The “Woke Left” being called out on their hypocrisy

I'm grudgingly impressed by an attempt at a smear that harks back so far, the smearer has to explain a publication's former names/editor's career history.

25 years ago is so far back, that there will be MNers on this board who were still learning to read at that point. Or even not yet born.

Myself, I had learnt to read by 1997, but nothing as lofty as Living Marxism. I think Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence was my preferred fare.

Don't refute the arguments, refute the source

Well this has always been the case. On here and GC arguments, right down to posting a Daily Fail link. "what? DM post? Oh Jesus she reads the DM, oh I feel sorry for you and your kids' Its exactly the same as what going on in this thread.

I am on the bare bones of not giving a shit about any one who high lights this issue. Thats why the Tories are scooping up ex labour voters. These are the clever ones who can see which direction this is starting to go and are placing themselves on the 'right side'.

I am ok with that.

Its a bloody great article though

In house Spiked articles are all the same; it's all how x policy favoured by the woke left is actually damaging to the working classes , there is a spiked bot on twitter I think. But like a stopped clock, they sometimes get it very right. I hate the fact that they seem to be the only places that publish people like Jo bartosh and Julie blindel.

Thanks for bringing this article to my attention, I read it and thought it was very on point. Blistering. I wish the Guardian could behave like adults and engage in some self reflection! They're such hypocrites. That says, I've been dismayed by the media in general lately. Scare mongering, manufacturing a fuel crisis where there is none then laughing at Joe Public queuing for fuel to get to work.

Thank you PurgatoryOfPotholes, that explanation was excellent and very apropos

I agree with him on this. And I love how he doesn’t hold back about the Guardian, Little Owen and Keir Starmer

I have no idea how founded his criticisms are. They may indeed be ableist! But 'ableism' simply can't be allowed to become a new 'stop the conversation now' shibboleth.

I've noticed this one creeping in more and more. For a few months it was antisemitism but they seem to have moved on.

God, it's true. They post memes of utter banalities at each other, especially quotes vaguely related to fitness, signed off with Socrates or Plato at the end, and kid themselves it makes them part of the intellectual elite.

Nah, it's only an intellectual class-marker if you can read Socrates or Marcus Aurelius in the original languages and translate it yourself. If you can't, you might as well quote any English philosopher on the internet.

Duck did it better

me & the Ancient Greeks like this 🤞 I tell you

Did you read the Donna Zuckerberg book? Interview.

Donna Zuckerberg: ‘Social media has elevated misogyny to new levels of violence’

When the academic, sister of Mark Zuckerberg, began exploring online antifeminism, she discovered far-right men’s groups were using classical antiquity to support their views

“So, there are online communities that exist under the umbrella of what we know as the Red Pill, which are men connected by common resentments against women, immigrants, people of colour,” she explains. “What I was surprised to find was the extent to which they are using ancient Greek and Roman figures and texts to prop up an ideal of white masculinity.”

www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/11/donna-zuckerberg-social-media-misoyny-violence-classical-antiquity-not-all-dead-white-men

Fab, ta Pots.

They really should teach rhetoric in schools.

Phew, stinks of purity spirals in here!

.. anyway ..

Overall a good article! The Guardian in particular has not had enough censure for the way they handled the WiSpa incident so I enjoyed reading that.

2319 Every time you see someone use a rhetorical technique that doesn't seem quite fair, you are probably experiencing common feeling with an angry Greek philosopher over 2000 years ago.

Thanks Purgatory I do love finding out that these things have names!

