The anti-SJW trap

[Kizz]

Thread titles aren't bumper stickers. Certainly you could come up with something less pejorative. That is, if you've really escaped from that "anti-SJW trap" after all.

Find a better phrase or don't comment about it, thanks.

 

[Plurabelle Laszlo]

Extremists on the left, if they had their way, would have literally open borders, would have full-on discrimination of the majority demographic, would have quota systems in place enforcing "equality of outcome", and would make stating non-progressive views illegal.

Umm. No. It might be difficult to find a definition of what the "extreme left" is and wants. But the utopia of the various "extreme left" people I know is definitely not what you describe.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Extremists on the left, if they had their way, would have literally open borders, would have full-on discrimination of the majority demographic, would have quota systems in place enforcing "equality of outcome", and would make stating non-progressive views illegal.

Extremists on the right, if they had their way, would have literally completely closed borders, would have full-on discrimination of the minority demographic, would have systems in place that allow for discrimination of anyone, and would make stating negative things about Christianity illegal.

When people use Hitler or Stalin as some sort of comparison, it's ridiculous, we need to judge by what's actually CURRENTLY out there.

Ah, yup. You haven't learned a damn thing. You come here acting as if you've learned something, yet you spout this nonsense.

As to comparing what is happening today on the right to nazis, well, "If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...".

You're a full-on believer and this is a fraudulent thread created by you, pretending one thing while believing another.

 

[Blue Green]

Kizz, If you were not a gay man do you think you would have stayed in the straight, white boys club?

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Kizz, If you were not a gay man do you think you would have stayed in the straight, white boys club?

You read my mind here.

 

[Ishina]

would have full-on discrimination of the majority demographic...

That's just a strawman meme with origins in the "white genocide" crowd. Don't fall for it.

 

[Jacqueline Trudeau]

Extremists on the left, if they had their way, would have literally open borders, would have full-on discrimination of the majority demographic, would have quota systems in place enforcing "equality of outcome", and would make stating non-progressive views .

Extremists on the right, if they had their way, would have literally completely closed borders, would have full-on discrimination of the minority demographic, would have systems in place that allow for discrimination of anyone, and would make stating negative things about Christianity illegal.

When people use Hitler or Stalin as some sort of comparison, it's ridiculous, we need to judge by what's actually CURRENTLY out there.

"open borders"
"discrimination of the majority demographic"
"quota systems"
"illegal"
"SJW"

Dude, your use of right wing dog-whistlely buzzwords is speaking much louder than whatever else you think you are saying. Care to add "political correctness" for the trifecta?

 

[Noodles]

 

[Blue Green]

I need to go to work and stop virtue signalling on this thread for today /sarcasm

 

[Jolene Benoir]

When people use Hitler or Stalin as some sort of comparison, it's ridiculous, we need to judge by what's actually CURRENTLY out there.

I feel the need to respond to this particular sentence. When the alt-right is in bed with white supremacists and nazis, that IS what is actually happening today. Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, Proud Boys, Richard Spencer...

Alt-right love their nazis and klan, even mainstream Republicans are inviting them to speak. They also love radicalizing infantile, insecure men online who then commit acts of murder. None of that even touches upon the fact that the White House is directly speaking to these people, calling them very fine people, demonizing anyone not white and caging brown children. Hell, Bannon (in past of Breitbart) and Stephen Miller, both past and present members of the administration, directly target young, angry men to their cause.


FBI says Proud Boys are extremist group with ties to white nationalism
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nidhiprakash/ew-york-gop-defends-proud-boys
The Proud Boys is an extremist group with ties to white nationalism, according to the FBI

Alt-Right Libertarians invite Richard Spencer to the party:
Alt-Right Libertarians Invite Richard Spencer to Conference - It's Going Down

Richard Spencer: White Supremacist
Richard B. Spencer - Wikipedia

Charlottesville and the alt-right
Charlottesville and the White-Nationalist Alt-Right - The Atlantic
Unite the Right rally - Wikipedia

Pittsburgh shooter, he was echoing comments of "white genocide" as is most of the alt-right. He was also radicalized online.
Pittsburgh shooter was fringe figure in online world of white supremacist rage
A digital funnel drives people to commit hate crimes in real life

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Extremists on the left, if they had their way, would have literally open borders, would have full-on discrimination of the majority demographic, would have quota systems in place enforcing "equality of outcome", and would make stating non-progressive views illegal.

