The Classical Freedom loving Left vs the Regressive Leftists

[Lohrenswald]

What's hilarious is that Sarkeesian's critique of gaming is literally basic college 101 feminism and yet people treat it as some sort of crazy screed.

I think most of her critics haven't had that

Neither have I, by the way

 

[Ryika]

You have to be absurdly naive to think the game developers dind't put the strippers there for the players to murder if they pleased. It's sort of like saying GTA devs didn't put civies there for you to run down if you pleased. You are penalized for this too, by having cops come after you, one can argue: being pursued by cops is certainly a vastly greater penalty then having some sort of abstract points reduced, which most players care little about anyway.

So the purpose of the thing that you'd totally expect to see at a certain place is not to provide immersion and atmosphere but something totally different. Yeah... wasted enough time here.

 

[illram]

And how would bringing up that the majority of Muslims don't support terror add anything of value to the discussion? When talking about suicide bombing and support for terror, I am interested in the Muslims who support suicide bombing and terror. I am not interested in the Muslims who don't. And the numbers of those who do present a massive problem.

I mean this is the crux of the problem, really. I don't think you can ignore one viewpoint or another when your goal is progressive social change. There is a lot more to this than just drawing a straight line from the Koran to terrorism. 40% of Palestinians think suicide bombing is OK. 89% of Pakistanis don't. What does that tell us? Maybe there is something going on in Palestine but not in Pakistan, other than lots of people being Muslim, leading to that difference of opinion?

Your general "blame Islam" perception is a gross oversimplification of a much more complicated issue that does more harm than good for those trying to foment positive change. For one thing if you're on the ground in the Middle East or North Africa trying to do good things, you have to deal with reality. Did Tunisian politicians create the first and only functional democracy arising out of the Arab Spring by insulting and demeaning the very powerful Islamic political bloc in their country? No. They had a dialogue with them. They worked with them. They tried to be respectful of them. They encouraged the more liberal and progressive elements of the Islamic political movement to bubble to the top so they could work together. They did not point out how the Koran contains this and that horrible thing and oh how terrible are you for being a Muslim. Did my Mom and Dad help train OB/GYN's and female nurses about modern medical methods for birthing and infant care and birth control in countries like Yemen, Senegal, Jordan, and Palestine by going in and telling everyone their religion is terrible and how could they make women wear those full body veils how dare they? No. That isn't being an apologist or enabling bad behavior, that is called being pragmatic and picking your battles in order to accomplish bigger and better things.

 

[Natan35]

Could somebody please simplify the point of this thread for me? I mean, other than claiming that anti communists are called leftists, which is kinda ironic...

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Could somebody please simplify the point of this thread for me? I mean, other than claiming that anti communists are called leftists, which is kinda ironic...

In summary: The left's version of the Tea Party has emerged. A small offshoot of the main political body that is a minority within it but manages to cause a massive divide and gain disproportionate power within it relative to their size.

In the left's case that takes the form of a group of people who are abandoning the concept of Liberalism and instead advocating for straight up controls on speech, controls on the Internet, etc.

 

[useless]

There are already controls on speech in every country, even prior to the existence of the dreaded "SJW".

Also the internet is already heavily regulated in certain areas, but not only that it's going to be regulated by countries like America eventually.

 

[Funky]

Inspired by recent discussions I have had and observations I have made, I decided to share my experiences and give you a list of the typical deflections strategies regressives use when it comes to Islam. As you all know, criticism of Islam is for regressives what sunlight is for vampires. They will avoid engaging with such criticism at all costs. But how do they do that? How do they time and time again manage to divert their attention away from the issue? Well, I came up with seven typical strategies, which I have named the Seven Regressive Sins of Islam Apologetics. Feel free to leave a comment. Perhaps you can share funny encounters you have had with some of the various deflection tactics. Or perhaps you can add a further point to the list which I forgot to mention.


The Seven Regressive Sins of Islam Apologetics


1. Deny the problem / blame the messenger

Despite its intellectual laziness, this sin is actually very common, and it is often used as the first cop-out in a discussion, especially by people who know very little about Islam, yet feel the regressive urge to "defend Muslims". When an Islam-related problem is mentioned, when, for example, the catastrophic situation of women throughout the Islamic world is brought up, the problem is simply denied. Either it doesn't exist at all, or it is much smaller and therefore essentially not worth discussing, or it has “nothing to do with Islam”.

And not only is the problem downplayed and ignored. Regressives don't stop there. Instead, they start smearing the person who brought up the problem. They blame the messenger. I find it truly fascinating how often I, as someone on the left, has been called a "right-wing bigot", a "neonazi", a "fascist", a "neocon", and whatever ridiculous labels have been thrown out there. And I am in good company. Geert Wilders, Sam Harris, Bill Maher, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to just name a few, are all left-leaning, liberal-minded people who have been smeared by use of all of the above terms. Rather then listen to the arguments these people have to make, it is so much easier to slander and thereby discredit them, and in consequence not to have to worry about anything they say, since the problems they mention are simply denied.

