Signal Boost · 4:33pm Jul 18th, 2020
Aragon's Gripping Personal Narrative on the descent from mild bigotry to full on hate and a culture of fear.
Aquaman's takedown of centrist cowardice.
PresentPerfect's own explanations.
Scarlet's breakdown of leftist thought.
I don't have too much to add myself in this regard. I tend to get a little impatient when it comes to these things. As a younger person, I had a lot more energy to spend and a lot more time to spend it with, but I can at least center their narratives.
My own life has been a bit of a rollercoaster, and I've opened up about it before. Pretty much as soon as I got politically involved, I naturally gravitated towards the left, and the more I understood about the world the further and further left I've become. The right's ideology is based on fundamentally untrue things, stuff like "climate change is a hoax," "Christianity is the one true religion," "big government is bad" (spoiler, turns out big government is only bad to them when it restricts their ability to do violence. Turns out they love state violence against foes foreign and domestic!), "unregulated free markets are the best solution for everyone," "wealthy people earned their money," "you can't trust scientists," "gay and transgender people are a threat to society," "women are lesser than men," "it takes a good person with a gun to stop a bad person with a gun," "Black people are more prone to crime because they're racially inferior," "Muslims secretly wish to destroy all of Western Civilization and there is no such thing as a moderate," and other fun thought-worms.
Not all of these false ideas are held by all conservatives, but basically every conservative idea you can think of is based in a violent lie. I am a leftist as surely as I breathe air - it seems to me that there is no sensible alternative.
My journey to accepting that free speech and "rational debate" with the right was a longer journey, and started back when I was heavily involved in skeptic circles. I still identify as a methodological skeptic and secular humanist, but debating with Christians taught me a few things. For one, while debates were fun I came to realize that the people who attended them really just came to be preached to. For two, it became immediately clear that the entire process of debate, particularly with these topics, was just a clash of personalities and skills that had little to do with the actual merit of the opinions. Success in a debate depends far more on your skills as a debater than it has anything to do with the underlying truth, and Christians and right-wing nuts like Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder know this. "Debate me" exists so that these people can get in there, deploy their most underhanded tactics, embarrass the target if possible, and sow doubt because we have been primed to believe that debate actually demonstrates truth where it doesn't exist.
To be frank, you don't need to debate someone who holds a belief in order to determine that it's wrong. You engage with the beliefs directly.
You don't need to listen to a Nazi speak in order to know that their beliefs are wrong. You take their beliefs, study them, and it becomes manifest that they are inherently monstrous and without any degree of merit. You don't need to have a debate with a Christian in order to interrogate their ideas and see that they don't meet the test of reality. Does every crackpot would-be physicist who thinks that gravity doesn't exist in favor of static charges deserve to have a platform debating their ideas? Does a climate change denier really need to debate a climate scientist? Do we really need to give equal time to two opposing beliefs when one is so desperately, horribly wrong?
I'm all for the idea that the government shouldn't arrest people just for their beliefs, but
And some ideologies? Like the aforementioned Nazis?
Some ideologies need to be opposed with violence.
[paragraph redacted for violent calls]
Nazis post art? Ban them. Pedophiles post underaged sex nonsense? Ban them. People "joke" about gassing Jews? Ban them.
This place is for love and tolerance, and people who have neither may receive neither.
I've been mildly encouraged to see such a violent reaction to their presence, and I hope to see more.
If any mods are listening to this, or if you know a mod, start agitating. Reach out to the staff of Fimfiction and get them to do something about this, or your fandom is lost.
This is a perfect summation of my current attitude, and very well-written and concise.
I often find myself middle-of-the-road with a lot of posts like these. Most of the time, I agree with most of the points made, if not all of them. However, I find myself increasingly uneasy about how these posts sometimes come off. I mean, I totally agree that not everything needs/should be debated to determine if it is wrong.
I just don't think it is as simple as banning or kicking people out. I don't see it as that easy to dismiss. I often agree that debating is not always the answer, but I fear that ignoring these harmful ideologies can lead to worse outcomes. I think we can agree on that.
Maybe it is me misunderstanding or skewing things inside my own head, but encouraging violence (which can be a pretty broad spectrum of actions) against people who support these ideologies? I totally get why that is appealing--harmful ideologies that are supported by supposedly "nice" or "polite" people are still harmful. I get that, I really do. I just feel that encouraging people to attack individuals of any ideology, whether that be verbal or physical, is a slippery slope that could lead to poorer and poorer conditions.
Perhaps that is an overly cautious way of thinking, but I can't help but feel something wrong about it.
That said, I do not mean to say that you are encouraging it. If you are, then you are. I don't want to come across as harsh in any way. In fact, I hope this doesn't sound like I'm outright disagreeing with you, because I'm not. I just felt I should share my thoughts in the most unbiased way I could.
I hope this doesn't come off as rude or offensive in any way. Consider it just food for thought, I guess. Thank you for posting things like this; it is important for these discussions to take place, however uncomfortable they may be.
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Thanks for chiming in. (Anyone upset about why I delete people - I delete people who are just here to start shit)
So, a few thoughts -
Re: Banning
It's a start. It keeps the space secure for vulnerable people and prevents infiltration.
Re: Engaging with their ideas
You can educate about harmful ideologies without engaging with the people who hold them. Like, when you discuss philosophy in class, you can't exactly summon the ghost of Plato for a little grilling. You interrogate his works instead.
I believe strongly that we need to educate about harmful ideas in context.
Re: Violent responses
My take on this is that certain specific ideologies have already declared war. Fascism is the main one.
Fascism is a belief that cannot exist without violence. No one argues this (unless they're trolling - in private they will acknowledge it.) The only reason they aren't starting shit is because they know that they need a critical mass of power to begin their plans.
