nomenym
7d ago
After the last few high profile violent crimes committed in the UK, there has been a curious rush to publicize that the offender was a second or third generation immigrant, usually a British citizen. This is apparently motivated from a desire to push back against anti-migrant sentiment: "See! He grew up in the UK. He wasn't an immigrant! You can't hold this terrible event against immigrants". It's one of those cases when the mainstream left demonstrates a complete failure to comprehend what their opposition actually believes and why.
It would be kind of like someone trying to publicize an instance of police brutality as proof of how bad black communities are: "Look! This is how brutal you have to deal with these people! This proves how irredeemably uncivilized they are". Of course, there are no doubt some people who actually do think like this, but even they would never try to use this argument against a left-winger because they understand how it would be interpreted in practically the opposite way.
nomenym
20d ago
They would learn about it before the end of the day, they would not want to drown, and France is really not that terrible (despite all the French people).
nomenym
21d ago
It's trivially true, even obvious. Sink a couple of boats and far fewer people die in the long run, nevermind the preventing other problems.
it's hypocrisy if you say "the important professions, including journalism, have been taken over by women and this is bad for society" while holding senior positions in journalism as a woman.
Not really, since "taking over" requires more than one person. The explanation given for why women taking over journalism is bad for society does not imply that having any women in journalism is bad for society. Having some women may be good, and not all women are like other women. Presumably, given the explanation, having highly effeminate men "take over" journalism might be expected to have similar bad consequences for society.
I would expect that having childcare taken over by men would be bad for society, but that doesn't mean that no men should be involved in childcare, nor that some men are not psychologically well-suited to it. If such a man were to complain about there being too many men in childcare (or, rather, childcare becoming too masculanized, because there are too many manly men taking over), that would not be hypocritical.
The difference is the concept of "fair play". Men naturally set up games with rules to structure conflict as an alternative to lethal violence. We even see this in males of other distantly related species where fights have a particular formal pattern. There are rules about how to challenge another male, how that challenge is accepted or conceded, and then they may even take turns attempting to intimidate or hurt their opponent. Usually this is all done in public, possibly with an audience. This all occurs in animals following mere instinct, and human males share these instincts. The institutions that allow us to scale up societies beyond their Dunbar number are basically dependent on this undercurrent of "fair play", and women don't really have those same instincts, or at least not as strongly or as often. Female competition is focused on protecting infants, subterfuge, and persuading others to do violence on their behalf. They don't abide by any rules of fair play, and it doesn't come naturally to them. Any institution that depends on fair play norms will not survive being staffed by mostly women unless those women are a highly selected group, but there aren't enough of those women to staff many institutions.
This is not to say that most men are necessarily good or consistent about this either. Most people aren't up to doing most important things, but we just need enough people, not most.
The "right" is currently a big tent alliance against the woke-globalist-progressive-socialism thing, so it includes a lot of strange bedfellows. This alliance will not last indefinitely, but for the moment there is a common enemy.
The factions of the "right" are fighting for control of the goose that lays the golden eggs, but they all agree the left is trying to kill the goose and so they have common cause for now.
Edit: The Great Journey is a lie.
nomenym
1mo ago
This is friends engaging in taboo banter. Saying taboo things is part of the friendship bonding process, because it's a demonstration of trust.
nomenym
1mo ago
The Nazis weren't wrong about everything, but the things they were right about were not uniquely or especially Nazi. That said, an alarmingly large number of people seem to have confused being an inverted Nazi* with being a good person, because Hitler is the secular devil.
*May not correspond to actual historical Nazis.
The difference between this and the Jay Jones situation is that the Jones conversation was seemingly more serious in tone. It wasn't otherwise soaked in irony and hyperbole, but rather a one-on-one conversation with someone who felt uncomfortable with what Jones was saying and even pushed for clarification. Maybe Jones felt like it was just private joking between friends, but it was less obviously that. It came across as relatively more sincere venting. I did not take it as a statement of intent by Jones, and it was certainly not a realistic threat. Mostly it just reflects the rising hostility between the political tribes. It's certainly more concerning for a prospective AG to be saying those kind of things, though not unexpected in my opinion. Both sides think terrible and horrific things in private, because in private you frequently give voice to thoughts and feelings that you don't even agree with yourself. However, it's important that you can have those thoughts, otherwise you'll be blindsided by people who have those thoughts and actually intend to act on them.
nomenym
1mo ago
The historical antecedent does not cause it to be wrong, but the explanation for why it is wrong may be analogous to the explanation for why its historical antecedent is wrong.
Essentially, yes. There are layers.