The "blame the messenger" attitude is not limited to individuals. When data, i.e. by surveys or statistics are brought up, many regressives will start questioning the studies. They would instantly use them for their own arguments if they supported their opinion (which, unfortunately for them, they never do when it comes to Islam), but since they don't like the conclusions of the study, the whole study is simply dismissed.

Gad Saad has coined the term "ostrich brigade". Like ostriches, regressives feel uncomfortable having to face certain real-world problems, so they stick their heads in the sand and pretend the problem doesn't exist. The difficulty, of course, is that denying a problem is essentially just as bad as the problem itself. If your leg is on fire, that is a problem. But denying that your leg is on fire, and possibly insulting the bystanders who inform you about the problem, is in effect just as consequential, since it removes the need to do anything about it.


2. Zoom out

If, due to the incoming overwhelming evidence, denying the problem is no longer possible without looking like an utter loon, regressives often resort to the zooming-out strategy. Instead of talking about certain subgroups of Muslims who display horrible behaviour, they will broaden out the issue and direct attention away from the actual group. For example, when talking about Islam and its connection to violence, we hear things like “Religions in general can lead to violence”. In the aftermath of the sexual assault scandal in Europe on New Year's Eve, many voices were heard blaming “men” for this behaviour. “That's just what men do when they get drunk”. Well actually it isn't, at least it wasn't in Germany before the influx a million young Muslim men.

By broadening out the topic the real issue is essentially avoided. Yeah, men are just like that, what can we do... Yeah, religions are bad, oh well... This strategy is not employed in order to talk about or solve problems. It is used to shift the attention away from the real issue, namely Muslims.


3. Zoom in

Unlike zooming out, zooming in narrows down the problem to make it seem more overseeable. When talking about the global phenomenon of Islamism and jihadism, for example, regressives will bring up the Islamic State. Even for most regressives IS is not defensible, so they try to use it to their advantage and to direct criticism away from Islam. They then can say things like that only a tiny fraction of the Muslim world support IS, so we shouldn't be so concerned. Ironically, it has been shown that this is not even true, and that support for IS actually numbers in the hundreds of millions. But even if this were not the case, what regressives like to ignore is that our concern isn't limited to IS. We are concerned about Islamism on a global scale. There are dozens of other significant Islamist and jihadist groups causing mayhem and destruction at this very moment, like Boko Haram, Al-Shaabab, Al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Taliban, to just name a few of the more violent ones. And of course we are concerned about far more in regard to Islam than just Islamism.


4. Create false conflation

Another popular deflection strategy is the attempt to lessen the problems of Islam by creating false conflations. A very common instance among Americans is the conflation of Islam with Christianity. For example, when the divisive and violent verses of the Koran are mentioned and criticised as an explanation for Muslim behaviour, regressives will point to the Bible and how it contains hideous passages too. This is of course entirely irrelevant and pathetic, but they will state it with a feeling of pride, as if they were being extremely nuanced (nuance, by the way, is one of the favourite words of regressives).

But it gets even more silly. Since no other group of people is currently committing atrocious acts even remotely on the same scale as Muslims, regressives compare the acts of Muslims today to what other groups did in the past. Often they will go back centuries! I'm sure you all have had the experience of wanting to discuss the perils of jihadism we are witnessing right now, only to be reminded of how terrible the crusades were 800 years ago.

Another fun false conflation which comes up frequently is the abortion clinic bombings. “See”, regressives say in response to the terror charts which show that Muslims are responsible for 98% of terror-related deaths around the globe, “Christians commit acts of terror too!” I believe that nine abortion doctors have been killed by Christians. Not last week, not last year. No, in the history of the United States. On a good morning that many are killed by Muslims before breakfast.


5. The "all-argument"

Personally this is my favourite piece of regressive Islam apologetics. It is the pinnacle of silliness, yet it comes up at a frequency which is breath-taking. When criticising anything to do with Islam, the response is “wait, are you saying that all Muslims are __________ . Although nobody has ever said that all Muslims are to blame for anything, the response is heard time and time again. It is the ultimate strawman.

Some examples:
“There are many verses in the Koran that incite violence.” - “Are you saying that all Muslims are violent?”
“Islamic terror occurs on a day to day basis.” - “But not all Muslims are terrorists. Most Muslims are peaceful people.”
“Muslims have problematic views when it comes to women.” - “All Muslims?”

It is shocking that it must even be said, but no, we don't mean all Muslims. We are not talking about about your friendly, secular, law-abiding Muslim neighbour. We are not talking about Maajid Nawaz. Or the 2-year-old son of a Muslim father. Or the 84-year-old grandma. We are refering to a demographic. The whole reason we bring up surveys and statistics is to determine the pervasiveness of certain beliefs in a given sample of Muslims.

