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JonTron Releases a Statement

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I'm fairly left myself I just hate people on the left bashing the right because they have different things they think are important. Those things may be short sighted, but pointing that out won't do anything towards changing their mind so I try and just end left-bashing or right-bashing if I see it.

Sometimes that right-bashing turns out to be justified.

Sometimes one of your favorite youtubers is a racist.

Sometimes you make an ass of yourself online.

All in a days work.
Right. I'm not saying people are entirely correct in any situation for being a liberal or whatever. Anybody can be a -ist or completely wrong. But that kinda mindset is useless without examining the context the situation is in. No big deal and lessons learned. Had to do this myself too, lol.
 

Silvard

Member
Moderates suck huh

Moderates do suck. Especially when they are "intolerant left" or "both sides" or "why can't we all just get along" or "colorblind" or "you need to have a dialog with the racists" or "this is not the way" moderates.

Or how MLK Jr. himself said:

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
 

LionPride

Banned
You know who Moderates try to evoke to get Minorities to calm down? MLK Jr.

You know who Martin Luther King Jr. despised? Moderates.
 

joe2187

Banned
Moderates suck huh

It's not really moderate when they clearly only speak out on silencing one side while the other goes unchallenged by them.

Man A: Kill all Immigrants.

Moderate Man: .....

Man B: You're an asshole

Moderate Man: Whoa whoa! how dare you sir!? you have the gall to label a person a such simply because they speak their mind? maybe it is you who is the real asshole after all.

Man A: Fucking niggers.

Man B: ....and racist.

Moderate Man: Maybe you should listen to him instead of calling him a racist. Maybe he's coming from a different point of view that you just dont understand.

Man A: heil hitler....

Man B: ...

Moderate Man: See...much better. Now nobody is offended!
 

TheSun

Member
Lol Jim Sterling in today's Jimquistion takes a nice shot at JonTron at the end

Haha, reminds me of that one Jimquisition: I Stand With Ganon. Had some Jontron fuckery there too.

Wonder if Jim is going to address TB's response? I doubt he'll touch this subject tho.

Fuck white supremacy.
 
He played the moderate and said this would be the hill he chooses to die on because JonTron is a friend.

Some friends to be honest. No honesty.

Not too surprising considering some stuff in the past tbh.


A lot of the people defending or sticking up for Jon have had some history of similar antics.
 
He played the moderate and said this would be the hill he chooses to die on because JonTron is a friend.

Some friends to be honest. No honesty.
Fuck that guy, I'm gonna unsubscribe from his stupid ass. Nothing more annoying than "moderates" or "both sides" people that refuse to speak the truth when they see it.
 
I saw this on Reddit, too.

Seems like a lot of people just auto-go on the defensive anytime someone gets heat for saying something fucked up, so they defend JonTron, someone tells them what he said and they backtrack. It becomes really hard to complain about "PC culture" when what JonTron said is so absurdly racist.
To be fair, I think we have hit a point culturally where almost anyone can be offended about anything and that's typically followed up with the Internet mob mentality of wanting someone silenced. I think that tends to muddy the waters for most people even when someone says something as stupid as what JonTron said. The bigger issue I see as a whole is that Americans believe in free speech as a right but to most people that only extends to something they want to hear. We see this play out on the internet every day. The minute they hear something they don't like then they want people to shut up. My own experiences have always seen this as an issue with the right (this whole anti-politically correct bullshit, people claiming "Truml just tells it like it is!", etc) but it's becoming a much bigger problem on the left as well. Couple that with the attack on facts and the polarization and politicizing of EVERYTHING and you can see why we've gotten to where we are.

Anyway, with that said, if people say stupid shit then they deserve to take flak for it. I do wonder if we are past the point where people like this YouTube clown can change because I think, in a lot of ways, most social media is simply an echo chamber that reinforces this bad behavior rather than correcting it, or even allowing for a moment of introspection. This dude is just doubling down on the stupid shit he said and blaming people for misunderstanding him. Hell, this is how Trump acts for the most part too.
 

stephen08

Member
I'm fairly left myself I just hate people on the left bashing the right because they have different things they think are important. Those things may be short sighted, but pointing that out won't do anything towards changing their mind so I try and just end left-bashing or right-bashing if I see it.

Sometimes that right-bashing turns out to be justified.

Sometimes one of your favorite youtubers is a racist.

Sometimes you make an ass of yourself online.

All in a days work.

