Could be. But I think when you go full-bore 'action over words', you oughta be able to back it up.

Words simply float free of any gravity of worldly consequence — sx

It sounds good. What's your worldly consequence? Is this really an unfair question?

That's a characterization of liberal political ontology, if you like. Must I be committed, somehow (to what?), to make it? Here? Where does fair - or not - come into it? What are you even talking about? Do you know?

:rofl: :vomit:

It is a characterization of liberal political ontology (one I actually agree with.) 'Words simply float free of any gravity of worldly consequence.' It seems like a characterization which is also an attack. Right? Presumably, if the characterization characterizes one's own position, one is equally attacked. The idea, as I understand it, is that that liberals talk and talk, and it amounts to nothing.

If you can make that attack, if their ideas have no worldly consequence, it must be the case that your ideas do have some worldly consequence. Right? What are those consequences?

If you can make that attack, if their ideas have no worldly consequence, it must be the case that your ideas do have some worldly consequence. — csalisbury

I've offered no 'ideas', made no claims to political action. I'm attacking an argument. It's informed by a certain understanding (duh), but that's not really relevant. Or at least, it's not this conversation. Perhaps you want a different conversation. Not my problem.

I've offered no 'ideas' — StreetlightX

Streetlight, c. 2019.

This might be too obvious so maybe it's been said before, but it must be worth noting that it wasn't Leftists screaming FASCIST! who just exposed Shapiro as a strident fool with horrible views, but a conservative journalist on a mainstream news network giving him a platform.

Otherwise, @StreetlightX, you seem to want to have your cake and eat it, to talk politics in order to scorn talking politics. You presume a position of political certainty where the battle lines are drawn--e.g., the Left vs white supremacist murderers--from which you can make an intervention to tell us all that we're wasting our time at best, paving the road to hell at worst.

But the political situation to me and others is different from that, hence the discussion. Hence the need for discussion.

The consequence is giving free reign to abhorrent politics. It's a society which is unable to take falsehood and immorality of certain politics and values as a problem.

A world in which no idea or value can be catergorised as one we ought to avoid. Where every pointed remark about how a politics, value or idea devalues someone is deflected under the guise of an alternative option worth respecting as a possible way of running society.

A world in which, for example, the liberal proclaims we force them to defend Ben Shapiro, in our suggestion Shapiro proposes false and abhorrent accounts of various people, which ought not be respected as a description of people or how we ought to run society.

:blush:

No, I think it's fair. When the rhetoric skews toward 'words in a vacuum', you have to supply the non-vacuum action. You can't use that ploy without offering something else. The words have teeth now. Or they pretend to. You don't have the right to that rhetorical move, unless you have something else in mind. That rhetorical move shifts registers. Fair play, if you have something on that register. What I'm asking is - what is it?

There's no shift of register. It's all fucking bullshit.

John Stuart Mill said something along the lines of “freedom of speech included the choice to listen to any view you wish”.

If you wish to silence someone because YOU don’t like what they are saying go ahead. If you are telling me I CANNOT listen to them then be sure to violently opposed (physically if need be).

That is all there is to say. If we’re talking about ‘protecting the youth’ or such then WHO is worthy of deciding the line between locking someone in isolation (for their own protection) and giving them absolute freedom (naked and running in the streets with a machete screaming and shouting)? I think we’re all pretty much in agreement that there is a rough area - not a definitive LINE - in which we should likely allow danger to manifest for the long term benefit of others. Risk is necessary for learning and the perceived negatives are simply the price paid for any kind of freedom.

Stupidity is the majority of human activity. Intelligence is a accident of stupid actions we attempt to cultivate by way of something vaguely referred to as ‘wisdom’ - an attribute we knowingly stumble toward possessing even though we know that we essentially cannot ‘possess’ it; we only place ourselves as close as possible to its burning and undeniable force upon a landscape that shifts every time we move.

Notice how now @streetlightex is weirdly absent. :ok:

You presume a position of political certainty — jamalrob

Do I? In arguing that the liberal appeal to the neutral ground of 'the free and open marketplace of ideas' is bullshit (I'm certain about that), is it battle lines that I'm casting? Is there a discussion, here, that I'm asking be shut down? Hell, I'm not even asking - desiring? - that Shapiro be 'shut down'. I want to talk politics in order to scorn a certain take on politics - one I think disingenuous and potentially harmful.

When the rhetoric skews toward 'words in a vacuum', you have to supply the non-vacuum action. You can't use that ploy without offering something else. — csalisbury

I don't have to supply shit. There's no 'ploy' here, if you think I'm wrong, say so, and why. The rest is noise.