In a different context such an evasion manoeuvre would be unthinkable. Imagine that you live in Australia. You turn on the news and hear about several attacks on surfers by sharks who have eaten them up or bitten off their legs. The news reporter's voice shakes in light of this dreadful news, as he turns to his studio guest, a shark expert, and asks him what we should do against this problem. The guest replies, “What has happened is truly horrible. Our sympathy lies with the victims and we all condemn these shark attacks. But we must be careful not to blame all sharks for these attacks. Most sharks are peaceful creatures that don't attacks humans. We shouldn't paint sharks with a broad brush. These specific sharks might have attacked surfers, but we can't draw any conclusions about the rest of the shark population from their behaviour.” I assume you would find this bizarrely irritating. And yet it is the same argument that is brought up to excuse Muslim attitudes and behaviour constantly.


6. Blame America, Israel, or “the West”

This too is a very common deflection attempt among regressives. It fits into the regressive narrative perfectly, that says that white heterosexual Western men are to blame for everything bad that happens in the world. According to this narrative, all the problems we see throughout the Islamic world are of our own making. IS? America's fault for invading Iraq. Islamic terrorism? A response to Western foreign policy. Palestinians stabbing Israeli civilians? Israel's “occupation” is to blame. Fundamentalist Islam and Islamism are generally on the rise? Of course, since “the West” has prevented the rise of stable societies. Muslims living in Europe are poorly integrated, have formed parallel societies, and have joined IS by the thousands? Blame the racist European cultures and their failure to do more for Muslims.

Now, obviously Western countries have made mistakes in the past. That is not the point. The point is that the argument deprives Muslims of any agency for their actions and they are viewed as helpless peons whose behaviour is solely determined by the West. Regressives don't tend to travel very much, let alone into Muslim-majority countries. They only experience their own culture, and only absorb their own news and politics. They see the world through the prism of their country and their culture. This causes them to think that everything is about the West, about them. It is actually a very narcissistic notion. Even when Islamists go on ad nauseum how they are doing what they do in the name of Islam, regressives will still often point to the West. It's almost like they can't stand the thought of the world not revolving around them.


7. Change the topic

Finally – and this is perhaps the most stunning renunciation of intellectual honesty –, when regressives feel uncomfortable about talking about Islam, they may simply change the topic. All the previous sins incorporate this strategy to some degree, since they are used to deflect from the real issue and muddy the waters. But the seventh sin is about changing the topic entirely, to a completely different issue. Instead of addressing concerning poll results, for example, they will start talking about anti-Muslim sentiment, and how it is growing in the West. Well, sure, that's a problem. Perhaps we can talk about it some day, ask for the reasons and discuss what we can do about it. But that is a separate conversation and has nothing to do with what we were talking about. Other popular topics which regressives switch to are racism or the political right. They don't want to talk about uncomfortable topics. They want to talk about their topics. The ones where they feel cozy and content.

A regressive on his own usually can't get away with such conversational sabotage. But when they come in hordes, and one of them changes the topic, the others will seize the chance and jump in, which may totally derail the discussion. Countless conversations have been destroyed through means of this tactic. So keep on the look-out!

Moderator Action: I decided that this post is okay on its own, but that having its own thread was not going to work well. Copy of post moved in from locked thread.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

There are already controls on speech in every country, even prior to the existence of the dreaded "SJW".

Also the internet is already heavily regulated in certain areas, but not only that it's going to be regulated by countries like America eventually.

All true, but also not any kind of rebuttal to what I said. Saying that there are already controls on speech is like me saying that the government banning caffeine is totally fine, because hey, there are already controls about what chemicals you're allowed to put in your body.

The issue is that the group is question is trying to escalate those controls.

 

[Princeps]

In the left's case that takes the form of a group of people who are abandoning the concept of Liberalism and instead advocating for straight up controls on speech, controls on the Internet, etc.

This is so absurd.

The liberal tradition has always confirmed the power of private autonomous institutions to apply their own rules -- unless the law explicitly forbids them from doing so for some reason.

This means reddit isn't suppressing anyone's freedom of speech if they ban fatpeoplehate. Nor is it wrong to recommend that reddit does more to moderate its community.

It means Yale isn't suppressing anyone's freedom of expression if they choose to ban demeaning Halloween costumes. Yale, too, is a private institution with the legal and moral right to restrict unwanted or disruptive behavior by its faculty and students as long as they're on campus.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean what some people think it means.

 

[useless]

Yeah because as we all know, it is the SJW's, not government officials, politicians etc, who control whether or not controls on speech or the internet will accelerate.

 

[Bootstoots]

Spoiler :

Inspired by recent discussions I have had and observations I have made, I decided to share my experiences and give you a list of the typical deflections strategies regressives use when it comes to Islam. As you all know, criticism of Islam is for regressives what sunlight is for vampires. They will avoid engaging with such criticism at all costs. But how do they do that? How do they time and time again manage to divert their attention away from the issue? Well, I came up with seven typical strategies, which I have named the Seven Regressive Sins of Islam Apologetics. Feel free to leave a comment. Perhaps you can share funny encounters you have had with some of the various deflection tactics. Or perhaps you can add a further point to the list which I forgot to mention.


