Against Hate, You Say
Further to this unedifying exchange, more mouthings of the woke:
Some of us identify as queer, non-binary, asexual, femme, men, POC, etc. We are your neighbours, we are your co-workers, we are concerned citizens who feel that one does not need to be part of an organisation or pre-existing group to speak up and oppose oppression wherever it rears its ugly head.
So says Humans Against Hate, a group of anonymous Portland activists who rail against the “oppression” of ideas being discussed, and whose implied definition of neighbourliness is, shall we say, intriguing.
You see, if Jordan Peterson is permitted to speak to people who wish to hear him and wish to ask him questions, then the venue being hired will be assailed by a mob of ill-informed Mao-lings, for whom Peterson’s arguments exist only as caricature, and who promise to “disrupt” not only the event in question, thereby spoiling the evening of roughly 3,000 people about whom the Mao-lings know nothing, but also other, unrelated events, involving unrelated people, just because they can. “We will not stand for bigots coming to our city,” say these self-imagined warriors, these champions of the downtrodden.
Because harassing random people and ruining their evenings, while exulting in the thrill of mob coercion and intimations of thuggery, is what people who aren’t full of hate do, apparently.
What if I committed a microaggression but no one noticed?
I believe the new etiquette is to “speak out” with a confession and pledge never-waning self-surveillance and total commitment to inclusion and equality, except for those who disagree.
“without knowing how to tell male from female”
A US Forestry Service biologist told me that they are now hiring mostly “urban kids” to fill vacancies.
For these newly minted civil service “wildlife biologists” being unable to distinguish male from female is a positive job qualification.
All these people are calling Dr. Peterson “conservative,” “right-wing,” and “alt-right.” I believe they are completely wrong. Peterson mostly agrees with the left creep of society. It is merely the egregious abuses that he objects to.
I see the author is happy to insist on an allegedly vast and meaningful distinction between (a) being jailed for not paying a fine incurred for not wishing to be compelled to use absurd invented pronouns and thereby lie about what one sees, and (b) being jailed for not wishing to be compelled to use absurd invented pronouns and thereby lie about what one sees.
It’s so naughty of course for people to use victimhood to strengthen their arguments.
It’s so naughty of course for people to use victimhood to strengthen their arguments.
The rules of the game, such as they can be determined, change frequently and without warning, and are almost always non-reciprocal.
All these people are calling Dr. Peterson “conservative,” “right-wing,” and “alt-right.”
All part of the “othering” of him. At least they haven’t called him a Nazi.
Yet.
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10948
Shortly after the event, Dr. Joelle Ruby Ryan gleefully tweeted that “we were able to disrupt this man’s hate speech as much as possible,” declaring that “‘civil discourse’ with him is impossible.”
If you’ve never heard Dave Rubin talk on YouTube, you should know that he is one of the most thoughtful, polite, and intelligent people anywhere…
So non-conformist.
I remember a bumper sticker from way back: You Non-Conformists Are All Alike. If it’s not still for sale these days, it should be.
“Civil discourse” means that Dr. Joelle Ruby Ryan gets to make unfounded, wild assertions and accusations and no one else is allowed to object or ask questions.
Just a guess.
The pedestal they’ve placed themselves upon is so fragile, any minor disturbance could be catastrophic. They simply can’t take any chances.
There’s also an unspoken benefit of such ludicrous exaggeration. First, the Mao-lings frame the event as some existential threat to their delicate selves. This excuses their own hysteria and vindictiveness, in the guise of retaliation, and the urge to exert power over others while feigning victimhood. Then, given this allegedly existential threat, in which words are somehow “violence,” they can escalate their ‘protest’ in lots of lively physical ways and beyond the event in question, to include thousands of random people and other, entirely unrelated events.
Because making sweeping, grandiose threats and disrupting the evenings of strangers on a seemingly random basis, and harassing random people with mob behaviour, and then doing it again, and again, is actually quite satisfying. If, that is, you’re inclined to something approaching sociopathy.
As so often, Peterson himself is much less interesting than the reactions to him. To borrow a phrase, he acts as a kind of plaque discloser.
I remember a bumper sticker from way back: You Non-Conformists Are All Alike.
I used to Walter Mitty the idea of starting a bumper sticker business. One was to be “Be different, be normal”. A friend of mine latched onto that one and would bring it up when we would be discussing teh crazy. We’ve had a falling out because he thinks I’m a white supremecist. He recently married off his daughter in what appears to have been a Game of Thrones themed wedding. There is no hope.
Calling Marxism, a respectable political and philosophical tradition, “murderous” conflates it with the perversion of those ideas in Stalinist Russia and elsewhere where they were.
The word ‘elsewhere’ is doing an awful lot of lifting there.
And that other word, respectable.
This.
This.
