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Also from an ex soviet state. Also feel alarm bells going off. I'm legitimately scared. I've seen this before, I know where it goes. It's really hard to convey

Also from an ex soviet state. Also feel alarm bells going off. I'm legitimately scared. I've seen this before, I know where it goes. It's really hard to convey my feeling of alarm to people here though. Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it, I guess. Doesn't help that the conformists have been allowed to frame the narrative as 'either you agree with us, or you're literally Hitler/Stalin' depending on political alignment, which is a very powerful weapon to shut down discourse. This rising culture is freedom and diversity in all things except thought. This is how totalitarian regimes form. This is what my parents dumped their entire life savings into escaping, and here I am watching it rise again.

wdwecewc 6y ago
As someone from the real world, I just read comments like this and laugh. Most of the alarmism is based solely on a few nasty twitter threads. There is no real speech suppression going on (except, maybe, by the right wingers in power), but the leftists and mobs reminiscent of the soviet era certainly don't have any power right now. People pull out the 'i am from a soviet state' card all the time and it's just so far removed from the present day United States I can only recommend you take a break from the web.
- deleted 6y ago
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- missosoup 6y ago
  You sound like someone who has never experienced the second phase of where this culture inevitably leads to. I pray that it remains that way. This is not a left/right issue. This is a mental homogeneity to the point of militant aggression towards dissenting views issue. And it always leads to totalitarianism.
  - wdwecewc 6y ago
    As someone who claims to be educated on history, it is important then to remind yourself of why this actually occurs. You can't make essays dismissing some angry mob as if they are a homogenous hivemind. They won't listen to you because they literally can't listen to you, they act independently and uncoordinated. You have to tackle issues which cause them to be aggressive towards racists to begin with. Police brutality, for example, is still a threat not yet addressed. yet in all of Paul's preaching about the mob I don't see him making an iota of effort to do something that would actually stop the mob: fixing their issues. Instead, the current plan seems to be to dismiss their outcries and trod steadily along down the path of least resistance in a world that was already collapsing with or without the anger.
    - missosoup 6y ago
      You probably don't know this word, but you're literally advocating for ochlocracy, which is the very thing I was talking about in the upstream comments. The mob has an infinite well of issues, the mob will never be satisfied. That's exactly how it transitions into totalitarianism. Pandering to the mob just adds more fuel to the fire. Police brutality etc. are issues that should certainly be addressed, and there's countless other societal issues that need to be looked at. But dealing with those and pandering to the mob are orthogonal issues. We have a democracy, the rule of law, and a government structure specifically to define a process for addressing such issues. These are the mechanisms that differentiate the western world from the soviet nightmare my parents escaped. It's so bizarre and terrifying to watch people openly advocating for discarding them and embracing mob rule. Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them. > You have to tackle issues which cause them to be aggressive towards racists to begin with Pretty heavily loaded language there. Anyone mob targets = racist? There's far too much evidence of the mob targeting non-racists to even pretend that this is what motivates them at this stage. 'Racist', or rather the newspeak co-opted 'Bigot', is now just the current incarnation of 'Communist', 'Kulak', 'Witch' and whatever other generic labels for the enemy of the mob. The mob never runs out of enemies, the mob never runs out of issues to get angry about. It's Lord of the Flies at a national scale.
      - wdwecewc 6y ago
        I would argue a mob is just a sort of tumor clinging onto the back of a very legitimate protest movement. My point, which I maintain, is that people like Paul are using this as an excuse to dismiss the movement in its entirety by selecting the (real) problems created by the mob. You would not be allowing the mob to rule by satisfying the entire group's demands. This is a function of very ordinary protests that have gone on over the last forever. And I don't think it's fair to compare racists, which are real, to witches, which are not.
        skellington 6y ago
        "racist" and "witch" are just labels given to those that don't agree with you or are somehow disapproved of by the mob. Not surprisingly, their definitions just change as needed by the mob. The term racist is just as ephemeral as witch in the cancel-culture world. Racist used to mean something around "believing one race was inherently better than another," but now it means anyone who doesn't agree with the BLM organization or who supports the Constitution, rule-of-law, Trump, etc.. In fact, if you've taken a look at modern critical race theory writings, you might be a racist if you: - emphasize objective thought, cause and effect thinking - support nuclear families as a good structure - prefer individualism - "work before play" or believe that hard work is key to success
  - locopati 6y ago
    How do you feel about the "mental homogeneity to the point of militant aggression towards dissenting views" when applied to a denial and perpetuation of aggression towards Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people and towards women? a belief that militarized police are just fine or that police brutality isn't a problem? a belief that gender is a binary or that love and intimacy are only allowable between opposites in that binary? in the USA, the dominant mindset (if evaluated by the current political) is exactly "mental homogeneity to the point of militant aggression towards dissenting views" and it's not coming from progressive views, it's coming from the authoritarians this whole idea of 'cancel culture' is just as much calling for the fainting couch as 'political correctness' was
- stopachka 6y ago
  How confident are you that this is true? What kind of information would you have to see to feel alarm?
  - wdwecewc 6y ago
    I would have to see the left gaining real political or financial power. Right now I am far more concerned about right wing fascism since that is gaining popularity in multiple countries.
    - tome 6y ago
      As has been pointed out a couple of times, it's not a question of left vs right though, it's a question of liberal vs illiberal. The number of people who have lost their livelihoods for mere speech (on both ends of the political spectrum) goes to show that the illiberals do have significant political and financial power, and toleration is declining.
      - tome 6y ago
        And as a counterpoint to my position Nick Sandmann has settled out of court with the Washington Post (after settling with CNN). I'm not aware of settlements in the opposite political direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Sandmann#Defamation_lawsuits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Sandmann#Defamation_lawsu...
    - jimbokun 6y ago
      The left controls academia, the arts, media, and corporate HR departments. That's a significant amount of power that can be wielded against people who don't conform.
- jmeister 6y ago
  It’s too far in the game to still make this claim. Go through this list and tell us there is no “real” speech suppression: https://twitter.com/SoOppressed/status/1282404647160942598?s=20 https://twitter.com/SoOppressed/status/1282404647160942598?s...
  - tome 6y ago
    In fact it's mostly worse than that, because it's barely even "speech", it's people getting picked on for making trivial "mistakes".
    - BurningFrog 6y ago
      You can think of it as "The Twitter mob needs to destroy N people every day". If they find genuinely bad people to destroy, they go first. But if not, pretty much anyone will do.
- nmzlPww 6y ago
