above their weight in the minds of journalists because they're big on Twitter, and most journalists/media people spend way too much time on Twitter. I think what might be happening with the NYTimes debacle is people are reading their personal experiences in whatever smaller discussion groups they've been involved in into the Opinion section of the Times. What they're missing is the context that this is largely centrist journalists mad at a breach of standards rather than idealogues who can't just deal with people who disagree with them.
kemiller 6y ago
Conservatives like to pretend that having their words taken down from a prominent platform, or getting pushback or harsh criticism, is the same as being sent to a re-education camp. Who's the snowflake now?
- eddieplan9 6y ago
  It’s not about conservatives. It’s not just “words taken down”. It’s regular good people who lose their job and career. For example, read the story of Professor Steve Hsu: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/
  - eej71 6y ago
    Another recent example - https://twitter.com/BenjiBacker/status/1273042888864206848 https://twitter.com/BenjiBacker/status/1273042888864206848
kilo_bravo_3 6y ago
Anytime someone equates private control of a private platform with an abridging of “free speech” rights I automatically think they have suffered a head injury that has damaged their ability to think and makes them take nonsensical positions. If I flood Hacker News with TIMECUBE truth and they delete my posts are they infringing on my free speech rights? > I am a Knower of 4 corner >simultaneous 24 hour Days >that occur within a single >4 corner rotation of Earth. If you disagree with that TRUTH you are a COMMUNIST from COMMUNIST CHINA, you DIRTY COMMUNIST.
- non-entity 6y ago
  Those downvoting this post are evil censors and are dangerous to society.
  - kilo_bravo_3 6y ago
    I know, right? They should be ashamed, trying to hide the UNASSAILABLE, INCONTROVERTIBLE, STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN truth of TIMECUBE. They are worse than dirty commie communist Chinese Chinese communists. They are timecube deniers. And they are infringing on my FREEZE PEECH and succumbing to groupthink.
sbmthakur 6y ago
> Sacramento Kings play-by-play announcer Grant Napear, who’s been calling games since 1988, was forced to resign after saying the words “all lives matter.” I thought 'All lives matter' was commonsense.
- padseeker 6y ago
  "All Lives Matter" taken literally totally is compatible with "Black Lives Matter". However "All Lives Matter" when said is not meant literally. No one said all livers matter until someone said "Black Lives Matters". It's an attempt to shut down "Black Lives Matter". And the opposite of "Black Lives Matter" isn't the opposite of "All Lives Matter", the opposite is Black Lives Don't Matter, which is what is happening when so many black people are killed by the police and no one says or does anything. Looking at the evidence how black people are treated by law enforcement as well as the legal system, that they are treated as less than equal.
  - s9w 6y ago
    As a counterpoint, look at what happens with the "it's okay to be white" posters. Completely benign, commonsense and not a reaction to something. And yet...
    - scottlocklin 6y ago
      Much like "radicalizing" the OK hand sign as meaning "WP," and the latest lolcow of making hawaiian shirts a sign of terrorist groups: seems like the right wing meme makers keep coming up with these things to alienate normies from activist types, and the left, who above all else in current year America, seems to enjoy thinking they have special knowledge that requires they lecture others about what is morally acceptable, keeps taking the bait. I don't see this pattern ending well.
      - s9w 6y ago
        I'm having honest problems parsing this comment. What's WP and what's a lolcow?
martythemaniak 6y ago