Noted from your link:
Shot:
Chaser:
Why, it is almost as if the leftists are not entirely coherent on this point.
To quote Marx,
Why, it is almost as if the leftists are not entirely coherent on this point.
It’s rather like eavesdropping on the pronouncements of a cult member. Someone who’s internalised, and then regurgitates, a bizarre conspiracy theory. She’s so presumptuous, so adamant, so incurious. And these eerily uniform creatures are churned out by the thousands every year.
He recently married off his daughter in what appears to have been a Game of Thrones themed wedding. There is no hope.
Good Lord, none of the weddings in that show went off without at least one, and occasionally several, gruesome deaths. Not exactly what I’d’ve chosen, but to each their own.
Have you heard from your friend since the wedding by the way? It went off without any unexpected expirations I hope?
Not exactly what I’d’ve chosen, but to each their own.
At the reception following his wedding, during the first dance with his new wife, my brother-in-law arranged for the DJ to play U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
This.
Further to that, this:
Who. They. Are.
Have you heard from your friend since the wedding by the way? It went off without any unexpected expirations I hope?
Well, because I frequent “white supremacists web sites” (ahem) he is, for the second time in five years…this time I think it’s permanent…not talking to me/unfriended me. This was a friend of over 25-30 years. I only heard about his daughter’s wedding through a mutual friend. And I’m guessing on the Game of Thrones thing but judging from the pictures shown to me, there was a lot of large-animal-fur clothing. Might have just been a cave-man theme?
my brother-in-law…
OK, you can’t leave us hanging here. You sister or your better half’s sister? Or, umm, something else? Inquiring minds and all that…
At the reception following his wedding, during the first dance with his new wife, my brother-in-law arranged for the DJ to play U2’s I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
Heh. Top trolling.
Your sister or your better half’s sister?
The Other Half’s brother.
Top trolling.
And they’re still married, before you ask.
As so often, Peterson himself is much less interesting than the reactions to him.
As the ersatz-Orwell quote suggests, telling simple truths in a time of universal deceit can be revolutionary. David French was recently puzzled by the same disproportionate hostility to what is, or should be, a very ordinary message.
It merely goes to show, once again, that an organization dedicated to a mission will invent new rationales or new threats in order to continue the mission rather than voluntarily dissolve. If you’ve made a rewarding career out of finding racists, sexists and homophobes lurking in every shadow, you’re never going to reach a point where you say, “Well, I guess we’ve taken care of the worst of them; time to find something more constructive to do now.” You’ll use smoke, mirrors, jazz hands, and Halloween soundtracks to turn a mild-mannered psychology professor into the epitome of evil. The devil’s snares are everywhere, even under the most anodyne disguises.
And they’re still married, before you ask.
Awwww. (That’s the sweet kind of “Awwww” by the way – the one made when looking at, for example, a cute kitten, not the “Awwww” made when you’re disappointed at something).
As so often, Peterson himself is much less interesting than the reactions to him.
By the way, I don’t mean that I find Peterson dull. He can be very entertaining. As with his comments on erotica for women. It’s more that his political views and opinions on life in general don’t, for the most part, strike me as particularly outlandish or deserving of outrage. Cultivating stoicism, gratitude and self-possession, and a sense of proportion, for instance, are fairly prosaic values, albeit seemingly out of fashion.
The reactions to him, however – and to him daring to draw attention to Things One Isn’t Supposed To Notice – are more striking, and convoluted, and often pathological. For example, during his exchange with Cathy Newman, it was Newman’s fashionable contortions that caught my eye, and her apparent inability to process certain facts and fairly obvious lines of thought. Ditto Michael Dyson, whose grip on reality, and ability to give anything approaching an honest answer, were, at best, intermittent.
Again, a plaque discloser.
“Two circles and a triangle!”
My parents have been married for over fifty years. Dad requested, but was vetoed by the vicar, for the hymn “fight the good fight” to be played as they walked up the aisle.
Wedding trolling has an ancient history.
fight the good fight
Heh.
Related. Or, “The Worthies Have Spoken.”
I remember a bumper sticker from way back: You Non-Conformists Are All Alike.
A friend of mine has a story of when he was living in Washington D.C. and had gotten caught being the person to send into and sort out convoluted event issues. In this instance a collection of very loud and vehement We Are Anarchists!!!!! had camped out apparently right in front of the White House, and whatever else was going on that day, my friend was sent in to see that everything could be kept nice and peaceful, or at least not escalate past mere mumbling and posturing.
He says that he didn’t actually blurt it out, but when he arrived at the location, his immediate thought was Ooooh, let’s Seee. Totally identical t-shirts, totally identical belts, totally identical pants that are totally identically tucked into totally identical boots, why, you must be the anarchists!!!
To quote Marx,
I don’t know what they have to say . . . .
Also works with the music.
