And how do you address that? By whining about free speech?

I feel like the relevant thing here would be whining about whining about free speech.

A corrective. Modest. I don't claim more.

In any case not whining about whining about whining about free speech. Want to keep going?

Ah, I hadn't picked up on the modest timbre of your posts.

e.g.

if you want to know where Sapiro et. al. emerged, perhaps, just fucking perhaps, one ought to look at the material conditions of the poor white working class, rather than 'Muh Free Speech Under AtTaCK fROM ThE LeFt'. Long story short, to put the etiology of the emergence of Shapiros down to 'the left' is such, such, such a stupid and historically myopic idea that it simply cannot be taken seriously. But the liberal simply has no fucking language or vocabulary other than 'free speech' by which to track these issues, so of course for him it's all about 'speech'.

I guess you have to read between the lines

Timbre? That's what you got? Ok, good chat.

I don't know what you mean by dreck. I don't even know what 'dreck' means. It sounds like an insult from a 19th century novel. I feel like you're going to call me a 'sniveling blackguard' next.

I mean, I've been pretty upfront with what I'm saying and I stand by it. What's the alternative? I invite a response, as always. I'm asking what you would do to make a world where no one would listen to Shapiros. If you say that's what you want - and I agree - I'm open to suggestions. A better reproach would be that I haven't offered anything either, and I haven't. But I'm sincerely interested in ideas in that vein.

[edit] the above is a response to the pre-edited post ["Do you have anything else other than this dreck? Or is this all you know how to do?"]

Fuck off you're sincere. You know my point is negative, you're not a complete incompetent so maybe stop pretending.

You know my point is negative, you're not a complete incompetent so maybe stop pretending. — StreetlightX

Yes, but I always argue with people who are closest to my view. It's negative, and the negativity sustains itself on the 'positivity' it grapples with, so it diffuses into nothingness without it. That's exactly why it's words in a vacuum. My post sustains itself off that sustaining, so I'm trying to drag us both down to the fiery pit where it doesn't matter at all what we think about Shapiro. I could clap you and it would be meaningless.

Ok beautiful soul.

Very beautiful, preening myself, not willing to fight in the very real, very serious trenches of saying 'i want a world where no one listens to shapiro'

I appreciate your detailed response. You have made me more skeptical about Weinstein's version of the events. Where I can't agree is that whether they were wrong or right is neither here nor there because Weinstein appeared on some show. I will say that Weistein's testimony in that video was a little offputting to me when he offered something like a conspiracy theory --as if the kids were the unwitting pawns of far more cynical agents.

But I find a different conspiracy theory here: https://www.thenation.com/article/white-men-have-good-reason-to-be-scared/

From the left to the right, we have for decades masked our disagreements with the paralyzing euphemisms of partisanship. We’ve told ourselves that our most bitter conflict is “conservative” versus “liberal,” “free enterprise” versus “big government.” Maybe now we are finally ready to be honest about the real point of contention: We are, as we have always been, a nation divided on the topic of white-male power. It’s easy to get confused by the crosscurrents of misogyny and racism and xenophobia, to think they’re discrete issues rather than the interlocking tools of white men’s minority rule. — The Nation

What do you make of this article?

I do get it. 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. We're all greedy monsters. Maybe we're all racists and sexists too. This article may want to demonize a small subset of rich white men. But only someone in the bubble will ignore the direction of this magical thinking. At the moment white men have enough power so that such articles are acceptable. But this anti-white and anti-male sentiment is only going to encourage white men to start thinking (even more) about which party has more to offer them. I mean those who might otherwise vote DNC but aren't sure if they can trust the kind of people that tolerate this attitude toward people with their combination of race and gender. Ain't it gonna be the po' white boy that gets it first? Or the dummy tryin' to pay off school debt? 'White men have reason to be scared.' Mitch McConnell approves this message. It's great way to cut down on violence too, literally telling the wingnuts with a basement full of ammo that yeah dude you should be scared, we're coming for you. (The NRA also approves this message.)

I mean look - look at this nonsense choice:

Either:

Shapiro's rhetoric is meaningless, persuades nobody, and need not be protested whatsoever, let alone censored.

OR

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.

The choice that either one 'responds' to Shapiro's words or does not; It's as if the world does not exist; as if one could not aim to change the conditions in which Shapiro's words have any hold at all, make them ring false on their own terms, from the moment they leave his mouth. Words, words, words, the thin, impotent reed of liberal dinner party politics.