The problem with this narrative is that it really doesn't fit. When you encounter situations like this, it's good to ground yourself as close to reality as you can get. Ie, ask questions such as: How has the guns? Who has the money? Who has the media? The clergy? etc. In the case of the The Cultural Revolution, the answers were simple. Mao had it all and he cracked down hard. In the case of the Soviets, the answer is also the same - the party had all the guns, all the money, all the media and the clergy were irrelevant. This situation is nothing like that. Conservatives control the guns, both officially (executive, half the legislature, most of the courts, most of law enforcement) and unofficially (the right-wing militias, which can show up anywhere and demand anything with guns and get treated deferentially). Money and Media are split, with everyone amassing on each side. The clergy is very heavily on the conservative side. So no, this is much closer to the Prague Spring than it is to the Cultural Revolution.
drocer88 6y ago
"Flagged". We need to at least listen to opposing views. The sanctimonious silencing of non mainstream views is scary.
- dilandau 6y ago
  Cancel culture in action.
- downerending 6y ago
  To have an opposing view in 2020 is to risk being beaten. Advise keeping your head down and your mouth shut.
  - codq 6y ago
    To have an opposing view so toxic, amoral, and ethically vapid to risk being beaten, is to risk being beaten. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequence. Advise practicing empathy.
    - downerending 6y ago
      You're saying that anyone who gets beaten for their opinion had it coming? Truly we live in evil times.
      - codq 6y ago
        Absolutely did not say that. You seem to think the bar for being beaten for an opinion is so low that it's anything that goes against mainstream opinion. Of course people should disagree, experience dialectics, have conversations, debate, spar, parry, and enjoy rigorous conversation. But then there are sentiments that are beyond the pale. Should NAMBLA be allowed a late night talk show, or an NYT editorial to espouse their views? Should neo-nazis be given a soapbox, or even worse, access to a highly-targeted ad network to radicalize young men? Should Richard Spencer be punched in the face for being a bigoted piece of human garbage? Should I be allowed to call him that? Is violence ever justified?
smacktoward 6y ago
> The Times can claim that a harsh tone and a small factual error in Senator Tom Cotton’s recent op-ed was the reason the entire paper had a meltdown, but the staffers who revolted initially claimed that Cotton’s argument for bringing the National Guard into cities put black lives in “danger.” Cotton’s entire argument was that the military should be sent into the cities to crack protesters’ heads, which is something significantly more aggressive than “a harsh tone.” If I were to take to the op-ed page of the Times with the argument that national stability requires that we send the military to crack the heads of everybody who writes for the National Review, I suspect they would waver somewhat in their commitment to unlimited free speech.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  The problem is that a significant majority of Americans, including almost half of Democrats, agreed in polls at the time that the situation was so bad the military needed to be sent in. It's hard to seriously argue that representing such a mainstream view is so offensive the New York Times shouldn't do it.
- eej71 6y ago
  The op-ed draws a distinction between those who are peacefully protesting and those who were rioting and looting. Dropping that context seems unfair and misleading. This paragraph - which is probably the source of the criticism - is clearly in the context of how to deal with rioters who are breaking the law by causing substantial damage. "One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what’s necessary to uphold the rule of law." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protes...
padseeker 6y ago
I'm all for diversity in thought - typically though this kind of thing gets flagged on HN. After 9/11, invasion of Afghanistan and both Iraq wars there were songs banned from the radio and people were thrown out of malls for wearing t-shirts that were anti-war. Conservatives were all for that or had little to say about stifling free speech concerns. The argument was its private property and companies can do what they want. There were plenty of pro war advocates that brow beat anyone who disagreed with any of those military actions. There was very little anti war sentiment on any of the major networks in the run-up to Iraq 2003. The disparity of pro war to anti war advocates on all the major networks and cable news channels was heavily tilted towards being in favor