Nice. So what's your problem with that? — ssu

Pinker's modus operandi is take a typically a downward long term trend, and presenting the current state of this trend as acceptable, or that solutions to these problems would be a mistake etc. In this example, a downward trend of terrorist attacks from the 70's to the present is used as an argument to downplay the increase of right wing terrorism (despite, as I've shown deaths have remained fairly consistent)

So why then the ferocious attempt to link terrorism and political correctness? What's the link? So the basic argument is that the topic is somehow wrong, because ...there's right-wing terrorism. — ssu

Well I'm not making Izat So's argument, I'm saying that the context offered in the graph you provided is irrelevant to the concern of rising right wing terrorism. But to Izat's point, the concern over political correctness is largely overblown as I've shown multiple times in a handful of threads.

Germany has four times as many guns per 100 people than the UK (20+ compared to 5 per 100), yet homicide rats in the UK are 44% greater. — I like sushi

It's fairly deceitful to supply a percentage difference without simultaneously supplying the numbers you are comparing. The homicide rate is 0.81 in the UK and 1.17 in Germany, which is a difference of 44% but in real terms is hardly distinguishable. As you point out, Germany has many more guns than UK. There are nearly 20 civilian-owned guns per 100 people in Germany and nearly 5 civilian-owned guns per 100 people in England. But this is very much in line with gun deaths: in 2015 there were 269 homicides committed with a firearm vs. only 14 in England (19x more). Per 1 million people, there are 3.26 murders committed by a firearm in Germany vs. 0.236 in England (14x more). This is not surprising when there are four times as many guns per people in one country than another, there are much more gun-attributed deaths, which is precisely my point, not that there is some vague cultural aspect involced which no one can seem to actually articulate.

In America, there are 120 civilian firearms per 100 people, or 5 times more than Germany, so it's unsurprising the USA has 32 gun-attributed murders per one million people vs. Germany's 3.26 (10x more) and 9,369 murders in 2015 compared to Germany's 269 (35x times more). More guns more gun-related murders, and to @StreetlightX's point, none of this even takes suicide via firearm into account.

Gotta hand it to Peterson for convincing a bunch of knuckle-dragging dipshits that he's a fierce proponent of free-speech when he's now hanging out with Viktor Orban

The cultures are inherently different. — I like sushi

Yes, the America has a deeply ingrained gun culture, exactly.

The mantras of ‘making it in America’ or ‘the land of hopes and dreams’ perhaps plays into people feeling falls harder than they should and abandonment when they see such inclusivity preached? — I like sushi

What you are attempting to describe here is more pointedly a mental healthcare issue, and as the Times article I linked to points out, mental health issues don't correlate as a factor.

See this is exactly what's I'm talking about. The responses here are so tortuously awful it's difficult to tell if this is just outright stupidity or sheer nihilism.

And your comment above just adds to my point that here you do have to put into context the present with a historical comparison. — ssu

This is such a Steven Pinker-esque argument. The discussion is around the increase in right wing terrorism, and the charts provided clearly show this to be the case. This is an important societal problem to concern ourselves with, and not something to shrug at simply because there are less overall terrorist attacks compared to 40+ years ago.

The main use of vehicles and knives is obviously not to kill, and guns are flexible in ways that cars are not, and deadlier in ways that knives are not, so the comparison is absurd. As the NYT pointed out, the singular explanation for US mass shooting are the abundance of available guns. Hand-waving deaths caused by guns whether homicide, mass shootings, suicide, etc. because there are alternative tools that can kill, are displays a nihilistic callousness; buffoonery dressed as intelligence.

It was pretty clear since Sandy that nothing will change for many years

Listen, I firmly believe everyone should be given a platform regardless of the content of their beliefs, so this means of course that, in addition to neo-nazis and white supremists, pedophiles, Islamists, eugenicists and people who enjoy Kid Rock also deserve platforms to advocate their views I don't make the rules for this, this is what is demanded for free speech

Probably important to link to the full article within which that chart can be found? Additional graphs and commentary point out that left-wing terrorist attacks and deaths via left-wing terrorism decreased by 70% and 65% respectively from the 70s to the 80s, so that's outside the collective political consciousness of about two, now nearly three, generations. I think it's also vital to note, per the article, that while there were about 7x more terrorist attacks in the 70s vs. the 2010s (regardless of ideological motivation), there were only 32 more deaths in the 70s than in the 2010s (which doesn't include 2017-2019), so the vast majority of left-wing terrorist attacks (+70%) were non-lethal, while a higher proportion of right-wing attacks are lethal.