  I think in some areas you are right: The general population is not that affected (yet!). But in universities and open source projects there absolutely is an oppression of free speech. In open source projects it is usually corporate directed middle managers who no longer program, so they have to profile themselves as bureaucrats fighting for a cause in order not to lose their cozy jobs. And fight they do, Robespierre style.
- spectaclepiece 6y ago
  I can’t speak for the states but I feel strongly that the aggressive conformists are gaining ground on several levels of society. One can avoid the worst of it if as you say one stays away from certain threads online and I’ve personally taken steps to do so but the way it has started to permeate broader academia and work places is creating a real problem which needs to be addressed and the fact that sensible people are speaking out about it now is encouraging.
  - ptero 6y ago
    > I feel strongly that the aggressive conformists are gaining ground on several levels of society. ... the fact that sensible people are speaking out about it now is encouraging. It is, but I am afraid sensible people speaking out may be on the decline. Many employers now schedule obligatory "sessions" where employees are given a spiel on a topic heavily pushing "the right view" with a short 2-3 minuted at the end dedicated to "discussion". With "just try to criticize this" as an unspoken seasoning. This would have been dismissed as "ludicrous, never going to happen here" when I came to the US 20 years ago but is the accepted norm now. Ironically, folks leaving for Vietnam claim more freedom as their main reason for leaving...
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > Many employers now schedule obligatory "sessions" where employees are given a spiel on a topic heavily pushing "the right view" with a short 2-3 minuted at the end dedicated to "discussion". With "just try to criticize this" as an unspoken seasoning. That reminds me of what I've spoken about a few times with friends, that it's similar to what Hillary Clinton said about the need to have a public and a private opinion, only for different reasons. Most people know what is allowed and what is expected to be said in public, and they'll behave accordingly. But they have a different, real opinion in private.
  - soundnote 6y ago
    It hasn't started permeating academia - the thing started its life in academia. Most of the newspeak and the mobs' grievances are rather directly born of "critical theory" born at the Frankfurt School. This is a bun that's been in the oven for decades. The critical theory was originally a tool for a philosopher to use, a lens to view things through or toy for them to play with: A way to look at things as power dynamics between societal groups, and how things those groups hold as truth are in part determined by how they speak. Language reinforces and spreads a view of the world, and a worldview is a tool for power. The way a group speaks of the world is their "discourse" of it. The critical theoretical project's aim is to look at the dominant groups' discourses and critique them relentlessly, to deconstruct, devalue and delegitimize them, to rob the words they use of the meaning that they're purported to hold. This kind of view is useful if it's a lens in a philosopher's toolbox and firmly sealed in a sandbox where it doesn't interfere with other programming, but utterly terrible to let loose on the world. Why? Because it's the intellectual equivalent of a universal acid. Nothing in that process is constructive, its only purpose is to corrode, erode, destroy established things. The only way the mindset knows how to function is to outline problems in a thing or to torture them out by doing a "close reading" of the material. Suffice to say an enemy can mind-read basically whatever they want to into a body of discourse. And that's what's going on out in the world: Basically every strand of activism from feminism, BLM, diversity trainings, X studies runs on that critical theoretical acid, and is actively trying to instill a "critical consciousness" (ie. ability and tendency to view things through the lens of critical theory and consequently take action to change the world against dominant discourses) in every corner of life. This is a problem. Why? Being more aware of power dynamics doesn't sound half bad in itself, and a more rounded curriculum might legitimately be a good idea. The problem isn't in the substance of what they claim they want to do, but the HOW of it. Critical theory is essentially an intellectual acid that's used to demolish pretty much anything into a feeble, shoddy and illegitimate-feeling house of cards, right? They're literally trying to construct the societal world on acid and caring more about words used than actual reality. They're literally trying to use a solvent as the foundation of society, the method that has two tools: Problematicize and delegitimize so as to tear down and destroy. There is no positive value - kindness, humor, gentleness in the program. Basically nothing is valued positively or viewed non-cynically, so next to nothing can be built. As a consequence, it's a destructive or takeover ideology. What it has has been taken from someone or is focused on tearing something down. Remove targets, you'll notice the whole endeavor is empty, because it stands against much, but truly stands for very little, if anything at all. Ever see mentions that people are being literally killed or somesuch when someone makes a comment an activist deems inappropriate. The focus on words is why. Speaking constructs a hegemonic discourse that will lead to oppression which legitimates some crackpot bigot somewhere to kill a transperson, so it's sane to them to treat any criticism or disagreement as if it was violence. Another problem is that some dominant discourses are not just social constructs in the sense that they're how the presumed-dominant group has ended up talking about things. Some discourses are dominant/hegemonic because they correspond well with reality and end up staying in a reality-connected memeplex where language is at least in part concerned with describing reality. This is utterly irrelevant in critical theory land, and so the theory doesn't care, and will try to dismantle them because they are simply tools of power used to oppress oppressed groups whose discourses are unfairly sidelined. Who says things is important, what is said, not so much. Everything is reduced down to group-based power struggles, and conceived as zero-sum games where victory is tearing down the majority enemy. What if someone isn't on board with the program? No sweat, in line with their Marxist social conflict theory heritage, critical theorists use the device of "false consciousness" or "internalized oppression" to sweep away people from oppressed groups who don't buy into the critical theoretical revolutionary narrative. It's really convenient how disagreement is just evidence of your rightness and proof that the opponents have done bad things. Needless to say, it means they're right in every case and the whole shebang is unfalsifiable because every counterargument is either the hegemonic discourse that is to be deconstructed and torn down or internalized oppression. Lived experience of minorities is only valid if they have woken to critical consciousness, ie. come to the right conclusions. Now start looking around, and the fingerprint of the critical theoretical worldview is everywhere. Insistence on alternate ways of knowing, framing everything as oppressor-oppressed relationships, redefinitions of words so as to exclude majority groups from fair treatment (See eg. Reddit's hate speech rules. Orwell couldn't have done "some are more equal than others" better: https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/promoting-hate-based-identity-or https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/acc... ). Many places where they simply try to force language to be reality rather than trying to find it. One salient example: Trans-rights activists insisting that lesbians should be attracted to them because what defines a woman is that the person thinks themselves one. It leads to totally inclusive and accepting funtimes like this: https://lesbian-rights-nz.org/shame-receipts/ https://lesbian-rights-nz.org/shame-receipts/ 'Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky' – do cities have to be so sexist? https://twitter.com/GuardianAus/status/1280221825973313537 https://twitter.com/GuardianAus/status/1280221825973313537 The National Museum of African American Culture posted this: https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiten... Robin DiAngelo whose video is on that page authored a book called White Fragility. According to her, a "positive white identity is not possible". Wonder why? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizi... Critical grammar at Rutgers: https://www.thecollegefix.com/rutgers-english-department-to-deemphasize-traditional-grammar-in-solidarity-with-black-lives-matter/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/rutgers-english-department-to-... Someone makes a joke about a model organism when asked about overrated animals. How to react? https://twitter.com/glctcsm/status/1285666612255821827 https://twitter.com/glctcsm/status/1285666612255821827 https://twitter.com/glctcsm/status/1285666955945541633 https://twitter.com/glctcsm/status/1285666955945541633