of invading Iraq. I recall watching Nightline on ABC when it still did heavy and serious news, when Ted Koeppel hosted it. They had a very honest forum about both sides, it was very even handed and I felt like everyone in America should have seen it, as it may have had more influence on the country. No one was watching it at 11:30 EST, and quite frankly it was too late. Nobody at Nation Review complained. It was all too convenient for them. And now that the mood of the country has shifted so much that even Rush Limbaugh has the hosts of a black radio program, and even the typical right wing blowhards concede maybe there's a problem with racism and policy brutality. And the National Review, which has trained the political and cultural attack dog, that typically goes after those on the opposite side of political spectrum, suddenly they are afraid that the monster they've helped create is coming back to get them. And the comparison is so weak its pathetic. Just because NYT subscribers (full disclosue I am one) didn't think they should have published is crappy editorial. Suddenly we're the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This is pathetic. Tom Cotton, a senator who could have published his editorial anywhere, and the NYT, a barely center left newspaper got grief about publishing it. No one is shutting down Tom Cotton, the subscribers of the NYT could and would have heard about Senator Cotton's ideas anywhere. What a bunch of whiners.
- non-entity 6y ago
  > Conservatives were all for that or had little to say about stifling free speech concerns. The argument was its private property and companies can do what they want No one is actually principled. They just use these sort of ideals as a convenient talking point when it supports what they want, and it's not just Republicans.
uranusjr 6y ago
The article has good points, but all of them summed up times 10 is still child’s play compared to the Cultural Revolution proper. I’m sorry, but this kind of sensational labelling is exactly the one thing Americans don’t need right now, and it’s a shame since, again, the article does have many good points.
ttonkytonk 6y ago
I just reposted this because one minute it was on the front page and the next minute it could not be found.
- Yetanfou 6y ago
  Use a feed reader to access sites like HN instead of the front page, that way you get to see all content which has been posted in the order it has been posted - there is no ranking nor any direct censoring.
  - ttonkytonk 6y ago
    I try to watch my data use so I am reluctant to download one, but I appreciate the tip.
sigsergv 6y ago
Welcome to Soviet States of America. You can feel now exactly how it was back in those days in USSR.
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  Weeeell... do people keep packed bags by the door, for when political police comes to deport them to Siberia (Alaska?), or maybe shoot them in the head and dump in a ditch? That’s still a stretch.
  - sigsergv 6y ago
    USSR existed for over 70 years and people there have seen a lot of varieties of oppression. “Silence is Violence” is one of them. “Kitchen Talks” too (you cannot say anything to random people and only to closest friends/relatives at home). Be ready for a new life, comrade.
    - tandr 6y ago
      Now that you have mention that... Add some unquestionable 3-letter agencies, "national security concerns" and "spies and outside-funded agitators are everywhere", and we are getting quite closely to what I remember from end of 70s/beginning of 80s. sigh
      - rich_sasha 6y ago
        Well, funnily enough, I’m sure America’s opponents are helping to stir the mess. I’m sure roubles or yuans flow in via crypto or whatever to help stir trouble. Of course not out of support for a noble goal, or a low desire to watch a fight, but to destabilise the situation. Still, it’s America’s fault for getting to this point...
        wherewillitlead 6y ago
        I'm sure they are, but the opposite is also true: every disordered regime or pressured state points to foreign interference as the reason for strife. There are distortions in both directions and not really any reliable information.
diffrinse 6y ago
Personally as a continental philosophy academic prior to software, its fascinating that a species of Michel Foucault interpretation became the predominant Liberal/Progressive discourse

