Triggernometry Day the Delusions Died

[RethinkingLife]

It's in the context of the conflict in Middle East but it has wider key questions about philosophical perspectives on whether we can legislate or social policy our way out of conflicts or can only manage them.

I keep thinking about the political and philosophical perspectives. I've always hoped that conflict can be remediated away. I've often feared it can only be managed for limited periods of time over history and that Sowell is right, "There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs".

I'm interested in this in the context of women's rights and living in a tolerant, pluralistic society despite inflammatory rhetoric from activists decrying a society in which people's values and human/civil rights are recognised as values and rights in a way that they aren't in many other countries.

I'm apprehensive about the increased likelihood of a desperate dystopia in which women will continue to be eradicated as a sex class and yet will mysteriously be allocated under-recognised caring responsibilities and lower pay.

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I am told that in American it’s often said that the right think the left are stupid but the left think that the right are evil.

I don’t know if many people really say that over there or not but it rings true based on what I hear in this country.

In this country I often hear right leaning people describe left leaning people as those with different opinions to themselves but I often hear leftists describe Tories as ‘scum’ and worse. Likewise I have heard of people on the right being denied promotion or employment due ‘values’ but I rarely hear of that happening to people on the left.

A few bad eggs in a rightwing party can also get an entire political party unfairly labelled as racist, but a few bad eggs in the Labour Party is unlikely to get the entire Labour Party smeared as a bunch of PIE sympathiers.

I really think the right need to wise up and start treating the left the way the left have treated them. People on the right tend to be better people though so treating vile leftists as they have treated them doesn’t come naturally to them. But I really think the right need to get past that and give themselves permission to treat leftists as leftists have treated them.

Yeah it’s disgusting that so many in the Labour Party supported groups like PIE isn’t it? Yuck indeed. It’s just what the left does.

It'd be really amazing if this thread could hold back from making childish attacks on people from the 'other side'. Although I suppose the fact that it happens so much is in itself instructive.

The American political system is very different, for all sorts of reasons, the meaning of being on the right differs from the UK meanings, too, partly, because religious fundamentalists are so much more important in the US (at least the Christian kind). The Democratic party has bits which are like the Tories in the UK, so direct comparisons can be quite tricky. The lobbying and funding systems also create differences which mean that both parties are dependent on corporate donations etc.

But yes, on some level what you say applies as a very first, crude approximation. The US began the process of creating political thought bubbles very early, with the radio propagandists and then Fox News, so what makes all this much more difficult is the lack of belief in the same facts across the aisle. It's difficult to debate when that is the case, as we are beginning to realise more widely with this new redefinition of words, the ability to create deepfake videos etc.

I recall being taken aback when a friend in the US described the NHS as a far left socialist system.

I'm with Stuart Hall: "The NHS is one of the most humanitarian acts that has ever been undertaken in peace time."

It'd be really amazing if this thread could hold back from making childish attacks on people from the 'other side'.

Agreed, I miss Bunbury's guidance at such times.

As much as I found food for thought in Masullo's argument for robust discussion in “Nasty Talk: Online Incivility and Public Debate,” she distinguishes between robustness that moves on discussion and the exchange of ideas and incivility that is

• unhelpful to useful exploration of ideas
• dampens rather than sparks interest in a range of contentious topics.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Online-Incivility-Public-Debate-Nasty-ebook/dp/B073CHFM2M

UKIP is just the BNP with an O level.

OK well if you’re going to throw around smears like that you have no right to complain when feminists are labelled far right.

The ideology of the BNP and UKIP are not the same at all. Farage and Tice are nothing like Nick Griffin or Jonathan Bowden, they have totally different beliefs. If you knew anything about political ideologies you would know that, instead you just chosen to smear. If you are a smear merchant don’t complain if some else does that to you.

"We are saying to BNP voters, if you are voting BNP because you are frustrated, upset with the change in your community, but you are doing it holding your nose, because you don't agree with their racist agenda, come and vote for us [UKIP]."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/14/bnp-ukip-voters-politics-immigration

In the past, UKIP distanced itself from the more radical BNP. Nevertheless, the parties mobilize from the same support base...Followers of both parties address the similar issues – immigration, Islam, populism, Euroscepticism – in their debates

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3371228

a large proportion of UKIP supporters have rather similar views to BNP supporters on issues related to race....Such findings mirror our own earlier findings that the parties were associated with the same policies in voters’ minds; that there was a strong correlation between respondents’ attitudes to the BNP and UKIP; and that there was further correlation between micro-local support for the two parties in London elections.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/moving-to-the-next-phase-of-the-british-far-right/

It is not a smear to say UKIP gave a more acceptable voting option to many BNP supporters. The increase in UKIPs vote base effectively spelt the end of the BNP.

Has he? The only interview I've seen where he was directly asked about the trans issue he very deftly swerved the question entirely. I got the impression he knows it's a minefield and he's not particularly interested in getting involved.

It’s not a smear to say that the voters are drawn from a similar voting pool as most BNP voters probably weren’t national socialists either.

But it absolutely is a smear against every member of UKIP to say their party is like the BNP (BNP with an O’level was how they put it).

