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Comment by didibus | Hacker News Reader

"But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth."

That's the problem, where's the worthy opponent? I'm sure they exist, but I rarely see or hear of them. I see a lot of demagogues, and those are not worthy by definition and should not be brought into the conversation especially in a University.

Bring us worthy opponents and I'm sure there won't be protests from students.

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I watch in fascination two twitter lists I've created - labeled for better or worse, "left" and "right". I routinely see both braindead namecalling and extremely well constructed arguments on both lists. And yet, the most fascinating aspect is that the authors almost invariably choose to ignore a well constructed argument against their point of view and choose to respond vocally and loudly to namecalling.

Perhaps it's not that there aren't worthy opponents, but that we deliberately choose to ignore them, because it's much easier to portray yourself as a paragon of virtue fighting against uncivilized, uncouth barbarians.

That's pretty much what I see on both sides these days. The idea that someone could hold differing views is no longer seen as disagreement but being actively evil or, at best, stupid.

...which is ok. I mean, you're perfectly entitled to see me as or call me evil or stupid. But when you ignore a 2-page rebuttal of your opinion, and only respond to someone who called you names as an "example" of the abuse being thrown about by the opposition, that's just hypocrisy.

I'll propose that there is a reason for this. The tactics of the Social Justice movement is to demonize people who disagree with you and attempt to get them fired or ostracized from society. The tactic is to find the most extreme version of that opinion and try to make that the model for the whole group, even though the center of it might be more moderate. For example, there are a lot of people that have been concerned about the amount of immigration to the US for years and any attempt to restrict immigration was called racists. It's easy to do since there will be extreme racists that also support restricting immigration. You just need to interview one of the clear racists and make them the poster child for the whole group. I saw tons of the meme with Pepe the frog from the alt-right and never saw a single one that was racists. When it went mainstream, someone found out that racists were using it too, so they attached the racist label to the whole thing and tried to get any discussion from the alt-right tied directly to racism and Nazism. There are racists in the group for sure, but I heard a lot of other parts of it as well.

This is the same reason I was so opposed to the witch hunt of punishing everyone associated with Peter Thiel. Trying to get someone fired for their political beliefs sends the middle people underground. They are fearful, and their whole lives are not centered around their political identity, so they just stop talking about it.

The result is that the only people willing to talk about these things are the extremes, or the weird or the people who really take "I don't care what you think of me" to the extreme. This is why Milo Yiannopoulos is the spokesman for these ideas to people. He is the only one willing to talk publicly. He is an extreme, and deeply flawed person, but he is willing to say things no one else is, so he has a following. Trump is also a version of this. Lots of his supporters are more reasonable than him, but they got shouted out of the public discourse and were call racists anyway, so that only left the extremes left to represent the center.

I think there are lots "worthy opponents" out there, but if they said they support less immigration, they would be called racists and everything they ever said would be quote-mined until something unacceptable was found and they would be run out of the public space.

I'm in total agreement with this reply. Regarding the silence of the centrists it is due to fear of being labeled with a pejorative that will be difficult to shake, even if it's within a small community and not widely publicized. That kind of ostracization, even if only in your neighborhood/town/city/workplace, can have a significant negative effect on your life, and the lives of your loved ones. For example, if you vocalize even mild support of some sort of immigration restrictions you are branded a racist, regardless of whether your reasoning for your support is logically sound or whether your implementation approach is measured or thoughtful.

The result is that the extremism rampant today has a chilling effect on the voices of what I believe is the vast majority of people. Where that may lead is something that could be quite scary.

There's some good arguments in here, but I'm not sure I see something that proves the chicken and egg problem. Though I admit, even when I look I can't seem to find centrists in the USA. It appears the center works like interlaced video, every 4 or 8 years, we alternate between far left and right, and over 100 years it centers itself on average. But I'd much rather just be close to the center at all times, just like full resolution video is better then interlaced.

> Bring us worthy opponents and I'm sure there won't be protests from students.

Germaine Greer, famous feminist faced an attempted "no platform" in UK because of her trans-phobic views.

This article mentions some other protests from students, although luckily most of them don't get anywhere.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/may/05/boris-tatc...

This line from that article sounds bad:

> NUS president Megan Dunn distanced herself and the union from the group, saying: “Hope Not Hate is not on NUS’s no-platform list. I would happily share a platform with anyone from Hope Not Hate tomorrow.”

But the list includes jst 6 groups:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Platform

> Al-Muhajiroun;

> British National Party;

> English Defence League;

> Hizb-ut-Tahrir;

> Muslim Public Affairs Committee.

> National Action

Some of these organisations are proscribed terrorist organisations, so not allowing them a platform isn't unreasonable.

How would you establish a definition for "worthy"? I'm almost certain your definition would differ from someone else's.

It's for that reason that I don't think we should prevent anyone from speaking. The only solution is more speech.

Also: Universities are doing a pretty poor job of bringing in certain kinds of speakers. If you want change, make it.

I would posit that Trump is not a worthy opponent. He does not use facts and reason for his arguments. He uses bullying and lies, that makes him "unworthy" in my eyes.

But in terms of political discourse, that's about as "worthy" as it gets. People have been trained by different (mainstream) politicians over the years that lies are the new normal, facts don't matter, promises are empty, etc. It's no wonder that eventually an extremist would succeed with a much more blatant version if those basic strategies.

At the very least, you can't be a demagogue, that is someone who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power. This goes for all sides btw.

Ideally too, especially if you're to speak at a well respected university, I'd like you to have some credentials, a book, research, a strong presence in existing circles related to the problems you'll address, etc. Something that indicates you've spent a good amount of time (like above the 90th percentile) thinking this through by yourself first, and by a few others.

Yeah, the other side has no worthy opponents, THAT'S the problem.

/sarcasm

> Bring us worthy opponents and I'm sure there won't be protests from students.

Seriously?

I'm on your side (I guess) but they have speakers that are credible.

Only a racist and an Islamaphobe would want limited immigration and a strong stance against Islamic terrorism. Did you know that more people die every year of heart attacks than terrorist attacks, so we should just not do anything to stop terrorism.

Also, did you know that every single person in Mexico is actually an American! Yup, they are all 100% Americans who just haven't illegally crossed the boarder yet. As soon as they do, refusing to give them citizenship is betraying our American values as a Nation Of Immigrants (TM).

Please stop posting inflammatory political rants to HN. It's very much not what this site is for.

You've been using HN primarily for political arguments. That's an abuse of the site—it's destructive of the thoughtful, varied discussion we're hoping for. We ban accounts that do this, so please stop doing this.

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