You're a good deal ahead of many people on all sides of the political spectrum if you can own your mistakes and try to be better person as a result of them so kudos to you for that.

However, I would caution you against this line of thinking that there are two sides to anything and the truth is somewhere in the middle. It lends the same amount of credibility to both sides and that can be dangerous. The right is moving further away from facts to the point that now the US has a president who insists he was wiretapped, that Sweden faces riots, that he won the EC by the biggest margin since Reagan etc.

We live in an age of on demand information. It takes minutes to be informed on a topic in some cases.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no one is entitled to their own facts and any discussion that happens must come from the same point of observation otherwise it's just who can make up the best sounding story. And though the left might do that once in a while (I haven't heard of anything in a long time) the right is doing it constantly and more boldly.
 

Arkage

Banned
Moderates do suck. Especially when they are "intolerant left" or "both sides" or "why can't we all just get along" or "colorblind" or "you need to have a dialog with the racists" or "this is not the way" moderates.

Or how MLK Jr. himself said:

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

And everyone who quotes this then proceeds to forget that white moderates then passed the civil rights act a year later, thanks to MLK's persistence in working with them. You can say they suck all you like, but you're not living in a liberal dictatorship where you can afford to throw out potential allies. Are the lessons of Trump's win really just not sinking in for the left? It's amazingly depressing.
 

LionPride

Banned
Tone fair, I think we have hit a point culturally where almost anyone can be offended about anything and that's typically followed up with the Internet mob mentality of wanting someone silenced. My issue with that is that Americans believe in free speech as long as it's something they want to hear. The minute it's something they don't then they want people to shut up. My own experiences have always seen this as an issue with the right but it's becoming a much bigger problem on the left as well. Couple that with the attack on facts and the polarization and politicizing of EVERYTHING and you can see why we've gotten to where we are.

Anyway, with that said, if people say stupid shit then they deserve to take flak for it. I do wonder if we are past the point where people like this YouTube clown can change because I think, in a lot of ways, most social media is simply an echo chamber that reinforces this bad behavior rather than correcting it, or even allowing for a moment of introspection.
Free speech means the government can't shut you down

You say something fucking terrible I can tell you to shut the fuck up all I want
 

brad-t

Member
I'm fairly left myself I just hate people on the left bashing the right because they have different things they think are important. Those things may be short sighted, but pointing that out won't do anything towards changing their mind so I try and just end left-bashing or right-bashing if I see it.

Sometimes that right-bashing turns out to be justified.

Like, frequently. Do you understand that your reductionism of left vs. right as just a matter of priorities is what enabled you to go to bat for a racist before understanding exactly what happened in the first place?
 

Silvard

Member
I haven't read any of Mathou's posts and I know nothing about the guy, but I think you guys are approaching him with a completely unwarranted level of hostility. From what I gather, Mathou is just worried that his way of life is disappearing. That if anybody posts even the slightest statement against the shared group think, they're immediately branded as a heathen and caught up in a witch hunt. I think that's a pretty reasonable concern in this day and age.

Again, I didn't read any of Mathou's posts so I may have missed something, but as it stands now I think all of you dogpiling on him should be ashamed.

wQMD1Xs.jpg


I know it's a joke.
 

Bastables

Member
You're making way too many broad connections between completely separate terms. Political correctness is not cultural marxism which is not the regressive left. These terms are not interchangeable, nor originate from the same places, nor have the same merits. I'd agree Cultural Marxism is conspiracy theory land. Critiques of overreaching political correctness, and critiques of the (regressive/illiberal) left's increasing desire to deplatform and protest against even moderate speakers, let alone conservative ones, are both worth discussion.

Regardless, JonTron is absolute shit at discussing any of these things without somehow faceplanting into racist quotes that would even make Trump think twice.

Disagree, regressive left has been increasingly used in place for Cultural Marxism as it's way too close to the actual progenitor NAZI idea Cultural Bolshevism.

Political correctness was used by paleo conservatives to point out cultural marxist tool set to enact the destruction of western civilisation.
Other tool or strategies used by Cultural marxists include: 1960s counter culture, multiculturalism, progressive politics and political correctness.

http://www.marylandthursdaymeeting.com/Archives/SpecialWebDocuments/Cultural.Marxism.htm
The next conservatism should unmask multiculturalism and Political Correctness and tell the American people what they really are: cultural Marxism. Its goal remains what Lukacs and Gramsci set in 1919: destroying Western culture and the Christian religion. It has already made vast strides toward that goal.