- baryphonic 6y ago
  I know at least two people who have been fired over the last month for wrongthink: one was due to a guy's stupidity; with the other, some woke vigilante went after him and intentionally took some jokes out of context. And this isn't an uncommon story. Did I imagine these two people losing their jobs, or did it really happen? Did they have their speech suppressed? And if it did happen, can you not see any parallels to how totalitarian regimes - Soviet or otherwise - operated? > There is no real speech suppression going on (except, maybe, by the right wingers in power), but the leftists and mobs reminiscent of the soviet era certainly don't have any power right now. During any coup d'etat, the perpetrators have two immediate objectives: isolate the existing leader and control the flow of information (usually the TV broadcasters or radio). This is true of almost every coup. For instance, a few years ago, the Turkish military attempted a coup against Erdogan, and were thwarted when he started making Facetime calls to the outside.[1] Schools are also often targeted over the longer term, and in places with state religion, the religious institutions are as well. I'd ask whether the "right wingers in power" are more isolated than any generic previous people in power, and I'd ask whether the "right wingers in power" have control over those culture institutions, or whether those are more guided by "the leftists and mobs" who "don't have any power right now." The most we can really say is that some right wingers have titles, but I'd argue that they have little actual power. (The current right-winger can't even get his former National Security Adiver's charges dropped, which were filed during his presidency by his people.) [1] https://www.vox.com/2016/7/16/12206304/turkey-coup-facetime https://www.vox.com/2016/7/16/12206304/turkey-coup-facetime
- sershe 6y ago
  And as another ex-Soviet I'd prefer they never do. There is already real-life intimidation. 2 Seattle Councilmembers who disagreed to vote to defund police to a sufficient degree had protests around the house, and Oakland mayor's house got protested and vandalized for the same crime, voting "wrong". These are just few, very recent examples out of a rich tapestry of everything from rioting with impunity to getting fired for posting a link to a scientific study. Frankly, if trump goons (and I really detest trump and most of what passes for his policy positions) literally machine-gunned whoever perpetrated the Oakland mayor's house vandalism, it would be super counter-productive, but morally the right thing to do in my book.
  - RonaldRaygun 6y ago
    > Frankly, if trump goons [...] literally machine-gunned whoever perpetrated the Oakland mayor's house vandalism, it would be super counter-productive, but morally the right thing to do in my book. How can you say something like this and still consider yourself a virtuous person. I will never understand the authoritarian mindset that thinks summary execution without trial is a legitimate response to property vandalism. It's not. It is murder.
    - sershe 6y ago
      No, it's not at all murder. At the very worst, it's disproportionate defense against crime. If you kill someone actively trying to kill you it's obviously fine, if you kill someone vandalizing a house it's the same principle; it would usually be disproportionate, but not wrong as such. However, in this particular case, when fighting mob intimidation like this (or marxism in general, come think of it) ends justify the means.
oisdk 6y ago
I find it bizarre that comments like these seem to think the main battle ground for free speech is young people like myself "cancelling" people on twitter, when at the same time protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US. Like there is an authoritarian government right there for you to criticise, but you choose only to talk endlessly about tweets like "can white people make rice, or is it cultural appropriation? A thread (1/329)".
- rclayton 6y ago
  I agree. I would like for someone to enumerate all the people who have been “cancelled” and then compare it to those that have been violently attacked.
  - oisdk 6y ago
    I mean I think there's an argument to be made that discourse has become more rigid (although I do think it's overblown), but like I don't understand how you can write this: > Also from an ex soviet state. Also feel alarm bells going off. I'm legitimately scared. I've seen this before, I know where it goes. And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest and the army being brought in to police civilians. Like your alarm bells are dead silent for all of that, but some celebrity has to apologise for not saying "latinx" or whatever and suddenly you're all "ah yes, just like in the Soviet Union"?!
    - hnal943 6y ago
      You don't understand, and that's the problem.
      - rclayton 6y ago
        Well, elaborate please.
        Sacho 6y ago
        It's difficult, when we are in thorough disagreement of the facts. > And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest Is the police crackdown on protest or rioting? I can buy an argument that Trump hates the protests and is secretly hoping that sending the police will also disperse protesters, but on its face, do we disagree that there's rioting in Portland, and that it's the police's job to stop it? > and the army being brought in to police civilians. Huh? > but some celebrity has to apologise for not saying "latinx" or whatever This is disingenuous strawmanning. There's plenty instances of people losing their jobs for saying the wrong thing, and even a few extreme cases of people ending their lives after intense internet vitriol(although it would be equally disingenuous of me to focus on those cases and claim that cancel culture "kills people"). I don't know why parent jumps on celebrities as go-to examples - a stronger example would be academia, where political censure has been normalized for decades.
AlanYx 6y ago
I feel the same way, but I think this era is much more directly similar to the "red guards" period during the Chinese cultural revolution than Soviet examples. Some of the parallels are just so direct -- students denouncing their professors, forcing them them to recant, the ideologies of the students growing more and more rigid and narrow through the conformity of the mob, until they often ended up even denouncing the professors who encouraged the movement to start. No one ends up being safe from this kind of thing as it grows. Even Mao almost lost control of the tiger, even though he thought he could steer it. My grandfather fought the Japanese as a preteen and later fought with Mao, and even he was disappeared for three days by the mob during the cultural revolution because someone denounced him as not ideologically pure enough.
- stopachka 6y ago
  Agreed. Recently read Born Red by Yuan Gao. Harrowing, both in what happened and how plausible it sounds today
- ekianjo 6y ago
  The first best instance of this was during the French Revolution. People were guillotined in droves for being not merely enthusiastic enough.
  - AlanYx 6y ago
    I think there are some important qualitative differences with the French Revolution, at least in its relationship with the academy (although I'm not an expert). During the French Revolution, most of the aristocratic cadre of scientists did lose their positions, but less than a year into the Terror, the Institut de France was established with more-or-less conventional takes on merit and the scientific method. In the cultural revolution, it was different. More than three fourths of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were persecuted, most of whose work did have scientific merit and had no direct nexus with politics. But that was the problem -- just doing science wasn't sufficiently political/ideological for the mob.
