But the average left-leaning person today doesn't see bigots even as people any more.
I spend the bulk of my time studying extremist discourse and communities. Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that behavior.
You are, essentially, projecting the characteristics of bad actors onto other actors who are warning and complaining about said bad actors.
I've found that when I actually talk to so-called "toxic" people politely, they are willing to listen. It's not them that are causing the polarization.
That's a tactic known as 'entryism' designed to leverage your nice, conflict-averse personality as a vehicle for normalization and possible future recruitment.
Why is this suddenly a discussion about extremism? Not everyone who is bigoted is an extremist, but maybe it's easier for you to argue as though this is the case.
> Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong [...] group are either not people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that behavior.
Funny, this is a pretty good description of cancel culture. "Warning" and "complaining" is one thing, but advocating for the complete social and professional ostracization of people for increasingly arbitrary reasons is happening, and has been happening. _That_ sounds like extremism to me.
Assuming constant bad faith on the part of people, _most_ of whom don't have any control over the views they hold, is not how this problem gets solved.
The trouble is, not everyone is saying that. A few people here and there are, but what about some mode nuance things? For example, what if someone says they're fine with trans-people and think everyone should live their lives whoever they want, but trans M2F shouldn't participate in professional sports because it's not fair.
That's an incredibly polarizing statement, and one who makes it is immediately labeled as a bigot. Some go as far as to say such an individual is "denying trans people exist."
There is a lot to unpack there, and people can have reasonable debates about both sides of that statement. Adam Conover and Joe Rogan have had such a conversation (it's a really good episode of the Rogan podcast), but many people refuse to even listen to it because they consider Rogan a bigot/alt-right-adjacent/etc.
You have to be careful because there is so much room in the details and someone not accepting 100% of x world view doesn't immediately make them a terrible human being.
In the past, controversial views converge over time. Heidegger talked about extreme ideas as a thesis, those trying to keep things as they are as antithesis, and eventually society moves together with some kind of synthesis. All that feels like it's been thrown out the window for extreme left or extreme right ideology.
> That's an incredibly polarizing statement, and one who makes it is immediately labeled as a bigot. Some go as far as to say such an individual is "denying trans people exist."
Great point. A huge part of the problem is language. Subtlety and nuance gets stripped away (especially online), so that everything you disagree with is an unconscionable violation. It's the language of clickbait.
I'm sure the idea is to break through the noise and mobilize people against perceived injustice, but all it does is make the noise that much louder.
"You have to be careful because there is so much room in the details and someone not accepting 100% of x world view doesn't immediately make them a terrible human being."
Like what? What could be the "not a terrible human being" part be about someone who wants the state to disacknowledge someone's humanity?
Who do we trust to be the arbiters of extreme positions? I would consider the dismissal of using biological science to define male and female as an extreme position, and yet I could be banned from Twitter by saying as much.
While that's true, I think it's worth pointing out that it is a mirror of your own statement that "the average left-leaning person today doesn't see bigots even as people any more." Neither statement is true. They are the same kind of hyperbolic/uncharitable extrapolation of a group's inner thoughts.
> That's true, it is a mirror, which should be disturbing to anyone on the left who doesn't want the left to be a mirror of the right.
I mean, sure, but I was meaning to make you think about your own tendency to fall into the same trap.
Also, the left can scarcely avoid being a mirror of the right in many ways, given that both groups are made out of humans. The influence of ideology on social dynamics is overstated.
> What does saying, "I don't think you deserve to be heard" say about the person saying it?
But see, you're putting words in people's mouths here. This saying is far from the average left-leaning position.
Even if we were to look at the subsection of the left that wishes to de-platform certain individuals, they generally wouldn't say something as crude and caricatural as "I don't think you deserve to be heard." This is, perhaps, what you think that they think, but this is uncharitable and dismissive.
Generally, I wouldn't. People may want to deplatform other individuals for a variety of reasons.
