I'm not 'equating' the political sphere with anything. What counts, and does not count, as political, is the political act par excellence and the liberal con is to imagine that one can set out, in advance, what ought to, and ought not, count as political. The neutralization and sterilization of politics passed off as sensible political theory. Trash. — StreetlightX

You're right that what counts most is determined in the field (voting booths mostly), but we embrace the use of force at the expense of the use of sensible political theory, where instead of the merit of a representative's ideas lending them success, it will be the amount of force employed by their supporters.

I'm not saying violence can't be political, or that there's not a time and a place for it, but I am saying it's undemocratic. Hooliganism from either side convinces no one, and seems to only serve the opposition by energizing them and fueling their rhetoric, so why bother?

Why do you want a no-holds barred political sphere?

No, I want a non-hypocritical political sphere. One in which the politics at work in platforming some dickhead like Shapiro is acknowledged as political, and not the outcome of some 'natural', merit-based, extra-poltical process. Where money is similarly acknowledged as a political tool that anyone who holds it knows it to be. What is 'undemocratic' is the (pseudo-)depoliticization of what is obviously political: of putting these things out of democratic play. I want more democracy not less. But this requires a less shallow, less emaciated understanding of democracy than just what happens in 'voting booths'.

Regarding “conservativism” it is clear enough to me that it’s suffering, and going to suffer more, simply because the world is changing fast.

The older you get the more conservative your values become. Does this mean experience is wisdom or that experience dims wisdom? Listen to your elders.

Political discourse requires opposition, conflict and the exposure of necessarily difficult and threatening questions.

Generally speaking I believe it best to act collectively with a right-leaning attitude and individually with left-leaning attitude - not that this dictates any personal starting position. To me this has become a common practice now that I try to instill habitually.

As for Murray’s comment about Foucault that is irrelevant. “Power” isn’t a dirty word and not something we should attach to ‘shame’ and/or ‘decadence’. Foucault’s work is primarily political and historical; his style of writing is that of someone who couldn’t decide whether to write fiction or be a scholar.

I do like this line from Murray:

“If you hear the dog whistle then you are the dog.” Haha!

I haven't interacted much, but I've followed this thread closely. There's been talk of ostracizing the baddies, but then Shapiro is somehow a viable boogeyman. Shapiro? Really? I watched the interview in which he himself was 'DESTROYED' and pitied him his earnestness and his shrill presentation.

Contrast Shapiro's shrill delivery with Hitchens here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY

Now that's charisma, whatever you think of his points. If he was still around, some 20-year-olds would probably be trying to silence him.

Paglia is a far more interesting individual than Shapiro and an even less plausible cartoon villain. My sense is that those who think Shapiro and Paglia are beyond the pale are themselves in a pretty small group, which is to say beyond the pale for yet another and perhaps larger group. And it's not the cartoon fascists. It's people largely in the middle and who haven't thought about the issues as much as intellectuals who really don't like being told what they can say and hear. Sorry, geniuses, you'll have to win those hearts and minds despite your obvious superiority.

Consider also that those who bother to watch Shapiro are still at least identified with 'REASON' and 'FACTS.' They are willing to talk. Shutting them down just puts the censors in question. If I'm young and my mind isn't made up yet, I'll probably go with the group that isn't directly interfering with my most taken-for-granted freedom. Isn't socialism scary to many people precisely in terms of its threat to freedom? And if those who would censor others really have reason on their side, then what do they have to hide? I identify with the left, but personally I'd like to trade the PC-left (the 'safe space' left) for some of the people in the center. And I think it would have to be a trade. Our crazies make the family look bad.

It's not "fair" because banning conservative views on campus would be gross political favoritism. Conservative students are paying customers, and as long as they're behaving peacefully, banning them would be unjust.

It's also not fair to Berkeley to use force to compel them to play political favoritism. — VagabondSpectre

That's just a slightly longer restatement of your position. I asked why. What is it about political favouritism that is unfair? What is it about banning them that would be unjust? We do favour people and ban people for various reasons, so it's not that favouring and banning themselves are unfair acts, so how are you justifying your judgement about who it is fair to favour/ban and who it is not?

If alt-rioters shut down an event you that happened to be attending and support, I'm guessing you would object to their use of force against you and yours, right? — VagabondSpectre

Yes. That's the point of having a feeling about how our society should be. I would object to the alt-right using any means at all to shut down an event I approved of because I'd believe them to be wrong. You can't remove the judgement of what's right and what's wrong from this. The debating arena itself is constructed and maintained by people. People who all have a view of what's right and what's wrong. It infuses every action they take. Denying a platform, allowing a platform, ignoring a platform...everything is infused with our moral sensibilities, we cannot 'step outside of them' to create a fair debating space.