There’s also an unspoken benefit of such ludicrous exaggeration. First, the Mao-lings frame the event as some existential threat to their delicate selves. This excuses their own hysteria and vindictiveness, in the guise of retaliation, and the urge to exert power over others while feigning victimhood. Then, given this allegedly existential threat, in which words are somehow “violence,” they can escalate their ‘protest’ in lots of lively physical ways and beyond the event in question, to include thousands of random people and other, entirely unrelated events.
And, of course, there is also the right wing doing the same over on the other side. Over on the right wing we are informed that Trump Is Under Spiritual Attack From Luciferian ‘Advanced Beings’ Who Control The World and told of The Luciferian Elite And The Destruction Of America. From the exact same sort of right wing mindset and merely a change of inspiring text for the local version of Dungeons And Deacons, we are told about Islamic Iran’s Loud and Clear Message to Great Satan. We are asked Would Evangelicals Elect Lucifer?
Happily, the assorted squawking from the left wing and right wing extremes can remain ineffectual. Surreally annoying if it gets loud or energetic enough, but given the complete lack of reality, quite ineffectual.
As the quite established alternative to both left and right, being the conservatives that are flanked by the two will remain and always has the benefit of just being what just is . . .
Heh.
Today’s words are competitive race-baiting.
It occurs to me that when your attempt to find hidden racism, and thereby assert your own status, entails demanding that a white woman publicly prove that she’s the mother of her own daughter, who happens to be black, and accusing said mother of “white privilege,” and disdaining anyone who notes your presumption as obviously being a Trump supporter, and therefore racist, then you may want to ponder where your life went off the rails and crashed into a ditch.
Via Damian.
https://audioboom.com/posts/6047678-tattoo-john-finnemore
Surreally annoying if it gets loud or energetic enough, but given the complete lack of reality, quite ineffectual.
Funny that you would write such a thing.
“We enable everyday white supremacy to take root by abdicating nice and well-intentioned white people of their responsibility to deal with the dangerous messages they believe about people of color…”
I thought we did it by raising our kids to be happy and productive members of their communities, instead of sullen self-destructive dependents of the state. Silly me!
Funny that you would write such a thing.
Do tell. Any example?
No, frantically denying something when reality just is doesn’t count, that’s what the Mao-lings and their right wing counterparts do.
We’re looking for an actual example.
@Hal, how effectual do you believe your rantings here to be in convincing others to your way to thinking?
Richard, perhaps a better question is what Hal actually believes to be the definition of “conservative.”
One time (well, more than once), it’s a link to a long screed at The Curia, in the course of which a “conservative” is defined as someone who doesn’t think things have to be banned “for your good” (as contrasted with the “right wing” and “left wing,” both of whom want to do so, albeit for different reasons). How that definition yields that Nancy Pelosi or Emma Gonzalez, to take two recent examples in comment threads, are “conservative” – I’m not real sure.
Another time, it’s that a “conservative” is anyone not at either of the extremes. Well, of course, all you have to do then is define one or both of the extremes as something off the charts – say, for example, that one extreme is that your political opponents should not only be killed but should be eaten – and presto, almost anyone is “mainstream” and “conservative.”
@Hal, how effectual do . . . . is “mainstream” and “conservative.”
Oh, please, really . . .
You have the declarative skills and efficacy of an utterly stock variety zampolit or struggle session ringleader—Albeit you may take that as a compliment.
If there’s any issue, it’s not in any “convincing”, or even trying to, given that the closest to there being any issue is utterly the political equivalent of noting that, Why Yes, the direct route between San Francisco and India just is straight over the north pole. You are perfectly free to demand the equivalent of all of us sharing a belief in only going to the east or west, and the math is still going to continue to fail you.
I haven’t invented a thing, I’ve only been taking notes on what people just do politically, and have been doing, and will keep doing.
If you want to fantasize that there is only the right wing OR the left wing, you really are going to have to also explain away, oh, Blue Dog Democrats and Main Street Partnership and The New Democrat Coalition and The Tuesday Group—And that cluster of conservatives is only the handiest example that comes to mind. According to the dogmatic fantasy doctrine of only right/left, absolutely none of those groups have ever existed or will exist . . . except that not only do they exist, their existing has nothing to do with me . . .
Oh, and as far as that floundering bit of yours of . . .a “conservative” is defined as . . . is anyone not at either of the extremes. Well. . . that mental blaring noise you were hearing as you typed was indeed your realization of Fail, Fail, Fail, complete and utter fail . . . And you even tried to pull that off with something that anyone on the internet can assess in person, without having to rely on you or blindly follow your rather open distortions . . .
Soooo, either you actually have zero idea of how political reality and related commentary is—and you therefore have some reading to do—Or, your intent is to be the return of Minnow. Either way, David’s following thread has very concisely summarized you: How Dare You Not Perform Our Fashionable Contortions.