The Seven Regressive Sins of Islam Apologetics


1. Deny the problem / blame the messenger

Despite its intellectual laziness, this sin is actually very common, and it is often used as the first cop-out in a discussion, especially by people who know very little about Islam, yet feel the regressive urge to "defend Muslims". When an Islam-related problem is mentioned, when, for example, the catastrophic situation of women throughout the Islamic world is brought up, the problem is simply denied. Either it doesn't exist at all, or it is much smaller and therefore essentially not worth discussing, or it has “nothing to do with Islam”.

And not only is the problem downplayed and ignored. Regressives don't stop there. Instead, they start smearing the person who brought up the problem. They blame the messenger. I find it truly fascinating how often I, as someone on the left, has been called a "right-wing bigot", a "neonazi", a "fascist", a "neocon", and whatever ridiculous labels have been thrown out there. And I am in good company. Geert Wilders, Sam Harris, Bill Maher, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to just name a few, are all left-leaning, liberal-minded people who have been smeared by use of all of the above terms. Rather then listen to the arguments these people have to make, it is so much easier to slander and thereby discredit them, and in consequence not to have to worry about anything they say, since the problems they mention are simply denied.

The "blame the messenger" attitude is not limited to individuals. When data, i.e. by surveys or statistics are brought up, many regressives will start questioning the studies. They would instantly use them for their own arguments if they supported their opinion (which, unfortunately for them, they never do when it comes to Islam), but since they don't like the conclusions of the study, the whole study is simply dismissed.

Gad Saad has coined the term "ostrich brigade". Like ostriches, regressives feel uncomfortable having to face certain real-world problems, so they stick their heads in the sand and pretend the problem doesn't exist. The difficulty, of course, is that denying a problem is essentially just as bad as the problem itself. If your leg is on fire, that is a problem. But denying that your leg is on fire, and possibly insulting the bystanders who inform you about the problem, is in effect just as consequential, since it removes the need to do anything about it.


2. Zoom out

If, due to the incoming overwhelming evidence, denying the problem is no longer possible without looking like an utter loon, regressives often resort to the zooming-out strategy. Instead of talking about certain subgroups of Muslims who display horrible behaviour, they will broaden out the issue and direct attention away from the actual group. For example, when talking about Islam and its connection to violence, we hear things like “Religions in general can lead to violence”. In the aftermath of the sexual assault scandal in Europe on New Year's Eve, many voices were heard blaming “men” for this behaviour. “That's just what men do when they get drunk”. Well actually it isn't, at least it wasn't in Germany before the influx a million young Muslim men.

By broadening out the topic the real issue is essentially avoided. Yeah, men are just like that, what can we do... Yeah, religions are bad, oh well... This strategy is not employed in order to talk about or solve problems. It is used to shift the attention away from the real issue, namely Muslims.


3. Zoom in

Unlike zooming out, zooming in narrows down the problem to make it seem more overseeable. When talking about the global phenomenon of Islamism and jihadism, for example, regressives will bring up the Islamic State. Even for most regressives IS is not defensible, so they try to use it to their advantage and to direct criticism away from Islam. They then can say things like that only a tiny fraction of the Muslim world support IS, so we shouldn't be so concerned. Ironically, it has been shown that this is not even true, and that support for IS actually numbers in the hundreds of millions. But even if this were not the case, what regressives like to ignore is that our concern isn't limited to IS. We are concerned about Islamism on a global scale. There are dozens of other significant Islamist and jihadist groups causing mayhem and destruction at this very moment, like Boko Haram, Al-Shaabab, Al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Taliban, to just name a few of the more violent ones. And of course we are concerned about far more in regard to Islam than just Islamism.


4. Create false conflation

Another popular deflection strategy is the attempt to lessen the problems of Islam by creating false conflations. A very common instance among Americans is the conflation of Islam with Christianity. For example, when the divisive and violent verses of the Koran are mentioned and criticised as an explanation for Muslim behaviour, regressives will point to the Bible and how it contains hideous passages too. This is of course entirely irrelevant and pathetic, but they will state it with a feeling of pride, as if they were being extremely nuanced (nuance, by the way, is one of the favourite words of regressives).

But it gets even more silly. Since no other group of people is currently committing atrocious acts even remotely on the same scale as Muslims, regressives compare the acts of Muslims today to what other groups did in the past. Often they will go back centuries! I'm sure you all have had the experience of wanting to discuss the perils of jihadism we are witnessing right now, only to be reminded of how terrible the crusades were 800 years ago.

Another fun false conflation which comes up frequently is the abortion clinic bombings. “See”, regressives say in response to the terror charts which show that Muslims are responsible for 98% of terror-related deaths around the globe, “Christians commit acts of terror too!” I believe that nine abortion doctors have been killed by Christians. Not last week, not last year. No, in the history of the United States. On a good morning that many are killed by Muslims before breakfast.