    - deleted 6y ago
malandrew 6y ago
ne chital, no osuzhdayu https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-soviet-mentality https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-so...
michaelmrose 6y ago
Am I misreading you or are you framing the left as the forces of conformity? Only one side has badgeless forces snatching people off the streets and is talking about disregarding the results of our election. My apologies if I misunderstood.
- sinker 6y ago
  It's possible for the left and the right to both be conformist in nature. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
kazagistar 6y ago
How old are you that you've seen this before? If you are just seeing similarities to soviet steady state society, they might not mean we are headed towards that state, since its unclear if the process that birthed the social order you experienced was similar to it at all.
- baryphonic 6y ago
  Is it inconceivable that someone who experienced Soviet life in the 70s or 80s might be around on HN? I didn't interpret either gp or ggp as talking about the October Revolution or collectivizing the "kulak" farmers. Just the ordinary totalitarianism where people who think for themselves (we might call them "aggressive-independent") have to go mute in order to not step on ever-changing minefields, or be very careful about who they talk to.
harimau777 6y ago
The problem that I see is: what's the alternative? Average people don't really have any political power in America so what alternative do they have? I agree with you that some of the more extreme parts of the social justice movement (for lack of a better term) worry me, but the alternative seems to be to do nothing.
grahamburger 6y ago
So what should we do? Honest question.
michaelmrose 6y ago
What we are on the cusp of in the United States isn't revolution it is merely a return to normalcy. 90% of our leftists would qualify as centrists in most of the more civilized world. The biggest "revolution" is apt to be providing health care to our people like the rest of the developed world. The "culture war" we are seeing is an increasingly large portion of the nation who simply finds bigotry, misogyny, ignorance, and hate unacceptable. This combined with an increasingly densely wired communication network means that bad behavior finds its way to the collective consciousness more frequently and finds a more receptive audience more willing to vote with their wallets. The truly hilarious thing is that most of the people so "canceled" if they don't end up actually breaking the law and being incarcerated probably have a better life than most of the people doing the canceling. To equate this sea change in public reaction to bad behavior with the rise of Hitler or Stalin and the fascist/Communism is distorted enough that wrong is simply insufficient to describe it. It verges on illness. Someone from an ex soviet state isn't better positioned to understand our current crisis anymore than someone who was once almost killed as a child by dogs is best suited to understand the "dangers" of dog ownership. They are apt to see menace and murder in the mind of a puppy. You simply don't understand this country and trying to obtain an insight by placing us in position of the soviet union doesn't provide insight it just obscures reality. I am more than tired of hearing about the only side that doesn't want to destroy our country is somehow a bunch of Marxists. Its more than incorrect its a malicious lie propagated by the actual fascists. Please stop spreading it.
- refurb 6y ago
  Someone from an ex soviet state isn't better positioned to understand our current crisis... You'd think someone who is against fascism would be interested to hear from someone who actually lived in a oppressive, authoritarian state, whether it be communist or fascist (since they use the same methods).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    I am interested in relevant perspective. I'm disinterested in listening wherein people disguise their lack of insight with the prop of their background and nationality. Some people use their insight, intelligence, and education to dress up their ignorance in better clothes. I'm also wondering why someone Who grew up in Russia and moved to Australia would have a deeper insight into the the country I've lived in all my life.
JPKab 6y ago
One of my early mentors was ex-Soviet, and he impressed to me the absolute dangers inherent in elevation of elevating collective identity over individual identity. I see this happening now, and all too many of my colleagues gleefully signing on. Recently one posted content that appeared to be regurgitated Agile materials for dealing with organizational dysfunction. But this material had replaced all mentions of org dysfunction with 'white supremacy'. It basically blamed every workplace antipattern on colonialism and, conveniently, whenever perpetrated by a non white person, stated it was internalized white supremacy. The dev, who is very much on the spectrum, seems to take joy in having the world turned into a D & D game, with different rules depending on whether you are orc, elf, or human.
- harimau777 6y ago
  Did they talk at all about how they felt that should be balanced against the need for society to work together towards common goals? I'm worried about some of the excesses of "cancel culture" but I'm more worried about the current Republican approach of basically saying that society has no obligation to its members. What worries me the most, is that I'm not sure I see a good way to balance the two extremes.
  - sparkie 6y ago
    How do individuals meet their obligations to society (if any)? Do they do it through voluntary exchange, altruism and compassion. Or do they do it out of compulsion because they are threatened with violence? The latter is obviously not what we want, but its the State we have. Reducing the size of the state therefore sounds like a good plan, since it should reduce the amount of threatening with violence that has to be done.
    - harimau777 6y ago
      It seems to me that reasoning is backwards. People agree to come together in society because the believe that doing so will allow their needs to be met. If their needs are not being met but they still go along with society, then it is likely because of the threat of violence if they do not. For example, I recognize someone else's home as private property because I want my own home to be recognized as private property. However, if a society's economy is such that I cannot afford a house then the only motivation for me to respect someone else's home as private property is because society threatens to throw me in jail if I don't.
devonkim 6y ago
One interesting thing I’m seeing is that both our (relative) extremes are culturally different how they try to silence and discredit opposing views, but both think the other’s approach and ideologies are more dangerous and Godwin’s Law is running amok in the real world. My analogy is the meltdown and chaos of many different online communities following similar paths of lack of social cohesion turning into decentralization and radicalization. It’s like watching cellular division happening as a super bacteria or bioweapon mutates. I grew up in the US but have spent a lot of time watching how other countries have fallen and listened to both survivors that stayed and those that left. I also listened carefully to my elders’ stories both rich and poor about their lives in wars and how totalitarian and fascist regimes work. Being called both a fascist and commie now by random people depending upon their alignment worries me because we are losing the ability to have nuanced conversations that might actually fix our problems without a full blown war. It really is a sad sight to see as second generation immigrants when our parents worked so hard to leave oppression or for economic opportunities see these very things repeat. And yes, I’m going to say that America’s “free speech” experiment has escaped the lab and is a Godzilla monster out of control. I don’t even care who’s at fault frankly as much as I want people to sit down and stop having bad faith arguments against each other as a rule.

