Maybe "thats right-wing rhetoric" has been the method of suppressing what we found uncomfortable.
If you could give an example of rhetoric that is suppressed because it’s “right wing”, that would be helpful.
It's not speech about fiscal conservative policies or smaller government that get's censored. It's people telling their viewers to harass Sandyhook parents, or participate in a violent insurrection, or something similar that gets censored.
Playing the victim card without acknowledging TOS violations is intentionally misleading.
When cancel culture was running amok, people were getting fired/reprimanded/harassed for advocating nonviolent protests over riots, for using Chinese words that sound vaguely like an English racial slur, for interviewing Black Americans whose opinions differ slightly from the official narrative about what a Black American ought to think, for throwing a geisha-themed party for your young daughter, for wearing a prom dress inspired by a traditional Chinese aesthetic, etc. None of these are remotely right-wing offenses.
This is the whole problem--the left harms people whose actions/opinions are well within the Overton Window and upon criticism, they retreat to some variation of "we're just opposing objectively horrible people!". This whole game hurts left-wing credibility and it easier for far-right viewpoints to enter the mainstream (is so-and-so an actual Nazi or are they just failing to completely toe the left-wing party line?). It's also just shitty behavior that makes people angry and pushes them rightward, and it does nothing to help left-wing causes.
The backlash has nothing to do with political ideology, however, so not sure why you're bringing it up. If your expectation is that 50% of backlash would be left leaning and 50% would be right leaning, I don't think that's reasonable, but if you think the backlash is because someone is conservative generally, you'd be mistaken.
There are a great many conservatives who can make their ideological arguments comfortably without being offensive. Conservative ideology isn't inherently offensive, but specific human beings say specific things that are reprehensible and when they do, it's called out.
And also when people say not reprehensible things.
> The backlash has nothing to do with political ideology, however, so not sure why you're bringing it up.
Then it's strange that it's been intimately connected with looming war against Russia and China, so many intelligence agencies have so many employees that spend 100% of their time on it, and so many congresspeople are making direct requests for censorship on political lines.
Sure, but we aren't talking about reprehensible things, we're talking about "advocating against political violence" and cultural appreciation.
> The backlash has nothing to do with political ideology, however, so not sure why you're bringing it up
Because it's clearly about punishing deviation from a partisan line.
> If your expectation is that 50% of backlash would be left leaning and 50% would be right leaning, I don't think that's reasonable, but if you think the backlash is because someone is conservative generally, you'd be mistaken.
That's not my expectation, my expectation is that we don't persecute people for moderate beliefs (and no, caricaturing those beliefs to make them sound extreme doesn't count), nor do we tolerate said behavior.
> There are a great many conservatives who can make their ideological arguments comfortably without being offensive. Conservative ideology isn't inherently offensive, but specific human beings say specific things that are reprehensible and when they do, it's called out.
As previously discussed, a lot of people are "calling out" others for utterly innocuous transgressions. For example, my state subreddit is presently arguing that families who homeschool their kids are closet Nazis (that's the very popular opinion on that particular subreddit).
I'm thinking of Kanye, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, etc. These people expressed reprehensible viewpoints and were subsequently removed from various platforms as a result. That's not politics; what they said was reprehensible regardless of political ideology. You can find people who expressed similar political thoughts without the hate, but the people I named can't figure out how to do that and therefore have been removed (to some degree or another) from the communal discourse.
Prom dress controversy: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kassycho/keziah-daum-pr...
Geisha party: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/mom-called-apos-racist-apos-...
Professor suspended for using a Chinese word: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-sus...
Asian fusion restaurant incident: https://www.dailywire.com/news/asian-restaurant-in-nyc-force...
These links are just the first things that came up on Google to help you find what you’re looking for. I’m not claiming these links are the best sources.
Man fired for cracking knuckles: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/502975-cal...
Besides, what do any of these have to do with conservative views being suppressed?
Sorry you feel the need to name-call here, but hope you have a better time elsewhere.
Even James confirmed as much. Trotting him out as an example is more to my point of how playing the victim card without acknowledging agreement violations is intentionally misleading. And before someone asks, "DiD u rEaD tHe MeMo?" it's right here:
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
> you don't see women in engineering and leadership positions is due to them being biologically incapable.