The violent fringe of the left has always enjoyed more support. More often than not, the media doesn't so much cover left wing violence as cover for it. Left-wing agitators get a lot more institutional leniency and are often treated with kid gloves. They're good kids, with their heart in the right place, but they're just a little too zealous. Moderate left-wingers have a difficult time opposing the radical fringe intellectually, because they don't really oppose the endgoals. It becomes a debate about strategy and how to achieve those goals, and the radicals can rightly accuse the moderates of hypocrisy.
EDIT: Jordan Peterson oft-repeats his observation that even moderate leftists have a very difficult time articulating what it would look like for the left to go too far, but moderate conservatives have little trouble identifying when the either right or the left goes too far.
The radical left is a snake, and the moderate left is the grass that the snake hides in.
Of course, there are layers. There are radical leftists who actively support and commit violence, then there are others who don't act but support and cover for the violence, and then there are a whole bunch of people who are either ambivalent or intimidated by the radicals. They will mumble disapproval but they rarely make full-throated condemnations nor argue back on points of doctrine, mostly because they would lose. The radicals have been able to increase their influence further by controlling institutions.
Of course all large groups and movements have something like this dynamic going on to some degree, but it's becoming more and more a prominent on the left, and it's similar to the problem with moderate Muslims.
nomenym
1mo ago
The problem is that normie progressives are increasingly becoming like moderate Muslims.
nomenym
1mo ago
Depends on how quickly you act. But sure, if he had already way overstayed his student visa before getting married, then it would not have been easy to get a green card.
nomenym
2mo ago
Right, what is the optimal level of anti-social behavior in a society? The downsides of too much are obvious and well-understood, but the downsides of too little are perhaps obscure and pernicious in their own way.
I really don't much like the idea of forcing all groups into some kind of equity in murder rates. Real diversity demands diverse outcomes, or it doesn't mean anything, but large differences between people in the same polity are clearly an issue.
nomenym
2mo ago
why stop at black vs white?
Because that's where the biggest gains are to made at the lowest cost.
I don't actually advocate for doing it, but it's obvious why someone would focus on that first.
nomenym
2mo ago
Those anti-social underclass whites exist in America too, but they're not as anti-social per capita as blacks of the same class. For pretty much every class, education, income level, blacks commit more crimes. Infamously, low income whites have lower murder rates than high income blacks. There really does seem to be a general ancestry effect independent of other social factors.
Of course, this does not mean there are not sensible policies that could not reduce these discrepencies, including reversing counterproductive progressive attempts to solve the problem.
However, it seems to me that parity between whites and blacks in anti-social behavior could only be achieved under circumstances where blacks were significantly less free than whites. I value freedom highly, so I am disinclined to take that trade-off. But that means accepting large discrepancies that fuel racial prejudice and discrimination and make it difficult for diverse cultural groups to coexist and share the same public and political institutions.
I see no solutions to this quandary except perhaps widespread use of advanced genetic engineering or embryo screening to breed out these differences over a few generations.
nomenym
2mo ago
Yeah, progressive cancellations would occur over issues where the population was 80-20 against. What would that even look like on the right? I guess if they started cancelling people for saying that global warming is real or something.
nomenym
2mo ago
This reads more like a godless liberal visiting a godless liberal church and being horrified at the cultural appropriation.
nomenym
2mo ago
Woke progressivism wears many once venerable institutions like a skinsuit. It consumes all their social capital and then moves on to the next victim.
It's that he did things that are acceptable ways of spreading ideas in a democracy.
I don't think progressives believe that anymore. His ideas were unacceptable in a democracy, and so there is no acceptable way to spread them, and so Kirk's political activism was illegitimate. They do appear to sincerely believe this, and that illegitimate political activism is an acceptable, or perhaps even inevitable, target for violent push back. After all, if you're going to oppress people with words (no sarcasm), don't be surprised when they fight back.
nomenym
2mo ago
From the point of view of Progressivism, Kirk was profoundly harmful to society. He successfully advocated for views which were obviously wrong, and likely did so while knowing he was wrong. He was a persistent purveyor of disinformation. Even supposing that he did not understand the fascist nature of the views he espoused (which he likely did in private), enacting his political and cultural ideals would, in fact, result in fascism. Preventing fascism is the most important goal of democracy, and Kirk was daily working to undermine that. His kind of political activism was inherently illegitimate, since it sought, wittingly or not, to demolish liberal democracy and its protection of minorities. Tolerance of the intolerant is not a virtue. Kirk did far more harm to society than most "violent" criminals locked up in prison, and yet he was allowed to walk free and spread his hateful ideas unchecked. That he was typically polite cannot hide that his ideas were inherently hateful. Kirk was "nonviolent", but he was the propaganda arm of a system that every day uses violence to control marginalized people. Without people like Kirk, that system of violence cannot survive, and so Kirk is responsible for a great deal of systemic injustice.
Russia's big mistake was attacking one of the few countries in Europe with a will to fight back.
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