wdwecewc 6y ago

As someone from the real world, I just read comments like this and laugh. Most of the alarmism is based solely on a few nasty twitter threads. There is no real speech suppression going on (except, maybe, by the right wingers in power), but the leftists and mobs reminiscent of the soviet era certainly don't have any power right now. People pull out the 'i am from a soviet state' card all the time and it's just so far removed from the present day United States I can only recommend you take a break from the web.

deleted 6y ago
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missosoup 6y ago
You sound like someone who has never experienced the second phase of where this culture inevitably leads to. I pray that it remains that way. This is not a left/right issue. This is a mental homogeneity to the point of militant aggression towards dissenting views issue. And it always leads to totalitarianism.
- wdwecewc 6y ago
  As someone who claims to be educated on history, it is important then to remind yourself of why this actually occurs. You can't make essays dismissing some angry mob as if they are a homogenous hivemind. They won't listen to you because they literally can't listen to you, they act independently and uncoordinated. You have to tackle issues which cause them to be aggressive towards racists to begin with. Police brutality, for example, is still a threat not yet addressed. yet in all of Paul's preaching about the mob I don't see him making an iota of effort to do something that would actually stop the mob: fixing their issues. Instead, the current plan seems to be to dismiss their outcries and trod steadily along down the path of least resistance in a world that was already collapsing with or without the anger.
  - missosoup 6y ago
    You probably don't know this word, but you're literally advocating for ochlocracy, which is the very thing I was talking about in the upstream comments. The mob has an infinite well of issues, the mob will never be satisfied. That's exactly how it transitions into totalitarianism. Pandering to the mob just adds more fuel to the fire. Police brutality etc. are issues that should certainly be addressed, and there's countless other societal issues that need to be looked at. But dealing with those and pandering to the mob are orthogonal issues. We have a democracy, the rule of law, and a government structure specifically to define a process for addressing such issues. These are the mechanisms that differentiate the western world from the soviet nightmare my parents escaped. It's so bizarre and terrifying to watch people openly advocating for discarding them and embracing mob rule. Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them. > You have to tackle issues which cause them to be aggressive towards racists to begin with Pretty heavily loaded language there. Anyone mob targets = racist? There's far too much evidence of the mob targeting non-racists to even pretend that this is what motivates them at this stage. 'Racist', or rather the newspeak co-opted 'Bigot', is now just the current incarnation of 'Communist', 'Kulak', 'Witch' and whatever other generic labels for the enemy of the mob. The mob never runs out of enemies, the mob never runs out of issues to get angry about. It's Lord of the Flies at a national scale.
    - wdwecewc 6y ago
      I would argue a mob is just a sort of tumor clinging onto the back of a very legitimate protest movement. My point, which I maintain, is that people like Paul are using this as an excuse to dismiss the movement in its entirety by selecting the (real) problems created by the mob. You would not be allowing the mob to rule by satisfying the entire group's demands. This is a function of very ordinary protests that have gone on over the last forever. And I don't think it's fair to compare racists, which are real, to witches, which are not.
      - skellington 6y ago
        "racist" and "witch" are just labels given to those that don't agree with you or are somehow disapproved of by the mob. Not surprisingly, their definitions just change as needed by the mob. The term racist is just as ephemeral as witch in the cancel-culture world. Racist used to mean something around "believing one race was inherently better than another," but now it means anyone who doesn't agree with the BLM organization or who supports the Constitution, rule-of-law, Trump, etc.. In fact, if you've taken a look at modern critical race theory writings, you might be a racist if you: - emphasize objective thought, cause and effect thinking - support nuclear families as a good structure - prefer individualism - "work before play" or believe that hard work is key to success
- locopati 6y ago
  How do you feel about the "mental homogeneity to the point of militant aggression towards dissenting views" when applied to a denial and perpetuation of aggression towards Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people and towards women? a belief that militarized police are just fine or that police brutality isn't a problem? a belief that gender is a binary or that love and intimacy are only allowable between opposites in that binary? in the USA, the dominant mindset (if evaluated by the current political) is exactly "mental homogeneity to the point of militant aggression towards dissenting views" and it's not coming from progressive views, it's coming from the authoritarians this whole idea of 'cancel culture' is just as much calling for the fainting couch as 'political correctness' was
stopachka 6y ago
How confident are you that this is true? What kind of information would you have to see to feel alarm?
- wdwecewc 6y ago
  I would have to see the left gaining real political or financial power. Right now I am far more concerned about right wing fascism since that is gaining popularity in multiple countries.
  - tome 6y ago
    As has been pointed out a couple of times, it's not a question of left vs right though, it's a question of liberal vs illiberal. The number of people who have lost their livelihoods for mere speech (on both ends of the political spectrum) goes to show that the illiberals do have significant political and financial power, and toleration is declining.
    - tome 6y ago
      And as a counterpoint to my position Nick Sandmann has settled out of court with the Washington Post (after settling with CNN). I'm not aware of settlements in the opposite political direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Sandmann#Defamation_lawsuits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Sandmann#Defamation_lawsu...
  - jimbokun 6y ago
    The left controls academia, the arts, media, and corporate HR departments. That's a significant amount of power that can be wielded against people who don't conform.
jmeister 6y ago
It’s too far in the game to still make this claim. Go through this list and tell us there is no “real” speech suppression: https://twitter.com/SoOppressed/status/1282404647160942598?s=20 https://twitter.com/SoOppressed/status/1282404647160942598?s...
- tome 6y ago
  In fact it's mostly worse than that, because it's barely even "speech", it's people getting picked on for making trivial "mistakes".
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    You can think of it as "The Twitter mob needs to destroy N people every day". If they find genuinely bad people to destroy, they go first. But if not, pretty much anyone will do.
nmzlPww 6y ago
I think in some areas you are right: The general population is not that affected (yet!). But in universities and open source projects there absolutely is an oppression of free speech. In open source projects it is usually corporate directed middle managers who no longer program, so they have to profile themselves as bureaucrats fighting for a cause in order not to lose their cozy jobs. And fight they do, Robespierre style.
spectaclepiece 6y ago
I can’t speak for the states but I feel strongly that the aggressive conformists are gaining ground on several levels of society. One can avoid the worst of it if as you say one stays away from certain threads online and I’ve personally taken steps to do so but the way it has started to permeate broader academia and work places is creating a real problem which needs to be addressed and the fact that sensible people are speaking out about it now is encouraging.
- ptero 6y ago
  > I feel strongly that the aggressive conformists are gaining ground on several levels of society. ... the fact that sensible people are speaking out about it now is encouraging. It is, but I am afraid sensible people speaking out may be on the decline. Many employers now schedule obligatory "sessions" where employees are given a spiel on a topic heavily pushing "the right view" with a short 2-3 minuted at the end dedicated to "discussion". With "just try to criticize this" as an unspoken seasoning. This would have been dismissed as "ludicrous, never going to happen here" when I came to the US 20 years ago but is the accepted norm now. Ironically, folks leaving for Vietnam claim more freedom as their main reason for leaving...
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Many employers now schedule obligatory "sessions" where employees are given a spiel on a topic heavily pushing "the right view" with a short 2-3 minuted at the end dedicated to "discussion". With "just try to criticize this" as an unspoken seasoning. That reminds me of what I've spoken about a few times with friends, that it's similar to what Hillary Clinton said about the need to have a public and a private opinion, only for different reasons. Most people know what is allowed and what is expected to be said in public, and they'll behave accordingly. But they have a different, real opinion in private.
- soundnote 6y ago