And perhaps more to the point, again, per the article, the proportion of attacks committed by right-wing terrorists jumped from 6% to 35% from 2000s to 2010s, and this jump doesn't even include 2017-2019, but it ultimately bespeaks to the fact that right-wing terrorism is a rising threat within the USA, which despite your protestation otherwise, has not been well-monitored by US law enforcement.

He just made peace with freaking North Korea — fishfry

North Korea Envoy Executed Over Trump-Kim Summit, Chosun Reports

The rise of the far right is due to the extreme left enabling them. — I like sushi

Owen Jones basically summing up my views on the essence of this thread.

is when people are prosecuted for what they say and/or others are told they cannot listen to what others say (or severely inhibited from doing so). — I like sushi

Prosecution is a legal term and I'm not sure who is being prosecuted by the USA government for stating 'non-political correct' views. This also seems like an incomplete definition given that China's CPC and other such governments do prosecute individuals for what they say, and censures content to limit what civilians can see, and I sincerely doubt we'd consider this 'political correctness'. So I'm really curious to understand precisely waht, in your view, is driving people towards extreme right-wing politics, which includes neo-Nazism and white supremacy. Is in not being able to dress as a Native American for Halloween? Is it being asked to call a transgender person by their preferred pronoun? Is it saying that Christopher Columbus was a bad person? What is it exactly? What are people saying that they are being *ahem* "prosecuted" for?

I never actually/literally said PC enables the far right and didn’t imply it either. — I like sushi

The rise of the far right is due to the extreme left enabling them. — I like sushi

Hmm...

You also stated, "it seems pretty clear to me that people get annoyed with the extension of the left into extremism and feel obliged to tilt to the right further - this allows recruitment into the extremes more easily"

So the "extension of the left into extremism" is ostensibly into political correctness, so that's what we are talking about (as oppose to universal healthcare, abolishing capitalism, solving global warming, etc.) and being "annoyed" with political correctness drives people into the open arms of white supremacy. That seems reasonable to you? That people are so profoundly "annoyed" that they being white supremacists?

If you don’t know what PC is then we’re wasting our time here. — I like sushi

Then explain it. Provide examples. Why is it driving people towards far-right ideology (which includes neo-Nazism, white supremacy etc.)?

I’ve no idea what you’re implying after that about non-white fascist movements — I like sushi

You say that "pushing hard left ideas that are disliked" has lead to the emergence of the far right. So why hasn't America's long history of white supremacy or modern far right movements lead to some sort of equivalent for people of color,or the Left in general? You've literally implied that political correctness enables the far right, so what equivalency does the far right enable? It's seemingly a unilateral dialectic.

It’s just common sense. If people are pushing hard left ideas and they are disliked then there will be push back — I like sushi

To be clear, you think Left political correctness, which you haven't defined or explained outside of vague terms, can lead to a push back into...Nazism. Weird how white hegemony hasn't lead to mass non-white fascist movements.

The rise of the far right is due to the extreme left enabling them. — I like sushi

This is of course a garbage analysis that denies agency to those who are on the far right. If you become a white supremacist, neo-Nazi or what-have-you because of someone else then you were open to it to begin with.

Is this an reasonable account, do you think, of the issues with Political Correctness? — Izat So

Yes, the subtext of (mainly) white male complaints and anxiety around 'political correctness', a term which is rarely well-defined, is the perception that the shift in ethnic demographics, from majority white to majority non-white that has taken place in the last few decades means the white majority will lose its status at the dominant ethnicity, and as a result, potentially lose social, political, and economic power; a privation that non-whites have had to deal with in for centuries. This holds equally true for ethnicity as it does for gender. Parallel to shifting ethnic demographics in the last few decades, women have increasingly gained economic, political, and social power, along with bodily autonomy. An outcome of gaining power is the ability to demand greater equality. An equality of wages and access to capital and sources of wealth accumulation, of representation (business, political, entertainment, etc.) of respect, and of power more generally, to that which has been enjoyed by White (men) for generations.