Your attempt to delink Political correctness and Cultural marxism is disturbing, especially when Paleo-conservatives like W. S. Lind overtly connect them.

It's all white supremacy bullshit= White Man the victim.

Note the enemies of the white man/western civilsation Lind out of context "cites" from Marcuse a coalition of blacks, students, feminist women and homosexuals. It's all hateful bullshit predicated against the minorities &/or disenfranchised.
 

SomTervo

Member
You're making way too many broad connections between completely separate terms. Political correctness is not cultural marxism which is not the regressive left. These terms are not interchangeable, nor originate from the same places, nor have the same merits. I'd agree Cultural Marxism is conspiracy theory land. Critiques of overreaching political correctness, and critiques of the (regressive/illiberal) left's increasing desire to deplatform and protest against even moderate speakers, let alone conservative ones, are both worth discussion.

Regardless, JonTron is absolute shit at discussing any of these things without somehow faceplanting into racist quotes that would even make Trump think twice.

Of course they're not literally the same or directly connected conceptually; the point is that people like JT use all of those phrases more than anyone else to justify intolerance and spew coded hatred
 

Mathaou

legacy of cane
I haven't read any of Mathou's posts and I know nothing about the guy, but I think you guys are approaching him with a completely unwarranted level of hostility. From what I gather, Mathou is just worried that his way of life is disappearing. That if anybody posts even the slightest statement against the shared group think, they're immediately branded as a heathen and caught up in a witch hunt. I think that's a pretty reasonable concern in this day and age.

Again, I didn't read any of Mathou's posts so I may have missed something, but as it stands now I think all of you dogpiling on him should be ashamed.

Thanks a lot. I'm by no means a moral compass I fuck up in life and online quite a bit, but I appreciate the understanding.
 

L Thammy

Member
And everyone who quotes this then proceeds to forget that white moderates then passed the civil rights act a year later, thanks to MLK's persistence in working with them. You can say they suck all you like, but you're not living in a liberal dictatorship where you can afford to throw out potential allies. Are the lessons of Trump's win really just not sinking in for the left? It's amazingly depressing.

Okay, this is totally tangential, but I'm really amused by the idea of a liberal dictatorship. Some madman in the high chair commanding his troops, families cuddled in fear in their houses, terrified that the police will catch them not being free and offer to defend their human rights.
 

Silvard

Member
And everyone who quotes this then proceeds to forget that white moderates then passed the civil rights act a year later, thanks to MLK's persistence in working with them. You can say they suck all you like, but you're not living in a liberal dictatorship where you can afford to throw out potential allies. Are the lessons of Trump's win really just not sinking in for the left? It's amazingly depressing.

Civil rights passed so any moderate gets to act like an ally because they're not actively undermining the rights of minorities? I believe you missed the point of the quote then.
 

Breads

Banned
Apparently I made the mistake of assuming someone writing two paragraphs in defense of someone actually knew who or what it was they were defending.

Apparently they just saw an opportunity to insert their "left bashing right" moderate agenda and blindly went into a conversation other people were having about something else and didn't know they were actually defending the dilution of the white american gene pool, ethnic enclaves taking America back for Mexico, and black crime genes.

My bad.

#howtrumpwon

If you're willing to learn from you're mistakes we can be cool someday. If you double down like Jontron... I have no more words for you.
 

Aquillion

Member
You're making way too many broad connections between completely separate terms. Political correctness is not cultural marxism which is not the regressive left. These terms are not interchangeable, nor originate from the same places, nor have the same merits.
No, they're all very literally the exact same thing. I see no distinction between them at all; they're all fundamentally the same meme repackaged for a new generation.

In the early 90's, conservative intellectuals were faced with a problem due to the collapse of the Soviet Union; they could no longer tar the left as unamerican by association with it. Political correctness, as a term and concept, was pushed by conservative think-tanks in order to try and tar the entire left as part of a dishonest effort to push the conspiracy the that more fringe conservatives much less subtly referred to as cultural marxism.