And this is how we've always done it, so what's changed in recent years? — VagabondSpectre

Simple - the right has coopted liberals into mass hysteria over anything that isn't 'speech'.

it's whether or not to disrupt the private political event of another group with force. — VagabondSpectre

'Private political event' is an oxymoron. Politics is disruption, and the liberal 'stay in your lane' take on politics is not politics at all, but its destruction. If it were up to liberals Rosa Parks would have been chastized for inconveniencing poor bus riders who just wanted to get where they were going. She should have just made a really good fucking argument, maybe written a really eloquent letter instead.

This is liberal 'politics': you ought to have your opinion, so long as it changes nothing, has no effect, amounts to people nodding along in contemplative agreement, looking good while they do so.

Simple - the right has coopted liberals into mass hysteria over anything that isn't 'speech'. — StreetlightX

I would hardly describe my objections as hysterical (certainly no more so than what I'm criticizing). And to thrice clarify, I'm not condemning anything that isn't speech, I'm condemning anything that is violence (at least in the context of a Shapiro event). There's an obvious difference you're expected to grasp.

Should you respond with some allegory about how Shapiro's events amount to force in the first place, please tell me how much force we ought to use in response (a practical example would be dandy).

'Private political event' is an oxymoron. Politics is disruption, and the liberal 'stay in your lane' take on politics is not politics at all, but its destruction. If it were up to liberals Rosa Parks would have been chastized for inconveniencing poor bus riders who just wanted to get where they were going. She ahould have just made a really good fucking argument, maybe written a letter instead. — StreetlightX

Rosa Parks refusing to yield a seat on the bus (an act of civil disobedience) is not quite the same as physically disrupting and shutting down an event via force.

There's a stark difference. If you think the harm caused by Shapiro's words or the policies they inexorably support warrant more than civil disobedience in active response, I would be glad to hear your position (as opposed to the peanut shells you've given me so far).

The choice that either one 'responds' to Shapiro's words or does not; It's as if the world does not exist; as if one could not aim to change the conditions in which Shapiro's words have any hold at all, make them ring false on their own terms, from the moment they leave his mouth. Words, words, words, the thin reed of liberal dinner party politics — StreetlightX

Bandying words at dinner parties is more productive than vaguely preaching fool-hearty revolution from an armchair. You've given up on words as a means to progress or resistance, but it's Shapiro's words (the persuasive power they hold) that helps prevent the world you desire from actually existing.

The disunity Shapiro causes in the body politic is a great way to divide and conquer that mythical vox populi, but instead of trying to win his followers to gain the base you would need to institute change (unity is roundly required for any revolution), you would instead have them tarred, feathered, and dunce-capped, which then makes my job at the dinner party unnecessarily difficult and awkward.

I would hardly describe my objections as hysterical — VagabondSpectre

'Your' objections belong to a multiplex industry of complaining about 'de-platforming' that just is the standard line churned out by any institution or person which fancies themselves 'thoughtful' about the day's events. An industry moreover that thrives off a tiny proportion of blown-up events all the better to secure the massive, crushing weight of the status quo. That critical mass - that disproportionate swarm, to which your objections belong - qualifies as hysteria by any measure.

And again the the apparently exhaustive duopoly: speech or violence. Nauseating.

this issue, which occurred two years ago at a college campus and really only affected a few people --- 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. --- 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. — Maw

So Weinstein inserted himself to this (with apparently an outrageous and provocating email???) and then knowingly gave a false version of the events? So just what was he lying about?

About 80 students were sanctioned for breaking the student conduct code at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, where race-related protests broke out on campus during the spring, college officials say.

About 120 incident reports involving 180 students were filed during spring and summer quarters, college spokeswoman Sandra Kaiser told The Olympian.

“Of those 180 students, approximately 80 were found responsible for their actions,” she said. “They received sanctions ranging from formal warnings, community service and probation, to suspension.”

See the Olympian article Here’s how many students were sanctioned for breaking Evergreen’s conduct code last spring, summer

I wouldn't say that 80 students being sanctioned and suspended (after over 100 incident reports) is just a few people. And Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying receiving a $450,000 settlement and $50,000 in legal fees from the college tells something. Of course with your logic, this perhaps was Weinstein's plan all along to provoke the students and start a new career or something.

As I've said, this odd incident was picked up by the media basically for it's oddity and naturally was cherished and upheld by conservative media. The rarity of the incident and others like it is quite telling and actually show how the thousands of campuses and universities in the US aren't affected with similar issues. Simply put it, today's students aren't on a verge of starting a revolution. However your spin on the events is simply a bit biased.

