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Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

No, you deflected by immediately discounting the author as being predictably, in your estimation, anti- feminist / anti- anti-racist.

Is this so different? It's saying the thing without saying it.

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> Is this so different? It's saying the thing without saying it.

This is reductive and only true in a binary world. If I question some anti-terrorism approaches, does that make me pro-terrorism? Of course not, but one could dishonestly accuse another of that to silence them or derail the conversation (see The Dixie Chicks). The world is hardly ever black and white.

My point was that their original comment about the article made was basically "I knew this person would be critical of blue coded luxury beliefs without being critical of red coded luxury beliefs!" without really arguing about the concept of luxury beliefs, or the examples being criticized.

It was shoot the messenger type stuff.

I recall when the Dixie Chicks criticized Dubya's invasion of Iraq.

The analogy here, to me, would be instead of arguing about whether Iraq invasion was a good idea, you said "aha! I knew the Dixie Chicks wouldn't have anything to say about Whitewater!" (or some similarly team blue scandal of similar vintage).

I hate tribalism, and I actually hate to see it even more on the side I vote with because it puts me in the position of being asked to defend things that I don't think make sense.

The latest topic of political discussion - Israel vs Palestine - is proving this. Not to derail the conversion about that topic itself, as it's highly contentious, but to point out that is a topic that is far from black and white, and both sides in our oversimplified two party system are finding out that there is nuance to be had on that topic, as they can't agree what the "right" stance is, though they can collectively agree that some ideas are stupid. To look at the other big topics of the past few, someone could be anti-mask and pro-vaccine, or anti-looting and vandalism but anti-police violence, neither of which wholly aligns with either party, but exists in the broader spectrum of what an individual believes in.

Yeah I think maybe we are making the same point in a way?

I felt the poster was discounting the article because the author had the opposite political preference on 2 topics. They lead with - "I figured out as soon as I saw the link title that the author's examples for "luxury beliefs" would just so happen to be associated with a feminist and anti-racist outlook."

To me reading the criticism of "my side" by reasonable writers from "the other side" is only additive. Also, logically that's exactly where I would expect the criticism to come from. You may even gain some perspective and re-evaluate your position or adjust your argument. This is how we grow.

As you point out, one can have a complex set of preferences/beliefs/things they support that do not fit directly into blue|red binary as a whole.

My problem with the argument is not that it's anti-feminist, it is that it's a broad-swath argument that could be levied against any number of beliefs, and the author deliberately chose to wield it only and exclusively against feminist and anti-racist positions.

I made that quite clear in my original comment by suggesting several conservative "luxury beliefs" that I believe the author would have to criticize on the same grounds, but failed to do so. This is not "deflection", it's showing that the article employs double standards and is thus intellectually dishonest.

The "predictable" part, in my estimation, is that this kind of argument would be used by a right-wing author. To be saying the thing by saying it, conservative cultural critics, when measuring liberal discourse, are incapable of coming up with a bar that they themselves don't trip over.

Do you have a theory why left-wing authors don't discuss luxury beliefs?

I think they do. It's just, it's so blatantly obvious that "single-payer healthcare is too expensive" and "there's no problem with police violence toward black people in particular" are "luxury beliefs" (in the sense that you can only afford to hold them if you're not directly affected by them) that there's no need to spell it out. (This point is sometimes spelled out when it comes to discussions on race and gender -- that's what "privilege" means. That "privilege" isn't brought up as much when it comes to economic/class issues speaks to the state of class warfare in the US.)

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