As it turns out, conservatism and progressivism are often after the same ends, people just disagree about how best to achieve them (both sides are interested in "fairness" for example, but they disagree about the facts of the playing field).

So, with the right evidence, it is actually possible to show people that their views are not practical or are not likely to achieve the desired results. — VagabondSpectre

What political rhetoric claims to be in pursuit of and what those following it are actually in pursuit of are not the same thing. Are you suggesting that it is a coincidence that most wealthy people are right-wing? That in order to get votes among the poor right wing parties appeal to anti-immigration? That despite any extraneous policies, the voting of the subsequent party/president depends almost exclusively on the strength of the economy?

The vast majority of people don't give a shit about 'fairness', or the playing field, or anyone else not directly related to them. If they did, then how would there be any homeless? How would a pair of trainers made by 11 year old sweatshop workers ever be anything other than a morbid museum exhibit?

This is not, nor ever has been, about rational persuasion on the basis of evidence. It's about what is and is not acceptable behaviour in a community, and people judge that by the actions of others. People think its OK to just walk past a homeless person because others do so too. They think it's OK to buy sweatshop-produced trainers because others do too. Rational argument never entered into it.

Alabamians are well insulated from reasonable pro-choice speakers — VagabondSpectre

they're surrounded only by people who reinforce that view — VagabondSpectre

Are you suggesting that Alabama has some kind of censorship law? I'm not particularly expert on local law in the US, but it's hard to imagine that evidence-based pro-choice arguments were somehow banned. If you're trying to make the argument that these people would have behaved any differently simply as a result of being presented with the evidence then I'm afraid you have a mountain of psychological research saying the exact opposite to counter along the way.

People do not change their political opinions on the basis of evidence. That's about as close to a concrete fact as we get in psychology.

Racists and fascists are debating their ideas in open forums — VagabondSpectre

No, they're not. No one is 'debating' anything. They're rabble-rousing and it needs to be stopped before a rabble gets roused. Their words have real impact on the lives of actual people. Ethnic minorities, the poor, immigrants... These people are actually harmed by the rhetoric of fascists, racists and the alt-right.

Tell me again why barricading the doors of Shapiro's events is necessary force? — VagabondSpectre

Because Shapiro's speaking at a university legitimises his ideas by association. Those who feel they do not want their community associated with such ideas often lack the power to ostracise him by financial or media control, so they use physical force to do so. The physical force carries a minor risk of harm to some, but Shapiro's ideas carry a more significant risk to a larger number, so the risk is broadly justified.

You said because the lives of marginalized folk are on the line. You might interpret that as only condoning barricades, but why can't someone else say that it condones the use of artillery?

If lives are on the line when Shapiro speaks, can't your argument also justify his assassination? — VagabondSpectre

No, because artillery and assassination are bad. As I said above, what we consider right and wrong infuses everything we do, you cannot remove it to make an argument. No one who wishes to ostracise Shapiro would also want to use live artillery on other people. If they were that inconsiderate about the lives of others, then why would they want Shapiro shut down in the first place?

The whole point of democracy is to work through our disagreements about what policies and moral aims we should enshrine into culture and law. — VagabondSpectre

No, that consensus politics. Something I'm greatly in favour of, but not democracy. Democracy is about doing what the largest block of voters want. Screw the rest.

emotionally riled up individuals within the scuffling mob take aggressive action, which engenders an aggressive response from opposing individuals, and then when the rest of the mob sees this, they tend to escalate their degree of scuffling. — VagabondSpectre

Hasn't really answered my question. Why is 'scuffling' particularly responsible for creating these "emotionally riled up individuals" yet words are completely immune from having such an effect?

Thanks for posting those links. The Aleksandar Hemon was a really good read. I've read few such close-up stories about watching a descent into fascism, it really highlights how dehumanising the process is.

Regarding “conservativism” it is clear enough to me that it’s suffering, and going to suffer more, simply because the world is changing fast. — I like sushi

Scruton and Murray do get to the point just why conservatism seems so feeble compared to the left (and I would also add compared to the extreme-right). Cherishing how things are, love of your country and your people is especially in a democratic justice state is quite lame and uninteresting. Conservatism is for those who at least are doing OK. Those that look for scapegoats in minorities and have more hate in their hearts than actual love for their people are made of a different mold and will look for radical changes. In political discourse and in the university traditional conservatism sounds extremely boring. However when it comes to real life and the choices people make in their own lives, conservative values are quite popular. In a leftist welfare state like mine I would say that many of those that vote for social democrats are otherwise quite conservative: they like how things are and don't object at all to what the free market can offer them, with the supervision of the government of course.

