honorentheos wrote:
If they view your jump to using the KKK as what you thought to be the correct analogy, I question the existance of anyone who fits this self-serving rewrite of your own virtue. A very Robespierre-like thing to do, in fact.
It's not even that you're hypocritical here, because that would imply there's a similarity. You're not even doing what I did. I brought up the KKK in a standard analogy illustrating a point about free speech rights. I didn't compare anyone to the KKK rather the KKK is just a placeholder for "disreputable group with a bad faith argument" in pointing out a principle. That's the point of contact for the analogous argument. I then pulled a famous example on the list to demonstrate the point.
You then just directly compared doing that to the Reign of Terror declaring it of the same mentality. Only one of these is a hysterical analogy that attempts to poison the well. "Projection" is the normal term for this kind of thing.
Jesse Singal has terrible views on trans people that has caused a lot of backlash. It's probably why he's there. He's not a good dude. That doesn't make him "abhorrent" precisely like the KKK. That you find one within the bounds of acceptable discourse, but not the other is utterly beside the point being made.
Next down the list of "people who EA apparently doesn't respect" is Anne Applebaum. From her wiki entry:
"Populism
In March 2016, eight months before the election of President Donald Trump, Applebaum wrote a Washington Post column asking, "Is this the end of the West as we know it?", which argued that "we are two or three bad elections away from the end of NATO, the end of the European Union and maybe the end of the liberal world order". Applebaum endorsed Hillary Clinton's campaign for president in July 2016 on the grounds that Trump is "a man who appears bent on destroying the alliances that preserve international peace and American power."
Applebaum's March 2016 Washington Post column inspired the Swiss magazine Tagesanzeiger and the German magazine Der Spiegel to interview her, the articles appearing in December 2016] and January 2017. She argued very early on that the movement had an international dimension, that populist groups in Europe share "ideas and ideology, friends and founders", and that, unlike Burkean conservatives, they seek to "overthrow the institutions of the present to bring back things that existed in the past—or that they believe existed in the past—by force." Applebaum has underlined the danger of a new "Nationalist International," a union of xenophobic, nationalist parties such as Law and Justice in Poland, the Northern League in Italy, and the Freedom Party in Austria.
Russia
Applebaum has been writing about Russia since the early 1990s. In 2000, she described the links between the then-new president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, with the former Soviet leader Yuri Andropov and the former KGB. In 2008, she began speaking about "Putinism" as an anti-democratic ideology, though most at the time still considered the Russian president to be a pro-Western pragmatist. Applebaum has also focused on Russia's failure to come to terms with the legacy of the USSR and of Joseph Stalin, both in Gulag: A History and in other writing and speeches.
In 2014, writing in The New York Review of Books she asked (in a review of Karen Dawisha's Putin's Kleptocracy) whether “the most important story of the past twenty years might not, in fact, have been the failure of democracy, but the rise of a new form of Russian authoritarianism." She has described the "myth of Russian humiliation" and argued that NATO and EU expansion have been a "phenomenal success". In July 2016, before the US election, she was one of the first American journalists to write about the significance of Russia's ties to Donald Trump and to point out that Russian support for Trump was part of a wider Russian political campaign designed to destabilize the West."
I think introducing the KKK as a strawman was a mistake now that I'm taking a look at the signatories to this letter. In fact, just three people in, I now realize how important this letter is, and to quibble it away with a fantastic gaffe-analogy was a huge mistake. I'm betting EA, instead of realizing his error, will double down, assign more strawmans to his tactic, and will ultimately entrench in his stated position that this letter is essentially an endorsement of bad speech.
One good thing about the right is that they don't use a lot of intellectual verbiage. When they want to do bad they just do it. The left on the other hand likes to overthink things and self-recriminate. Trump is able to get a simple message out to the public, while others put up a wall of sound that tends to be garbled. Too intellectual.
That's true of Trumpism, but there's a whole culture on the right of being able to present terrible ideas with fluency in a way that allows them to get taken seriously. It's the intellectual equivalent of showing up to court wearing a suit. Trump isn't First Things, but First Things is the other side of modern conservative culture.
Next down the list of "people who EAllusion apparently doesn't respect" is Anne Applebaum. From her wiki entry:
This is a flat out dishonest description of my opinion of people on the list. That you almost immediately resort lying on subjects like this is a tell regarding what you think about your capacity to engage them.