5. The "all-argument"

Personally this is my favourite piece of regressive Islam apologetics. It is the pinnacle of silliness, yet it comes up at a frequency which is breath-taking. When criticising anything to do with Islam, the response is “wait, are you saying that all Muslims are __________ . Although nobody has ever said that all Muslims are to blame for anything, the response is heard time and time again. It is the ultimate strawman.

Some examples:
“There are many verses in the Koran that incite violence.” - “Are you saying that all Muslims are violent?”
“Islamic terror occurs on a day to day basis.” - “But not all Muslims are terrorists. Most Muslims are peaceful people.”
“Muslims have problematic views when it comes to women.” - “All Muslims?”

It is shocking that it must even be said, but no, we don't mean all Muslims. We are not talking about about your friendly, secular, law-abiding Muslim neighbour. We are not talking about Maajid Nawaz. Or the 2-year-old son of a Muslim father. Or the 84-year-old grandma. We are refering to a demographic. The whole reason we bring up surveys and statistics is to determine the pervasiveness of certain beliefs in a given sample of Muslims.

In a different context such an evasion manoeuvre would be unthinkable. Imagine that you live in Australia. You turn on the news and hear about several attacks on surfers by sharks who have eaten them up or bitten off their legs. The news reporter's voice shakes in light of this dreadful news, as he turns to his studio guest, a shark expert, and asks him what we should do against this problem. The guest replies, “What has happened is truly horrible. Our sympathy lies with the victims and we all condemn these shark attacks. But we must be careful not to blame all sharks for these attacks. Most sharks are peaceful creatures that don't attacks humans. We shouldn't paint sharks with a broad brush. These specific sharks might have attacked surfers, but we can't draw any conclusions about the rest of the shark population from their behaviour.” I assume you would find this bizarrely irritating. And yet it is the same argument that is brought up to excuse Muslim attitudes and behaviour constantly.


6. Blame America, Israel, or “the West”

This too is a very common deflection attempt among regressives. It fits into the regressive narrative perfectly, that says that white heterosexual Western men are to blame for everything bad that happens in the world. According to this narrative, all the problems we see throughout the Islamic world are of our own making. IS? America's fault for invading Iraq. Islamic terrorism? A response to Western foreign policy. Palestinians stabbing Israeli civilians? Israel's “occupation” is to blame. Fundamentalist Islam and Islamism are generally on the rise? Of course, since “the West” has prevented the rise of stable societies. Muslims living in Europe are poorly integrated, have formed parallel societies, and have joined IS by the thousands? Blame the racist European cultures and their failure to do more for Muslims.

Now, obviously Western countries have made mistakes in the past. That is not the point. The point is that the argument deprives Muslims of any agency for their actions and they are viewed as helpless peons whose behaviour is solely determined by the West. Regressives don't tend to travel very much, let alone into Muslim-majority countries. They only experience their own culture, and only absorb their own news and politics. They see the world through the prism of their country and their culture. This causes them to think that everything is about the West, about them. It is actually a very narcissistic notion. Even when Islamists go on ad nauseum how they are doing what they do in the name of Islam, regressives will still often point to the West. It's almost like they can't stand the thought of the world not revolving around them.


7. Change the topic

Finally – and this is perhaps the most stunning renunciation of intellectual honesty –, when regressives feel uncomfortable about talking about Islam, they may simply change the topic. All the previous sins incorporate this strategy to some degree, since they are used to deflect from the real issue and muddy the waters. But the seventh sin is about changing the topic entirely, to a completely different issue. Instead of addressing concerning poll results, for example, they will start talking about anti-Muslim sentiment, and how it is growing in the West. Well, sure, that's a problem. Perhaps we can talk about it some day, ask for the reasons and discuss what we can do about it. But that is a separate conversation and has nothing to do with what we were talking about. Other popular topics which regressives switch to are racism or the political right. They don't want to talk about uncomfortable topics. They want to talk about their topics. The ones where they feel cozy and content.

A regressive on his own usually can't get away with such conversational sabotage. But when they come in hordes, and one of them changes the topic, the others will seize the chance and jump in, which may totally derail the discussion. Countless conversations have been destroyed through means of this tactic. So keep on the look-out!

Moderator Action: Just a note: I decided that this post is okay on its own, but that it doesn't work well as the OP of its own thread and that it properly belongs in this thread anyway. Post copied into this thread, and it is a little behind this point because it was inserted in its chronological position. The other posts from that thread weren't really worth merging in, but anyone who wants can feel free to reply to it here just like any other post in this thread.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

This is so absurd.

The liberal tradition has always confirmed the power of private autonomous institutions to apply their own rules -- unless the law explicitly forbids them from doing so for some reason.

This means reddit isn't suppressing anyone's freedom of speech if they ban fatpeoplehate. Nor is it wrong to recommend that reddit does more to moderate its community.

It means Yale isn't suppressing anyone's freedom of expression if they choose to ban demeaning Halloween costumes. Yale, too, is a private institution with the legal and moral right to restrict unwanted or disruptive behavior by its faculty and students as long as they're on campus.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean what some people think it means.