Ahem.

extract from wikipedia

Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a type of informal fallacy where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. Poisoning the well can be a special case of argumentum ad hominem, and the term was first used with this sense by John Henry Newman in his work Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864).[1] The etymology of the phrase lies in well poisoning, an ancient wartime practice of pouring poison into sources of fresh water before an invading army, to diminish the invading army's strength.
Structure

Poisoning the well can take the form of an (explicit or implied) argument, and is considered by some philosophers an informal fallacy.[1]

A poisoned-well "argument" has the following form:

1. Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented by another. (e.g. "Before you listen to my opponent, may I remind you that he has been in jail")
2. Therefore, the claims made by person A will be false.[2]

Poisoned-well arguments are sometimes used with preemptive invocations of the association fallacy. In this pattern, an unfavorable attribute is ascribed to any future opponents, in an attempt to discourage debate. (For example, "That's my stance on funding the public education system, and anyone who disagrees with me hates children.") Any person who steps forward to dispute the claim will then risk applying the tag to him or herself in the process. This is a false dilemma: not all future opponents necessarily have the unfavorable attribute. (For example, not everyone who has a different opinion on funding the public education system necessarily hates children.)

I do wonder how some people cope when they realise that Donald Trump, Joseph Stalin and they probably all agree the sky is blue. If they agree on one thing they must surely agree with everything after all....

Absolutely excellent article.

Ableism is very much a moving target. Yes, it does really exist and can have genuine negative impacts - but it's also increasingly being very deliberately weaponised as an ideological tool. Just saying that someone or something is ableist isn't actually enough. There are very, very valid reasons to critique the online 'chronic illness' communities - they have their upsides but they also do a huge amount of damage.

I have no idea how founded his criticisms are. They may indeed be ableist! But 'ableism' simply can't be allowed to become a new 'stop the conversation now' shibboleth.

I know self-identification is all the rage, but it is a bit much to ‘identify as’ a crusader against misogyny when you have contributed, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to a new culture of misogyny. One in which women are monstered, censored and sometimes even sacked merely for talking about problematic male behaviour. One in which you can be branded scum and a bigot for arguing that women should have their own spaces in which no biological male is allowed to enter. One in which women are called hags and bitches and subjected to sexual threats by armies of faceless Twitter crazies simply for suggesting that some dubious men will exploit trans loopholes in order to get close to women.

What an absolutely brilliant article.

I used to subscribe to Spiked, but I found that there wasn't quite enough variation in the writing styles. So I switched to Unherd.

I don't know about Spikes alleged ableism. I guess it must be this article?

How woke culture hurts disable people

but for sure, when O'Neil is on form, he hits the target unerringly;

You cannot casually shift, in mere weeks, from sending your hacks to call into question an allegation of indecent exposure to demanding on your front page that society take the problem of indecent exposure more seriously. You can’t essentially excuse an act of misogyny one month and then bang the drum about the scourge of misogyny the next. And this doesn’t just go for the Guardian – numerous activists and commentators on the woke wing of the culture war are now posing as the defenders of women from misogyny, despite having spent the past few years berating women for talking about misogyny.

I agree. It's bizarre.

Frankly I can't help feel it's the latest stick to beat GC Fems with.

Don't refute the arguments, refute the source.

Ideally, go further and dispute its credibility and thus that of anyone agreeing with it - even when the topics at hand are unrelated.

Flip that on its head wrt to many of the very unsavoury characters who are ardent TRA's or indeed the Guardian and it's rank misogyny as highlighted in this article and suddenly the source is far less important than the message - funny that....

I’m sure she can simplify it for you if you want

tbh, Rufus , as a matter of interest I put it through one of the online readability checkers and it came out as suitable to a 'reading age' of a 15-17 year-old. And, as I'm not familiar with the lived history of people in 1800s…

I've seen tone policing before but TJWIT's faux knowledge of history applied to writing styles is new to me.

I thought the argument was GC women align themselves with the far right. But this article should be dismissed because it is from... the left?

It's absolutely clear that GC women must not have opinions or pockets. If GC have opinions and they overlap with a political perspective of any sort that that is helpful as it's an extra form of smears, criticism or even attack. It's never to be considered seriously or critiqued on its own merits.

I think that's how it goes.

I'm confused. I thought the argument was GC women align themselves with the far right. But this article should be dismissed because it is from... the left?