Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Sebby, take this thread by John Holbo, a response to the Harper's letter, as a sort of response to the Quillette and Tablet pieces you posted yesterday.
eta: DeLong puts it in a more readable form here. It does a better job of articulating something I've been trying to get at lately. |
That's a bit ellipitcal. But where it makes clear points, they seem to be:
1. Right wing trolls acting in bad faith deserve to be canceled
2. They're ruining it for everyone
On 1, agreed. On 2, no.
Right wing trolls can be easily ignored. We do it every day. The extreme left is not afraid of right wing trolls.
The extreme left is afraid of smart people who pick apart its arguments. The thread you cite lumps smart conservatives in with Nazis and slippery slope alarmists, and that's dishonest. The critics of the left are myriad and varied. We can separate the psychos from the reasonable people acting in good faith.
But we aren't.
The mob is seeking to eliminate the smart debate that would put some of its shibboleths to the test.
The mob actually likes the Nazis. They make its case for it. "Look at all those horrible racists!" It's afraid of people like Taibbi or Harris, who say, "Yeah, um... This movement is generally good, but in some regards, it's also batshit." Those are the moderate voices it seeks to silence because those voices can convince other moderates that they ought not to join the movement.
I'm not woke, and I never will be. I'm exactly the kind of voice people will find infuriating. I look at the woke movement and, as is the case with any movement, I see zealotry. So while I support BLM's motives, I do not genuflect blindly as one like Adder will. I hold a more pragmatic view. (I find all movements of people generally suspect, as they require an intentional loss of skepticism on the part of their members.)
I'm the most dangerous sort of thinker because I'm not the enemy. I'm just a skeptic (and also largely a supporter... except when the woke say batshit stuff). But I can take apart a zealot's thinking (as can anyone) pretty easily. That's the analytical thinking the New Left wants banished.
That Twitter thread goes a long way to defend this essential point none of the New Left dare say aloud:
We're doing this, dammit. All in or all out.
His only defense of it seems to be that the right is awful and acting in bad faith. I agree. So perhaps it's excusable in the political realm. But whacking editors and authors and pundits (often on the left!) for being insufficiently doctrinaire isn't political. It's just a mob engaging in mob violence.
For an excellent outline of the extremism one finds in moral panics like the one we're experiencing, here's a truly funny read:
https://www.amazon.com/Mobs-Messiahs.../dp/0470474807