White identity, which largely exists invisibly in the background, begins to emerge as a reaction to these perceived threats, as you put it, "when you're used to privilege, equality looks like oppression", and as James Baldwin wrote, "an identity is questioned only when it is menaced". Suddenly, you can't slap a girl's ass, or say "bitch", or the N-word, or use an Indian accent, or dress as a Native American for Halloween, or in essence, leverage your now waning ethnic dominance and privilege, which you had otherwise enjoyed, to sub-humanize other ethnicity or genders without social repercussions.

Well David Frum, who argued in favor for the Iraq War and coined the phrase "axis of evil" said that throwing milkshakes is a "symbolic assassination attempt".

Throwing milkshakes at far right wingers has been good

So good

Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) by Elizabeth Anderson (just finished, and the ending has a glorious put down of libertarian economist Tyler Cowen's response to her)

White Identity Politics by Ashley Jardina

this thread is awful

If all you know is Orange Man Bad you just can't even think. — fishfry

I get it. Orange Man Bad — fishfry

Orange Man Bad. Not conducive to thought. — fishfry

Is everyone so consumed with hate against the Terrible Orange Man — fishfry

Orange Man Bad, ok. Now try to have ANOTHER thought as well. — fishfry

r u ok?

Not really. If you think that to be a vigilante is totally OK or that the police cannot handle some small fringe cabal of neonazis, then I have to disagree. Sorry, but the violence part I simply disagree with. — ssu

ssu really needs to read the news more often

OK, you don't get my point in this issue. — ssu

Your point? You asked me to explain what Bret was lying about and I explained. What do you mean your point?

That he later goes to talk to the media and goes on talk shows can be seen as a quite logical. After all, he hasn't his earlier job anymore. And there aren't so many professor level people interviewed in the US media. Hence among the filmstars, comedians and other celebrities your run-of-the-mill college professor here isn't so bad. — ssu

What the hell are you talking about? I don't give a shit about this. I give a shit about him giving a false narrative on a major news network.

And Bret Weinstein has explained this. He thought that it is quite different for a 'Day of Absence' being celebrated by African-Americans being absent (as a boycott mimicking past passive resistance) and to ask white people to stay away. I think that there is an obvious difference in the nuance. And I guess that in any way such a day would and should be optional anyway in either way 'celebrated', hopefully, so that this is a non-issue here. What is the false premiss or lying that refer to I don't know. — ssu

Not sure how you aren't picking this up. In an email Bret (mis)characterized the inversed Day of Absence as "a show of force, and an act of oppression in itself", when the event was completely optional, required pre-enrollment to participate, and it was never expected that a majority of the white students, who comprised 70% of the total student body would participate. Not only did Bret mischaracterize the event via email, but, far worse, he went on Tucker Carlson's show and in front of an audience of millions did not correct Tucker Carlson when the latter framed the event as "student activists demanding that all white people leave campus, or else" and asking if they protested Bret directly because "he did not leave campus because he's white".

Because I just wanted to note that what you described as only a few persons involved was obviously far more, simple as that. — ssu

Dude. I said that a few people were "affected". Not that there were few people "involved". Honestly, please do a better job of reading what I write because it's a waste of my time responding to this illiteracy.

I highly encourage anyone considering posting here to first consider how ruinous increasing taxation on the rich will be. They will not be able to spend their hard earned money they achieved through exploitation on vital necessities such as a fifth home along the Mediterranean, building a spaceship so they can go to Mars, getting handjobs from high-end prostitutes, and donating to political candidates in order to reverse the progressive taxation. Shedding a tear thinking about it.

We can go in circles about this, but that's only because you can't acknowledge that Milo and Richard are not nearly as popular or influential as they were in 2017, precisely because they were deplatformed. As long as the internet exists, sure, they can find and interact with some audience willing to hear them out, but as long as they aren't on major platforms with scaled audiences, or being legitimized through invites to speak at colleges, they simply fade away.

So just what was he lying about? — ssu

Consider carefully rereading my original post.

I wouldn't say that 80 students being sanctioned and suspended (after over 100 incident reports) is just a few people. — ssu

ssu, why did you remove my following sentence asking pomophobe why the actions of these 80 students "is a more compelling influence on how you will vote" particularly because the consequences of their actions resulted in nothingburgers such as "formal warnings, community service and probation, to suspension". Do you think it's normal to make voting decisions because some college students received formal warnings??

And Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying receiving a $450,000 settlement and $50,000 in legal fees from the college tells something. — ssu

Yeah it tells us that the Evergreen College, which formally admitted no wrong-doing in how it handled the affair, didn't want to go through years of litigation which would have been time-consuming and arguably would more expensive in the long run.

