Not being held hostage by accusations of elitism

I like this:

Link

Accusations of liberal elitism fall under this umbrella. Now it's becoming impossible to criticise or raise objections to racist and nonsensical drivel without being accused of being elitist and one of those who caused the left to lose ground. And the nature of bigotry is such that it's entirely appropriate to object to it strongly, which further raises the ire of the bigots and prompts their accusations of being hysterical.

When will the more moderate left grow a spine and not be cowed by such tactics? The solution to bigotry and ignorance is not to try and coax them into listening to you by listening to them, which they will likely only use as a chance to propagate their filth. Rather, the solution is a long-term one that includes protracted struggle. Fight the bigots and the right for every inch, refuse them the honour of having their views aired without reprobation and fight for education so that the next generations will know not to be ignorant.

There is no excuse for bigotry, and the bigots need to be called out no matter what their circumstances might be. Time is not their ally, and as long as the left and SJWs keep up the fight, I'm sure that their beliefs will be left behind and forgotten in time, just like their predecessors'.

Thoughts?

 

Can you show us an example of this happening?

I see criticisms of racism in the media and on the internet almost every day.

 

You know the recent incident where the cast of Hamilton addressed Mike Pence at the end of their show? This is what they said:

Just a simple, harmless statement. And here are some examples of responses from the right:

Yup.

Right. The old canard that intolerance of intolerance is still intolerance. Precisely the kind of ammunition that racists love to use.

And maybe you haven't learned that the dictionary is not a substitute for arguments, nor does it give prescriptions for how words are used socially.

 

Everyone has prejudices. My prejudices are better than yours because they're more well thought-out against people who actually victimize others.

Yeh, you're the thought police.

 

Okay, now just do us a solid and identify the bigots.

 

Do you need a safe space?

 

Americans have boners for their political leaders, *shrug* I've seen this before, it's not easy to speak up against the president or VP by directly rejecting his support. Somebody somewhere will always speak up and call you all sorts of names.

 

Aren't performers on the hottest show on Broadway literally the American elite?

 

I can understand why Trump tweeted about safe spaces. He gets every ounce of understanding he has of the world off Twitter, and the liberal left is always screaming the loudest in places where it really will not fix any situation, so he just parrots what he reads, not realizing he belongs on Tumblr.

 

Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds

 

I outgrew the "your intolerance of my bigotry is just as bad" argument decades ago. Bigotry should have consequences, and I administer them cheerfully.

 

Read some articles in Canadian media about Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch (the one who wants to interrogate "visitors, immigrants, and refugees" to find out if they have "Canadian values"). She just LOVES Trump and thinks his "messages needs to be delivered to all Canadians."

Oh, and this MP who in her non-political life is a highly-paid surgeon, regularly rants against the "elite"... which apparently means anyone who doesn't vote Conservative or support her style of bigotry.

 

The second quote doesn't even mention elitism at all.

 

I'd say that taken together the quotes support the general observation extremely well. The ideologues on the right do, observably, use "how dare you resist" as justification for further abuse.

 

I disagree. I know that "liberal elite" is a term, but that doesn't mean that "liberal" and "elite" are synonyms. So when you start a thread about accusations of elitism, are asked for an example, and then give a quote that's actually critical of liberals, then that's not what you were asked to give is it.

 

The point is that in the hands of the abusive conservative they actually are synonyms. Both are defined as "a randomly selected word that I can use as a slur without any regard to its actual definition."

 

Clinton was perceived, quite accurately, as an elite technocrat, which is an extremely unpopular character outside the circles of technocrats themselves. Most of the country's cultural, academic, and (to a lesser extent) business elite endorsed her, which didn't help with the perception.

The message I keep repeating is that it doesn't have to be this way: all the Democrats have to do is embrace a kind of inclusive populism and contrast it with the racist/sexist/etc populism of Trump and his core supporters. There's an elitist-populist axis perpendicular to the left-right axis, and the Democrats went way to the top of the elitist part of that axis in this election. That opened the way for Trump to win over the votes of most people with a broadly populist leaning. A lot of the people who ultimately voted for him actually didn't like him, but they wanted to overthrow the technical-managerial class that occupies the top echelons of the modern Democratic Party.

Very little moderation is actually necessary - in fact, a more populist Democratic Party could go some way toward the economic left and easily get away with it. I recommend that the relative importance of class in social justice rhetoric be dialed way up, to put it on par with race/gender/sexuality/etc, and that SJWs study how to actually persuade people and use those tactics rather than the sort of internet outrage tactics that only entrench the opposition. If they fail to do that, people won't be persuaded and the current dysfunction will deepen. It's totally a matter of what tactics they choose.

 

In what sense? Especially when we're comparing to politicians and real estate tycoons? If the term encompasses all that it is meaningless.

 

They're cultural elites or at least play to a culturally elite audience, much the same way that prominent academics can be seen as elites even if they make relatively low salaries.