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
And having read the full document (or even just the bits I quoted in my comment above), you surely also know that he was very explicitly not imputing population-level averages onto individuals. Damore's critics have been very openly lying about the contents of the document; there's no charitable way to interpret their claims.
To be quite clear, I don't think Damore is a hero (his politics are more conservative than mine and I don't think he handled the fallout particularly well), but he was clearly fired for claims he very explicitly didn't make[^1], and his critics are just doubling-down on what can't be described as anything other than trivially-verifiable lies.
[^1]: Even Google's legal team knew that they couldn't get him on those bases and instead they argued that criticizing Google's hiring practices implied that some of his coworkers weren't the best candidates for the job thus creating a hostile workplace. Of course, criticizing Google's hiring practices was absolutely pedestrian at Google at the time, although the argument was that Google's hiring practices were biased toward whites, men, etc. This is pretty obviously just pretense to fire him for ideological transgressions.
Again, Damore reaped the consequences of his own actions by violating a contract he agreed to. This is intentionally misleading to represent him as a martyr for right-wingers.
Unless, of course, you think the conservative agenda includes promoting that women are biologically incapable of holding teach and leadership positions.
Here it is (again):
> I’m simply stating that the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and that these differences may explain why we don’t see equal representation of women in tech and leadership.
An average man is incapable of being in tech. An average woman is incapable of being in tech.
There are men and women at the tail who are capable of being in tech.
Because of the difference in averages, there are fewer women than men who are capable and want to be in tech.
---
Collapsing all that to "women [on average] are biologically incapable of being in tech" is disingenuous. Using words like "incapable" implies binariness, ignoring the continuous nature of distributions.
But then I doubt you care, especially since your account does nothing but astroturf Damore on HN.
I do google Damore on HN to seek out misinformation to debunk. The other hot takes that I do is trash-talking car dependent urban planning.
Occasionally I learn new things in the latter discussions.
It looks more like an algorithmic hiccup that was corrected than a ban for violating TOS. Not the same at all.
So yes, he was banned for violating the TOS.
Things that are "Nazi" or "white supremacist" ideas and ideologies get called out, and those ideas and ideology exist on the right in ways they don't on the left, but those ideas aren't bad because they're conservative, they're bad because they're hateful and discriminatory.
Anyone espousing Nazi ideology is a huge problem, regardless of their political leanings.
I've heard them all over for many years (including on this forum for a good while a few years ago), but I agree they aren't "honest" (and the dishonesty is precisely the problem).
> Things that are "Nazi" or "white supremacist" ideas and ideologies get called out, and those ideas and ideology exist on the right in ways they don't on the left, but those ideas aren't bad because they're conservative, they're bad because they're hateful and discriminatory.
I agree. But the problem is that moderate ideas are being caricatured and labeled as "Nazi" or "white supremacist" so that they enjoy the same social censure that we would give to bonafide hateful ideas.
> Anyone espousing Nazi ideology is a huge problem, regardless of their political leanings.
Yes, but we're not talking about "espousing Nazi ideology", we're talking about people who are espousing moderate ideas that get treated like they're hateful. Consider for example James Damore's "Google Memo" and how it was framed as a hateful, "anti-diversity screed" by virtually the entirety of the media despite that the full text was readily available. His arguments were squarely liberal in nature even if he made some factual errors. Consider Lee Fang or David Shor (both committed progressives).
And Lee Fang and David Shor are fine? I literally cannot find either controversy you're referencing on the front page of Google or Google News.
[0] Not sure I'm allowed to post this, but it's easily discoverable.
Yeah, this is flat out wrong. The "memo" (it wasn't a memo, but the media's gonna media) is publicly available and pretty short so we can trivially verify claims that it was "hateful" and anti-diversity. Notably, Damore's position on diversity via the document:
> I strongly believe in gender and racial diversity, and I think we should strive for more.
And his position on hate:
> Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions. ... Reducing people to their group identity is bad and assuming the average is representative ignores this overlap. (this is bad and I don't endorse that)
> According to his LinkedIn[0], he's been working at an unnamed startup for the past 4 years, so it's not like he was "cancelled" in any real sense.
I don't know anyone who defines "cancelled" as "permanently unemployable", but in any case I hope we can agree that getting someone fired for minor ideological differences is reprehensible. Maybe you would argue that these differences are very significant, but I don't see anything in the document that would fall outside of the American Overton Window (it's probably more moderate than many of his critics professed viewpoints on diversity, which is pretty obviously the actual reason he provoked such a reaction).