A common one is to impede the spread of ideas that they consider dangerous, because they believe that these ideas will cause human suffering down the line. Whether these ideas truly are dangerous, whether their obstruction is effective, or whether it may backfire, that's another debate. The point is that they genuinely believe these ideas to be mind-viruses of sorts, and they genuinely believe that deplatforming is an effective way to impede them. If they are correct on these counts, then their actions are justified.
There are other possible rationales. One would be concern about bandwidth: platforms have limited bandwidth and can only spread a limited number of ideas, and people also have limited bandwidth and can only be aware of a limited number of ideas. The spread of bad ideas may therefore harm us by "clogging" the system (the resurgence of flat Earthism may be the most egregious example of wasted bandwidth).
I don't mean to debate the merits of these reasons. I just mean to point out that the "deplatformers" do have well thought out rationales. And if they are wrong, which is certainly possible, they are not obviously wrong.
Why is this suddenly a discussion about extremism?
Because that is my area of expertise and I wish to contribute to the discussion. While not all bigots are extremists, all extremists are bigots.
"Warning" and "complaining" is one thing, but advocating for the complete social and professional ostracization of people for increasingly arbitrary reasons
I'm not making an argument for cancel culture, which has flaws of its own. When I talk about extremists I have narrow and specific criteria for inclusion in that category, most importantly the advocacy of genocide.
Assuming constant bad faith on the part of people, _most_ of whom don't have any control over the views they hold
You seem to be assuming that most people are mindless, and further that I'm talking about the broad mass of people.
> I'm not making an argument for cancel culture, which has flaws of its own. When I talk about extremists I have narrow and specific criteria for inclusion in that category, most importantly the advocacy of genocide.
No one would disagree with that definition. Your comment's parent made the point that exclusionary language is used in many in-groups, not just bigoted ones.
Your contribution was to say that the parent is talking about left-leaning people like they are - in your words - genocide advocates. I don't know that this is a quality contribution.
> You seem to be assuming that most people are mindless, and further that I'm talking about the broad mass of people.
Are you saying that people generally have control over their opinions and predispositions? I know I can't change my views at will, Lord knows if I could I'd become a bit more woke to fit in better.
The parent to me comment was complaining about the attitude of left-wing people towards bigots. I'm leveraging my knowledge of extremism to explain why left wingers feel such antipathy towards bigotry: because of the genocidal outcomes which are associated with it and nowadays actively promoted by some folk.
Of course, extremism is by no means limited to one particular ideology. I'm not a fan of Maoists, for example.
I believe one can certainly change their views, although it's hard work.
> Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that behavior.
Yes, extremist bigots do tend to favor deplatforming: they just want to deplatform a different group.
Surely we can behave better than the bigots?
> You are, essentially, projecting the characteristics of bad actors onto other actors who are warning and complaining about said bad actors.
Yes, but it's not just projection: the shoe fits.
If we behave like them we are no better than them. We on the left can't claim tolerance if we only tolerate people we agree with.
> That's a tactic known as 'entryism' designed to leverage your nice, conflict-averse personality as a vehicle for normalization and possible future recruitment.
LOL at me being conflict-averse. Check out my post history.
Yes, extremist bigots do tend to favor deplatforming: they just want to deplatform a different group.
I'm not talking about deplatforming, I'm talking about the sort of extremist bigots who advocate, organize, or engage in murdering people. You are free to present deplatforming as an equal ill to that if you wish.
If we behave like them we are no better than them. We on the left can't claim tolerance if we only tolerate people we agree with.
Tolerating disagreement and tolerating murder are not really equivalent. You're not obliged to give someone a hug if they're trying to stab you, for example.
> You are free to present deplatforming as an equal ill to that if you wish.
Sigh. Can we not do the obvious straw man arguments?
> Tolerating disagreement and tolerating murder are not really equivalent.
That's true.
Bigots and murderers are also not really equivalent. Nobody is talking about tolerating murderers, so again, let's try to not toss around straw man arguments.
> Yes, extremist bigots do tend to favor deplatforming: they just want to deplatform a different group.
> Surely we can behave better than the bigots?
In a vacuum, I'd agree. As in, in the real world, I would agree. If this were a true human contact based forum, the voice of many regular, busy people will always trump the voice of a few raging bigots. Culturally, we've moved past that; at least in urban centres where this sort of discussion could actually happen.
