[flagged]
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.
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.
> Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them.
This is true for both ends of this spectrum and also never ending. The mob doesn’t see themselves as eroding those institutions just as our current government doesn’t see itself as obstructionists. What makes this difficult is two competing extremes. I don’t focus on cancel culture because I’m concerned more with the erosion of our voting rights and the dismantling of our institutions by our own citizens. It doesn’t invalidate your points what so ever but it makes them a blind spot for individuals with competing priorities.
Maybe we need to focus on both as manifestations of the same disease, even though one is much worse than the other?
You're acting like this is the first time people have ever complained about things or marched in the streets, and therefore we're on the precipice of communism. We're not.
> The mob has an infinite well of issues, the mob will never be satisfied.
We don't have a mob in the U.S., we have sovereign citizens. The right to march and complain about each other is firmly protected by the U.S. Constitution. The goal of improving the nation is shared by all of us, and we take it seriously, even if some feelings get hurt along the way.
Everyone agrees police brutality is a problem. Not all of us think attacking speech, undermining important institutions, and destroying people over opinions is the way forward.
No one here is against protest in general, the right to march, or the right to complain. A lot of us are against this particular protest which is ostensibly combating police brutality and racism, but manifests in undermining universities, attacking, controlling, and suppressing speech, and establishing doctrine based on anecdote and emotional reflex.
And I don't think it's fair to compare racists, which are real, to witches, which are not.
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
There's a term for that: "mob rule". It's not a good thing.
I'm not for one second saying that Police brutality isn't a problem. I don't live in the USA so I don't know. I am saying that if your system doesn't provide a method for fixing this problem without rioting, then your system is probably broken, and it might be better to fix the system and then use the fixed system to fix the problem.
And while people like to dismiss any group whose concerns they disagree with as being merely an "angry mob," more often than not that "mob's" concerns are legitimate, and their anger is justifiable. Laws don't get passed to "pacify" them, they get passed because public pressure and awareness turns public opinion in their favor, making it politically infeasible for those in power to continue the status quo.
That's not the way it's supposed to work, but that's the inevitable result of a democratic process and society not working as it ought to begin with.
And the endpoint of that process is revolution. Again, not a good thing. Revolutions are bloody.
How can you fix the democratic process so that works as it ought and prevent the disaster you're heading for?
Getting low level employees fired for some kind of political faux pas does absolutely nothing to combat Trump's gross abuses of power.
Both cases linked by fear of and opposition to the existential threat of "the left" as an insidious enemy within and a willingness to accept any means necessary to stop it.
The rise of dogmatic orthodoxy and the inability to have a civilised dicussion where the participants disagree yet respect each other.
What we see today are angry flashes that can change direction on a whim. Flash mobs of statue tear-downs, coronavirus mask/no-mask outrages, etc. are in my view more of a symptom of pent-up aggression fanned by pre-election opportunism, not of legitimate concerns. My 2c.
There have been riots and protests over police brutality and systemic racism for years. People have been protesting America's whitewashing of its history and romanticizing of the Confederacy for years. None of these issues are new. The CHAZ wasn't the result of "pre-election opportunism," read their list of demands. It's fueled by anger, yes, but also seeks redress for grievances the black community has been complaining about for years. "Biden 2020" isn't in there anywhere.
And it almost never ends well.
Jefferson said:
"what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants"
Granted I'm not trying to make some extreme, tough guy statement that the current situation is equivalent to a revolutionary war. I just mean that to some degree that is how a democracy works.
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...
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.
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/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/
'Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky' – do cities have to be so sexist? https://twitter.com/GuardianAus/status/1280221825973313537
The National Museum of African American Culture posted this: 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/dehumanizi...
Critical grammar at Rutgers: https://www.thecollegefix.com/rutgers-english-department-to-...
Someone makes a joke about a model organism when asked about overrated animals. How to react?
Go through this list and tell us there is no “real” speech suppression:
https://twitter.com/SoOppressed/status/1282404647160942598?s...
If they find genuinely bad people to destroy, they go first. But if not, pretty much anyone will do.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Sandmann#Defamation_lawsu...
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.
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.
However, in this particular case, when fighting mob intimidation like this (or marxism in general, come think of it) ends justify the means.
> 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