I assume you're talking about the USA here, so please forgive me for not being fully versed on these things, but which "Extremists on the left" in the USA do you say advocate making it illegal to state "non-progressive views" or want "literally open borders" (unless by "literally" here you actually mean "figuratively," and not literally at all)?

Who actually advocates these policies?

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

Have you ever had any luck in getting people out of that mode? How did you do it? The way *I* got out of some of that mode was the fact that as a gay man, I was getting targeted by the traditionalism, as well as I've always been a neophile. But what of those who will never be targeted by that? The people who fit the white, straight, male, cisgender, Christian demographic? How will those people get out of it?

To define a few terms: Anti SJW people are usually the only ones who ever use the phrase "Social Justice Warrior" non ironically.
SJW is a silly, derogatory term for feminists, and people who believe in white privilege along with LGBT rights.

I think anti SJW can be sub divided into two categories that have a little overlap:

1) Traditionalists. They oppose trans rights because they think it offends god and what not. They usually also favor "traditional gender roles." Traditionalists can be hard to reach and seem to be outside the scope of what you're talking about.

2) Edgy, contrarian atheists. This is the group I think you are talking about. I believe a high percentage of these people will grow out of it and become liberals.

I believe the second group is usually just rebelling against what they are told and what they think is the popular sentiment among their peers. I have a place in my heart for these people, because I was one during puberty. I grew out of it.

This is one of my favorite bodies of research for demonstrating white privilege in a quantifiable sense. What makes this study so persuasive is because they are controlling for the crime committed, which makes it much harder to make the "this one person deserved it because X."

Another topic that comes up when discussing crime and punishment is poverty. Many liberals feel content citing wealth disparities but this isn't very persuasive. Young conservatives will dismiss this argument and if they feel brave, just come out and say that they deserve their poverty.

This is why I think it's very useful to give very specific examples of the systemic racism that worsened the problem. The Greenwood race riots seem to be an effective thing to talk about. It's well known and accepted, even among conservatives, that race riots would deliberately destroy black owned businesses at least as recently as the 1960's on a large scale. The New Deal and Great Society programs deliberately subsidized white owned businesses above their black competitors.

Conservatives like to say that freed slaves had plenty of time to pick themselves up, but it's easy to point to examples of how entire generations of black people who tried to do everything right, just got knocked back down.

Most conservatives know this, but kind of dismiss it as ancient history. It's important to point out that the 1960's are not ancient history. Even if we agree that all systemic racism stopped after 1970 (note that I"m not saying that, it's just for the sake of discussion), the fact remains that many survivors of that evil are still around.

Wealth, connections, education, knowledge of career development and so forth build up over generations. It's extremely naive to think that young black people should have already recovered from what was done to their parents and grandparents, and not just distant ancestors.

This is already a long winded post, and I didn't have a chance to say much about women and LGBT folk. There are a lot of key similarities and differences between how different groups were marginalized across generations. If you are open to learning one, you can learn the others.

 

[Jacqueline Trudeau]

Find a better phrase or don't comment about it, thanks.

You could do worse, and you did, than Civil Rights Activists (it's not something that petered out in the 60s).

 

[Kara Spengler]

the extreme left is just as bad as the extreme right, but most people aren’t extremists.

Define your terms. When we have had threads where people post their results in a 2d political graph I wind up being the most liberal and the least authoritarian. Yet recently (and I had a thread here on it) a bunch of anarchists were actually proud of not voting and blew up when I said my stance was that unless you had some sort of a reason (ANY reason: disenfranchisement, logistical issue, fundamental disagreement with the system, whatever) you should vote. They basically blew up at me and called me every name you can think of, I did a bunch of blocking and some unfriending, then I looked in later and they were patting each other on the backs over the incident.

 

[Casey Pelous]

Extremists on the left, if they had their way, would have literally open borders, would have full-on discrimination of the majority demographic, would have quota systems in place enforcing "equality of outcome", and would make stating non-progressive views illegal.
....

Nutjobbery is non-selective about its victims, and that includes their political preferences. But, who, on the so-called left, precisely, has advocated these things? Hillary? Joe Biden? Bernie? The dreaded Scary Lady Nancy Pelosi? I'm talking about real, grown-up, elected or potentially electable public officials, not some ranting. qualification-free blogger.

