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It looks from this post as if "aggressively misunderstanding" is still in fact what you're doing, though--including, here, by skipping the most generous recommendation I could think of. Look--
My point was that magicalkittycat was engaged with a mixture of whataboutism and the Chinese Robber fallacy that is presently circulating in furtherance of running cover for Leftist antisemitism. Insofar as 'running cover' implies the news media has some secret agenda to promote antisemitism, no, I don't think it's true. Insofar as they're sequentially denying, deflecting blame, minimizing and whatabouting, yes, they're running cover for antisemitism.
Every once in a while it will happen that I am in a conversation with someone here, using the terms and tropes of this place, and it will turn into a kind of "no, you" debate. This seems to be most common with motte-and-bailey arguments--"no, I'm not playing in the bailey, you're playing the bailey!" Sometimes people find ways out by finding a good word to taboo, or through careful charity, or whatever. I'm honestly not great at this (Zorba is genuinely great at it) but I do try. Anyway we seem to be in one of those circles now, where I get accused of whataboutism (maybe simply because I'm not the OP, and so there's a "first mover" advantage or something) for pointing out how OP's sources are engaged in a kind of whataboutism.
Right, and the circlular firing squad for this argument is the one where I point out that you're playing the role of the leftist who simultaneously speaks as the arbiter and adherent of objectivity and truth while downplaying the possibility (or at least likelihood) of objectivity and truth. Why is it that forums with actual free speech so often begin leaning to the right--almost as though leftism can't stand on its own two feet? Clearly I am not without my priors! And yet exactly one of us in this discussion has frankly admitted the existence of, and offered criticism against, both right-wing and left-wing antisemitism and racism, and it isn't you. I wasn't kidding, here:
Yes! White supremacy is not a new kind of identitarianism, though the term "white supremacy" has gotten woefully overextended and maliciously distorted in furtherance of Leftist aims. And I think a lot of Leftists are not identitarians, though sometimes they have to be reminded of that. The anti-Woke Left is not a group of insignificant size--and relevantly, my sense of this forum is that most users are anti-Woke leftists who have been surprised to find themselves in the center-Right of the Overton window, as radicals have stretched it to reach the territory of identitarian spoils systems.
The main difference between left-wing identitarians and right-wing identitarians so far is that left-wing identitarians mostly control their political coalition (the Democratic Party) while right-wing identitarians remain at the fringes--albeit, less at the fringes than they were before the Great Awokening. With specific reference to antisemitism, the antisemites on the Right are reactionaries who fetishize a failed effort to implement national socialism in a country they often know nothing about. The antisemites on the Left, by contrast, are the vanguard of Islamofacism, a movement with at least tens of millions of supporters around the globe, who are prosecuting a centuries-long grudge against the ideological descendants of Judaism and Christianity. I don't think it's "whataboutism" or "running cover" to suggest that if we're going to talk about political antisemitism, we should talk about all of it, not just those bits of it that are most convenient to our preferred narratives.
I echo @Chrisprattalpharaptr’s half-bemused, half-despairing incredulity at the fact that you apparently genuinely think that MAGA isn’t an identitarian movement.
‘Remove the log from your own eye’, indeed.
I suppose you can make the case that they are "identitarian" in some vague abstract sense, but you're just not going to find the kind of racist screeds published by MAGA that routinely get published by progressive institutions. Or if I'm wrong feel free to enlighten me, but you seem like the one with the log in the eye.
Give me the worst such screed you can find, and I guarantee you that I can give you a MAGA screed that’s just as bad, if not worse.
Okay, let's start with something basic. Here's 3 day training that Lockheed Martin executives were sent to, where they were asked to connect the term "white men" with terms like "old, racist, privileged, anti-women, angry, Aryan Nation, KKK, Founding fathers, guns, guilty, can’t jump.". Or here's a chart by the Smithsonian that's so anti-white that it somehow managed to flip over into being racist against non-whites.
Eh, fuck it.
After spending the better part of a day dumpster-diving through the worst MAGA shit I could find, I finally started wondering why I was doing any of this.
I mean, shit, it’s not like whatever I can throw at you is likely to convince you that actually, you’re wrong and I’m right; any more than than your (IMO unimpressive) examples actually convinced me that I’m wrong and you’re right. All I’ll succeed at is wasting both our time, probably irritating you with my unwillingness to cede any ground in the face of what you consider to be indisputable evidence, and further disgruntling me with continued exposure to anti-woke talking points.
So whatever; you win, I guess. Congratulations on your argumentative stamina. Feel free to get in the last words at your leisure.