63 points by drocer88 6y ago

If this is really the problem conservatives claim it is, there's a simple solution: Get a backbone and delete your social media accounts. Most platforms (unlike HN) provide account deletion functions (though some keep them well-hidden).

alreadydeleted 6y ago
Most of us moderates were shamed off social media years ago. I locked myself out of my HN account because I was tired of being flame baited by Woke tyrants. Don't use Facebook, don't use Twitter. This new ideology seems more popular than it is because the sane people have left the internet. Most of us keep quiet about this stuff because any wrong think will end our careers. Congrats, Woke people. You'll never know the size of your opposition until election day because you've made it too dangerous to question the narrative openly.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Maybe you aren't a moderate? I mean, you literally are calling anyone who participates in the internet these days insane. That hardly scans as a moderate take.
  - blueflow 6y ago
    I'm with him - the internet somehow works as competition for who is most extreme. Sane, healthy people neither have the need nor the time to engage with this.
    - happytoexplain 6y ago
      Consider that I couldn't agree more with your statement, yet to me, the GP post sounds exactly like (one side of) the extremists we're discussing.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    I don't have any hard data backing this up, but in my experience most moderates who are exposed to the state of discourse on Twitter agree it's kinda crazy.
  - downerending 6y ago
    The ground has shifted. Someone who was a moderate in 1995 would be considered "alt-right" today.
    - sammaeliam 6y ago
      I've been a moderate in 1995. At no point did I buy into ideology that we currently associate with the alt-reich.
      - jeffreyrogers 6y ago
        > At no point did I buy into ideology that we currently associate with the alt-reich. With phrasing like that you've certainly bought into some ideology.
        happytoexplain 6y ago
        The alt-right has a strong relationship to Nazi ideologies, "ironic" or not, and the parent is therefore reasonable in pointing out that it's an inappropriate comparison to 1995 moderate politics, regardless of left vs right opinions. The GP could have just said "far right". Now, if the parent was accusing a specific person of being alt-right, you could absolutely have a case against him based on how reasonably the label was being applied.
        jeffreyrogers 6y ago
        You're using the term "alt-right" like it is a monolithic thing, but it's not. The person I was replying to obviously wasn't using the term "alt-reich" as a nuanced description. It was a bad-faith smear. Edit: policies that were once held by people like Bernie Sanders on immigration or Bill Clinton on crime are now considered "alt-right", but would have been considered well within the mainstream in 1995.
    - happytoexplain 6y ago
      This is pretty hyperbolic. Somebody who was "moderate" in 1995 could be considered left-leaning or right-leaning today, depending on their specific politics, and in fact, without any specific context like "internet free speech", I would think a majority of them would be considered more left-leaning on average today. And even if that isn't true, the alt-right is a pretty specific flavor of hate-motivated shitposters, not just "people who are heavily right-leaning".
- dilandau 6y ago
  The silent majority is bigger than any of us think. Angry twitter mobs give misleading impressions. Watching company after company, institution after institution cave to demands from the outraged woke-culture has completely pushed me the opposite direction. I will never post any of these beliefs online under my real name. But I will vote.
  - archagon 6y ago
    If it was this easy to push you in the opposite direction, all it means is that you never had any core convictions to begin with. I find it easy to sympathize with people frustrated by the modern left, but I fundamentally don't understand the people who look at the horrendous, despotic, corrupt shit that the party in power is doing, and are more than happy to cover their eyes and ears just because they feel slighted by the other side. I know myself well, and no matter how "bad" the left gets, there is no possible future in which I could vote for a party built around venerating money, imposing control, flaunting their lack of empathy, and — yes — propagating white supremacy. If, at some point in the distant future, the Democratic party becomes "literally Soviet Communism" (in quotes because I find this laughably unlikely, but w/e) then I guess I'll just have to stop voting, or vote for a third party. Frankly, I'm much more concerned about the US turning into a fascist hellhole to worry about that remote possibility right now.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  You claim to be a moderate, but you speak as though you are quite politically biased, and emotionally so (though I can only go on tone here, since you didn't give specific examples). Lately there is a lot of usage of the word "moderate" to simply mean "I have clearly left or right ideologies, but want to sound like I'm above the rabble", and you should consider this pitfall.
jkhdigital 6y ago
Tom Cotton's editorial was not run in social media. This is much, much bigger than social media. Also, do you understand that you're advocating self-censorship? How is that a positive development for a liberal democracy, when large swathes of the population just remove their voices from the public debate out of fear for the "shoot first, don't ask questions" social justice mob?
- sammaeliam 6y ago
  You call it self-censorship. I call it opsec. In case you haven't noticed, we don't live in a "liberal democracy". We live in a police state, where anything you say or write can be held against you, and you're lucky if it happens in a court of law.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
solotronics 6y ago
I am very liberal in my politics and there should definitely be a way to moderate people's opinions on platforms.

asdfman123 6y ago

Not being racist seems to be an awfully hard adjustment for some people. Don't worry, a generation or two will die off and it won't seem quite so onerous.

ativzzz 6y ago
Pretty sure that's what they were saying in the 60s as well
- asdfman123 6y ago
  Yes, exactly. And do you know of any people of color who want to go back to the sixties in America? Change is uncomfortable but necessary.
BitwiseFool 6y ago
This strikes me as awfully glib. My parents aren't racists and they empathize with the police reforms that BLM is advocating for (so do I). But they were raised with the belief that racism was due to prejudice. To them, racism is judging someone by their skin color / background rather than the actions of that individual. They don't buy into the idea of microaggressions and implicit bias. To many nowadays that makes them racist individuals. To me that begs the question, what behavior today might be seen as racist decades from now?
- montagg 6y ago
  We're absolutely doing things that future generations will find abhorrent. And as our thinking as humans evolves, I hope we'll also change our behavior. But let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good. When we are aware that behaviors and symbols are hurtful to other humans, and we genuinely believe that other people should be able to live without fear, then we should change both. We're not going to get it 100% right, or find 100% of the situations where we're screwing it up, or even come up with the right solutions right away, but it's too often that conservatives simply want to throw their hands up and either downplay or outright ignore the problem in order to say it's not solvable or not worth solving. That's just cowardice, and we can do better.