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. — Maw

Oh yes you can. Anything indexed by the google search engine counts as a platform, and as click-baity provocateurs, there are an unfathomably large number of news outlets willing to air their ideas, whether to profit from the stink, or that good old time smell.

s 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? — Maw

The trouble is that Spencer, Milo, and Bannon (and Shapiro) are great at positioning classically far right and Fascist ideas something else. To an average white seventeen year old, all they will see is someone claiming to represent their interests with some fancy sounding ideas about religion and government. The deeper they get into alt-right circles the more they're being exposed to mountains of misleading bull-shit that individually they have little hope of refuting (shit about "white genocide/death", shit about anti-semetic conspiracy theories, shit about "the muslim invasion", shit about "the evils of diversity", shit about "race and IQ" and more). Once the damage is done and they've accepted the basic alt-right program of bat-shit ideas, dissuading them is like talking to a flat-earther who cites nothing but obscure, convoluted, and misleading arguments to make their case.

And what happens when you tell a "flat-earther" that their ideas are too stupid to even be considered or debated, let alone refuted? They say "Aha! You're so brainwashed that you're unable to give me an answer! I must be right!". This is why Shapiro DESTROYS... are so popular. It's not that his ideas are really being challenged and showing their merit in any meaningful way, what pleases them is that where leftists and liberals are unable to respond, they claim the chemical rewards of victory without ever needing to leave their comfort zone. Granted, many of their ideas aren't fit for daytime T.V, and willingly getting into a serious debate with them is downright masochistic, but short of a firing squad it's dirty work that inevitably needs doing.

These 17 year olds that Bannon et al. are recruiting will soon be voting age, and they're already on platforms you and I haven't yet heard of.

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. — Maw

Online social media has been segmented for years (which is a part of the problem). People like Spencer were never out in the light. Almost nobody had ever heard of him until a video of him being sucker-punched went viral and we all asked the question "Is it O.K to punch a Nazi?". Maybe it's O.K to punch a Nazi, but it falls short of a rebuke, and it's not a good look (and regrettably, looks matter; by going overboard we undermine our own political goals).

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. — Maw

I would like to point again to how a conservative British interviewer was able to "destroy" Shapiro simply by keeping his composure and asking straight-forward questions. By refusing to respond with emotion, Shapiro was disarmed of his "Aha!, Triggered leftist!" shtick, and being completely unprepared to defend the actual ideas in that moment, he fell flat on his face. I'm positive that that event had a negative influence on his popularity (maybe the only blow to his popularity in recent memory).

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

I never said that it is unreasonable to protest Shapiro, I am saying that it's unreasonable to use force against him, and that both protesting him and using force against him are less effective than beating him at his own game.

And again the the apparently exhaustive duopoly: speech or violence. Nauseating. — StreetlightX

I'm not condemning anything that isn't speech, I'm condemning violence and intimidation through force (at least in the context of a Shapiro event). There's an obvious difference you're expected to grasp.

I'm condemning violence and intimidation through force — VagabondSpectre

Quote one line where I advocated 'violence and intimidation through force'.

Quote one line where I advocated 'violence and intimidation through force'. — StreetlightX

Quote one line where I alleged or stated that 'anything other than speech amounts to violence'.

The trouble is that Spencer, Milo, and Bannon (and Shapiro) are great at positioning classically far right and Fascist ideas something else. To an average white seventeen year old, all they will see is someone claiming to represent their interests with some fancy sounding ideas about religion and government. The deeper they get into alt-right circles the more they're being exposed to mountains of misleading bull-shit that individually they have little hope of refuting (shit about "white genocide/death", shit about anti-semetic conspiracy theories, shit about "the muslim invasion", shit about "the evils of diversity", shit about "race and IQ" and more). Once the damage is done and they've accepted the basic alt-right program of bat-shit ideas, dissuading them is like talking to a flat-earther who cites nothing but obscure, convoluted, and misleading arguments to make their case. — VagabondSpectre

Yet one shouldn't go too far with this theory of a political gateway drug to nazism. Because it sounds like an argument like "if smoke marijuana, you'll end up as a heroin addict". Because there is the lure just to enlarge every conservative pundit having this kind of veiled agenda, which simply is false. Just to remind people that this thread was about Roger Scruton.

It is as condescending as thinking that every social democrat is actually for Marxism-Leninism and authoritarian communism. That they 'just disguise' themselves as believing in things like democracy.

I'm not trying to generalize all conservatives as contributing to this. To be fair, Shapiro can be almost wholly excluded from what I mentioned above, although he waxes non-secular a bit much. Spencer in particular (the only self proclaimed white-supremacist among them) uses exactly those shitty ideas I mentioned.