  It hasn't started permeating academia - the thing started its life in academia. Most of the newspeak and the mobs' grievances are rather directly born of "critical theory" born at the Frankfurt School. This is a bun that's been in the oven for decades. The critical theory was originally a tool for a philosopher to use, a lens to view things through or toy for them to play with: A way to look at things as power dynamics between societal groups, and how things those groups hold as truth are in part determined by how they speak. Language reinforces and spreads a view of the world, and a worldview is a tool for power. The way a group speaks of the world is their "discourse" of it. The critical theoretical project's aim is to look at the dominant groups' discourses and critique them relentlessly, to deconstruct, devalue and delegitimize them, to rob the words they use of the meaning that they're purported to hold. This kind of view is useful if it's a lens in a philosopher's toolbox and firmly sealed in a sandbox where it doesn't interfere with other programming, but utterly terrible to let loose on the world. Why? Because it's the intellectual equivalent of a universal acid. Nothing in that process is constructive, its only purpose is to corrode, erode, destroy established things. The only way the mindset knows how to function is to outline problems in a thing or to torture them out by doing a "close reading" of the material. Suffice to say an enemy can mind-read basically whatever they want to into a body of discourse. And that's what's going on out in the world: Basically every strand of activism from feminism, BLM, diversity trainings, X studies runs on that critical theoretical acid, and is actively trying to instill a "critical consciousness" (ie. ability and tendency to view things through the lens of critical theory and consequently take action to change the world against dominant discourses) in every corner of life. This is a problem. Why? Being more aware of power dynamics doesn't sound half bad in itself, and a more rounded curriculum might legitimately be a good idea. The problem isn't in the substance of what they claim they want to do, but the HOW of it. Critical theory is essentially an intellectual acid that's used to demolish pretty much anything into a feeble, shoddy and illegitimate-feeling house of cards, right? They're literally trying to construct the societal world on acid and caring more about words used than actual reality. They're literally trying to use a solvent as the foundation of society, the method that has two tools: Problematicize and delegitimize so as to tear down and destroy. There is no positive value - kindness, humor, gentleness in the program. Basically nothing is valued positively or viewed non-cynically, so next to nothing can be built. As a consequence, it's a destructive or takeover ideology. What it has has been taken from someone or is focused on tearing something down. Remove targets, you'll notice the whole endeavor is empty, because it stands against much, but truly stands for very little, if anything at all. Ever see mentions that people are being literally killed or somesuch when someone makes a comment an activist deems inappropriate. The focus on words is why. Speaking constructs a hegemonic discourse that will lead to oppression which legitimates some crackpot bigot somewhere to kill a transperson, so it's sane to them to treat any criticism or disagreement as if it was violence. Another problem is that some dominant discourses are not just social constructs in the sense that they're how the presumed-dominant group has ended up talking about things. Some discourses are dominant/hegemonic because they correspond well with reality and end up staying in a reality-connected memeplex where language is at least in part concerned with describing reality. This is utterly irrelevant in critical theory land, and so the theory doesn't care, and will try to dismantle them because they are simply tools of power used to oppress oppressed groups whose discourses are unfairly sidelined. Who says things is important, what is said, not so much. Everything is reduced down to group-based power struggles, and conceived as zero-sum games where victory is tearing down the majority enemy. What if someone isn't on board with the program? No sweat, in line with their Marxist social conflict theory heritage, critical theorists use the device of "false consciousness" or "internalized oppression" to sweep away people from oppressed groups who don't buy into the critical theoretical revolutionary narrative. It's really convenient how disagreement is just evidence of your rightness and proof that the opponents have done bad things. Needless to say, it means they're right in every case and the whole shebang is unfalsifiable because every counterargument is either the hegemonic discourse that is to be deconstructed and torn down or internalized oppression. Lived experience of minorities is only valid if they have woken to critical consciousness, ie. come to the right conclusions. Now start looking around, and the fingerprint of the critical theoretical worldview is everywhere. Insistence on alternate ways of knowing, framing everything as oppressor-oppressed relationships, redefinitions of words so as to exclude majority groups from fair treatment (See eg. Reddit's hate speech rules. Orwell couldn't have done "some are more equal than others" better: https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/account-and-community-restrictions/promoting-hate-based-identity-or https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/acc... ). Many places where they simply try to force language to be reality rather than trying to find it. One salient example: Trans-rights activists insisting that lesbians should be attracted to them because what defines a woman is that the person thinks themselves one. It leads to totally inclusive and accepting funtimes like this: https://lesbian-rights-nz.org/shame-receipts/ https://lesbian-rights-nz.org/shame-receipts/ 'Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky' – do cities have to be so sexist? https://twitter.com/GuardianAus/status/1280221825973313537 https://twitter.com/GuardianAus/status/1280221825973313537 The National Museum of African American Culture posted this: https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiteness https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/whiten... Robin DiAngelo whose video is on that page authored a book called White Fragility. According to her, a "positive white identity is not possible". Wonder why? https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizing-condescension-white-fragility/614146/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/dehumanizi... Critical grammar at Rutgers: https://www.thecollegefix.com/rutgers-english-department-to-deemphasize-traditional-grammar-in-solidarity-with-black-lives-matter/ https://www.thecollegefix.com/rutgers-english-department-to-... Someone makes a joke about a model organism when asked about overrated animals. How to react? https://twitter.com/glctcsm/status/1285666612255821827 https://twitter.com/glctcsm/status/1285666612255821827 https://twitter.com/glctcsm/status/1285666955945541633 https://twitter.com/glctcsm/status/1285666955945541633
baryphonic 6y ago
I know at least two people who have been fired over the last month for wrongthink: one was due to a guy's stupidity; with the other, some woke vigilante went after him and intentionally took some jokes out of context. And this isn't an uncommon story. Did I imagine these two people losing their jobs, or did it really happen? Did they have their speech suppressed? And if it did happen, can you not see any parallels to how totalitarian regimes - Soviet or otherwise - operated? > There is no real speech suppression going on (except, maybe, by the right wingers in power), but the leftists and mobs reminiscent of the soviet era certainly don't have any power right now. During any coup d'etat, the perpetrators have two immediate objectives: isolate the existing leader and control the flow of information (usually the TV broadcasters or radio). This is true of almost every coup. For instance, a few years ago, the Turkish military attempted a coup against Erdogan, and were thwarted when he started making Facetime calls to the outside.[1] Schools are also often targeted over the longer term, and in places with state religion, the religious institutions are as well. I'd ask whether the "right wingers in power" are more isolated than any generic previous people in power, and I'd ask whether the "right wingers in power" have control over those culture institutions, or whether those are more guided by "the leftists and mobs" who "don't have any power right now." The most we can really say is that some right wingers have titles, but I'd argue that they have little actual power. (The current right-winger can't even get his former National Security Adiver's charges dropped, which were filed during his presidency by his people.) [1] https://www.vox.com/2016/7/16/12206304/turkey-coup-facetime https://www.vox.com/2016/7/16/12206304/turkey-coup-facetime
sershe 6y ago
And as another ex-Soviet I'd prefer they never do. There is already real-life intimidation. 2 Seattle Councilmembers who disagreed to vote to defund police to a sufficient degree had protests around the house, and Oakland mayor's house got protested and vandalized for the same crime, voting "wrong". These are just few, very recent examples out of a rich tapestry of everything from rioting with impunity to getting fired for posting a link to a scientific study. Frankly, if trump goons (and I really detest trump and most of what passes for his policy positions) literally machine-gunned whoever perpetrated the Oakland mayor's house vandalism, it would be super counter-productive, but morally the right thing to do in my book.
- RonaldRaygun 6y ago
  > Frankly, if trump goons [...] literally machine-gunned whoever perpetrated the Oakland mayor's house vandalism, it would be super counter-productive, but morally the right thing to do in my book. How can you say something like this and still consider yourself a virtuous person. I will never understand the authoritarian mindset that thinks summary execution without trial is a legitimate response to property vandalism. It's not. It is murder.
  - sershe 6y ago
    No, it's not at all murder. At the very worst, it's disproportionate defense against crime. If you kill someone actively trying to kill you it's obviously fine, if you kill someone vandalizing a house it's the same principle; it would usually be disproportionate, but not wrong as such. However, in this particular case, when fighting mob intimidation like this (or marxism in general, come think of it) ends justify the means.