Wolfenstein98k 6y ago

Important and topical article about Google Ads and monetisation.

ihm 6y ago

This is absurd. The New York Times opinion section is primarily for right-of-center opinions that support the ruling class. They let in center left and actually left ones from time to time to be able to claim it isn’t. They went a little too far right on this one for their readership. Have you ever seen an op-ed in the Times with a communist perspective on current affairs? To those who think I am being hyperbolic, here is an op-ed they published in 2018 to no backlash. Why We Miss the WASPs: Their more meritocratic, diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well. If you want to understand more, here is an article in which Bennet (now resigned editor of the op-ed section) describes his ideology explicitly: https://fair.org/home/top-nyt-editor-we-are-pro-capitalism-the-times-is-in-favor-of-capitalism/ https://fair.org/home/top-nyt-editor-we-are-pro-capitalism-t...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
naravara 6y ago
While the article itself is kind of an exercise in dumb self-pity, and I don't think it hits the mark at all when talking about the Times, I will say I am noticing a pattern of "mind closing" in Leftist spaces over the past year. I think it really kicked into gear with the Democratic primary where a lot of the "New Left" media went into the tank for the Sanders campaign. Being too personally invested into a political campaign (especially a losing one) has a way of shorting out people's analytical brains. There's just a very strong ego-preservation incentive to shut naysayers up and to engage in obviously motivated reasoning to explain away failures, insist there is still hope even when there isn't, and to point fingers and deflect blame. These are all bad for keeping any sense of perspective, keeping an open mind about things, having a movement that can actually assimilate new facts as situations evolve, or be able to talk to people outside who aren't already bought in. It's kind of like a fractional distillation, eventually the heat starts boiling off different groups of people, who might have added vitality or useful intellectual perspective to the movement, until you're left with kind of a burnt-out sludge on the bottom. Of course, those outlets actually have really small readerships in the grand scheme of things. This dynamic mostly happens in smaller groups chats, forums, subreddits, discords, etc. But these groups do tend to punch above their weight in the minds of journalists because they're big on Twitter, and most journalists/media people spend way too much time on Twitter. I think what might be happening with the NYTimes debacle is people are reading their personal experiences in whatever smaller discussion groups they've been involved in into the Opinion section of the Times. What they're missing is the context that this is largely centrist journalists mad at a breach of standards rather than idealogues who can't just deal with people who disagree with them.

kemiller 6y ago

Conservatives like to pretend that having their words taken down from a prominent platform, or getting pushback or harsh criticism, is the same as being sent to a re-education camp. Who's the snowflake now?

eddieplan9 6y ago
It’s not about conservatives. It’s not just “words taken down”. It’s regular good people who lose their job and career. For example, read the story of Professor Steve Hsu: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/
- eej71 6y ago
  Another recent example - https://twitter.com/BenjiBacker/status/1273042888864206848 https://twitter.com/BenjiBacker/status/1273042888864206848

kilo_bravo_3 6y ago

Anytime someone equates private control of a private platform with an abridging of “free speech” rights I automatically think they have suffered a head injury that has damaged their ability to think and makes them take nonsensical positions. If I flood Hacker News with TIMECUBE truth and they delete my posts are they infringing on my free speech rights? > I am a Knower of 4 corner >simultaneous 24 hour Days >that occur within a single >4 corner rotation of Earth. If you disagree with that TRUTH you are a COMMUNIST from COMMUNIST CHINA, you DIRTY COMMUNIST.

non-entity 6y ago
Those downvoting this post are evil censors and are dangerous to society.
- kilo_bravo_3 6y ago
  I know, right? They should be ashamed, trying to hide the UNASSAILABLE, INCONTROVERTIBLE, STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN truth of TIMECUBE. They are worse than dirty commie communist Chinese Chinese communists. They are timecube deniers. And they are infringing on my FREEZE PEECH and succumbing to groupthink.

sbmthakur 6y ago

> Sacramento Kings play-by-play announcer Grant Napear, who’s been calling games since 1988, was forced to resign after saying the words “all lives matter.” I thought 'All lives matter' was commonsense.

