Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

[BovaryX]

There is an interesting article by Douglas Murray in the DM about the authoritarian, identity politics which have alienated Labour voters and triggered a paradigm shift in the political landscape. It covers some of the themes which Lang GC Pencils and others have been discussing in light of election result.

It is a divide between people who have real-world concerns and those focused on niche and barely significant ones...How, you might ask, have we reached such a state? There is a clue in the Labour Party’s dysfunctional reaction to its catastrophic defeat on Thursday

It's interesting that nonetheless JK's ratio is okay - she has something like 140,000 likes for the tweet, even on twitter which is self-selectingly woke.

I also think she went into it knowing exactly the reaction she would get (and hopefully is employing a PA/image management consultant to deal with the fall out rather than reading it herself).

Which of course doesn't stop the responses being utterly horrible, but I suspect they will be giving a lot of people pause for thought: "Hang on - 'live your best life, but biology is real' is transphobic now? A polite, compassionate, thoughtful but reality-based tweet provokes this sort of unhinged raging response? WTAF?"

Arnold thank you.

but I suspect they will be giving a lot of people pause for thought: "Hang on - 'live your best life, but biology is real' is transphobic now? A polite, compassionate, thoughtful but reality-based tweet provokes this sort of unhinged raging response? WTAF?”

I took a look at some of the Twitter. The spin is it’s hate speech masquerading as innocuous concern. As you say, this interpretation is indicative of a determination to interpret any challenge as hate speech. It will highlight the intolerance and authoritarian nature of this lobby

re JK Rowling, someone has mentioned microchimera entering via the placenta and containing different chromosomes....

I can't help but think that a lot of this language policing is a from of 'anywhere' etiquette.

Just as you won't be accepted into upper class society if you don't know the correct way to use a fish knife, or the correct form of address for a dowager duchess, you can't be accepted into 'anywhere' society unless you learn all these abstruse and ever changing rules about which phrases are currently regarded as problematic. And if you don't understand or aren't willing to go along with the rules than you're a bigot and therefore persona non grata.

It's a great way to shut the 'unelightened' people out of the discourse, isn't it?

I think this is spot on. Annoyingly many of the people who are keen to enforce this etiquette and show off their detailed knowledge of it have no interaction with or care for the people they try so hard to avoid upsetting.

Honestly I tend to assume good faith until I have firm evidence otherwise.

So do I, but I'm not sure how possible that is if the conversation is on social media - there's always someone to take offence on behalf of.

re JK Rowling, someone has mentioned microchimera entering via the placenta and containing different chromosomes...

That's the same argument incels make. A study was done on fruit flies and they extrapolated it to mean a woman with numerous male sexual partners will have children with the DNA of all her previous lovers. (This is the level of discourse they get to.) Funny to see where this shit argument has migrated to.

I'm getting serious Double Plus Ungood vibes from your post Goosefoot.

I really don't mean this rudely, but so what? What difference does it make what vibe you get? Maybe that says something about you rather than me.

What's the issue you have specifically? That I think the financial sector is seriously problematic, and those who profit from it and support it are benefiting from something exploitative? And it's important to talk about that? That I am not happy with allowing phrases and ideas, often fairly general ones, become taboo statements? Reading British political philosophy?

I'll add to all of that that I don't think that kind of climate is at all helpful to Jews or black Americans or any other marginalised group, it's only helpful who individuals who are looking to associate themselves with marginalised groups so they can avoid criticism of their own activities.

I'd also say, if people want to use code words for ideology that won't be recognised by most, they will. And since they will be unrecognised by those who aren't meant to know, people won't generally know about it.

FWIW though I don't think it was wrong to point out that kith and kin might have specific connotations for some, since we were deliberately talking about some sort of phrase that wouldn't have those connotations.

Maybe it goes to show though that people who want to say those things, like the rest of us, are limited to the language we have. So they use it in a way that reflects their beliefs.

I can't help but think that a lot of this language policing is a from of 'anywhere' etiquette.

Oh it's definitely a new form of etiquette, though I'd call it 'woke' etiquette myself.

A lot of people refer to etiquette and manners as the same thing, there's a thread on AIBU right now about holding cutlery the 'wrong' way round for example where people are using the terms interchangeably.

I don't think that's the case at all. I've always though manners and etiquette are complete opposites. Manners being about making people feel comfortable and welcome, etiquette about excluding them on the basis of petty and ever changing 'rules' that only the select, in the know, few are aware of.

I don't think that's the case at all. I've always though manners and etiquette are complete opposites. Manners being about making people feel comfortable and welcome, etiquette about excluding them on the basis of petty and ever changing 'rules' that only the select, in the know, few are aware of.

Excellent way of putting it.

I absolutely agree with that definition of manners. The Queen is reputedly very good at making people feel comfortable and welcome.

