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Comment by kwinten | Hacker News Reader

It should come as no surprise that the right-leaning students who ideologically agree with the stated "controversial books" or ideological viewpoints of the hypothetical speakers do not want to remove them from the university library.

Also, it's a third of SOCIAL SCIENCE students, not overall student population, and the study has a terrible response rate of 7.5% which they themselves admit in part 4.1. Also, because it seems like bad faith editorializing by the OP, it's about banning books from the university library, not in general.

In other words, the study is awful and it doesn't prove any point, but because it's easy to spin it into an anti-woke censorship narrative, HN is going to eat this up.

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I tend to be right leaning and would flip out if the extreme left was censored. If you can't have a discussion you can't have democracy.

The "extreme left" is not even a fraction as represented as even far right within popular consciousness and, more significantly, political representation. There's no Marxist-Leninist politicians of note in Germany (where the study was done). There are however plenty of popular politicians and parties with significant power who align with some of the statements and topics the students were asked about.

What I'm trying to say with that is that it's not an equal comparison. There is no political mobilization for extreme left ideas that is even remotely comparable to the far-right that align with some narratives that the students obviously consider as dangerous, such as anti-Islam and anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQ, and pro gendered labor division.

I am not in favor of flat out banning such books (even if I personally believe they have no place in an environment of science and learning such as a university), but it's easy to understand why the response of left-leaning students towards right-leaning topics is stronger than the inverse.

>The "extreme left" is not even a fraction as represented

A good democratic country will swing between extreme polls but if you look around you'll see many strongly leftist ideas (extreme gun control, censorship, minors consenting to sex reassignment surgery etc.) getting quite a lot of support and becoming laws in many countries. I certainly wouldn't argue that they're being ignored.

Idk if you're still talking about Germany specifically or more global trends. Regarding Germany: gun control is a non-partisan issue and not even remotely part of the public discourse. Censorship of various degrees is written in German law especially when it pertains to racism, hate speech, and Nazi language and symbolism. Regarding the last, I'm not aware of the state of Germany on that point.

However, none of the points you named are anywhere even remotely near "extreme left", even by US standards. Those are all Democrat party talking points, which is anywhere from slightly left of center to center-right.

The "extreme left" (no, US Democrats are not socialists) has no political representation anywhere in the Western world and barely registers in public consciousness at all.

> The "extreme left" (no, US Democrats are not socialists) has no political representation anywhere in the Western world and barely registers in public consciousness at all.

That's false. In France there's a far left party ( France Insoumise, which has or has had stuff like redistribution of wealth and nationalisation of infrastructure, increasing the minimum wage in multiples in their programme, and regularly works with the Communist party for elections ) which is pretty mainstream, and their candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was 4th with 19.6% in the last presidential elections. ( For reference, 3rd was with 20%, 2nd with 21.4%, first with 24%)

Isn't there a far left party in Spain as well? And Italy?

Western world != US, Canada, UK.

Are any of those "strongly leftist" ideas in reality? When I think of the most famous book burnings and censorship, I think of this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings), or this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism), or pretty much any case on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_destroyed_libraries

Something I notice is that, whether it's nationalist Italians burning Communist literature, Germany (WWI-era) burning Catholic writings, or the Nazis burning Soviet books, it's...almost exclusively the right-wing that supports censorship, at least on the list for destroying libraries. When I think of who's actually achieved anti-censorship in the United States, I think of people like Allen Ginsberg, the reason the First Amendment actually began to mean something in the US for the first time in its history. Now, I could be wrong, but I think Ginsberg was...a leftist going against the right-wing?

The left seem to have a certain libertarian bent if anything: They seem to want private enterprise to be able to host what they want. It makes sense from a free market perspective.

>The left seem to have a certain libertarian bent if anything

My understanding was that the "left and right" is more or less orthogonal to the "authoritarian vs libertarian" dimension. The authoritarian forms of both are absolutely terrible, that's why we have democracy: so they can do their best to cancel each other out.

Do you see why presenting "extreme gun control, censorship" (authoritarian ideas, not "leftist" ideas) might therefore not be considered a good argument for the idea that left-wing policy is gaining popular support?

This is a common misunderstanding in another group I converse with. Left in his context refers to the American one, which refers to an overarching field that is represented by the American progressives and includes the moderate dems (center left) progressives and socialists /communists, amongst others. You're coming from a European left right split, which means something different.

The first two are moderate positions. They are only "strongly leftist" in a far-right banana republic (i.e., the USA). Giving people the right to physically match their gender identity is a human rights issue.

> They are only "strongly leftist" in a far-right banana republic (i.e., the USA).