Yeah because as we all know, it is the SJW's, not government officials, politicians etc, who control whether or not controls on speech or the internet will accelerate.

Are you people misrepresenting me on purpose or are you legitimately not comprehending me?

Of COURSE private institutions should have the right to ban whatever they want on their own premises or websites. Nowhere did I say otherwise. In fact, I'd wager that I'm more in favor of private property rights than either of you, who no doubt agree with things like blanket smoking bans in restaurants and laws against refusing to serve customers based on race, sexual preference, gender etc., whereas I believe private companies should be allowed to do those things (although I would personally never give my money to any place that did). If I ever said that private institutions should not be allowed to restrict whatever they want please do point it out.

But people being invited to speak at the UN about "cyber violence" are not dealing with private spaces. Universities also do not qualify as private spaces, as many of them receive significant funding from the government. You're going to seriously sit there and try to convince me that this whole argument is over people who want to restrict speech on private property only? Do you think me an imbecile, or do you actually have your heads so far in the sand that you can't see the change being advocated for on a national policy level?

 

[Farm Boy]

Restricting rights is all about determining when the proper people are doing it for the proper reasons Wolf. Silly man. Principle aren't principles. They're rationalizations for loyalty.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Restricting rights is all about determining when the proper people are doing it for the proper reasons Wolf. Silly man. Principle aren't principles. They're rationalizations for loyalty.

Right, right, I forgot about "there are no bad tactics, only bad targets". Silly me.

 

[Funky]

I mean this is the crux of the problem, really. I don't think you can ignore one viewpoint or another when your goal is progressive social change. There is a lot more to this than just drawing a straight line from the Koran to terrorism. 40% of Palestinians think suicide bombing is OK. 89% of Pakistanis don't. What does that tell us? Maybe there is something going on in Palestine but not in Pakistan, other than lots of people being Muslim, leading to that difference of opinion?

Actually only 16% of Palestinians reject suicide bombing. In Pakistan this specific belief is apparently less prevalent, though there are still 15 million people in favour of it. What connects them is that they all derive this belief from their religious scripture, specifically the doctrines of jihad, martyrdom and paradise. They all get it from the ideology of Islam.

You seem to have fallen victim to a version of the 5th sin, as stated above, the "all-argument". When we are talking about support for suicide bombing in Pakistan, we are talking about the 15 million who support it and the doctrines they are motivated by. We can acknowledge that, unlike other Islamic countries, a large majority is against it and we can talk about the reasons. But that doesn't lessen the problem that millions of Pakistanis essentially support terrorism. And whether a majority of Muslims world-wide rejects the practise or not, there are still hundreds of millions who support it throughout the Islamic world. This is a huge problem which causes death and destruction every single day, and it is caused by doctrines which make up a significant part of the Koran. That a majority of Muslims doesn't happen to adhere to this particular belief is irrelevant. These doctrines must be challenged. As must many other far wider spread central Islamic beliefs, like the subjagation of women or support for sharia.

Did my Mom and Dad help train OB/GYN's and female nurses about modern medical methods for birthing and infant care and birth control in countries like Yemen, Senegal, Jordan, and Palestine by going in and telling everyone their religion is terrible and how could they make women wear those full body veils how dare they? No. That isn't being an apologist or enabling bad behavior, that is called being pragmatic and picking your battles in order to accomplish bigger and better things.

Respect for your mom and dad. It sounds like they did some great work. And I totally agree about being pragmatic and picking your battles. I am certainly not advocating going into a mosque and ranting about how awful Islam is. What I am doing here is diagnosing the problem. How we proceed to combat Islam is an entirely different (and obviously very important) conversation. But we can't even get to the discussion about how we want to solve the problem if we don't talk openly about the nature of problem.

Apart from that, I wouldn't be so quick about dismissing certain modes of argument. I find it rather condescending to assume that just talking honestly about Islam will cause Muslims to become more radicalised. They should be treated with the same dignity as everyone else, which includes that we treat them as equal adult members of the human project who are capable of rational discourse. If anything, the past 15 years have shown that too much tolerance and compliancy have not improved the situation, in fact the threats of Islamism and Islamic fundamentalism are greater than ever.
Moreover, some of the more strident Islam critics report that they have received hundreds or even thousands of emails by former, partly radical Muslims, who were deconverted by relentless and unsparing criticism of their religion. In this video, Sarah Haider describes how her deconversion process was due to the research she did on Islam in order to prove her atheist fellow students wrong, who were constantly making fun of her and throwing barbaric Koran verses in her face.

As I see it, the criticism has to come from all sides. We need the strident critics. The more moderate critics have their role too. We need comedians making fun of Islam, just like they do with Christianity. We need unbound historical and theological debate. We also need the voices from "normal" men and especially women who managed to escape Islam and who can share their stories about the oppression in their lives. We could also use the feminists, but they have become utterly insane and pathetic. What we can't use are regressives who out of some abstract notion of "protecting the minorities" are morally blind to the suffering which Islam is causing, first and foremost to Muslims.

 

[Cheetah]

This is so absurd.