Violence against them serves the purpose of making them scared to speak up. It keeps them from getting out and recruiting others.
We ban them so we don't have to fight them with fists. We fight them with fists so we don't have to fight them with guns. We fight them with guns so our neighbors don't have to fight them with tanks (or not at all, because nuclear weapons are the ultimate trump card in national defense.)
I don't advocate violent responses against many other forms of problematic beliefs, just the ones that are utterly irredeemable and inherently violent.
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See, I am relieved that you explained your thoughts a little more.
I agree that context and process are invaluable to the education of harmful ideals and the prevention of those harmful ideals getting a foothold in the world. I also agree that some ideologies are just bound to lead to violence based on their inherent nature.
I suppose my hope is that more people will be able to be "helped" out of that way of thinking, rather than just be pounded into recession by way of fear and violence. Maybe in a perfect world, I suppose . . .
Thank you for your thoughts.
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I think that the people who can be helped will get themselves out of it once the community aspect of the extreme right is broken down, for what it's worth.
Once they're a part of normal society again, it becomes a lot harder to cling to toxic ideas.
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Very well-said.
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How the fascist white supremacist radicalization process works:
How to counter the process and de-radicalize fascist white supremacists:
Good post. :)
Thank you for speaking out.
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I didn't call Ben Shapiro a Nazi. I said he was a right-wing nut.
There's a difference. Not a fantastic one, but it exists.
I'm also not in danger of becoming a Nazi, you silly person. This "Both sides are bad" crap can go straight to hell.
I'm never going to listen to a scumbag like Shapiro. He denies transpeoples' rights to exist as themselves among many other horrible things.
When one side refuses to admit a group of people have a right to exist and another supports it, I have every right to call that first side evil.
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What's wrong with downvoting people? It's there for a reason.
First of all, he denies that trans people even exist. He refuses to use even his ally Blair White's pronouns and says that transwomen are men and transmen are women.
Second of all, no one is getting jailed for refusing to use the proper pronouns. That's a myth promulgated by him and others, and it's utterly absurd. There's no proof that has or ever will happen.
Third, denying pronouns makes you an asshole. It isn't "coddling" to accept people for who they are.
Fourth, his "science" about the fetus is bullshit, he's a religiously motivated conservative.
Fifth, he also denies climate change, and thinks that it isn't a problem even if it is real, which is just stupid.
I believe these people are called Schrödinger's Douchebag. Someone who decides if they're joking or not based on people's reactions.
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Count the little red thumbs. They're from the people who disagree with what you're saying strongly enough to express themselves that way.
Now count the green... oh, wait.
Well, that doesn't prove you're wrong, only that your opinion is unpopular.
In light of your comments, I watched a couple of Ben Shapiro's videos to familiarize myself. Then, I downvoted your comments. He's clearly a far-right extremist (practically a caricature of the type), and your denial of that makes no sense to me.
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It's how That Guy who makes all your women friends uncomfortable operates, too.
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Ben Shapiro is a right wing hack who can barely beat college kids in debates. He exhibits fascistic tendencies and wrote an awful book that unabashedly fellates the military, is blatantly racist and demonises brown people.
Haha man the downvotes. Looks like that guy had this blog brigaded.
Wow, look at all those downvotes and surprisingly few comments. One of our right-wing friends must have linked this blog.
My belief in the power of debate as a method of arriving at the best conclusions faltered quite a bit when I started realizing how disingenuous many right-wingers are. A leftist may slander and try to tear you down, but they usually say what they mean. But a lot of these right-wing figureheads aren't actually interested in earnest debate to try to arrive at the truth. It is evident in one of their most-beloved figures, Ben Shapiro. Many people, even liberals, believe him to be some kind of excellent debater even though he goes out of his way to target college kids with no media training and bury them in a deluge of half-truths. If you take the time to watch one of his "debates" and really examine what he says, he falls apart. It's a similar story with Jordan Peterson, though he doesn't have that annoying way of talking really fast at people.
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Yes, I didn't mention that. Ben is a pretty bad debater.
Also yes, I assume it was either Commander Applejack or that Mario twerp.
I deleted a comment off his that had hateful things to say about trans people, but I was going to let the others stand. When the brigade came and mass-downvoted, I removed them all. Don't ever let them have satisfaction.
Your blog was linked to by right-wingers brigading Fimfiction due to a certain controversial fic that elicited a response from knighty. He did something, but it's far from enough to get nasty people off of the fandom about love and tolerance.
Tolerance isn't about tolerating nazis or pedophiles or other sorts of scum. Alt-Right Playbook - How to radicalize a Normie is a YouTube video that explains how alt-right takes hold. It all starts with "harmless" jokes and ensnaring vulnerable people through underhanded tactics.
Your blog post, OP, is a breath of fresh air. But I think we do need to be more active to fight back against the right wing. I'm afraid they're brigading many blogs and related stories right now, spewing bullshit propaganda that doesn't really take much to dispel but... Who says they would listen? They would continue to cry about "bloody communism" way past the point of hearing the explanation that USSR and China and other so-called "communist" countries were barely anything but authoritarian state capitalism regimes.
Those people spew so many wrong points it's impossible to refute them all without wasting a ton of time doing so. I got myself sucked into "debate", and oh boy, Ben Shapiro tactic of saying as much bullshit in a single comment is very widespread.
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Thanks for the heads-up. Do you know where it was linked?
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I think it was in that Aryanne fetish story, but it definitely was posted in knighty's blog post about the situation.
God, I wish this wasn't so true, but it really is.
Good blog! Thanks for signal boosting some of those other ones: they're also great!
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If I may, Thought Slime did a video on Stonetoss, and how humor and inoccuous messages radicalize people.
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It was also linked in a thread in the Unsafe Space.