More recently, the rise of Islam as the bête noire of the far-right necessitated a way to tar the left as sympathetic to Islam (again, in order to replace the red-baiting of the Soviet Union era.) "Regressive left" was concocted by the same impulse that led conservatives to manufacture the memes of political correctness and cultural marxism - in an effort to tar leftists as unduly sympathetic to Islam (and, therefore, intellectually suspect.) All of them also serve the same core role of reassuring right-wing libertarians (who find themselves, constantly, on the same side as genuinely regressive Taliban-style American fundimentalists) that they're on the right side by allowing them to construct a fantasy in which the left is the side that really opposes free speech, free exercise of religion, and so on. (This is also why the people who cling most desperately to all three fantasies are right-wing atheist libertarians - again, they face a constant contradiction in allying with themselves with the religious right. These three concepts, while lacking any real grounding in reality and lacking any sort of statistics or data to back them up, provide an emotionally-comforting bedrock to the atheist right by giving them an out for their constant willingness to side with a censorious and illiberal religious right - the only way they can justify their position is by constructing a fantasy under which the left is even worse.)

It is useful to discuss them as manifestations of the neuroses of the American right and the various branding efforts they have used to attack the left throughout recent history; but none of them have the slightest connection to reality. They represent right-wing fantasies about how it would be useful to mislead the public into viewing their opponents, not anything even slightly real.
 
Thanks.

- Mathaou, Professional Informed Person


This is why when people are outraged/mad about stuff my general "neutral" stance is to literally hold no opinion until I get my hands on actual quotes.


I've seen people go absolutely bonkers over stuff that's not even true. (I often have to actually ask a friend to source "horrid" quotes he sents me by anita sarkeesian & they're always fake/misinterpreted)

but on the flipside, there's also always a defence force for everyone, no matter how fucked up the shit they said is; So I realise the only sane position is to actually judge what they literally said, rather than other people's interpretation of it.
 

Aquillion

Member
You ain't an idiot man, it's a complex minefield. Don't worry about it.
I mentioned this above, but I feel that a lot of the reason racism and sexism are such volatile issues among gamers and "geeks" in particular is because of the way they're socialized to view their intellect and understanding as central to their identity.

This makes them unwilling to accept how complicated and difficult race and gender can be; when they inevitably make mistakes or when their initial knee-jerk reactions are met with scorn, their inclination is to double down as a way of defending their self-image as the smartest person in the room. This is also why many of them are so willing to swallow the far-right memes mentioned above so eagerly - those provide easy answers and justifications for why their initial knee-jerk reactions are right, and say that the people who disagree with them or criticize them are not just wrong but knowingly wrong and criticizing them dishonestly.

This also explains the urge so many have to say how they're "moderate", which feels like an easy way to present yourself as intelligent and smart and above-it-all without having to do the hard work of understanding the actual issues involved.

It's important not to be afraid to be wrong, and it's important to be willing to admit your ignorance. These are some of the hardest and oldest problems we've wrestled with as a society, so they don't have easy answers (although they do have a lot of people offering transparently bad answers.)
 

Arkage

Banned
Disagree, regressive left has been increasingly used in place for Cultural Marxism as it's way too close to the actual progenitor NAZI idea Cultural Bolshevism.

Political correctness was used by paleo conservatives to point out cultural marxist tool set to create the destruction of western civilisation.
Other tool or strategies used by Cultural marxists include: 1960s counter culture, multiculturalism, progressive politics and political correctness.

http://www.marylandthursdaymeeting.com/Archives/SpecialWebDocuments/Cultural.Marxism.htm
The next conservatism should unmask multiculturalism and Political Correctness and tell the American people what they really are: cultural Marxism. Its goal remains what Lukacs and Gramsci set in 1919: destroying Western culture and the Christian religion. It has already made vast strides toward that goal.

Your attempt to delink Political correctness and Cultural marxism is disturbing, especially when Paleo-conservatives like W. S. Lind overtly connect them.

Words being used fast and loose by certain individuals do not then change the meaning of the word. Saying the "regressive left" is linked to Marxism because it's "increasing used in X way" is a slippery slope of making words mean whatever fits your fancy, while getting to ignore the context of the usage, or even the person using them. It's especially ironic when you consider that a liberal coined the term, and the term itself is finding solid ground among people like Jonathan Haidt. Your framing of the word really has no world basis beyond the claim "well some stupid people use it in bad ways."

I also really have no idea what you're trying to say about "political correctness" and it's ties to cultural Marxism. The term didn't originate in Marxism, but that's what the conspiracy theorists think, because they want to tie the term to their marxist-takeover-fantasies. So, the most you can say is that the word is hijacked by a fringe right-wing group for its conspiracy theory. That doesn't then invalidate all the other ways the word is used.
 

poodaddy

Member
I feel like for moderates life is one long episode of scooby doo where the villain is always unmasked to be the intolerant left
I think you're on to something here.

So how bout that poster up there who defended use of the term "regressive left" huh? He seems like a fine individual....

