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Contrapoints released her newest video yesterday. As someone who has found a number of her past videos to be well done and interesting (they're generally better the further back you go), this one was disappointing. Some random thoughts:
Contrapoints made a name for herself through actually engaging with the "alt-right" and by being willing to make real arguments in response to conservatives; now it seems like she's totally bought into some of the worst argumentation styles of the woke left. Most annoying to me is the frequency with which Natalie begs the question by referring to "trans rights" as if they're some unobjectionable, neutral thing that only "bigots" could oppose. Interestingly, the only time she actually concretely discusses a supposed "trans right" (males competing in women's sports), she agrees that there is a debate to be had here. Of course, no mention of kids transitioning, males in women's prisons, etc. Just "trans rights" in the abstract. The one thing Contrapoints is clear about is that not acknowledging that "trans women are women" is at the least "transphobic" (if not a violation of "trans rights" in some hard to define way), which is interesting. What does it mean to be "transphobic"? Could one not be "transphobic" and still refuse to acknowledge that "trans women are women"? Because I would like to say that I'm not "transphobic" on the basis that I don't think trans people should be denied rights that we accord to others, or that they should be forcibly prevented from dressing like women, or even (if over 18) allowed to surgically alter themselves to match their desired gender identity (perhaps with some reasonable safeguards).
I think she makes some good arguments about the fact that there are always limits to debate. She talks about how LGBTQ activists essentially "cancelled" an old anti-gay activist Anita Bryant, with the implication that most people nowadays would agree with that cancellation. Of course, I would simply say that there are meaningful differences between gay activism and trans activism (e.g., gay people were fighting against laws that criminalized consensual behavior between adults; trans people often are fighting to allow children to mutilate themselves). Nonetheless, I do take her point: Arguing against "cancellation" or "illiberal" tactics in the abstract is kind of pointless, because almost no one is a true free speech absolutist here. If, say, someone was going around and gathering a following by literally advocating for the murder of Jews, I think a lot of us would agree that public shaming (at the least) would be appropriate. That means that one must always have some object-level discussion about what people are being cancelled for before one can reasonably argue that any given cancellation is unacceptable. It's hardly a groundbreaking observation, but it's true nonetheless that there must be a line somewhere that would make "cancel culture" type tactics acceptable; we're all just debating where that line is.
Finally, I was surprised to see how much more aggressive Rowling has gotten in her anti-trans rhetoric. Not that I necessarily disagree with her, but it looks like I can no longer say that she's being unfairly smeared as an enemy of the trans movement.
Anyways, I would be curious on others thoughts here (assuming anyone is willing to watch a nearly two hour video by someone most would consider an ideological opponent.
Whatever came of Contrapoints getting canceled by other trans figures? Some right-wingers gloated about meta-cancer back then, but I guess you don't really cancel your stars after all?
This is a narrative which was promoted by the media, yes, I even imagine there's a grain of truth in it, but if she actually engaged with the «alt-right», it was on the condescending level of cooing and petting a spooked animal (and argument-free reviews to the effect of «I used to be in a dark place as a 4channer giganazi Cookie Monster joke enjoyer, but Contra
detransitionedderadicalized me, thanks now I can be myself» only reinforce this image. I have to plug in my old post «On Nazi Whisperers and closed memetic surfaces».Almost four years later, I still can't get into the mindset of a person who thinks his side loses every unbiased debate, but keeps believing in the cause and evangelizing it. This is a total profanation of what debates mean to me, on any level from the most brutish, chimp-like rhetorical power contest to the most quokka-esque rationalist «collaborative inquiry»; if not rigorous doubt, then at least depressive resignation ought to settle in as a result of repeatedly getting routed, I feel.
What I do know is that such robust belief grows coupled with disregard for debate and honesty in general.
I am not sure that any such people actually exist.
"I can't say I've ever seen someone in debate with a Pepe-grinning fascist come out on top." does not mean "I can't say I've ever seen someone win an unbiased debate against a Pepe-grinning fascist." There are many ways besides logical argument to come out on top of a debate. For example, you can Gish Gallop the opponent into giving up. Or you can out-charisma the opponent and make him look like a geek. Or you can decide to only debate in front of audiences that you know will be pre-disposed to support your side. Etc.
I am not sure that CounterPoints meant "I can't say I've ever seen someone rationally win an unbiased debate against a Pepe-grinning fascist."
I guess a lot depends on what "unbiased" means in this context.
It happens from time to time in religious debates. A few months ago there was a debate on sedevacantism (the idea that Vatican II was heretical and thus there hasn't been a true pope since the 1950s) where the "orthodox" Catholic got trounced so bad the moderator had to make a follow-up video defending his decision not to take down the debate.
My recollection of the incident was that Dimond(who, to be clear, is a lunatic that other sedevacantists want nothing to do with) won partly through happenstance and partly through his opponent’s overconfidence, with a side of it being a low point for orthodox conservative Catholicism, and that orthodox conservative Catholics mostly view it as a failed example of nutpicking rather than an indication of the sedevacantist position having particularly strong arguments in favor.
There’s plenty of examples of orthodox or mainstream traditionalist Catholics winning arguments with sedevacantists, after all.
Yeah, the overconfidence was thinking he’d be able to win a fair debate with rigorous cross-examination against Dimond. That won’t happen again.
How many of these are since Francis?
The one decent anti-sedevacantist argument is the Vatican I canon that Peter shall have “perpetual successors in the primacy over the universal Church,” but this doesn’t make any of the Vatican II era heresies non-heretical, it just means that the papacy was BS from the beginning.