And as I’ve reminded over there;
Indeed.
Fascinating. So Hal, apparently you’re under the impression that all of your critics are the same person, thus “You have the declarative skills” to something that Richard said, and straight from there to “that floundering bit of yours” to me. Are you that divorced from reality?
I notice, too, that despite the “mental blaring noise” of “Fail, Fail, Fail” from you, you haven’t found it appropriate to address my point about your earlier definitions of Nancy Pelosi et al as “conservatives.”
So one must conclude that it’s not just “the right wing” and “the left wing” that are at the extremes, but also “liberal” and “conservative,” at least your type of “conservative.” Meanwhile, many of us are going about the business of making things work, rather than talking and writing endlessly.
. . . my point about your earlier definitions of Nancy Pelosi et al as “conservatives.”
Weellll, Let’s do have a look at Pelosi, shall we?
The right wingers are ticked off because of her, the left wingers are ticked off ’cause of her, and therefore, between the right wing and the left wing, that leaves her being . . . what now?
—and then for anyone else who you may have on a spectrum placement shopping list, yes, at this point you know how to apply the same math.
Meanwhile, many of us are going about the business of making things work, rather than talking and writing endlessly.
Why, yes, we are aren’t we.
A wise man once pointed out, back in the day when all transport was animal-powered:
Walk down the street. You see people walking on the left; you see people walking on the right. Who walks in the middle? Horses.
So no, I’m not terribly impressed with someone who is being attacked from both sides, and that somehow this makes them “conservative.” It may be simply that they’re a horse, or the rear end thereof.
Weellll, Let’s do have a look at Pelosi, shall we?
OK, Hal, now you are either just trolling, or lost what little you had to begin with.
Calling Pelosi “conservative” because she is one millimeter to the right of the rest of the California extreme left lunatic fringe means you have now anointed yourself the resident Carrollite Humpty Dumpty, no matter how much you link to the logorrheic flight of ideas hot mess “The Curia”.
From now on the best course of action, and one I would recommend to everyone else, upon seeing one of your posts is to just smile, pat you on your head, and drive on. If, and that is a big if, at anytime in the future I ever want your opinion, I’ll be sure to give it to you.
Farnsworth, I don’t know that I’d call it trolling. Seems to me more wishful thinking than anything else.
Let’s stipulate that Hal is conservative, or at least aspires to be so. Consider, though: he lives in one of the most left-wing states of the Union, in one of its most left-wing areas, and is represented in the U.S. Senate by San Fran Nan, one of the most left-wing denizens of that area. What’s a fellow to do, then, but deal with that dichotomy by constructing a world in which said senator is actually a fellow conservative? Not really all that different than the goings-on chronicled on this very site, where pasty-white cosseted rich kids reimagine themselves as poor oppressed blacks heroically fighting dictatorship, men “identify” as women and women as men, both as domestic animals, etc.
Alex,
You are far more generous than I. He has also labeled Bernie Sanders, Obama, and Clinton as “conservative”, so I really don’t think his poor choice of residence and having to reconcile suffering the foolishness of Nan is the real issue. As has been pointed out by many others, his words mean what he wants them to mean, regardless of what they actually mean, and not just on political subjects.
The options then are a) trolling, b) contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, c) just plain lost in the sauce, d) any combination of, or all of the above.
Regardless, as I said, smile politely, and march on past.
A wise man once pointed out . . .
. . . regarding transportation.
And we’re not discussing transportation, are we?
Hal, the various posts here about Laurie Penny and her methods of “argument” – one of them being, as you just did, to refer back to something you wrote as though it were a self-evident truth – are meant to be minatory, not something for you to be emulating.
. . . to refer back to something you wrote as though it were a self-evident truth – are meant to be minatory, not something for you to be emulating. . . .
Ahhhhhsoooo . . . Got it.
So you are stating that the process David uses quite recurringly and on many occasions is utterly and absolutely wrong.
Well then.
Clearly you need to take this issue up with David, so that you can properly entrench in him the benefit of your inherently superior and intrinsic understanding.
And then after that, once the two of you have straightened that out, do feel free to then report to me the results of your discussions . . . . . .
Oh, and, if you had actually read any of David’s posts about Laurie, he keeps pointing out patterns of intermittent relationship with reality, her ongoing struggles with logic . . . rather than . . . taking notes on what people just do politically, and have been doing, and will keep doing.
No refunds. Credit note only.
Hal, do you really not see the difference between referring back to previous posts and their links _as showing that someone said or did such-and-such_, versus using one’s own previous opinions _as a mic drop_ that should end all discussion? “We’re not discussing transportation, are we” is not an argument. “No refunds. Credit note only” is not an argument. “Fail, fail, fail” is not an argument. Nothing in all of the goalpost-shifting, irrelevant links, and other simulacra of debate here is an argument.