The liberal tradition has always confirmed the power of private autonomous institutions to apply their own rules -- unless the law explicitly forbids them from doing so for some reason.

This means reddit isn't suppressing anyone's freedom of speech if they ban fatpeoplehate. Nor is it wrong to recommend that reddit does more to moderate its community.

It means Yale isn't suppressing anyone's freedom of expression if they choose to ban demeaning Halloween costumes. Yale, too, is a private institution with the legal and moral right to restrict unwanted or disruptive behavior by its faculty and students as long as they're on campus.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean what some people think it means.

Yeah because as we all know, it is the SJW's, not government officials, politicians etc, who control whether or not controls on speech or the internet will accelerate.

Are you unaware of some things which have been happening, or did you intentionally misinterpret Wolfbecketts position?

Take universities, for instance. It's become a regular occurrence that some students are actively trying to limit the freedom of expression, always in the name of tolerance and general left-wing ideas. Some of it is more reasonable than others of course, like the discussion of removing the statues of Rhodes or Wilson, but other things are simply repressive!

Hence the ban on the sale of several newspapers – the Sun, Daily Star and Daily Express – on many campuses in the past year. Songs, including Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines, were blocked by some student unions, along with Charlie Hebdo, fancy dress and Mexican sombreros, as well as a number of speakers.

Nowadays no-platform policies have given up focusing only on the far right. Many of the people who have found it hard to be heard at British universities in the past year could be described in many ways but not, by any sober definition, as “fascists”.

The veteran feminist and provocateur Germaine Greer, the journalist Milo Yiannopoulos, the feminist and campaigner Julie Bindel, the comedians Dapper Laughs and Kate Smurthwaite – contentious, sometimes offensive, sometimes funny, but none of them a goose-stepping neo-Nazi. Yet all have either been banned, disinvited or had events cancelled at British universities.

Take the case of Julie Bindel, the lesbian feminist and longtime campaigner against violence against women. With that kind of profile, you’d think she’d be welcomed by student activists all over the country.

However, Bindel has also been critical of some aspects of gender reassignment surgery and transgenderism, which has led her to being declared a “vile transphobe” by the NUS LGBT campaign. Last October she was banned from speaking at an event at Manchester University. The topic of the debate Bindel was excluded from? Censorship.

Or look at the comedian Kate Smurthwaite. She is a feminist and activist against the sexual exploitation of women who doesn’t appear to be a threat to anyone’s safety other than that of men who pay for prostitutes – she supports the Nordic model of prostitution law, which criminalises punters.

Yet Smurthwaite was informed a few days before she was due to play a gig last year at Goldsmiths College in south London that “there is a likeliness that the ‘safe space’ policy we abide by could be breached”. Apparently members of Goldsmiths Feminist Society decided that Smurthwaite’s views on prostitution, which were not in her show, were “whorephobic” and planned to picket the performance.

It happened during a talk given by the human-rights activist Maryam Namazie. The Iranian-born Namazie is spokesperson for the Council of Ex-Muslims and campaigns for secularism, feminism, freedom of expression and against Islamist extremism. As such she is a controversial figure. Earlier last year she was barred from giving a speech at Warwick University when an officer from the student union decided that she was too “inflammatory” to be heard.

Link to video.

Namazie is heckled and subject to a prolonged campaign of disruption by a group of students from the Isoc [Goldsmiths Islamic Society]. They shout out, get up and sit down, walk around the room, laugh when she refers to Bangladeshi bloggers being hacked to death, and at one stage shut down her overhead projector when it displays a [British webcomic] Jesus and Mo cartoon.

An atmosphere of agitation and tension pervades the room, and in spite of the presence of a security guard, the sight of a number of men trying to silence a lone woman seems uncomfortably close to physical intimidation.

“I absolutely support the right of Isoc members to protest our event,” says Fainman. “I think we need more of that but you have to draw the line at where they’re preventing the speaker from talking – turning off the PowerPoint and shouting her down.”

Yet when Namazie finally cracks and tells her tormentors to be quiet, one of the ringleaders calls out in reply: “Safe space! Safe space! Intimidation!”

In the past few years the Isoc has invited speakers who defend wife-beating and the criminalisation of homosexuality. What’s more, soon after Namazie’s visit, it emerged that the Goldsmiths Isoc president’s Twitter account contained several homophobic messages, and he was forced to resign.

Yet critically both Goldsmiths LGBTQ Society and its Feminist Society condemned Namazie and offered their support to the Isoc. As the Feminist Society’s statement read: “Goldsmiths Feminist Society stands in solidarity with Goldsmiths Islamic Society. We support them in condemning the actions of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society and agree that hosting known Islamophobes at our university creates a climate of hatred.”

“It’s been very much my experience that much of ‘progressive’ student politics has bought into the Islamist narrative that sees any dissent as bigotry and an ‘attack’ on ‘Muslim students’,” says Namazie. “This is absurd given that ‘Muslim students’ are clearly not homogeneous. What the societies did was not to side with ‘Muslims’ against bigotry but to side with Islamists who condone homophobia, misogyny and the death penalty for apostasy.”

