Douglas Murray letting rip about Starbucks is an absolute joy

I think this idea that you have to agree with every statement that anyone has ever made and that unless you do, their opinion is 'tainted' is not only absurd, but another way of controlling who is allowed to debate and whose opinions are deemed 'acceptable ' to be heard. The no platforming paradigm is deeply damaging.

Douglas Murray is superb on this issue. His scathing assessment of cookies to promote draconian medical intervention is absolutely on target. He also analyses possible motivations for corporate 'wokeness.' It's a cheap way of getting millennial points despite advantageous tax arrangements. Douglas Murray is an antidote to the trite woke memes which have colonised public discourse.

@Llyn I work on the basis that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Murray thinks feminists should acknowledge the natural differences between the sexes (we do actually, Douglas!). The potential ping back of our rights is precisely because of one of those innate differences between male and female: the apparent biological imperative of men as a class throughout the ages to control women.

I think it's arguable that many feminists (it's obviously not a block with only one opinion but I mean a fair number of "serious" feminists) only partially acknowledge this - they draw a very definite line around what is allowed to be seen as biologically rooted differences across the male/female classes, and that line is more ideological than empirical.

Agree about Murray's views on women AutumnRose1. I get the impression he just hasn't bothered to exercise his formidable critical thinking skills to full extent on the subject, only insofar as it fits his overall thesis for the book.

I feel like there are a lot of men out there who who almost dismiss the injustices and systematic oppression of women by men because they subconsciously dismiss it as: yeah but it's just the natural order of things innit.

If I recall the book correctly he was of the mind that we should have been piping down a bit about ongoing injustices because we in the West were 90% of the way to equality.

What that view fails to take into account is that the other 10% (or whatever) is still important and that, like a tightly stretched elastic band rather than a permanent engraving in stone, our rights could ping back to oblivion should we fail to guard them vigilantly - as we are seeing with the trans issue right now or increasingly violent porn and its effect on us.

Murray thinks feminists should acknowledge the natural differences between the sexes (we do actually, Douglas!). The potential ping back of our rights is precisely because of one of those innate differences between male and female: the apparent biological imperative of men as a class throughout the ages to control women.

I noticed that Murray refused Delingpole’s free badge! I like to think that wasn’t a purely sartorial decision

Realising how I'd completely misunderstood what the Brexit referendum was about, ie for a decisive number of people it wasn't about the EU, shook up my complacency enough that meant I didn't take in self-ID unthinkingly and as a result, here I am.

I struggle with Delingpole though.

Prodigal I completely failed to realise why some people voted for Trump. Knowing more about self ID has been a window into a lot of things.

It’s very recent, but the David Webb/Areva Martin radio exchange was a big penny dropping moment for me.
She’s a civil rights lawyer and cnn commentator and tried to accuse him, a radio host, of having ‘white privilege’ because he said his qualifications were more important than his skin colour...

but he’s black 🤷‍♀️

(And then she tried to blame her staff for not prepping her properly, rather than accepting that she had jumped to a conclusion based on her own beliefs and prejudices)

I’ve since heard David Webb describe this as ‘The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations’ and when you start looking for it, you can see it all over the left.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/01/15/cnn-analyst-called-out-fox-news-contributor-his-white-privilege-hes-black/%3foutputType=amp

m.youtube.com/watch?v=juQLifY4l_0

I generally think some healthy doubt about one's core beliefs can be healthy.

I remember having a major major penny drop one day over what was a typical conservative talking point with regard to social support. It was something I had utterly disagreed with, I didn't think it made any sense, and so it was probably disingenuous or an artefact of a sort of character problem.

And then I was looking at a situation where there was a particular problem within a real community I knew and had lived in, trying to figure out what had caused it, and I saw it in a way I hadn't before. In a clear and material way what the conservative talking point had said could happen had happened in that situation. And that this was actually something to be wary of in developing public policy, that would require very careful balancing and awareness.

Which also suddenly meant that maybe people who said such things weren't stupid or didn't have an agenda.

Part of my willingness to rethink how I approach sources not on "my side" stems from realising that I completely failed to understand why some people who I usually agree with voted pro Brexit when I thought it was a terrible idea. I'd still have voted to stay, but I understand better now why some people went the other way and have learned something about just assuming people will broadly agree on most issues.

this makes me wonder, god, is it me?!