Now stop whinging about so called ‘TERFs’ smeared as far right and address your own shitty behaviour. When your own shitty behaviour stops I might have some sympathy.

@RethinkingLife ”I've never fully reconciled myself with what I learned from Giles Udy's Labour and the Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left.*”

what do you mean by this please?

Labour are a deeply immoral party, it’s just a factual book that looks at a chapter in the party’s history when they were sympathetic to Stalinist Russia.

There are lots of dark bits in the Labour Party’s history. Like the time when many of them were sympathetic to PIE or most recently when they were riddled with anti-Semites.

Here is a very interesting interview with Udy.

It's kind of eye opening if you have been a sort of typical person on the left who thinks of leftism as mainly being about caring for others, and have had trouble understanding how gender ideology and it's more batshit outcomes have been embraced. Which has plagued a lot of people who have seen themselves as leftists and feel really politically disenfranchised.

What Udy's description shows is that the left, even in the UK, has always had an appetite to swallow cruelty if it is in support of their ideology. And that maybe some of these people's follies are baked into their beliefs rather than aberrations or errors.

It's a really interesting interview.

@Rudderneck i saw that interview but there wasn’t anything new in it

always been anti communist though. Those students who idealise it are so mad and ignorant. Where do they get their information?!

leftism as caring for others? That’s a laugh.

“I really think the right need to wise up and start treating the left the way the left have treated them. People on the right tend to be better people though so treating vile leftists as they have treated them doesn’t come naturally to them. But I really think the right need to get past that and give themselves permission to treat leftists as leftists have treated them.”

I think this is correct. If the left smear you as an ist or ism it’s no good pleading with them and begging like a dog not be called such a horrible thing, they will just keep repeating it until it sticks and enjoy seeing their opponent beg in the process. Much more effective to just give them the same treatment back. I think this is starting to happen In America, I’m seeing more and more people online calling leftists “groomers” and such like on social media. The only other effective way I can see to deal with a left wing smear merchant is to sue them.

I'm glad this is being discussed though. A few years ago, if you said you were worried about lefties forcing things on us for a "common good" you were ridiculed.

We had a lovely poster recently who was very honest that she had believed govt would have our best interests at heart and she asked genuine questions about why some of us were questioning certain things. It's nice to have an exchange where someone listens and admits there's a lot to learn.

Scotland and Wales certainly seem to be going down that road, but meglomania is the same whether it's left, right or centrist. The left have done some excellent PR and seem to know how to target idealists.

I don't think giving the same treatment is a good approach tbh. Because what happens then, apart from losing your moral high-ground, is that your arguments begin to suffer.

I’m not interested in clever arguments or the moral high ground, I’m interested in my side winning politically and their side losing because that’s all they care about. You cannot engage in good faith rational debate with fundamentally bad actors. And the left are fundamentally bad actors. Look at the way they smear people even on this forum, they are bad faith actors.

I am not trying to persuade anyone on the left of anything, I have nothing to say to them and am not interested in hearing anything that they might want to say to me. I’m only interested in persuading politically active people on the right to start giving the left a taste of their own medicine within the bounds of the law. We must always stay within the bounds of the law or we are in trouble but apart from that holding the moral high ground doesn’t seem to count for much anymore, if it ever did. If holding the moral high ground and having the better arguments counted for anything the right would already be politically and culturally dominant but they’re not.

Look at what happened to some prominent feminists when they clearly had the moral high ground, conducted themselves well and tried to engage in rational respectful debate in good faith. Did that help them? Or did they just get smeared by bad people determined to ruin them?

Anyway we really need to talk about Labour’s past support for PIE and have a long discussion about how many Labour MPs, members and supporters probably still support these sorts of aims today.

Aah a lovely grubby lefty bashing thread by some grim males with dodgy neo fasc politics . Lads are you here to give us a lecture? Any one who calls David fecking Starkey "great" (dead one or living one)is automatically a clown in my view. Now tiddle back to twitter .

Diggee · 30/10/2023 15:14

AfD and UKIP are not moderate parties Yes they are. It’s just that you might be a far left extremist? And if you are should be treated as such.

Really, if you think that they're moderate, then you must be fairly extreme.

What do you mean by "should be treated as such^ ? Do you think that people on the left should be excluded from certain jobs? Labelled traitors?

That's the same sort sighted thinking that has the progressive left creating such crap nonsense policy. Because they can no longer think clearly, their brains have melted from accepting their own rhetoric that was just intended to help them "win".

You are being very short-sighted.

I completely agree with your take on the left.

I really like Konstantin and love the clear way he conveys information.
I think he's too generous, though: I don't believe that most "progressives" are so because they believe mankind is capable of being better. I think it's one or a combination of tribalism, immaturity, fashion, nastiness, anti-social/insecure personalities and the odd useful idiot.

(and, of course, privilege)

This thread is a very interesting illustration of some of the posters who hang out on the fringes of this board.

There is very limited critical thinking, lots of projection and straw manning and no desire to actually engage in a conversation. I'm pretty shocked by it tbh.

That post was so ridiculous I couldn't even be bothered

"Far left extremist" for saying the AFD and UKIP are right wing