Ah, finally, an emotional response.

In arguing that the liberal appeal to the neutral ground of 'the free and open marketplace of ideas' is bullshit (I'm certain about that), is it battle lines that I'm casting? — StreetlightX

In the context of the rest of your posts, yes, obviously.

Are you guys doing armchair politics? I guess so because I don’t understand a word being said :D

Because of the existing "social contract" between Berkeley and its students. What I mean by this is that it's an unwritten agreement which, when broken, leads to problems for both sides. — VagabondSpectre

Exactly, which is just your view of the moral framework. If my moral framework justifies the use of force in situations like this, that is wrong, but if your moral framework justifies the use of force (by the police, say) to prevent me, then that's right. Wars, riot management, police attendance...all uses or threats of force to maintain a political state. Do you think the families of immigrants spilt up in detention centres acquiesced to such treatment by persuasion? Force, or the threat of force, is what maintains the state, its the playing field on which the circus of politics takes place.

The 'social contract' has been abandoned long ago. It was abandoned the moment it became OK to buy footwear made by children on little more then stipend wages. It's a mockery to look at Western society in all its destructive gory and then focus in on one university to see if they're upholding a minor legal contract. It's like talking about Ghengis Kahn's table manners.

Why do you make me defend Shapiro? He's not a fascist, he's not racist, and he's not alt right. (He's the son of Jewish immigrants if that helps persuade you). — VagabondSpectre

What, the man who said "Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue.", or the later classic "Arabs just want to murder", not a racist?

The man who, on a Columbus Day posting listed Native American achievements as "dreamcatchers, tomahawks and cannibalism" compared to a list of noble European achievements. That's the non-racist you're referring to?

Do I seriously need to find all his quotes about how blacks are disproportionately represented in prisons because "blacks commit more crime", his tweets supporting vigilantes who kill black children, his denial of institutional racism in the police, his support for immigration policies based on race...

Then there's the homophobia...

Are we talking about the same Ben Shapiro?

Are you asking why violent combat tends to invoke emotion more so than words? — VagabondSpectre

Yes. Hitler's rallies created a state complicit in the genocide of 6 million Jews. I grew up in a town where a fight on Saturday night was a fairly regular event for at least the decade of my early adulthood, and yet we never instigated a policy of ethnic cleansing on the boys from the neighbouring estate.

So yes, I am asking you why you think violent combat tends to invoke more emotion than words.

Well, sure, between those who abide by the argument and don't: but that's every argument ever.

:ok:

Corporations invest in both sides to subvert them as best they can, old and new media certainly aren't dominated by the right, and anecdotally it seems like there's a well funded pundit for every political niche. — VagabondSpectre

I've learnt here that this is toxic centrism.

You presume a position of political certainty where the battle lines are drawn--e.g., the Left vs white supremacist murderers--from which you can make an intervention to tell us all that we're wasting our time at best, paving the road to hell at worst.

But the political situation to me and others is different from that, hence the discussion. Hence the need for discussion. — jamalrob

Hear, hear

Yet too many actors gain from the vitriolic nature of modern (non)debate. Heated debate creates more posts, more activity (clicks) and makes you embrace your side more. Add the anonymity to the debate and that there is nothing that we have to do otherwise together, hence there is no need to be cordial and respectful. The opposing side isn't simply wrong, it's a sinister evil. Hence respecting opposing thoughts to your own is a sign of weakness or worse. Seeking a consensus is simply wrong.

It's worth noting that 'tHe RaDiCaL LeFt CrEaTeD tHe RaDiCaL RiGhT' meme is just another function of the liberal inability to countenance politics beyond the thin film of speech. Nevermind stagnating wages, the destruction of primary industry, the corportization of the media, the swelling of economic inequality, the ballooning of household debt, the evisceration of state investment into public works, the explosion of prisionfare, the glaciating of social mobility, the crushing inflation of educations costs, the increasing capture of regulatory apparatus, the meteoric concentration of industry monopolies, the gutting of union power - no, won't somebody think of the fucking salons and how they look. All the rest is ViOlENcE. The InDiGnITy!

Liberalism is cancer. — StreetlightX

Just from a Left-strategic point of view, I think liberalism is precisely now necessary. The Left antipathy to free speech only makes sense from a position of dominance, as in, it's generally not ok to be openly racist and sexist, and we need to protect those progressive gains. That is, it only makes sense for a Leftist focus on culture at the expense of economics and class, because a concern for the latter, as expressed in your post, is what we need free speech for, given that the societal ills you mention are real (and I agree they are). Pretty much any fundamental social gain either depends on free speech or is intimately associated with a fight against restrictions on speech.

