Douglas Murray letting rip about Starbucks is an absolute joy

Thank you. This is all giving me a lot to think about. Like I said, I haven’t heard of either of them. It wasn’t so much a matter of cherry picking a damning quote as scanning their Wikipedia pages and thinking wtf?!

assumption that if you broadly share someone's views on most issues you should share their views on everything is being used to manipulate people.
Yes, I think this is where my discomfort comes from.
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.

I find it very frustrating seeing people ‘fall’ for it I suppose

'should be taken aside...and then away' I love Douglas Murray

Llyn

I think that's a fair thing to wonder about.

As somene who has always had views that seem to cross standard political boundaries, something I have noticed is that it is often the case that people share more than you might think with you in terms of belief. The fact of seeing oneself as part of one sort of tribe can often mean that the other groups views are not as well understood as they might be, often there is a tendency to have a bit of a straw man version, or an extreme version, of their beliefs in mind.

I would also say that there are more than a few people who, having seen that those they consider to be on the other side are talking sense on this one issue, find when they become a bit more open minded, and start looking at the better commentators, that some of them are actually quite good and have some good ideas. Certainly that they are not all bad people with bad motives. (Douglas Murray is no idiot.) It can really be quite freeing in a way.

Murray has said of the EDL ‘they had a point.’

Murray hardly some fringe right winger, he is conservative sure, but he’s an editor on the Speccie and about to go on tour with the Titania McGrath writer, Andrew Doyle, who is firmly on the left. They both happen to be gay men, and Murray recently published a book called ‘The Madness of Crowds’, which talks about the tensions around sexual orientation, race, trans issues and the divide between men and women. His previous book, ‘The Strange Death of Europe’ and no doubt that’s where you’ve cherry picked that supposedly damning quote from. There are loads of videos of him talking about the content online, and it’s clear he isn’t motivated by Islamophobia.

I don’t know anything about the other dude, but if you dismiss everything without listening, how do you formulate effective arguments against the people with whom you disagree.

I’m sure none of these men are feminists, and I expect we’d all have a right old drunken barney at a party, but Murray has some interesting points, for a conservative (I shan’t call him a Tory, because I don’t believe he is very keen in the current version of the party).

Look, I think Tommy Robinson is an utter ball bag, but he was right about the existence of grooming gangs 🤷‍♀️

It's not you, and that assumption that if you broadly share someone's views on most issues you should share their views on everything is being used to manipulate people.

I think because sharing similar views with people on a range of issues such as social justice, feminism, the environment, parenting, whatever, often stems from a set of shared values. There might be some things we come at from a different angle or have different ideas about, but, in my experience, it’s unusual to have polar opposite views on most things and then have one thing we agree wholeheartedly about.

It makes me uncomfortable because when it comes to trans issues my views are seemingly at odds with most people around me. I have friends at work beginning to announce their pronouns in emails and arranging training sessions with Gendered Intelligence. Coming across things like this makes me wonder, god, is it me?!

them I feel deeply uncomfortable to find we share views about trans issues whilst disagreeing on literally every other topic

Seriously, why? I agree and disagree with a broad number of people on a broad range of topics. I’m sure even my polar opposite I could find at least one thing we agreed on.
This need for ‘political purity’ And ‘alignment of views’ makes me very uncomfortable, I find it to be such rigid and odd thinking

I wasn’t familiar with either of these men, and having googled them I feel deeply uncomfortable to find we share views about trans issues whilst disagreeing on literally every other topic. Delingpole is the editor of Breitbart London, and Murray has said of the EDL ‘they had a point.’