Yes. Thank you @Llyn for reflecting on this

OP “ Both are weak on women. I have never heard either talk about porn, prostitution, DV, surrogacy, trafficking.....”

Well, you can talk about what you choose to talk about. They’re not obliged to discuss anything.

If you read Madness of Crowds, or watch this interview, you can see
Murray’s odd views on women. I don’t know what Doyle thinks.

Sorry, it’s very long and I can’t tell you where it is!

Douglas Murray talking about his book, The Madness of Crowds

The two most enlightening men on the left In 2020

1. Matthew Goodwin 2) Paul Embery

(Triggernometry has been described as extreme right wing, but they recently got cyber attacked by actual extreme right wingers, because they don’t want to interview extreme right wingers!)

Harris and Nawaz on Joe Rogan

Labour’s Woke War on Women - Spiked podcast

(I used to think Brendan O’Neill was on the right, turns out, he isn’t! That’ll teach me to believe everything I hear. Spiked actually hosts a range of writers and I still hate Toby Young)

And there concludes my whistle stop tour of re-examining right and left for the modern day.

I find I agree with Murray on a few things, but his views on women are bizarre.

However, I don’t want to get into that thing of “must agree with everything” or I think we lose balance and important voices.

I wanted to acknowledge my own feelings of discomfort, not to suggest that of the OP, or of people talking about GC views here, but to help me examine those feelings and understand them better

Thank you for answering, it’s good to get some insight, as I said I always find it to be very rigid thinking, but I often wonder whether it’s coming from a genuine ‘I don’t want to agree with this person place’ or if wonder what people will think if I’m seen to be agreeing with this person’

I think sometimes people can start to really doubt their core beliefs over certain things - I know I have.
It sort of opens the dam where you think ‘if I’m/they’re wrong about this, then what else am I/they wrong about’
It’s very illuminating

Thanks all. I will look up the Madness of Crowds.

I find Murray completely useless on anything related to women, and also find that unsurprising and note that there are plenty of men on the left who'd agree with the things that he says that make my eyes roll. I think the assumption that you'll agree with anyone on everything is inherently flawed, and that political tribalism can often be used against women (on the left the argument tends to be "we'll get to women's issues after the revolution, love", no idea what patronising shit women on the right hear from their male counterparts).

I would welcome some links to learn more about Murray, like Llyn I've just scanned his wiki really.
Something to balance the scales?!

I think differing views on certain topics is one thing, but I certainly won't be celebrating and amplifying the voices of people who I don't share many core values with, & Murray & Delingpole fall well into that category.

To me it risks polarisation & marginalisation of 'GC' views whereas for me they are a mainstream part of my left wing environmental socialist feminism.
It's not just you, Llyn, we are many, but once again women's rights have become a bone which extreme groups haggle over in attempts to prove a point.
I'm just going to keep on keeping on, with my boundaries and my morals firmly in place.

I see people using it as a stick to beat people with. ‘This person has abhorrent views on x. This is who you are aligning yourself with’ type shit.

Yes- I think that’s part of what makes me feel uncomfortable; knowing that if I were to be open about my views at work, that is how some of my colleagues would see me.

I wanted to acknowledge my own feelings of discomfort, not to suggest that of the OP, or of people talking about GC views here, but to help me examine those feelings and understand them better.

I expect whoever edits the wiki has picked that quote for their own agenda!

There is a really good Murray interview on YouTube (there are several but one particularly one stands out, I will fetch it in a sec).

Worth noting that Sam Harris, the famous neuroscientist and atheist gets condemned as right adjacent, simply due to his criticism of the Quoran, but listen to him in conversation with Maajid Nawaz and it’s clear he’s not a bigot or a hater.

Goosefoot is right, it’s really freeing when you discover you can listen to and read things from outside of the lefty approved sources. Sometimes they speak utter shit, but it engages your critical skills and challenges you to think deeper.

You see the same pattern with certain media outlets being assumed to be tainted, and not for our sort of people, so if whoever wants to control the narrative can keep the approved outlets from covering a story they can manipulate what the people on their side think has happened.