Conservatism a political movement for a silent majority which doesn't make a huge fuss about itself. Radical leftism is on the other hand quite hip for a loud extrovert minority who want to shake things up, especially when nobody here in the West has experienced the true nature of totalitarian Marxism-Leninism. It's very apt for Scruton to depict Murray as being 'harmless'. Of course the left wouldn't see Douglas Murray at all like that, yet there is a point about it when you talk about upholding free speach. You then have to respect that other people have different views about everything than you.

A thought prompted by this: I don't think the liberal has any capacity to think of political action beyond political speech. Words simply float free of any gravity of worldly consequence, and the whole content of politics lies entirely in the ephemera of 'argument' or 'agreement', which now come to bear the entire weight of politics. Nevermind that the world around the lectern is literally on fire - what happens out there, beyond the charmed circle of intellectual spar and parry simply cannot so much as even be thought. The liberal literally doesn't even have the vocabulary to deal with it, let alone act upon it.

Worse still, having plucked her own eyes out, the liberal then denies that anyone else ought to have recourse to action beyond speech either (despite such actions saturating the ground aroud her). Anything else is apparently 'violence', 'unfair', 'undemocratic', or whatever empty pejorative might fit the current flow of conversation. And this sort of bullshit renders fascism utterly unintelligible to the liberal, who can only treat of it as a set of ideas while actual fascists get on with the job of grabbing the levers of power where they can. People don't get hurt in the liberal imagination because there are no people in it: only 'debatable ideas' - words. And while everything burns, the liberal can only stammer on about m-m-muh free speech... Good-intentioned pavers of the road to hell, all of them.

Brecht's lovely little poem comes to mind:

Step foward: we hear
That you are a good man.
You cannot be bought, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, also
Cannot be bought.
You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?
You are honest, you say your opinion.
Which opinion?
You are brave.
Against whom?
You are wise.
For whom?
You do not consider personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?
You are a good friend
Are you also a good friend of the good people?

Hear us then: we know
You are our enemy. This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a wall.
But in consideration of
your merits and good qualities
We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.

No, I want a non-hypocritical political sphere. One in which the politics at work in platforming some dickhead like Shapiro is acknowledged as political, and not the outcome of some 'natural', merit-based, extra-poltical process. Where money is similarly acknowledged as a political tool that anyone who holds it knows it to be. What is 'undemocratic' is the (pseudo-)depoliticization of what is obviously political: of putting these things out of democratic play. I want more democracy not less. But this requires a less shallow, less emaciated understanding of democracy than just what happens in 'voting booths'. — StreetlightX

So you're arguing that because moneyed interests are supporting Shapiro, and because ideological merit has nothing to do with politics or democracy these days, the use of intimidation, force, and violence to silence him is well justified?

Why do we even have voting booths if the real politics are decided through money and might? Merely tradition?

And if Ideas mean for so very little, what's the harm in not using force against Shapiro?

I want a non-hypocritical political sphere too, but vague and violent grand-standing against the likes of Shapiro by alleging that he is somehow vaguely violent is itself hypocritical (he has access to those rings levers of power I guess?).

He's just a pundit, and the attitude of forceful mobilization against him does nothing but feed the troll.

I don't think the liberal has any capacity to think of political action beyond political speech. Words simply float free of any gravity of worldly consequence, and the whole content of politics lies entirely in the ephemera of 'argument' or 'agreement', which now come to bear the entire weight of politics. Nevermind that the world around the lectern is literally on fire - what happens out there, beyond the charmed circle of intellectual spar and parry simply cannot so much as even be thought. The liberal literally doesn't even have the vocabulary to deal with it, let alone act upon it. — StreetlightX

And Shapiro himself is The Joker? Holy bubbeleh!

Shouldn't you be posting all of this in underground revolutionary networks committed to toppling the current status quo of exploitation, slavery, and death? After all, it's not like our tiny digital pulpit serves any pursuit other than the hubris of an ego massage...

I wish you would be more specific than "the world around the lectern is literally on fire", because I'm not sure what you mean; it reads like a traumatized war-veteran trying to describe what it's like out in the shit (and I'm the innocent green boy ignorant useful idiot who is incapable of fathoming a hard world outside his toy chest). In what way has my advocacy for non-violent methods of protest against Shapiro triggered your world weary stress syndrome? How does bringing down Shapiro put out any of the fires you have yet to name?

What is it about political favouritism that is unfair? — Isaac

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. I've explained this every which way, and in the end you can just say "That's just like, your opinion, man", but I think you understand the idea that people should be free to explore political ideas. Do you think that your own correct beliefs should be the only permissible beliefs hold?