On the internet, it is different. Posting on the internet is gamified. The rules are simple. To get more influence, you need to be upvoted/favorited/hearted. If your opinion sucks, you are downvoated/blocked/etc.
It's simple, right? But it's also very easily gamed via astroturfing/botting/upvote-downvote farming/influence manipulation. Case in point, any political subreddit prior to the general election in 2016.
Because of this fact, any attempt at good faith discussions in popular forums simply do not exist anymore. Just take a look at how many garbage posts are at the top of any popular subreddit vs actually insightful posts.
Politicians who use these to gain grassroots support have learned to game the system. And enterprising individuals from all over the world are flocking to them. There is big business in upvote/downvote farms, botnets, and influence manipulation via social engineering. Clearly none of these is done in good faith.
Places that have been deplatformed are not always simply people who harbor alternative opinions from the norm. They are places or groups of people who wilfully try debase discussion via the aforementioned methods.
There are bad actors on all sides of any discussion, but it seems to me like organized bad faith is always at the core of the most toxic, polarized places on the internet.
To fix polarization, we must fix the gaming mechanics of these places. More moderation for cheaters is priority number 1.
I think you are right to identify gamification of social media as part of the problem, but I think we need to be careful not to lump in every opinion we disagree with, with people who are using astroturfing/botting/farming/etc. Manipulation of the gamification systems is clearly not in good faith, but there are plenty of real people with odious opinions that they hold due to fear and/or ignorance, but hold in good faith.
Yes, I spend a great deal of time thinking about that. In general, the best antidotes to extremism is getting a girlfriend (most extremists are male and heterosexual), having a kid (more so a daughter), settling down and ageing out. Socioeconomic conditions are a major driver of extremism, which is one reason it tends to flourish in adversity, when there is a large supply of pessimists available for recruitment.
There are of course many other approaches to deradicalization. Personal contact and bridge-building is ideal, but it's slow, expensive, and scales poorly for much the same reasons as why it's not practical to solve all social problems by telling everyone to go to therapy.
>planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that behavior
This sounds like de-platforming to me.
When I say 'eliminating' people I specifically mean killing them, and no I don't think that's the same thing as de-platforming people.
What you are doing here is called "vilifying." Where you identify that someone is disagreeable to you and attribute everything they do to bad faith.
It is not. I haven't identified anyone in particular as being disagreeable or practicing entryism, but rather pointed out the existence of such a rhetorical tactic that can be used in bad faith. You seem to be confusing my suggestion that the person I was responding to is a victim of such a tactic with their being a user of it.
> Yes, I spend a great deal of time thinking about that. In general, the best antidotes to extremism is getting a girlfriend (most extremists are male and heterosexual), having a kid (more so a daughter), settling down and ageing out. Socioeconomic conditions are a major driver of extremism, which is one reason it tends to flourish in adversity, when there is a large supply of pessimists available for recruitment.
How are you defining extremism?
> When I say 'eliminating' people I specifically mean killing them, and no I don't think that's the same thing as de-platforming people.
This is a motte-and-bailey argument[1]. You're arguing on a topic about bigots talking on the internet. I'm not arguing that we should allow murder or calling for murder, and I'm not aware of anyone who is arguing that, so you're just presenting your opinion as "I'm against murder" which is not controversial. But in the larger argument you're supporting the deplatforming of a pretty large group of people, and very few of those people are actually calling for murder.
If you're anti-letting-people-call-for-murder, great, we're in agreement on that. But that has literally nothing to do with the overall discussion.
> It is not. I haven't identified anyone in particular as being disagreeable or practicing entryism, but rather pointed out the existence of such a rhetorical tactic that can be used in bad faith. You seem to be confusing my suggestion that the person I was responding to is a victim of such a tactic with their being a user of it.
> Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that behavior.
Uh, well, isn't that the same that some leftwing activist advocate for those they disagree with? Deplatforming, censorship, criminalisation?