White men have largely been running things. But this seems like a crude simplification to me. And most white men aren't rich and aren't connected to power. Lemme guess, if we get rid of the white men in power, then the rich POC and women in power will sprinkle the poor with cash and reduce carbon emissions, since blackness and femaleness are magically good, just as whiteness + maleness is magically bad. I don't think so. — pomophobe

Seems evident to me that you aren't attempting to thoughtfully listen and engage with what people of color and women are arguing for when they criticize and attempt dismantle the hegemony of white (male) power. And when this hegemony holds onto its power through voter suppression and gerrymandering, denying access to capital, or dissolving reproductive rights along with punitive consequences, you think that the only valid response is to play nice and be civil?

I strongly suggest reexamining your ideological commitments and political prioritization, because saying that students chanting "black power" is leftism gone haywire and will only alienate white people and cause severe backlash, while shrugging off voter suppression or police brutality is an outright backwards ideology. In a previous post, I said it was strange that political correctness in this country might "move the needle" on your voting decision, but caging children at the border is of tertiary concern, and I think that's something you need to recognize and internalize.

Milo, Bannon, and Spencer don't get much play on CableTV, but they still have large online followings, and their influence is still able to spread through the unregulated new media — VagabondSpectre

Well no they don't, because they were banned from most forms of popular media. Can't have a large online following if you are banned from most popular platforms.

We could ban them from every existing platform, but as long as they have an extant following, they could simply create platforms of their own (we would also have to ban all of their followers from very platform). I'm saying it's not practical to disallow their speech on whatever platforms they manage to get invited to, instead it is far more practical to counter their rhetoric directly when and where arises — VagabondSpectre

Is it? I thought Fascism, Nazism, White Supremacy, or whatever Spencer, Milo, Bannon, et. al. are selling were thoroughly defeated by the end of WW2, and yet somehow you feel that we still need to confront these ideas via debate and counterargument? That these ideas can still take hold over segmented populations (despite the last 70+ years) shows that far-right ideology actually thrives when placed in the light and publicly confronted. That's precisely why Bannon, Milo etc. want confrontation. That's why they want to be platformed and publicly exposed. That's why the alt-right celebrated when Hilary Clinton gave speech in 2016 condemning them. They can't lose. Far-right ideology is inherently irrational. It cannot be defeated by debate and countering rhetoric. In that regard, it's actually very practical to disallow their speech on platforms, whether on popular publications, or social media, or college campuses.

Shapiro does represent a very large ideological demographic in America, so unless you want to get rid of political-pluralism altogether — VagabondSpectre

Does he? Seems like a majority of Americans, regardless of political affiliations, prefer left-leaning policies.

Speech that leads to violence is the kind of speech that we want to censor, but where do we draw the line? In my opinion, if someone calls for, condones, or advocates for violence against a specific individual or group, then we should be able to prosecute them for hate speech, but legislating that in practice is a tricky affair. — VagabondSpectre

Sure, but my point is that it's not unreasonable to protest Shapiro for lecturing on college campuses.

I think we may be running aground on our final vocabularies, and I'm not sure you have the story straight, especially since you didn't mention Weinstein — pomophobe

I don't mention Bret Weinstein because he was not, in actuality, a major component to the story. He inserted himself as a major figure during on-going protests for personal exposure. The actual story is that for decades, Evergreen engaged in a 'Day of Absence' event in which students of color would leave the school to highlight their importance within the college and overall community. This practice, which was optional, was praised by Weinstein. However, in Trump's first year in office after threatening mass deportation for people of color, the school had decided to invert the original project so that white people were asked to leave the campus while people of color stayed, in order to highlight their belonging to the community. This was encouraged, but not mandated, and Evergreen's white students made up over 66% of the overall population, so it was never expected that a majority of white students would participate. Bret complained about this change on false premises, arguing via email that this was a "show of force", which it wasn't, since it was always optional. This email was sent and leaked in April. No protests took place because of this because who cares about Bret Weinstein. It wasn't until May that the incidents I mentioned regarding black students occurred and protests appeared throughout the campus. Weinstein confronted the protesters who shouted him down, in part because of his emails. Whether or not they were right to do so is frankly neither here nor there, as Weinstein later appeared on white nationalist Tucker Carlson's show on Fox and knowingly gave a false version of the events, which lead to alt-right targeting and harassment towards the school.