People think its OK to just walk past a homeless person because others do so too. — Isaac

But sometimes the homeless person is grouchy or drunk...

No, they're not. No one is 'debating' anything. They're rabble-rousing and it needs to be stopped before a rabble gets roused. Their words have real impact on the lives of actual people. Ethnic minorities, the poor, immigrants... These people are actually harmed by the rhetoric of fascists, racists and the alt-right. — Isaac

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).

Why is 'scuffling' particularly responsible for creating these "emotionally riled up individuals" yet words are completely immune from having such an effect? — Isaac

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

So you're arguing that because moneyed interests are supporting Shapiro, and because ideological merit has nothing to do with politics or democracy these days, the use of intimidation, force, and violence to silence him is well justified? — VagabondSpectre

I'm arguing that people like Shapiro got to where he is by means far beyond that of his power of speech alone, and to restrict responses to those means to speech alone is asymmetrical and democratically fatal. It is to enter the fray with one's hand deliberately tied behind one's back while giving the other a full range of movement and then having the gall to call this 'fair' and 'democratic'. It's yielding to a profoundly uneven playing field that, in all naivety or idiocy, is subsequently earmarked as the only one that's 'fair'. Meanwhile, anyone who knows anything about anything is laughing all the way to white house while liberals congratulate themselves on how they are apparently not the idiots (and oh-so-democratic).

And this is all to say nothing about the reductive and myopic tertium nom datur that is speech or violence that you keep pushing. As if this silly little duo exhausted the means and range of political action. Most of those having their au courant whine about deplatforming or whatever are responding less to incidences of violence - rare and sporadic as they are - than to the sense of damage done to their bourgeois sense of dinner table manners ('let the man speak, chérie'). Violence is rarely at issue*, and to pretend that it is is misdiagnosis, either deliberate, ignorant, or both at the same time. In any case the right - who have been pushing just this line, to their infinite benefit - couldn't be happier with this utter failure of political imagination.

*On the left in any case. Let's not talk about how nearly every single ideologically related murder in the US was commited by right wing terrorists in 2018. Let's keep pushing the bullshit line that it's the PC snowflake left that's after violence. Speech or violence? Fuck that entire framing of the issue, and anyone who peddles it. 'World weary stress syndrome'. Yeah, you fucking bet.

I'm arguing that people like Shapiro got to where he is by means far beyond that of his power of speech alone, and to restrict responses to those means to speech alone is asymmetrical and democratically fatal. — StreetlightX

I don't see the asymmetry of means between political camps that you do. 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. As the absolute majority, a full embrace of force might be in our short or long term interests, but not if we abolish democratic safeguards in the process. I would much rather discuss erecting new safeguards to defend against those as yet unnamed "means" which you say are democratically fatal (corporate influence perhaps? Individual wealth?).

Speech is not the only useful form of political action, but in the past, violence as political action has caused unpredictable and oftentimes undesirable results.

How does Shapiro fit into all of this. Is it that he supported Trump?

And this is all to say nothing about the reductive and myopic tertium nom datur that is speech or violence that you keep pushing. — StreetlightX

I say: "we shouldn't use violence or physical force against Shapiro", and then you say: "stop restricting my political freedom, and fuck your myopic excluded middle!".

Let's clarify. Are you arguing for the use of force or violence against Shapiro? (For example, by using intimidation and force to block, shut-down, or disrupt his events?) Or are you in support of something less drastic? (Like, for example, a peaceful protest).

Most of those having their au courant whine about deplatforming or whatever are responding less to incidences of violence - rare and sporadic as they are - than to the sense of damage done to their bourgeois sense of dinner table manners ('let the man speak, chérie'). Violence is rarely at issue, and to pretend that it is is misdiagnosis, either deliberate, ignorant, or both at the same time. In any case the right - who have been pushing just this line, to their infinite benefit - couldn't be happier with exactly that framing of choice — StreetlightX

What is the issue?

That Trump got elected, therefore the left should have used greater forced against the likes of Shapiro?

I'm genuinely trying to connect the dots between saving our souls and barricading a Berkeley auditorium against Shapiro. Is it the harmful nature of his policies or the way he manipulates young minds in support of them? Or both? If so, can't you see that your attitude and approach toward Shapiro et al. only empowers them? If not, why should we cross any moral lines to take down Shapiro when he's neither the source nor the sustaining force of our problems?