I think you combat this by being clear as possible about what's good about free speech and why it needs defending. That's why I think joining hand-in-hand with people who don't have that message to share is potentially bad strategy.
You just described the letter; clear, simple to the point one of its most common criticisms is it's practically above needing to have been said.
You then undermine your point by then inserting the purity test for who qualities as a suitable ally in sharing this message. So unsaid in your comment above is a second condition. You apparently think the way to combat illiberalism is to be faultless. Since that's no one, and the urge to attack people who do not share in a views is at the center of the illiberalism in question, you're subtly (well, above you're being subtle) enforcing a firm of orthodoxy that is shutting down expression with which you do not agree. You're shutting down the P in your own argument by enforcing that it requires maximum distance from Q. How far is far enough? Just keep retreating when outrage happens and shove others over the line and you'll be fine, right?
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Jesse Singal has terrible views on trans people that has caused a lot of backlash. It's probably why he's there. He's not a good dude. That doesn't make him "abhorrent" precisely like the KKK. That you find one within the bounds of acceptable discourse, but not the other is utterly beside the point being made.
My Google of Singal turned up a few hits like an article in The Atlantic and on Reason on the subject of gender identity that I figured would be where you took issue.
But what isn't clear is why you view what he said to be abhorrent. You are asserting it. I want an example not an assertion.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Next up (or down if you're following along) is Marie Arana, the Literary Director of the Library of Congress. Yay, a Peruvian! Let's take a look see at her wiki for any ties to far-Right extremism a la the "KKK":
"She ... achieved her B.A. in Russian at Northwestern University, her M.A. in linguistics at Hong Kong University, a certificate of scholarship at Yale University in China, and began her career in book publishing, where she was vice president and senior editor at Harcourt Brace and Simon & Schuster."
Boy, she sounds like a real idiot. Had she known the letter she endorsed would be equated to supporting the KKK's right to freedom of speech - is that analogy sounding ironic yet? - she might've reconsidered adding her name to it! She does, however, contribute to the Washington Post, which makes her a virtual Nazi at this point. Here's the Daily Kos' take on the letter (you'll see EA's principled stand echoed throughout):
[quote=EAllusion post_id=1231291 time=1594309657 user_id=1078]
[quote="Doctor CamNC4Me" post_id=1231289 time=1594309468 user_id=3779]
Next down the list of "people who EAllusion apparently doesn't respect" is Anne Applebaum. From her wiki entry:[/quote]
This is a flat out dishonest description of my opinion of people on the list. That you almost immediately resort lying on subjects like this is a tell regarding what you think about your capacity to engage them.
[/quote]
Projection much? You're the one introducing the KKK as somehow benefitting from the letter and its signatories. Give me a damned break. You're the consummate 'bad faith' argue-er on this board. I'm rolling my eyes so hard right now my chair just flipped over, so thanks for that.
honorentheos wrote:
My Google of Singal turned up a few hits like an article in The Atlantic and on Reason on the subject of gender identity that I figured would be where you took issue.
But what isn't clear is why you view what he said to be abhorrent. You are asserting it. I want an example not an assertion.
I didn't say what he said was abhorrent. The exact quote is, "That you find the KKK abhorrent, but not, say, Jesse Singal is scrambling your ability to read a simple argument even the whole point of that construction is to pick a bad group that deserves its rights to be defended."
No where in this sentence do I call him abhorrent. I pulled his name out because some people certainly would describe him that way and could easily take offense at being compared to him. I am saying the fact that you find one abhorrent and not the other is scrambling your ability to see what the point of the analogy is. Do you find Singal abhorrent? No? Then it sounds like my statement that you find the KKK abhorrent and not Jesse Singal is literally true.
Schmo, you began your point saying the OP was pointless because of a reason.
No I didn't. Thank you for confirming my suspicion.
I essentially said the letter was well and good, except that it assumes good faith participants.
I disagreed with that reason. You said, Nope. So I went on the offensive to point out why the nope was wrong.
No I didn't. Thank you for confirming the second instance.
You said it was about values, not facts. My contention was that the major value we should care about is adherence to facts. If I take your line of reasoning, you're autocratically telling me my values are wrong. Why are you shutting me down? We can go round and round on this all day.
You say I'm ignoring you. What did I ignore when I was replying to your claim that freedom of expression was undermined by people not sharing the same views on issues?
Where did I ignore what you were saying?
Um... my "claim that freedom of expression was undermined by people not sharing the same views on issues?"
You don't even know what my point is. That would be three.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.