I think the only ones you'll come up with are the same imaginary "left-wingers" who want to "take away all the guns."

The right, on the other hand, has fallen all over itself to very publicly line up lockstep behind a charismatic leader who uses every classic bit of divide and conquer rhetoric beloved of dictators everywhere and advocates most of what you list as the horrors of the right, either forthrightly, or just by policy. Now, what was that, again, about Stalin and Mao?

 

[Kara Spengler]

I don't know. For me it looks like that the left has developed some kind of techniques which can strangle down almost every kind of discussion, if needed - and that the far right now have learned those techniques, and are using them against the left.

For example like this:

LOL! I unsubbed from 2600 about that time because the magazine had long since jumped the shark. Someone who is actually proud to still read it?

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

.
Now I’m certainly not saying that there aren’t problems on the left; the extreme left is just as bad as the extreme right, but most people aren’t extremists.?

When my grandfather was a child in the South, it was not uncommon for a black man to be lynched in broad daylight. The men that did that weren't extremists. That was just what was done to "deal with" undesirables who didn't mind their place.

Now we have openly racist, sexist, white men carrying torches, marching WITH Nazi lovers and white supremacists, in support of Trump. A spineless idiot who can't even condemn them for being Nazis and sympathizers.

I can't see how any reasonable person can equate that with students demanding that faculty/staff avoid avoid language and rationalizations that reenforces showing disrespect to individuals because of their immutable characteristics.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Have you ever had any luck in getting people out of that mode? How did you do it? The way *I* got out of some of that mode was the fact that as a gay man, I was getting targeted by the traditionalism, as well as I've always been a neophile.

Like they say in the clip at about 1:15:

-- Hey, that fellow's talking about me!
-- And that makes a difference, doesn't it?

On the general point, there's an interesting article in The Times (not the NYT) about a young man, Jack, who signed up for one of the British government's anti-radicalisation initiatives -- initially aimed at diverting young people from jihadism but now also aimed at members of far-right organisations, too -- in order to "conduct reconnaissance" on behalf of the English Defence League and was successfully radicalised by the mentor assigned to him by the programme (Evernote link because paywall). It sounds pretty simple in theory but maybe more difficult in practice -- essentially his mentor, Mark, first engaged with him. Jack says,

“I had a tough upbringing and so did [Mark]. We spoke about our personal lives, joked about football. He was easy to speak to. I didn’t feel like I was speaking to Prevent, I just felt like I was speaking to a friend in the pub.”

Then, once they'd established a rapport,

Jack said: “Mark gave me new ideas. He said, ‘Rather than listen to Tommy Robinson and just take what he’s saying, just go and research it’. I debunked what Robinson was saying through my own research.”

Mark said: “Most young people I deal with don’t have an ideology, they’re just looking to belong.”

Mark helped Jack to get on a plastering course and found him a job in a shop. “I feel like I was ready for intervention, I was already questioning some of what was on social media and pressure was building for me,” Jack said. “Channel came at the right time.”

It's basic rhetorical theory -- it's not about proving you're right and the other guy is wrong, but about establishing some common ground and a rapport with the audience you seek to persuade, and then trying to lead them from that to the position you want them to adopt.

 

[Brian]

Extremists on the left, if they had their way, would have literally open borders, would have full-on discrimination of the majority demographic, would have quota systems in place enforcing "equality of outcome", and would make stating non-progressive views illegal.

This is still nothing short of a lazy both sides rebuttal.
There is really no such thing as "discrimination of the majority demographic". It's a dog whistle itself, defending and outright promoting racism.

Making hate speech illegal is not even close to an analogy of making non-progressive views illegal.

You aren't free of that trap yet.

 

[Luisa Land]

Extremists on the left, if they had their way, would have literally open borders, would have full-on discrimination of the majority demographic, would have quota systems in place enforcing "equality of outcome", and would make stating non-progressive views illegal.

/QUOTE]

On the background that here in europe "left" "extreme left" "right" etc..often doesnt mean exactly what an american speaker has in mind, when he/she uses these terms, I also ask: whom do you mean with "extreme left"...
I, at least, have the impression that many americans would consider someone or something as left, what the most europeans would consider as mainstream... look alone the attitude towards public health insurance. I cant remember that even the political "right" have put them into question here on this side of the Atlantic like this happened to "Obamacare"
And does there in the USA realy an extreme left exists?