Link

Clearly, the ISOC members hold views which place them far to the right of the traditional political spectrum, and the fact that Goldsmiths Feminist Society supported them against a feminist, secular human-rights activist is precisely what people are referring to as the Regressive Left.

And banning feminists and Charlie Hebdo are other good examples of the damage the regressive left is doing.

 

[Cheetah]

I just found the first part of the Rubin Report's interview with Tommy Robinson, and there was also this disclaimer/trailer/explanation:

"Part of me was afraid that if I spoke to Tommy, regardless of whether he is really a bigot or not, that I would also be labeled a bigot, too. Let me repeat that: I feared that just by having a conversation with someone, just by hearing their views as I do on this show every week, I would then get one of these awful labels these people throw around like candy."

Link to video.

 

[Princeps]

there are still hundreds of millions who support it throughout the Islamic world.

Again, stop this nonsense. This doesn't mean that there are actually hundreds of millions supporting attacks on innocent civilians.

It means that there are people, in poor reactionary countries, who lack the information to judge the action appropriately (as I've emphasized, there is a lot of choice blindness; i.e. people just don't know any better). Additionally, voting for something on a poll doesn't take any personal investment and there is no one to argue against what you choose to vote for. This means that there is a lot discouraging polls everywhere, which are paraded around but one shouldn't put too much stock in them.

Also, stop with the assumption that all terrorism is unjustified and all suicide bombing is unjust. This is obviously a false assumption. Like for example:

Actually only 16% of Palestinians reject suicide bombing.

If in 1948, the Russians had invaded my country and moved in 4 million Russian settlers (not a wildly implausible prospect in those years), I don't see anything wrong with suicide bombing kindergartens in Leningrad.

Israel is a legitimate target: they chose to create their ideological experiment on stolen land, which they chose to ethnically cleanse. Now they're like "boohoo, they want to kill us, how dare the savage brown people do that! boohoo".

Are you unaware of some things which have been happening, or did you intentionally misinterpret Wolfbecketts position?

Take universities, for instance. It's become a regular occurrence that some students are actively trying to limit the freedom of expression, always in the name of tolerance and general left-wing ideas. Some of it is more reasonable than others of course, like the discussion of removing the statues of Rhodes or Wilson, but other things are simply repressive!

Yes, and universities are allowed to do this.

I simply don't see anything wrong with this. If the students want to do this and the universities choose to allow it; it's fine.

Why do you care about Rhodes? I say dump that sucker in the sea.

They are not obligated to provide a platform to to garbage like Milo. They are not obligated to purchase or accept hateful rags like the Sun.

This is simply a case of the far-right and other rabble-rousers wanting the civilized world to unilaterally disarm. They feel entitled to the respected, prestigious platform when they should be out on the street selling pencils from a cup.

Of COURSE private institutions should have the right to ban whatever they want on their own premises or websites.

Yes, which means this isn't a freedom of speech issue. Why do people like you keep saying that it is? Why do you keep insinuating that the universities seek to suppress freedom of speech?

In fact, I'd wager that I'm more in favor of private property rights than either of you, who no doubt agree with things like blanket smoking bans in restaurants and laws against refusing to serve customers based on race, sexual preference, gender etc., whereas I believe private companies should be allowed to do those things (although I would personally never give my money to any place that did). If I ever said that private institutions should not be allowed to restrict whatever they want please do point it out.

No. Private institutions are still bound by laws, they're not above them. Governments restrict harmful discrimination because... it's harmful. Banning Milo from a university harms no one.

Restrictions on Halloween costumes doesn't undermine academic freedom.

But people being invited to speak at the UN about "cyber violence"

OHMYGOD!!!111111 BLAKC HELICOPTERS!!!1

The UN is allowed to do this, and the UN doesn't make laws. This really makes the UN a part of the civil society.

Universities also do not qualify as private spaces,

Yes they do.

as many of them receive significant funding from the government.

Which come with specific conditions attached that are irrelevant to this subject. Being subsidized by the government doesn't make you a component of the government.

You're going to seriously sit there and try to convince me that this whole argument is over people who want to restrict speech on private property only?

It is. This a debate between actual totalitarians , that is people who want force the civil society to endorse or platform views even if they find them abhorrent, and the liberals who are justly opposed to doing so. The universities do not want to poison their studying environment with demeaning filth: and that's fine.

 

[Funky]

Again, stop this nonsense. This doesn't mean that there are actually hundreds of millions supporting attacks on innocent civilians.

Sin 1: Ignore all the evidence and deny the problem.

stop with the assumption that all terrorism is unjustified and all suicide bombing is unjust.

I don't see anything wrong with suicide bombing kindergartens in Leningrad.

Israel is a legitimate target

Wow. You need help, dude.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, we do need to understand that war has not been discarded as a political tool humans use. War, inevitably, involves murdering children. Only we don't call it murder when the party doing it passes our loyalty check.