I don't think it's fair to call this phenomenon "leftwing". My perception is that those who advocate deplatforming/censorship are centrists who call themselves "progressives". They do this mostly in order to support existing power structures that they fear are threatened by free speech. Very few actual leftists in the American context are against free speech.
I wanted to stress that I didn't mean it as a leftwing phenomenon. It's just that the GP seemed to describe it as a peculiarly rightwing one, and I think we've seen instances on the left as well (particularly recently). And while the left is generally much more averse to physical violence than the right, it's also more socially accepted and mainstream, so the outrage storms are more pronounced and the calls for censorship and sometimes criminalisation meet much less resistance.
I didn't agree with your first comment above, as I mostly focus on violent extremism, but you do raise a good point about the general intensity of polarization and how there is certainly support on the left for social sanctions against those we disagree with.
I don't exactly subscribe to the proposals in your example article, but I do think that climate denial is a sort of fraud which has real externalities, and have suggested that people should listening to or engaging with known climate deniers. It seems to me that there's something fundamentally wrong with the idea that it's OK to lie about products or policy for the sake of profit and then assign blame to the victims of predictable externalities for their credulity or lack of preparedness.
One thing we've learned in the age of social media is that false information is considerably more likely to go viral than true information- good news for the entertainment industry, less good in areas like public health or policymaking. It's likely that the ease of transmission is that false information tends to leverage easy prior assumptions over difficult unintuitive ones such that cognitive bias could be said to yield a 'liar surplus' which has an economic value to the deliberate proponent of untruth. It's possible that this will lead to the development of weighting tools for assessing the reliability of information through analysis of the rate and direction of its transmission, but as long as it's profitable to sell false information we will continue to get more of that.
I really like your comment, I don't know what the end goal is? Does that mean we should never try to give our opinion?
Maybe I don't understand.. I think it would be a good thing if every individual with their beliefs is slowly normalizing others to their feelings and beliefs.
Exactly. Extremists who espouse intolerance count on the tolerance of the opposing groups to get themselves accepted and their extremist viewpoints normalized. When they do get deplatformed, marginalized and discredited, they complain about it, which itself serves to recruit people, especially those who are unfamiliar with such tactics and mistakenly think that their side is being unfair.
My problem with this "intolerance-is-okay-against-the-intolerant" thing is I'm lumped in with some extremist politics because of my religion. I don't feel at all treated as an individual (or even treated fairly) by either the left or the right. Some people who identify as the same religion have been homophobic. Since I was of voting age, I have never been against legalizing gay marriage, or treating homosexuals differently in the law at all. But I get flak for my religion from the tolerant left. They stereotype me every bit as much as the right stereotypes Islam. But they sure think they're being tolerant, by supposedly shunning intolerance.
You say that "some people who identify as the same religion [as me] have been homophobic" but I wonder if that's not minimizing the truth. If you're part of an opt-in demographic that's known for negative characteristic X, even if you yourself don't exhibit that characteristic, you're going to receive some transitive association -- and it's at least somewhat warranted because your participation is voluntary.
It's only known for that, because of a few high-profile examples. It's like saying that Muslims should just expect some transitive association with terror groups. I mean, they choose to still be Muslim, right?
One reason why it is difficult for me to tell is that I personally know a lot of people who say the same thing, i.e. that they are in favor of gay rights, but then they donate thousands of dollars a year to an extremely powerful and wealthy religious corporation that consistently preaches against homosexuality, drives gay teenagers to suicide, and puts their financial and political weight toward preventing gay rights in multiple states.
I spend the bulk of my time studying extremist discourse and communities. Extremist bigots take it as read that people of the wrong ethnic/religious/political group are either not people or at best inferior people, and direct their efforts to promoting those views, planning how to eliminate those they dislike, and normalizing that behavior.
You are, essentially, projecting the characteristics of bad actors onto other actors who are warning and complaining about said bad actors.
I've found that when I actually talk to so-called "toxic" people politely, they are willing to listen. It's not them that are causing the polarization.
That's a tactic known as 'entryism' designed to leverage your nice, conflict-averse personality as a vehicle for normalization and possible future recruitment.