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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25705 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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I really don’t think people in this space grapple with this question, and questions like it, nearly enough.

It's a tar baby. Grappling with it at all is a fool's game. If I won't consider calling someone "racist" a superweapon, why is it so important to know who deserves the label and who doesn't?

There are weapons below superweapon.

Calling someone a murderer if they're a murderer isn't a superweapon, it's a normal weapon.

Calling someone a murderer if they're gotten an abortion is a superweapon.

Similarly, if people are racist, calling them racist isn't a superweapon. It's a superweapon when you try to apply it to non-racists, but that doesn't mean the original term doesn't have a true and important context.

Calling someone "racist" is a superweapon; it's a superweapon even if it would have happened to be justified under some previous reasonable definition of "racist". As soon as someone who is not aligned with current progressive thought accepts the validity of "racist" being a super-evil thing, it will be used against them; they will find themselves in interminable arguments trying and failing to defend themselves against accusations of "racism" for doing such things as using the term "tar baby". Part of the reason it's a superweapon is that trying to defend yourself against such accusations is in itself considered proof of them.

This seems like a masked way of saying “that thing you call racism, I don’t consider bad”, but with some strawmanning and the pointless jargon of “super weapon” thrown in.

I didn’t say you must consider racism a “super weapon”. I said I’d like you to tell me whether you think racism in any form exists and whether you think it’s bad.

I think you’ve just said you either think it doesn’t exist or it isn’t bad, but again, I absolutely do not know for sure, and it’s exhausting to try to tease this shit out from people who really seem like they’re trying as hard to conceal it as they can.

the pointless jargon of “super weapon” thrown in.

If you start posting in a form, you should learn some of the forum's jargon. If you don't, and you encounter some, you should at least not criticize someone else's forum for using jargon that you, a newbie, don't understand, especially when you go on to ignore the point made with the jargon. A superweapon is an accusation which automatically makes the targets out to be in the wrong because of generalizations about a group.

I didn’t say you must consider racism a “super weapon”.

You didn't say he should call it one. He figured out it was one all on his own!

I said I’d like you to tell me whether you think racism in any form exists and whether you think it’s bad.

That's a trick question, because the next question will be a gotcha which takes his answer but substitutes racism as you define it for racism as he defines it. If he says that racism is bad, you can then act as though he agrees that some progressive bugaboo that's commonly called racist is bad.

I agree that a lot of left-wing people abuse the term “racism”!

Can you describe some examples of this abuse?

And assuming you do describe them, can you then understand that Nybbler might necome vulnerable to this abuse if he said "sure, racism exists and is bad"?

If you start posting in a form, you should learn some of the forum's jargon.

Guy, I know exactly what the term is being used to mean; that’s precisely why I said it’s pointless jargon. I appreciate the gatekeeping, though. Extremely normal behaviour to unofficially require everyone posting be familiar with the collected works of one specific blogger, even to the point of constantly referencing some of the stuff from a decade ago that he’d probably rather you forgot about. (This last bit is a reference to the “paranoid rant” from way back when, by the way, in case it wasn’t clear.)

That's a trick question, because the next question will be a gotcha which takes his answer but substitutes racism as you define it for racism as he defines it. If he says that racism is bad, you can then act as though he agrees that some progressive bugaboo that's commonly called racist is bad.

Highly good-faith argumentation on display here. Do I get to write fanfic about the various dishonest and hypocritical things you’re going to say to me and then assert my fanfic as indisputable fact, or do only you and nyb get to do that for me?

Do I get to write fanfic about the various dishonest and hypocritical things you’re going to say to me and then assert my fanfic as indisputable fact, or do only you and nyb get to do that for me?

It makes sense to guard against this sort of tactic even if it's just a possibility. Nobody actually needs to be able to read your mind in order to realize "maybe I shouldn't say something that's vulnerable to tricks". If you personally weren't going to use any such tricks, blame the left-wing abusers you describe, for messing things up for honest people like you.

It makes sense to guard against this sort of tactic even if it's just a possibility

If you don’t care at all about speaking in good faith, then yes, it does make perfect sense.

If you personally weren't going to use any such tricks, blame the left-wing abusers you describe, for messing things up for honest people like you.

So your rules appear to be “many left-wing people are bad because they argue in bad faith, but when I do that, it’s actually still the left’s fault because they made me do it”.

For the millionth time, I have to argue - why don’t they get this excuse? Why isn’t their bad-faith argumentation justified by yours?

If answering a question is likely to be met by an insincere gotcha, it's a bad idea to answer the question.

It doesn't matter whether you personally are planning to do that. It is sensible to take precautions against bad things even if you don't know for certain that the bad things are going to happen.

Why isn’t their bad-faith argumentation justified by yours?

Not answering a question whose answer is likely to be used out of context isn't "bad faith argumentation".

This seems like a masked way of saying “that thing you call racism, I don’t consider bad”, but with some strawmanning and the pointless jargon of “super weapon” thrown in.

You're about a decade too late for this sort of thing to work.

What it means is that the term "racist" is used to indicate "ultra-bad-person-you-should-hate", that the criteria for "racist" are loose and variable, and that any attempt to pin it down is fruitless; no matter what criteria you can come up with to separate "the real racists who deserve the ultra-bad treatment" from those who don't will immediately be widened by those using the term in bad faith to cover people who shouldn't be.

You're about a decade too late for this sort of thing to work.

I’ve been round these parts long enough to know that you wouldn’t have accepted it eight or so years ago either, and were saying much the same thing then.

To put you both on the same page rather than anonymously calling Nybbler out for things he said 8 years ago, you are reddit.com/user/895158, yes?

Incorrect. I am some other wrongthinker who must be rooted out and destroyed as quickly as possible. (Not nearly as notorious as that one; I only ever posted very occasionally.)

I have no idea if @papardus is /u/895158, but this sort of call-out serves no purpose but antagonism. There is no requirement that Motte users announce their other Internet identities. Yes, that means even a known troll and troublemaker from reddit would be allowed to post anew here under a new name and be given a fresh slate. (As has, in fact, happened, and in many cases, such people unsurprisingly immediately revert to their previous behavior and get banned.) There are circumstances where you could politely ask someone directly if they are someone you think you recognize from elsewhere, but "I just want to put you on the same page" ain't it.

Hey, thanks for the quick confirmation. I think it's important when the guy who declared the whole community an irredeemable den of racist deplorables that should be destroyed shows up to start pinning down racists.

Eight years is less than a decade, indeed.

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