padseeker 6y ago
"All Lives Matter" taken literally totally is compatible with "Black Lives Matter". However "All Lives Matter" when said is not meant literally. No one said all livers matter until someone said "Black Lives Matters". It's an attempt to shut down "Black Lives Matter". And the opposite of "Black Lives Matter" isn't the opposite of "All Lives Matter", the opposite is Black Lives Don't Matter, which is what is happening when so many black people are killed by the police and no one says or does anything. Looking at the evidence how black people are treated by law enforcement as well as the legal system, that they are treated as less than equal.
- s9w 6y ago
  As a counterpoint, look at what happens with the "it's okay to be white" posters. Completely benign, commonsense and not a reaction to something. And yet...
  - scottlocklin 6y ago
    Much like "radicalizing" the OK hand sign as meaning "WP," and the latest lolcow of making hawaiian shirts a sign of terrorist groups: seems like the right wing meme makers keep coming up with these things to alienate normies from activist types, and the left, who above all else in current year America, seems to enjoy thinking they have special knowledge that requires they lecture others about what is morally acceptable, keeps taking the bait. I don't see this pattern ending well.
    - s9w 6y ago
      I'm having honest problems parsing this comment. What's WP and what's a lolcow?

martythemaniak 6y ago

The problem with this narrative is that it really doesn't fit. When you encounter situations like this, it's good to ground yourself as close to reality as you can get. Ie, ask questions such as: How has the guns? Who has the money? Who has the media? The clergy? etc. In the case of the The Cultural Revolution, the answers were simple. Mao had it all and he cracked down hard. In the case of the Soviets, the answer is also the same - the party had all the guns, all the money, all the media and the clergy were irrelevant. This situation is nothing like that. Conservatives control the guns, both officially (executive, half the legislature, most of the courts, most of law enforcement) and unofficially (the right-wing militias, which can show up anywhere and demand anything with guns and get treated deferentially). Money and Media are split, with everyone amassing on each side. The clergy is very heavily on the conservative side. So no, this is much closer to the Prague Spring than it is to the Cultural Revolution.

drocer88 6y ago

"Flagged". We need to at least listen to opposing views. The sanctimonious silencing of non mainstream views is scary.

dilandau 6y ago
Cancel culture in action.
downerending 6y ago
To have an opposing view in 2020 is to risk being beaten. Advise keeping your head down and your mouth shut.
- codq 6y ago
  To have an opposing view so toxic, amoral, and ethically vapid to risk being beaten, is to risk being beaten. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequence. Advise practicing empathy.
  - downerending 6y ago
    You're saying that anyone who gets beaten for their opinion had it coming? Truly we live in evil times.
    - codq 6y ago
      Absolutely did not say that. You seem to think the bar for being beaten for an opinion is so low that it's anything that goes against mainstream opinion. Of course people should disagree, experience dialectics, have conversations, debate, spar, parry, and enjoy rigorous conversation. But then there are sentiments that are beyond the pale. Should NAMBLA be allowed a late night talk show, or an NYT editorial to espouse their views? Should neo-nazis be given a soapbox, or even worse, access to a highly-targeted ad network to radicalize young men? Should Richard Spencer be punched in the face for being a bigoted piece of human garbage? Should I be allowed to call him that? Is violence ever justified?

smacktoward 6y ago

> The Times can claim that a harsh tone and a small factual error in Senator Tom Cotton’s recent op-ed was the reason the entire paper had a meltdown, but the staffers who revolted initially claimed that Cotton’s argument for bringing the National Guard into cities put black lives in “danger.” Cotton’s entire argument was that the military should be sent into the cities to crack protesters’ heads, which is something significantly more aggressive than “a harsh tone.” If I were to take to the op-ed page of the Times with the argument that national stability requires that we send the military to crack the heads of everybody who writes for the National Review, I suspect they would waver somewhat in their commitment to unlimited free speech.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The problem is that a significant majority of Americans, including almost half of Democrats, agreed in polls at the time that the situation was so bad the military needed to be sent in. It's hard to seriously argue that representing such a mainstream view is so offensive the New York Times shouldn't do it.
eej71 6y ago
The op-ed draws a distinction between those who are peacefully protesting and those who were rioting and looting. Dropping that context seems unfair and misleading. This paragraph - which is probably the source of the criticism - is clearly in the context of how to deal with rioters who are breaking the law by causing substantial damage. "One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what’s necessary to uphold the rule of law." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protes...