Shapiro's rhetoric does persuade people, in which case we must try to counter his persuasive power with persuasion of our own, a large part of which entails addressing the underlying substance of his claims and beliefs. (Given he is persuading people, censorship or no, clearly de-platforming alone isn't the answer for the left) — VagabondSpectre

This is nonsense. Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon, and Milo were deplatformed and have all but been removed from public conversation, save for Bannon when he's occasionally invited to speaking engagements. Deplatforming works, and just because Shapiro may be persuadable, doesn't mean he deserves to be heard. And it's not as if someone who says Muslims are bad, or doesn't understand transgenderism deserve to be heard.

Violence is not speech — VagabondSpectre

No but speech can undoubtedly lead to violence. Shapiro is emblematic of that.

The context behind the video is that that there was a series of incidents in which several black students were mistreated while white students who had been involved as well were not charged or taken into police custody, and so black students protested these unjust events.

But if whites become a smaller part of the population and lose political power, they'll have a precedent for thinking racially. — pomophobe

This is really the thrust of your argument, isn't it, and the genesis of white nationalism. White people fear losing power and will take extreme efforts to hold on to that power. The key difference between black power movements and white power movements is that latter tends towards overt violence and systemic oppression of non-whites. 'Black Power' is the call for Black Americans to defend on another against oppressive forces, and confronting those forces in non-violence ways. 'White Power' is to call for lynches and remove non-whites from their communities. Black Americans simply don't want to be unjustly targeted by police in their own communities and desire safety like their white peers. American demographics are changing, and non-whites are simply demanding the same opportunities, freedoms, and equality before the law that's currently afforded towards whites. Thinking that a white racial backlash is a justifiably precedent to these demographic shifts and demands is to justify white nationalism.

Ironically, you seem triggered by the use of 'Black Power', but my main concern is that this issue, which occurred two years ago at a college campus and really only affected a few people is a more compelling influence on how you will vote, than say, the draconian legislation to destroy women's reproductive rights, or the zero-tolerance border policy separating children from families, villianizing news media, cozying up to right nationalists around the world, as well as domestic white nationalists, shifting wealth to the ultra-wealthy through tax cuts, etc. somehow these play second fiddle to black students protesting unsafe and unfair conditions in their colleges.

A non-contextualized video of a protest and sit-in, along with vague accusations of new ageism and cultism around gender studies doesn't paint a clearer picture of what you mean by "political correctness".

No one is denying that the Democrats have been bad on immigration for nearly 30 years at least, but the reason we are focusing on Trump is because he has been president for over two years, and immigration has been his primary clarion call. All @fishfry is doing is pure whataboutism.

That's pretty weak. — pomophobe

Can you actually explain why it's weak? The paper is interesting and "celebratory" because of the number of hours purportedly observed. 1,000 hours of observation, as the article and linked tweets within explain, is a huge outlier in research, and would be an enormously valuable data set for other scientists, even if the actual study itself was silly.

It doesn't keep me up night, but it moves the needle a little bit at the voting booth — pomophobe

Good to know that a poorly executed sociological hoax makes you slightly more likely to vote for what's becoming a white nationalist party.

So do you distance yourself at all from any PC stuff? I ask sincerely. — pomophobe

I don't know what Political Correctness means, a priori. Most people agree that white people shouldn't be slinging the N-word around. But is that political correctness? Most people agree that women should't be sexually harassed in the workplace? Is that political correctness? Some people think that we should acknowledged a person's preferred gender and refer to them as such. Is that political correctness or just common decency?

his views must still be challenged. — VagabondSpectre

Why?

protestors should not use extortionate physical force and disruption to make it happen, nor should they use force to disrupt the event should they not get their way. — VagabondSpectre

I don't know about physical confrontation, but they have every right to protest the event, in particular against someone who thinks women shouldn't have reproductive rights, that Muslims are mostly religious extremists, etc. If Ben Shapiro, who claimed that Left Jews are bad and undermine Judaism, came to my university, then why should I, a Left/Secular Jew, standby as a person who dehumanizes and delegitimizes me is offered a platform? You cannot expect that when a person's views are essentially a protest against others, they are not challenged and confronted in turn by it. That's a consequence of free speech.

Wow the radical center is such a fount for vital ideas, like how university students are so loud and bad these days and uh....