Goosefoot I'm agreeing with you. Just making a 1984 joke, referencing the restrictions on permissible language leading to restrictions on what can even be thought about, etc, let alone articulated. In the book is a it's an actual strategy to eliminate dissent.
Your post brought it to mind.

I would assume the north London metropolitan elite was Kate Moss and her pals or something. Or maybe champagne socialists.

Goosefoot I'm agreeing with you. Just making a 1984 joke, referencing the restrictions on permissible language leading to restrictions on what can even be thought about, etc, let alone articulated. In the book is a it's an actual strategy to eliminate dissent. Your post brought it to mind.

Go, wow, I feel dumb! Sorry!

*Oh

No dont! I'm enjoying your posts certainly not dumb!

Imnobody4 and Goosefoot, I agree with you and am similarly uncomfortable about the way it becomes hard to have serious, honest discussions about important topics, when fragments of the ideas and language we need for the discussion have been pressed into service elsewhere as handy tropes to propagate an ideology we don't wish to, eg antisemitism, racism.

I'd like to say there's a thin line between using terms for honest discussion, and using them to eg propagate racism, but unfortunately I actually think there isn't so much a line as an overlap.

It's entirely possible to be having an honest discussion and also be inadvertently furthering a nasty trope (good eg of this recently with the criticism of George Soros, out of all billionaires, some of which may well be reasonable but which gets such good traction because it's hitched to an antisemitic conspiracy theory).

I honestly don't know what to do about this. I want to be able to discuss important issues.

I'd actually prefer to do the careful hedging around that Goosefoot describes, than be caught in the dichotomy where I either don't discuss a subject at all, or I unwillingly propagate an ideology I abhor.

Manners being about making people feel comfortable and welcome, etiquette about excluding them on the basis of petty and ever changing 'rules' that only the select, in the know, few are aware of.

Yes, absolutely. You generally don't even notice if someone has good manners, as they are all about making sure other people are feeling comfortable, not about using the right fork or winning some arcane social one-upmanship.

There are many historical events where conventional terms and phrases have been used as metaphors. Just because you might know a lot about the history of a former African colony, I don't think it justifies colonising a term to always have the baggage of that historical event.

I mean, if you have a Polish cleaner, are you going to avoid asking her to clean the Living Room? Are you going to call it the Sitting Room instead to avoid the Nazi connotations?

You're missing the point, terfsandwich.

PP were discussing bringing back into common usage the (otherwise excellent) term "kith and kin", because they thought they could use it as a good, neutral term to discuss community cohesion while avoiding "national identity baggage."

I am saying that I would expect future use of that term, in the particular context they were describing, to almost immediately become heavily loaded with exactly the baggage they wish to avoid.

I cite as evidence for this one extended example (there may well be others) when it has been loaded with such baggage.

If it were revived and used as a term to discuss community cohesion, I would expect it to spontaneously re-acquire that loading (because, humans). I would also expect it to be much quicker at re-acquiring that loading, or to have never lost it, among people who remember the previous example.

It's not about "offending people because of the past". It's that I think this otherwise poetic term which in many ways I find delightful, is doomed to become a euphemism for in-groups (vs out-groups) with nasty racial edges in all directions, if used like a catchphrase in discussions of communities.

You might disagree with me that this would happen!

Also, surely intention and context count for something when describing a word/term/concept as 'racist' or 'offensive'..? For example, one black person may call another a 'nig*er', without accusation of racism, whilst I certainly couldn't (and wouldn't want to), and can't even write it out without asterisks (and I'm now fearful that I have used the 'wrong' descriptive term in this post - I genuinely hope I have not caused offence!).

Or the JKRowling thread, as another example: a woman who accidentally 'mis-gendered' someone, now being hounded out of her job and eviscerated on social media. Intention is important, and as PPs have said, surely we can/should give the other the benefit of the doubt until/unless there is evidence to the contrary to say that we shouldn't?

I mean, if you have a Polish cleaner, are you going to avoid asking her to clean the Living Room? Are you going to call it the Sitting Room instead to avoid the Nazi connotations?
I'm pretty sure living room is Wohnzimmer not Lebensraum.

This is a bit ironic. Doesn't Murray discuss in his book the way the whole concept of political correctness has come about and how it serves identity politics?

Antibes

Sort of. Have you read them?

Getting back to language, I think we all have the choice about whether to be offended or to give someone the benefit of the doubt.
Not saying the latter is better necessarily, there are some snide people who can put a lot of spite into "so, where are you FROM?".
But the most predictable outcome of making certain conversations too difficult to have is that people just won't have them.

I'd be interested to know if people are now actually more segregated than before, with online echo chambers and blocklists and cancelling.
I remember all the long conversations I've had with straight people, all those awkwardly worded questions fielded. I didn't mind, if I liked the person I'd talk to them. Would anyone ask a trans person the same kind of daft questions they asked me?
I doubt it. People just think "minefield" and avoid.