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The worst part of all this "the Nazis and fascists are super good at rhetoric" talk is that it's not even true. Destiny has been consistently demonstrating that they're no different from most debaters i.e garbage for the most part. Destiny's retorts aren't perfect, and he has a certain attitude necessary to deal with this kind of debate, but he's consistently come out on top rhetorically against basically every far-right person he's debated.
If Destiny didn't exist, I would understand, but he's literally spent years doing exactly what they're claiming can't be done. Which is understandable for Breadtube, whose creators are not interested in developing the skills to be internet debaters instead of content creators. But their community is collectively responsible if they can't generate anyone who is willing to do the dirty work.
This only holds up to a point. Destiny can get away with saying things in the moment that would torpedo someone else. In part due to having an audience that seems a lot more antifragile and less 'normie' than most. On top of that Destiny has been very careful in selecting who gets to talk to him. And depending on who he is talking to he will drop all pretense of believing anything at all.
His 'debate' with Sean Last was illustrative of that and his inability to argue against 'race'. Prior to that he 'debated' with Mike Enoch where Destiny all but ceded the ground to American white nationalists that pro-white advocacy was valid and needed. Not being able to pinpoint exactly what the problem with something like the American white nationalist project that Mike Enoch was associated with.
Destiny can do that. If things go bad he just rolls with the punches. His audience will stick by him and nothing really happens. It's not like the far right has any platform to advertise their victories on anyways. But if you are a lefty that exists in and relies on a network of media personalities that feed on drama and purity spirals, you can't afford any of that. You really don't have the wiggle room. Not debating the nazis and just doing the mainstream thing of calling them evil and stupid seems a lot more optimal play.
I concur, Destiny doesn't have the best answers in multiple cases. But it's at least doing something. He's showing up and defending the status quo as he typically does. People like Contra and the rest of Breadtube can't even do that much.
Edit: Realized I didn't answer the rebuttal. I don't think many lefties have to rely on the media personality networks. As much as BreadTube is a thing, I'm not aware of people being ostracized from it or similar community for having these kinds of debates. I don't see people, for example, criticize Destiny for having those debates, but rather for disagreeing with them on some point.
People in that sphere primarily catch flak when the debate goes poorly for their side. You can't afford a string of bad debates, so as soon as one goes bad other lefties put the pressure on by asking why the person was platforming nazis in the first place if they couldn't perform.
Destiny gets slightly different kind of flak, for example by inviting Nick Fuentes on and being cordial with Lauren Southern or his most recent appearance with Richard Spencer on 'NoJumper' or whatever. To name a few examples.
I think the big breadtube channels make it seem like there is no specific reliance on networking but you can't really exist without being in the green, so to speak. Outside of channels like Contrapoints and others, that are practically too big too fail, there are plenty of channels that are one scandal away from ostracization. If they don't have friends behind the scenes they are just as likely to be drama fodder for the other channels, since they all partially share the same pool of viewers. Unlike someone like Destiny who kind of has his own dedicated base of hardcore supporters. But even then Destiny felt the squeeze during the whole Rittenhouse thing.
Oh, sure, but there's ample room to start with training wheels. Become a Destiny orbiter if you have to, but learning to do what he does is a matter of personal skill that can be entirely learned.
Right, he gets flak for not debating them. But I was ignoring that because I figured we were restricting ourselves to his debates. Also, I'm not sure where the flak is for appearing with Richard Spencer. Any examples?
I don't recall all the details, but my understanding is he got departnered from Twitch over saying that the rioting had to stop in an incendiary manner. Hardly for simply defending Rittenhouse at all.
The point is there's no reason to start at all. You don't need to debate them when you can just silence them and tell lies about them.
Well, kind of, he gets flak for platforming them and not making them look like they are evil. It's not about 'debate' in that sense. It's just about who the enemy is.
I misremembered, it was the host that got flak.
Destiny had been building on the more lefty viewer pool from debating the nazis. Routinely talking about all the 'tankies' and 'socialists' he had in his chat. He was still a 'liberal' but there was a very clear crossover of viewers. That came crashing down when he did a debate with Vaush on the Rittenhouse stuff. After the pushback he got from that, a lot which coming from 'personalities' he went on a much more direct anti-left thing as a response.
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It's kind of true. "Super good at rhetoric" is relative. Normies get BTFO by guys called Dirlewanger_Respecter on twitter all the time. When you adopt extremist and fringe political positions you have to develop at least some rudimentary rhetorical skills to defend them, which may not be all that much, but are still leagues beyond those of your average person who rarely thinks even that much about their politics.
I think another contributing factor might be that everyone else is using weighted clothing, so to speak. Dirlewanger_Respecter doesn't have to give a shit that his argument could be construed as racist or sexist or transphobic, and at the same time he doesn't have to dance around all the various inconvenient truths that lie in wait for non-shitlords. Adolf_Kekler_42069 can make the correct argument that having massive riots and burning things down isn't actually a method of protest that contributes to achieving political goals, but if you're on the left saying something like that is enough to get you fired, even if you're so non-racist you actually worked on Obama's campaign. A significant portion of the "good, useful arguments" space is just completely verboten thanks to social justice culture/purity policing.
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The people in question are internet political and cultural commentators. Not normies. They're not those annoying prank channels, these are the people discussing ideology, philosophy, politics, etc. They talk a lot about ideas and theories, they only show their own incompetence when they demonstrate an inability to do rhetoric effectively.
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She apologized and managed to not piss them off a second (well, third actually) time (yet).
When you're cancelling your enemies the goal is to get a scalp, and to put a friend in the position they were occupying. But when you're cancelling a friend, the goal is just to ensure they stay on message.
I suppose sometimes you can cancel a friend that outlived their purpose, and you want to replace them, just as you would an enemy, but that day is not today.
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