Even in the US, they are, at least some of them, more prominent in the more centrist faction of the Democratic Party than even the Democratic “left”, much less the actual (for the USA) “far left”. Remember that one of the establishment arguments early on against Sanders was that he had a historically weak voting record on gun control.

The American Right tends to confuse the degree to which a position is associated with the Democratic Party with how far “left” it is.

I'm curious how you think the third is consistent with the idea that minors can't consent to sex. Do you justify it pragmatically or is there something deeper?

No, kids getting gender confirmation surgery is little more than a right wing talking point. WPATH recommendation is to put kids on puberty blockers 'til they're old enough to consent. Sure, some trans kids probably want that, but some cisgender teens want plastic surgery, too (and, a gal in my high shool had rich parents who paid for that, and they had to fly somewhere because american surgeons can't or won't)

"Extreme gun control" is interesting. By that criteria, Australia is extremely leftist! As is the UK and almost all of europe! Or... maybe the US is the extreme one here.

No. Extreme leftists use guillotines to bring literal class war to the rich. Sieze the means of production and all that. You get the job the state gives you, you get what the state gives you. Collectively somehow even though everybody disagrees with the fundament?

Moderate leftists write laws to tax profits in order to provide infrastructure and services to people to increase the baseline of wellbeing in the state. Biden is actually quite conservative in that regard

> I am not in favor of flat out banning such books (even if I personally believe they have no place in an environment of science and learning such as a university)

In society’s most important institutions of science and learning, ALL ideas must be open to scrutiny, especially unpopular ones.

Shouldn’t we want society to be built on the bedrock of truth via scrutiny, rather than on the mere sand of intellectual fashions?

Ideally, sure.

It is just my personal opinion that anti-science does not have equal value as science and should not be found right alongside it. Given the correct context and time and place, I don't fundamentally have an issue with the books existing or people being able to read them.

An idea is not “anti-science” merely because it makes you or anyone else feel uncomfortable.

4. Someone who thinks that homosexuality is immoral and dangerous.

I'd argue that this is anti-science. The biological theory "en vogue" is that homosexuality (not the sexual act, the falling in love part) is determined by hormonal balance during pregnancy. I don't think any theory argue that this is dangerous, and well, about immorality, it has nothing to do with science.

So this idea is anti-science, and i don't think is interesting enough to take a spot on a shelf in a science university. Maybe in the reserve. Are you disagreeing with that?

Morality has little to do with science, and this case is not different. For an extreme example we determined that murderous psychopathy was related to a developmental hiccup, would you be surprised that people would call it immoral or dangerous?

So which is it? If someone says "homosexuality is immoral", is it anti-science, or does it "have nothing to do with science"? You can't have both.

I mean, whole range of topics tangentially related to 1916 is being censored in american schools right now and it is not even extreme left.

By actual lawmakers.

> I tend to be right leaning and would flip out if the extreme left was censored.

Florida is demanding ideological surveys of faculty within the state. Laws are being passed banning discussion of "CRT" in a variety of institutional levels. I've got a few friends who receive fairly consistent death threats every time they are mentioned by Fox News or equivalents for being "anti-american ivory tower leftists" for teaching courses on police violence or race and gender in medieval europe. One of the authors of the 1619 project had their position changed from a tenured position to a TT position after interference from the board of a public university.

Heck, the Trump administration published "the 1776 project", which was absolutely ahistorical nonsense (no single historian was involved in the project) explicitly designed to shift history curricula towards a specific ideology.

Well, I have some news from the future of that comment. HN is not eating it up. Almost every post is about how the study isn't great and the title doesn't reflect it.

The statistical significance of the poll may be garbage, but the point it's trying to make is important. I'd personally ban CRT rhetorics in education, but banning CRT books would be a direct attack on 1A.

You can't make a point based on garbage data.

Im not a researcher, but why would any study of some social environment not be worth studying?

Especially as it relates to present day & macro-scale social dilemmas, and more importantly a robust history to learn from vs repeat –– Though for this, I'd be more interested in historic psycho- analysis/profiling, present day, and how individual viewpoints evolve to large social disruptions in democratic societies.

Never said it's not worth studying. The methodology, resulting samples, one-sided nature, and biased and opinionated narrative structure of the paper (I urge you to read through it) make it entirely uninteresting is all.

It's clear that this is yet another piece to throw on the libertarian heap and to spin it into anti-woke agitprop just as the OP (and linked tweet, to a lesser extent) did with their heavy editorializing. Fuel for the fire for everyone who wants to read the title and extrapolate some greater social trends from this to fit their already established perspectives.

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