Thus the Left is suicidal in abandoning the defence of free speech to the Right. Liberalism still has the potential to undermine its own social conditions, which is part of its enduring value.

But I guess that's an old and obvious argument, and I think things are a bit more interesting than that. Culture war and identitarian Leftists have not merely forgotten about economics and class. Their position is predicated on an outright rejection of the working class as a progressive political force, and on a concomitant fear and suspicion, namely that the average white Joe is always one Shapiro video away from signing up as a white supremacist. So this Left antipathy to free speech is not merely suicidal or naive, but is an expression of a class hostility.

@csalisbury: The danger for me here is that if I start banging on about "liberal elites", as befits my nauseating role right now, I might look like a kind of proto-fascist. Instead, in my attacks I feel the need to use other terms of abuse such as "petit-bourgeois" so I can remind everyone I'm even more woke than woke. But still, I want to say that in saying so I need not be disavowing my position, exactly. It's more that I'm struggling to find or create the language to use, most often failing and falling back.

Pretty much any fundamental social gain either depends on free speech or is intimately associated with a fight against restrictions on speech. — jamalrob

Wow, that's quite a substantial claim, given the overthrow of basically any authoritarian political regime I can think of has happened by at least physical protest if not outright war.

the overthrow of basically any authoritarian political regime I can think of has happened by at least physical protest if not outright war — Isaac

Yeah I'm not denying that.

Yeah I'm not denying that. — jamalrob

Then I'm not quite seeing the exhaustive link you're making. It seems like 'free-speech' is being presented as some kind of unique pre-requisite to social reform, such that reform is frustrated by any restriction thereof. But I'm not seeing the way in which 'free-speech' might be singled out among the many other issues which might frustrate social reform, including such media dominance and intellectual legitimising which the de-platforming is attempting to diminish.

Are you guys doing armchair politics? I guess so because I don’t understand a word being said :D — I like sushi

We're a bunch of leftists and a couple of centrists disagreeing about what politics is, and what actions are relevant to it. There are a few sub conversations; Maw, Street, Csal, Jamalrob and I are being annoyed with liberals. Csal, Jamalrob and I are also being annoyed with the left. Vagabond and SSU are against Maw, Street, Jamalrob and I in the usual 'what is politics' and 'how does free speech relate to it' debates between leftists and more centre left liberals. Vagabond, Csal and I were talking about social media and the role of reason in internet discourse. Isaac and Vagabond are having a discussion on framing issues about politics. Now there's a new one where Jamarob (who started it on the first page and then left it, and is now picking it up again) and Csal (who is suspicious of internet political discourse for similar reasons to me, I think) are suspicious of Street's portrayal of left politics for different reasons.

Maw, Street, Csal, Jamalrob and I are being annoyed with liberals. Csal, Jamalrob and I are also being annoyed with the left. Vagabond and SSU are against Maw, Street, Jamalrob and I in the usual 'what is politics' and 'how does free speech relate to it' debates between leftists and more centre left liberals. Vagabond, Csal and I were talking about social media and the role of reason in internet discourse. Now there's a new one where Jamarob (who started it on the first page and then left it, and is now picking it up again) and Csal (who is suspicious of internet political discourse for similar reasons to me, I think) are suspicious of Street's portrayal of left politics for different reasons. — fdrake

And I'm just shouting into the void...?

Culture war and identitarian Leftists have not merely forgotten about economics and class. Their position is predicated on an outright rejection of the working class as a progressive political force, and on a concomitant fear and suspicion, namely that the average white Joe is always one Shapiro video away from signing up as a white supremacist. — jamalrob

Is this a kind of leftism prevalent where you are? I'm asking. My perception is that racial tension has increased in my country since the election of Trump. I don't think Trump recruited anyone, it's just that when David Duke has endorsed the elected president, it gives a bit of hope to the down-trodden white supremacist, which leads to increased police brutality and violence around protest marches.

It has a tit or tat feel to it and it's in that context that Shapiro is demonized. I understand the need to restrain ourselves in the name of free speech. What's riled me from the beginning of this thread is your casual dismissal of the sources of liberal angst. Maybe there is no legit source where you live. If so, let's limit your comments to the world you're witnessing. Be open to the possibility that others see a different world.

And I'm just shouting into the void...? — Isaac

I forgot you because I've not read your exchanges with Vagabond. I'll put it in my post. :)

I forgot you because I've not read your exchanges with Vagabond. I'll put it in my post — fdrake

I was only joking. It amused me that you'd managed to summarise everyone else's position, as if you'd read mine and just shook your head slowly. There's nothing needs doing about it, I didn't mean for you to take that impression.