I'm not interested to listen to Spencer, but I think I agree with this. And Shapiro as political commentator and a talk show host indeed wants people on the left to get provoked.

The simple problem here is to see nazis everywhere, just as for the right it is this quite odd fixation about there being these postmodernist cultural marxists undermining the society in the academia.

It is as condescending as thinking that every social democrat is actually for Marxism-Leninism and authoritarian communism. That they 'just disguise' themselves as believing in things like democracy. — ssu

Social Democrats are just badly informed Marxists. :razz:

The simple problem here is to see nazis everywhere, just as for the right it is this quite odd fixation about there being these postmodernist cultural marxists undermining the society in the academia. — ssu

It's less about calling everyone you disagree with a Nazi, and more about seeing threats to democracy and social justice. Let's indulge a far right, but quite insightful, understanding of politics for a second and reference Schmitt; there are political friends and enemies on any issue. Friends are those who act, consciously or unconsciously, to bring about your political desires. Enemies are those who act, consciously or unconsciously, to frustrate your political desires.

When people see good intentioned 'free speech absolutists' making the same arguments as clever transphobes about that Canadian hate speech law, we can see sides drawn. When people defend homophobia through the guise of 'states rights' on gay marriage, you can see sides drawn. When people lambast the antifa for the free speech rights of white nationalists, you can see sides drawn.

The question you have to ask yourself is; why do the far right see centrists like this. People that have not inoculated themselves against fascist rhetoric are willing vectors for political disease; normalising what should never be normal. In most circumstances, the toxic propaganda is elevated by giving it any public platform; you end up with people who wouldn't believe it not believing it, and people who have far right sympathies see their beliefs (in the ethnostate, in the invasion of whatever brown country...) as a subject for reasoned debate. The engineers of discourse see you lot as easy dupes and design their arguments, propaganda and behaviour along easily accepted tropes (like freedom of speech in deplatforming, or 'Zionism for whites') for you. It isn't just the far right that get in on the act, it's organisations like Soros, Murdoch and the Kochs and every government. And why do so many centrists fall for it?

It's all a sham, really. Antifa super soldiers care a lot more about democracy and free speech than the lipservice most people pay to it. When Antifa counter protest and frustrate threats and horrible organisations, they're being an immune response to fascism, racism, transphobia, nationalism - people who would rather see Mexican children in cages than playing happily with their kids. They care so much about democracy and social justice they organise to stop threats to both.

They're never going to be seen as the heroic, sound-minded people they are as long as political action is sanitised speech 'respecting everyones rights'. This right there, that belief in sanitised politics and its reduction to inferential chatter, is the biggest namby pamby PC scam there is. Anyone who thinks PC is killing political freedom needs to take a good look in the mirror, their smiling reflection knows what side the sophisticated marionette of their body is on.

With regard to the Vampire Castle @jamalrob presciently brought up:

The Vampires’ Castle feeds on the energy and anxieties and vulnerabilities of young students, but most of all it lives by converting the suffering of particular groups – the more ‘marginal’ the better – into academic capital. The most lauded figures in the Vampires’ Castle are those who have spotted a new market in suffering – those who can find a group more oppressed and subjugated than any previously exploited will find themselves promoted through the ranks very quickly.

We have to be ultra careful not to address ourselves to the academy in our hearts; so what we do isn't to confuse the actionable insights of critique for the actions they embody. I'm a hypocrite in this regard, perhaps a necessary one due to political alienation. So I imagine that the only role I can play is an academic one; writing about this kind of stuff. What we definitely shouldn't do is to turn academic critique into a placebo politics; in essence on this site leftists posting are doing what TED talks do, making a complicated issue an advert for further talk.

It's probably true that people everywhere are turning left in response to the increasingly evident impossibility of nationstates acting in the interests of their people everywhere. That this is essentially a symptom of the alienation of workers from politics, and the PR role nation states play for global capital, isn't a coincidence; the rise of the populist right (and Blair and Obama rhetorically) in Europe and America which addressed the concerns of the working class with racist just so stories was also an opportunity the left squandered. Sanders, Corbyn and before them Syriza and Las Podemos have seized the opportunity to articulate the alienation of the working class, let's hope we make use of the shift in the Overton window and the at least in principle sympathetic ears to overcome our tendencies to self purge with academic precision.

Edit: Trump too, we have a role to play in doing what we can to resist the shift in the Overton window to the right.

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.

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.

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.

Consider carefully rereading my original post. — Maw

Ok, so there (assuming I have the right one), you say:

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. — Maw

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, why did you remove my following sentence — Maw

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