Man what the fuck is going on these days? If you would of told me twenty years ago that one day all knowledge will be at our fingertips and that we'd of gained this untold access to knowledge and power completely through the benefits of cultural diversity and the sharing and spreading of ideals that have objectively bettered us as a society and that somehow, despite this amazing social and technological progress, that empathy amongst the population would actually suffer and that we would somehow become MORE tolerant of racism and bigotry, well if you would of told me that I'd of.... I guess I would of believed it. I would of believed it because humanity is consistent in its disgusting self imposed segregation and intolerant beliefs. I just wouldn't of wanted to believe it. I still don't.

Man I thought Jontron was funny dude; it's a bummer to find out he's a hateful bigot. I can't understand the mindset of these people at all, especially from the son of an immigrant. The hypocrisy is painful. Unfortunately I have a friend who is literally a Panamanian immigrant and he somehow supports several of these same ideals and is a Trump supporter as well. I mean it boggles the mind.
 

Bastables

Member
I also really have no idea what you're trying to say about "political correctness" and it's ties to cultural Marxism. The term didn't originate in Marxism, but that's what the conspiracy theorists think, because they want to tie the term to their marxist-takeover-fantasies. So, the most you can say is that the word is hijacked by a fringe right-wing group for it's conspiracy theory. That doesn't then invalidate all the other ways the word is used.

Dude you're literally ignoring/writing off a quote by a paleo conservative (Lind) connecting political correctness as a part of cultural marxism, a plan in his mind to destroy western civilisation. And how the new conservatives should struggle against it. His hijack of terms has been successful considering how pejorative against the "left" it has become.

Do you also argue that Swastika's have other meanings other than aryan superiority, because it represents others things outside of Nazi/Neo-nazi circles? Because that's what you're trying to argue here; words/symbols have different meanings in other contexts so don't point out the links to their use in hate theory/meme/speech.
 

SomTervo

Member
No, they're all very literally the exact same thing. I see no distinction between them at all; they're all fundamentally the same meme repackaged for a new generation.

In the early 90's, conservative intellectuals were faced with a problem due to the collapse of the Soviet Union; they could no longer tar the left as unamerican by association with it. Political correctness, as a term and concept, was pushed by conservative think-tanks in order to try and tar the entire left as part of a dishonest effort to push the conspiracy the that more fringe conservatives much less subtly referred to as cultural marxism.

More recently, the rise of Islam as the bête noire of the far-right necessitated a way to tar the left as sympathetic to Islam (again, in order to replace the red-baiting of the Soviet Union era.) "Regressive left" was concocted by the same impulse that led conservatives to manufacture the memes of political correctness and cultural marxism - in an effort to tar leftists as unduly sympathetic to Islam (and, therefore, intellectually suspect.) All of them also serve the same core role of reassuring right-wing libertarians (who find themselves, constantly, on the same side as genuinely regressive Taliban-style American fundimentalists) that they're on the right side by allowing them to construct a fantasy in which the left is the side that really opposes free speech, free exercise of religion, and so on. (This is also why the people who cling most desperately to all three fantasies are right-wing atheist libertarians - again, they face a constant contradiction in allying with themselves with the religious right. These three concepts, while lacking any real grounding in reality and lacking any sort of statistics or data to back them up, provide an emotionally-comforting bedrock to the atheist right by giving them an out for their constant willingness to side with a censorious and illiberal religious right - the only way they can justify their position is by constructing a fantasy under which the left is even worse.)

It is useful to discuss them as manifestations of the neuroses of the American right and the various branding efforts they have used to attack the left throughout recent history; but none of them have the slightest connection to reality. They represent right-wing fantasies about how it would be useful to mislead the public into viewing their opponents, not anything even slightly real.

That's sick, thanks for sharing
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
You ain't an idiot man, it's a complex minefield. Don't worry about it.
Jumping to blatantly defend racism while decrying and attempting to silence the side angry with it IS straight up idiotic. There's NOTHING complex about what Jontron said or did, nor about what Matthou did.

*Guy says a bunch of white supremacist shit, naturally gets blown the fuck out*

Dude who has not heard a single thing that was said:I personally think that this is a huge over reaction. This isn't that radical of a response to all of the problems facing America, I feel.

Same dude after everyone rightfully goes what the fuck:I just assumed it was like an offhanded comment or something. I literally didn't see a single thing that was said.