@Amadan, I’d appreciate it if you did the both of us a favor and permabanned me while this moment of clarity lasts.
Ought to make your lives easier having one less triggered leftist around accumulating reports, and maybe it’ll be the kick in the pants I need to finally get me off this site.
It’s clear to me now that the time for talking is over, and that there can be no further productive use for sticking around and trying to bridge the ever-widening divide in realities between “woke” America and “antiwoke” America.
Not here, anyways.
If you really want me to.
I feel like I should say a few things, though. It's ironic you are at this point now. I just took you (manually) out of the new user filter since you've been around long enough that you're clearly a good faith contributor, but also clearly were never going to accumulate enough "karma" or however Zorba scores accounts to leave the filter on your own.
You do get reported a lot, but 100% of the reports have been people angry at you for being a leftist expressing leftist opinions. You have not a single warning on your record (so far). I can see how it's disheartening to get downvoted constantly. This place is no better than reddit, in that downvotes are supposed to be used only to express that a comment is "objectively" bad in the sense of contributing nothing to the conversation, but instead it is used as an agree/disagree button, just as half our members use reports as a "super angrily disagree" button.
Now, is "the time for talking over"?
I am kind of there myself. And this place frustrates the hell out of me. Proud and violent bigots and haters, accelerationists, and people who literally and explicitly wish me death.
Clearly I should go find greener pastures more aligned with me, right?
There are none.
SlateStarCodex and adjacent spaces come closest, and even there you'll pretty much be booted for talking about the wrong things or having the wrong opinions.
I could go on X/Twitter, which is pretty much the Wild West right now. Except while it's true you can say almost anything there, that just means you'll draw a small crowd of people who agree with you and a lot of fire from people who hate you, and since it's far more public the doxxing potential is greater. There's no real upside because you aren't actually having interesting and thoughtful conversations, you're just dunking and point-scoring. It suits a certain personality type, I guess, but not me with my milquetoast centrism and lack of desire to throw people out of helicopters.
Anything "mainstream/normie"? Fuck no. All my hobby and social spaces have converged on acceptable and settled positions on everything from trans people to HBD to whether or not Trump is Literally Hitler to ... well, everything. I mostly don't talk in those spaces anymore, because I, with my center-left "let's just be civil and polite" GenX 'tude retains just enough skepticism and contrarianism that I have narrowly escaped being tagged as a Literal Nazi more than once, and I know if I bother to get into it, I will be banned. These spaces provide other needs for me and I don't want to lose them, so I keep my mouth shut. No point in losing years of history and access to resources that are somewhat important to me because I cleared my throat about the wrong subject.
This is what your side does. (I say "your" side, but I still consider myself liberal enough that it's kind of my side as well, except not really- they want to fucking kill me too, and now I feel kind of like a sleeper agent seething and blackpilling in their midst.)
So tell me, bud, where are the other places I could go to share opinions and maybe express skepticism about whether or not trans women are really truly heckin' 100% biological women, even though I by no means hate them or want them killed or put in camps or forcibly detransitioned? Where are the places where I can admit I think HBD is probably true even though I think individuals should still be judged on their own merits? Where can I say that I really dislike Trump, but also I don't think he's Hitler (and also the Democrats brought all this shit on themselves)? Where can I say Charlie Kirk was a prick but murdering him in front of his wife and children was an atrocity and if you're celebrating it you need to fix your goddamn soul? And so on and so on. In all your spaces, I'll just be called a collaborator, a bootlicker, a useful fool, a Nazi, and then banned.
Here, you suffer downvotes and unpopularity for taking a contrarian position but you still get treated politely. We still politely talk to each other (not willingly, not happily, many people would like to take the gloves and masks off completely, but we mods won't let them). Sure, half the people here are salivating for the Day of the Rope, which means its inherently unstable, but it is what it is.
I would be disappointed to see you pack up and go because righties are mean to you, as has happened to so many leftists before you. But I also understand it's just not fun being constantly dogpiled and downvoted, so I can't tell you you should keep hanging around somewhere that makes you miserable. I just want to point out that the greener pastures you are heading to are only greener for your orthodox and approved opinions.
Some parts of the SpaceBattles diaspora used to be this (most notably Digital Wild West and Questionable Questing), but DWW's dead (its owner had a psychotic break) and QQ banned politics. I think The Sietch is roughly similar to here in outlook, although I haven't actually joined due to being satisfied with ACX/here.
Speaking of which, the ACX comments still do exist, although Substack's UI is hilariously inferior.
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