I'm telling you to let the man speak because throwing him out of the saloon makes us look weak and stupid, and is exactly the sort of attitude that propelled the bad orange orangutan himself all the way to the white house. It wasn't the fascists and the racists that got him elected, they're a clear minority; it was that too many on the left got fed up with their own dogmatic bullshit. The alt-right grew for a reason, and it certainly wasn't because the left wasn't radical enough.

I'm telling you to let the man speak because throwing him out of the saloon makes us look weak and stupid — VagabondSpectre

Yes, you would care about looks, wouldn't you? Words and looks, the substance of the liberal political imagination.

I don't see the asymmetry of means between political camps that you do. — VagabondSpectre

Then there's nothing to discuss. Fascists and racists are always a 'minority' in the liberal imagination. Right up until the point they're not. Because there are no racists and fascists, only ever racist and fascist ideas, ripe for the acedeme debate. What a joke.

Then there's nothing to discuss. Fascists and racists are always a 'minority' in the liberal imagination. Right up until the point they're not. Because there are no racists and fascists, only ever racist and fascist ideas, ripe for the acedeme debate. What a joke. — StreetlightX

The joke is that Shapiro is a meme of your own making, just like Trump.

Who needs debates or voting booths when you have undying righteous indignation?

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.

Unfortunately, how we look does matter, but so does what we say and what we do, especially in the eyes and ears of young university students.

That Shapiro is able to win informal popularity contests upsets the left, and then many individual overreactions only serve to make him even more popular by comparison. It's the same bottom up force that helped put Trump in the white house (which hasn't been a very good thing for many of the problems you've mentioned). By condoning the forceful censoring of Shapiro you're giving him more attention and losing the petty popularity contest/grudge match that politics has apparently become.

Words simply float free of any gravity of worldly consequence, and the whole content of politics lies entirely in the ephemera of 'argument' or 'agreement', which now come to bear the entire weight of politics. — StreetlightX

Which you'd know if you'd read.... Where's the extra-word center of gravity here?

As a blusterer, I know the litmus test of bluster is how cartoonish the insults get. If you're leaning into calling things 'trash', you're probably covering over the fact you're guilty of exactly what you're accusing others of.

Do politics, not words, c.f. a very lovely piece by...

One thing I haven't done is 'condone the forceful censoring of Shaprio'. Not because I don't think he should or shouldn't be censored, but because the only thing I've been doing is pointing out that the liberal grounds for 'non-censorship' (scare-quotes because one person's 'censorship' are another person's everyday life and political situation - the terms for what counts and does not count as censorship are themselves political) are rubbish. My argument is against an argument; not a position on Shapiro being 'censored' or not. Living outside the shithole that is the States, I'm lucky enough to hardly be graced by anything he says or does.

Where's the extra-word center of gravity here? — csalisbury

You don't know?

You don't know? — StreetlightX

Let's say I don't & want to learn - guide me toward it. You do the words on here, what does your worldly practice look like?

What does your worldly practice look like? — csalisbury

It's not mine.

It's not mine. — StreetlightX

I don't know what that means, so I think you got me.

This might make for a nice riposte to those concerned about their 'looks' and powdered wigs:

"A categorical error is made in any media narrative resting on the idea that protests “turn” violent, or counterprotesters instigate violence in these circumstances. The error exists in the tacit suggestion that there was a situation of nonviolence, or peace, from which to turn. Any circumstance in which cops take black life with impunity, any context in which it is still necessary to state that Black Lives Matter, any situation where neo-Nazis march and murder, is a background state of constant violence. Yet the media consistently attributes the act of turning to violence to people who literally cannot turn from it, whose lives and deaths are organized by it. In the book, I cite the late philosopher Bernard Williams who wrote, “To say peace where there is no peace is to say nothing.”

https://www.thenation.com/article/natasha-lennard-fascism-book/

When everything around you is ugly, the concern for 'looks' is just another scar.

*When everything around you is ugly, the concern for 'looks' is very far.

When everything around you is ugly, the concern for 'looks' is just about as shallow as it gets. — StreetlightX

The only problem is that literally every post on tpf is 'looks.' We're all doing looks! This is looks, that is looks. It's all looks. you do understand that, right? Like - these ideas aren't politics, or anything even close to it. Do you see that?

And the point is anything more than trivial because...?

You should be the one answering this question.

it's probably trivial, a harsh word, but the point is that all this rhetoric about 'powdered wigs' and 'words' is self-implicating.

No, it's not trivial.

Yeah, because pointing out badly drawn conclusions from badly wrought arguments means I'm not doing politics means... ? I dunno man, I think you're just playing meta outta habit, and it's silly.

--

Also strikes me, incidentally, that the concern for appearances from those who avowedly like the arguments to 'speak for themselves' in the 'marketplace of ideas' is irony made thick.