It's pretty clear cut. And fucking insufferable. At least he apologized, but holy shit far be it from me to feel empathy for what seems like a borderline impulse.
 

LionPride

Banned
Jumping to blatantly defend racism while decrying and attempting to silence the side angry with it IS straight up idiotic. There's NOTHING complex about what Jontron said or did, nor about what Matthou did.

*Guy says a bunch of white supremacist shit, naturally gets blown the fuck out*

Dude who has not heard a single thing that was said:I personally think that this is a huge over reaction. This isn't that radical of a response to all of the problems facing America, I feel.

Same dude after everyone rightfully goes what the fuck:I just assumed it was like an offhanded comment or something. I literally didn't see a single thing that was said.

It's pretty clear cut. And fucking insufferable.
I mean...yeah
 

Arkage

Banned
In the early 90's, conservative intellectuals were faced with a problem due to the collapse of the Soviet Union; they could no longer tar the left as unamerican by association with it. Political correctness, as a term and concept, was pushed by conservative think-tanks in order to try and tar the entire left as part of a dishonest effort to push the conspiracy the that more fringe conservatives much less subtly referred to as cultural marxism.

More recently, the rise of Islam as the bête noire of the far-right necessitated a way to tar the left as sympathetic to Islam (again, in order to replace the red-baiting of the Soviet Union era.) "Regressive left" was concocted by the same impulse that led conservatives to manufacture the memes of political correctness and cultural marxism - in an effort to tar leftists as unduly sympathetic to Islam (and, therefore, intellectually suspect.) All of them also serve the same core role of reassuring right-wing libertarians (who find themselves, constantly, on the same side as genuinely regressive Taliban-style American fundimentalists) that they're on the right side by allowing them to construct a fantasy in which the left is the side that really opposes free speech, free exercise of religion, and so on. (This is also why the people who cling most desperately to all three fantasies are right-wing atheist libertarians - again, they face a constant contradiction in allying with themselves with the religious right. These three concepts, while lacking any real grounding in reality and lacking any sort of statistics or data to back them up, provide an emotionally-comforting bedrock to the atheist right by giving them an out for their constant willingness to side with a censorious and illiberal religious right - the only way they can justify their position is by constructing a fantasy under which the left is even worse.)

It is useful to discuss them as manifestations of the neuroses of the American right and the various branding efforts they have used to attack the left throughout recent history; but none of them have the slightest connection to reality. They represent right-wing fantasies about how it would be useful to mislead the public into viewing their opponents, not anything even slightly real.

Bill Maher had a show called "Politically Incorrect" throughout the 90s. The word had wide use in both liberal and conservative circles. While the right used it more frequently against the left as a talking point, that doesn't then transform it into the term "cultural marxism," which is in itself incredibly loaded. Your analogy is literally just "both words were used by the right against the left, therefore they are the same." This is not convincing.

You say "regressive left" is a fantasy term used to describe two incoherent ideas: that the left opposes free speech, and that the left opposes free exercise of religion. I agree with the later - anyone using the term to describe the free exercise of religion, in terms of being able to freely discriminate against other religions, is off the deep end. But the focus on free-speech is not a non-issue. Colleges increasingly deplatform (there is statistical data) speakers due to leftist student protests. When cartoonists who draw Muhammad are killed, the left is filled with individuals speaking up about how the cartoonists shouldn't have drawn it, and that it was their own fault. In Canada they're putting in place (or have already) "hate speech" laws that give tremendous fines for not using proper gender descriptors including ones like "zie/hir." Kirsten Powers, Jordan Peterson, Maajid Nawaz, and Jonathan Haidt are all liberal/moderate intellectuals, among others, who are worried about this problem, so you characterizing it as libertarian atheist hogwash is more than disingenuous. I mean the term itself was literally coined by a liberal, Jonathan Chait, so it's pretty damn ironic to be thinking it's some conservative plot to undermine liberalism.
 

Jebusman

Banned
In Canada they're putting in place (or have already) "hate speech" laws that give tremendous fines on not using proper gender descriptors including ones like "zie/hir."

I mean this is a blatant lie, but please continue to enlighten us.

If you refer to someone as the wrong pronoun, no one is going to come after you.

If you refer to someone as the wrong pronoun while simultaneously exclaiming that they deserve to die because of wanting to use said pronoun, among other hateful speech, then you might get brought to court.

The law was specifically changed to allow hateful speech "against" trans people to count under our already existing hate speech law. Just simply referring to someone as the wrong pronoun, while a dick move, isn't "hateful".
 
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