padseeker 6y ago

I'm all for diversity in thought - typically though this kind of thing gets flagged on HN. After 9/11, invasion of Afghanistan and both Iraq wars there were songs banned from the radio and people were thrown out of malls for wearing t-shirts that were anti-war. Conservatives were all for that or had little to say about stifling free speech concerns. The argument was its private property and companies can do what they want. There were plenty of pro war advocates that brow beat anyone who disagreed with any of those military actions. There was very little anti war sentiment on any of the major networks in the run-up to Iraq 2003. The disparity of pro war to anti war advocates on all the major networks and cable news channels was heavily tilted towards being in favor of invading Iraq. I recall watching Nightline on ABC when it still did heavy and serious news, when Ted Koeppel hosted it. They had a very honest forum about both sides, it was very even handed and I felt like everyone in America should have seen it, as it may have had more influence on the country. No one was watching it at 11:30 EST, and quite frankly it was too late. Nobody at Nation Review complained. It was all too convenient for them. And now that the mood of the country has shifted so much that even Rush Limbaugh has the hosts of a black radio program, and even the typical right wing blowhards concede maybe there's a problem with racism and policy brutality. And the National Review, which has trained the political and cultural attack dog, that typically goes after those on the opposite side of political spectrum, suddenly they are afraid that the monster they've helped create is coming back to get them. And the comparison is so weak its pathetic. Just because NYT subscribers (full disclosue I am one) didn't think they should have published is crappy editorial. Suddenly we're the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This is pathetic. Tom Cotton, a senator who could have published his editorial anywhere, and the NYT, a barely center left newspaper got grief about publishing it. No one is shutting down Tom Cotton, the subscribers of the NYT could and would have heard about Senator Cotton's ideas anywhere. What a bunch of whiners.

non-entity 6y ago
> Conservatives were all for that or had little to say about stifling free speech concerns. The argument was its private property and companies can do what they want No one is actually principled. They just use these sort of ideals as a convenient talking point when it supports what they want, and it's not just Republicans.

uranusjr 6y ago

The article has good points, but all of them summed up times 10 is still child’s play compared to the Cultural Revolution proper. I’m sorry, but this kind of sensational labelling is exactly the one thing Americans don’t need right now, and it’s a shame since, again, the article does have many good points.

ttonkytonk 6y ago

I just reposted this because one minute it was on the front page and the next minute it could not be found.

Yetanfou 6y ago
Use a feed reader to access sites like HN instead of the front page, that way you get to see all content which has been posted in the order it has been posted - there is no ranking nor any direct censoring.
- ttonkytonk 6y ago
  I try to watch my data use so I am reluctant to download one, but I appreciate the tip.

sigsergv 6y ago

Welcome to Soviet States of America. You can feel now exactly how it was back in those days in USSR.

rich_sasha 6y ago
Weeeell... do people keep packed bags by the door, for when political police comes to deport them to Siberia (Alaska?), or maybe shoot them in the head and dump in a ditch? That’s still a stretch.
- sigsergv 6y ago
  USSR existed for over 70 years and people there have seen a lot of varieties of oppression. “Silence is Violence” is one of them. “Kitchen Talks” too (you cannot say anything to random people and only to closest friends/relatives at home). Be ready for a new life, comrade.
  - tandr 6y ago
    Now that you have mention that... Add some unquestionable 3-letter agencies, "national security concerns" and "spies and outside-funded agitators are everywhere", and we are getting quite closely to what I remember from end of 70s/beginning of 80s. sigh
    - rich_sasha 6y ago
      Well, funnily enough, I’m sure America’s opponents are helping to stir the mess. I’m sure roubles or yuans flow in via crypto or whatever to help stir trouble. Of course not out of support for a noble goal, or a low desire to watch a fight, but to destabilise the situation. Still, it’s America’s fault for getting to this point...
      - wherewillitlead 6y ago
        I'm sure they are, but the opposite is also true: every disordered regime or pressured state points to foreign interference as the reason for strife. There are distortions in both directions and not really any reliable information.

diffrinse 6y ago

Personally as a continental philosophy academic prior to software, its fascinating that a species of Michel Foucault interpretation became the predominant Liberal/Progressive discourse