oisdk 6y ago

I find it bizarre that comments like these seem to think the main battle ground for free speech is young people like myself "cancelling" people on twitter, when at the same time protestors are being arrested by secret police in the US. Like there is an authoritarian government right there for you to criticise, but you choose only to talk endlessly about tweets like "can white people make rice, or is it cultural appropriation? A thread (1/329)".

rclayton 6y ago
I agree. I would like for someone to enumerate all the people who have been “cancelled” and then compare it to those that have been violently attacked.
- oisdk 6y ago
  I mean I think there's an argument to be made that discourse has become more rigid (although I do think it's overblown), but like I don't understand how you can write this: > Also from an ex soviet state. Also feel alarm bells going off. I'm legitimately scared. I've seen this before, I know where it goes. And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest and the army being brought in to police civilians. Like your alarm bells are dead silent for all of that, but some celebrity has to apologise for not saying "latinx" or whatever and suddenly you're all "ah yes, just like in the Soviet Union"?!
  - hnal943 6y ago
    You don't understand, and that's the problem.
    - rclayton 6y ago
      Well, elaborate please.
      - Sacho 6y ago
        It's difficult, when we are in thorough disagreement of the facts. > And not be talking about a massive police crackdown on protest Is the police crackdown on protest or rioting? I can buy an argument that Trump hates the protests and is secretly hoping that sending the police will also disperse protesters, but on its face, do we disagree that there's rioting in Portland, and that it's the police's job to stop it? > and the army being brought in to police civilians. Huh? > but some celebrity has to apologise for not saying "latinx" or whatever This is disingenuous strawmanning. There's plenty instances of people losing their jobs for saying the wrong thing, and even a few extreme cases of people ending their lives after intense internet vitriol(although it would be equally disingenuous of me to focus on those cases and claim that cancel culture "kills people"). I don't know why parent jumps on celebrities as go-to examples - a stronger example would be academia, where political censure has been normalized for decades.

AlanYx 6y ago

I feel the same way, but I think this era is much more directly similar to the "red guards" period during the Chinese cultural revolution than Soviet examples. Some of the parallels are just so direct -- students denouncing their professors, forcing them them to recant, the ideologies of the students growing more and more rigid and narrow through the conformity of the mob, until they often ended up even denouncing the professors who encouraged the movement to start. No one ends up being safe from this kind of thing as it grows. Even Mao almost lost control of the tiger, even though he thought he could steer it. My grandfather fought the Japanese as a preteen and later fought with Mao, and even he was disappeared for three days by the mob during the cultural revolution because someone denounced him as not ideologically pure enough.

stopachka 6y ago
Agreed. Recently read Born Red by Yuan Gao. Harrowing, both in what happened and how plausible it sounds today
ekianjo 6y ago
The first best instance of this was during the French Revolution. People were guillotined in droves for being not merely enthusiastic enough.
- AlanYx 6y ago
  I think there are some important qualitative differences with the French Revolution, at least in its relationship with the academy (although I'm not an expert). During the French Revolution, most of the aristocratic cadre of scientists did lose their positions, but less than a year into the Terror, the Institut de France was established with more-or-less conventional takes on merit and the scientific method. In the cultural revolution, it was different. More than three fourths of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences were persecuted, most of whose work did have scientific merit and had no direct nexus with politics. But that was the problem -- just doing science wasn't sufficiently political/ideological for the mob.
  - deleted 6y ago

malandrew 6y ago

ne chital, no osuzhdayu https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-soviet-mentality https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-so...