> And Lee Fang and David Shor are fine? I literally cannot find either controversy you're referencing on the front page of Google or Google News.
Lee Fang was harassed by colleagues and pressured to resign because he quoted MLK in support for non-violent protest and for Tweeting an interview with a black man who expressed concern about crime in his community.
David Shor is a data analyst who was fired for citing research on the efficacy of non-violent protest. He was fired because people on Twitter were contacting his company's management on Twitter and demanding his termination.
Of course, if your perspective is that firing someone for these kinds of minor ideological offenses is totally fine (so long as they're able to get another job?), then we're probably going to have to agree to disagree. That said, I doubt very much that the people celebrating or defending these terminations would be so cheerful when people on their side of the spectrum are terminated (and for whatever it's worth, I'm a left of center independent).
Regardless of team, if someone says or does something reprehensible, it ought to be condemned. That’s what these people did, and seems like they’ve moved on from there. Their lives go on, but you obsess over one chapter of their lives.
Just seems overblown for its own sake.
Says you. I say differently.
I’m curious about why you find Fang, Shor, etc reprehensible though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Fang#:~:text=In%20June%202...
> In June 2020, Fang was accused of racism by Akela Lacy, a colleague at The Intercept. This occurred after Fang shared a Martin Luther King Jr. quote about remaining non-violent and tweeted out an interview in which a black man at a George Floyd protest expressed concern about black-on-black crime. Fang's tweets set off a "firestorm" on Twitter and he issued a lengthy apology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shor#:~:text=On%20May%20....
> On May 28, 2020, Shor tweeted a summary of an academic study by Omar Wasow, a black political scientist at Princeton University, that argued riots following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination likely tipped the 1968 presidential election in Richard Nixon's favor.[19] Some critics argued that Shor's tweet, which was posted during the height of the George Floyd protests, could be interpreted as criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement.[20] Jonathan Chait wrote in New York Magazine that "At least some employees and clients on Civis Analytics complained that Shor’s tweet threatened their safety."[21] Shor apologized for the tweet on May 29, and he was fired from Civis Analytics a few days later.
Here's the Tweet that Shor's colleagues felt threatened their safety:
> Post-MLK-assasination [sic] race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests increase Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage. http://omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf
These events were also covered by other media outlets. Like the Wikipedia links above, you can easily find these via Google or any other popular Internet search engine.
Kind of odd you equate racist statements with conservative statements. Why would that be?
I'm sorry again you seem confused, and again I hope you find clarity elsewhere, because this seems to have bothered you somewhat.
This article is useful as it places them in a relatively neutral investigative context.
It is obviously right that racist, sexist, etc bias is pointed out, but that case is not at all helped by complacency in response to political bias towards liberal mores when also clearly present.
But, being against illegal immigration is currently considered "right wing", and in a lot of contexts will get you fired, vilified, and perhaps beaten.
There's your example.
(I'm a child of immigrants, and don't particularly have an opinion of how much immigration is good. I do, though, believe this amount should be determined by legislative process and then tightly enforced.)
Being against legal immigration and implementing policies to make it more difficult to become legal (as the right has done) has lead to the enslavement of immigrant women and other sex trafficking. Being against sane and fair immigration policies is what people react to.
Everyone is against illegal immigration and child sex trafficking, but vary vastly on the solutions.
A dirty secret of many Republicans is that they're pretty okay with illegal immigration as it's been in the 80s and 90s. Pseudo slave labor, deport as needed, etc. Needless to say, this seems unethical (even if the immigrants in question might be okay with it).
We have no better solution than to let our legislature fight this out. But, whatever laws they come up with need to be followed and strictly enforced. Failure to do so has led to abject misery, and it will only get worse.
You might not agree with the law, but the alternative is leading to far worse suffering. Ironically, the fentanyl crisis will probably turn the tide, rather than pedestrian ethical concerns.
(I'm quite old, so don't really have a dog in this fight, aside from a general well wish for the young. Beyond that, I was a "far-left" Green for most of my years. I've not changed much, but the world sure has.)
As a percentage of the total population, now is the highest level of immigration the US has ever experienced going back to the founding of the country.
The previous maximum was prior to the 1924 immigration act which effectively banned the practice for 40 years.