michaelmrose 6y ago

Am I misreading you or are you framing the left as the forces of conformity? Only one side has badgeless forces snatching people off the streets and is talking about disregarding the results of our election. My apologies if I misunderstood.

sinker 6y ago
It's possible for the left and the right to both be conformist in nature. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

kazagistar 6y ago

How old are you that you've seen this before? If you are just seeing similarities to soviet steady state society, they might not mean we are headed towards that state, since its unclear if the process that birthed the social order you experienced was similar to it at all.

baryphonic 6y ago
Is it inconceivable that someone who experienced Soviet life in the 70s or 80s might be around on HN? I didn't interpret either gp or ggp as talking about the October Revolution or collectivizing the "kulak" farmers. Just the ordinary totalitarianism where people who think for themselves (we might call them "aggressive-independent") have to go mute in order to not step on ever-changing minefields, or be very careful about who they talk to.

harimau777 6y ago

The problem that I see is: what's the alternative? Average people don't really have any political power in America so what alternative do they have? I agree with you that some of the more extreme parts of the social justice movement (for lack of a better term) worry me, but the alternative seems to be to do nothing.

grahamburger 6y ago

So what should we do? Honest question.

michaelmrose 6y ago

What we are on the cusp of in the United States isn't revolution it is merely a return to normalcy. 90% of our leftists would qualify as centrists in most of the more civilized world. The biggest "revolution" is apt to be providing health care to our people like the rest of the developed world. The "culture war" we are seeing is an increasingly large portion of the nation who simply finds bigotry, misogyny, ignorance, and hate unacceptable. This combined with an increasingly densely wired communication network means that bad behavior finds its way to the collective consciousness more frequently and finds a more receptive audience more willing to vote with their wallets. The truly hilarious thing is that most of the people so "canceled" if they don't end up actually breaking the law and being incarcerated probably have a better life than most of the people doing the canceling. To equate this sea change in public reaction to bad behavior with the rise of Hitler or Stalin and the fascist/Communism is distorted enough that wrong is simply insufficient to describe it. It verges on illness. Someone from an ex soviet state isn't better positioned to understand our current crisis anymore than someone who was once almost killed as a child by dogs is best suited to understand the "dangers" of dog ownership. They are apt to see menace and murder in the mind of a puppy. You simply don't understand this country and trying to obtain an insight by placing us in position of the soviet union doesn't provide insight it just obscures reality. I am more than tired of hearing about the only side that doesn't want to destroy our country is somehow a bunch of Marxists. Its more than incorrect its a malicious lie propagated by the actual fascists. Please stop spreading it.

refurb 6y ago
Someone from an ex soviet state isn't better positioned to understand our current crisis... You'd think someone who is against fascism would be interested to hear from someone who actually lived in a oppressive, authoritarian state, whether it be communist or fascist (since they use the same methods).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  I am interested in relevant perspective. I'm disinterested in listening wherein people disguise their lack of insight with the prop of their background and nationality. Some people use their insight, intelligence, and education to dress up their ignorance in better clothes. I'm also wondering why someone Who grew up in Russia and moved to Australia would have a deeper insight into the the country I've lived in all my life.

JPKab 6y ago

One of my early mentors was ex-Soviet, and he impressed to me the absolute dangers inherent in elevation of elevating collective identity over individual identity. I see this happening now, and all too many of my colleagues gleefully signing on. Recently one posted content that appeared to be regurgitated Agile materials for dealing with organizational dysfunction. But this material had replaced all mentions of org dysfunction with 'white supremacy'. It basically blamed every workplace antipattern on colonialism and, conveniently, whenever perpetrated by a non white person, stated it was internalized white supremacy. The dev, who is very much on the spectrum, seems to take joy in having the world turned into a D & D game, with different rules depending on whether you are orc, elf, or human.

harimau777 6y ago
Did they talk at all about how they felt that should be balanced against the need for society to work together towards common goals? I'm worried about some of the excesses of "cancel culture" but I'm more worried about the current Republican approach of basically saying that society has no obligation to its members. What worries me the most, is that I'm not sure I see a good way to balance the two extremes.
- sparkie 6y ago
  How do individuals meet their obligations to society (if any)? Do they do it through voluntary exchange, altruism and compassion. Or do they do it out of compulsion because they are threatened with violence? The latter is obviously not what we want, but its the State we have. Reducing the size of the state therefore sounds like a good plan, since it should reduce the amount of threatening with violence that has to be done.
  - harimau777 6y ago
    It seems to me that reasoning is backwards. People agree to come together in society because the believe that doing so will allow their needs to be met. If their needs are not being met but they still go along with society, then it is likely because of the threat of violence if they do not. For example, I recognize someone else's home as private property because I want my own home to be recognized as private property. However, if a society's economy is such that I cannot afford a house then the only motivation for me to respect someone else's home as private property is because society threatens to throw me in jail if I don't.

devonkim 6y ago

One interesting thing I’m seeing is that both our (relative) extremes are culturally different how they try to silence and discredit opposing views, but both think the other’s approach and ideologies are more dangerous and Godwin’s Law is running amok in the real world. My analogy is the meltdown and chaos of many different online communities following similar paths of lack of social cohesion turning into decentralization and radicalization. It’s like watching cellular division happening as a super bacteria or bioweapon mutates. I grew up in the US but have spent a lot of time watching how other countries have fallen and listened to both survivors that stayed and those that left. I also listened carefully to my elders’ stories both rich and poor about their lives in wars and how totalitarian and fascist regimes work. Being called both a fascist and commie now by random people depending upon their alignment worries me because we are losing the ability to have nuanced conversations that might actually fix our problems without a full blown war. It really is a sad sight to see as second generation immigrants when our parents worked so hard to leave oppression or for economic opportunities see these very things repeat. And yes, I’m going to say that America’s “free speech” experiment has escaped the lab and is a Godzilla monster out of control. I don’t even care who’s at fault frankly as much as I want people to sit down and stop having bad faith arguments against each other as a rule.