I think we’re pretty much in agreement. A few days ago on the “with Jews we lose” thread, I pointed out that the Internet and websites like Stormfront have made it easier for like minded people to find each other. Pretty much stating the obvious I thought.
Someone gave me a finger wag saying “Freedom of speech. We liberals used to be in favor of that. The antidote to hate speech is open debate.” That pissed me off. I don’t need to calmly consider their argument and form a respectful rebuttal. Fuck them, they’re not making reasonable arguments. See what I mean?
Edit to add: I’ve seen a lot of free speech concern trolling since Bill Maher got his knickers in a twist over the Berkley boycott non-sense.
Chait,and those who argue in support of his article, seem to have a very hard time distinguishing between attacking someone for what they say and trying to prevent them from saying it. The former is not an attack on free speech.
I believe in free speech including the freedom to argue against something. I don’t agree in government intervention that restricts speech. That’s pretty much it. There are way too many people who think free speech means, “I can say what I want and you have to take it.” Um, no. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, you don’t have the right to just say whatever you want with zero personal consequence. That’s pretty much just plain stupid and childish.
That means even if you weight things on a scale of righteousness, it still doesn’t give you the right to spout anything you want against even your worst enemy and expect they’re just going to stand there with mouth closed about. Like I said, childish.
That obviously depends on what you mean by “attacking someone for what they say.” Physically attacking or intimidating someone for what they say is pretty obviously an attack on free speech. Free speech includes the right to respond to speech with counter speech, not with violence.
At least in the Chait piece that I read (the one linked in the article), Chait didn’t seem to have much difficulty distinguishing between allowing and preventing speech. The distinction was the whole point of his essay.
Actually, no. You still want to beat this horse? Fine, let’s beat it.
Much of the stuff that was being said on that site was only “right” if you were willing to believe facts not in evidence and make it right. There’s an unsubtle difference between “evidence tending to impeach the credibility of the witness” and “evidence disproving the witness’ story.” There was a lot of the former, as there will always be in such cases but, ultimately, there was none of the latter.
The underlying assertion of the conservative douchecanoes was “she’s just making it up for the attention or because she had consensual sex and now regrets it.” And in support of that, they brought forward a lot of evidence that was utterly ridiculous (“there’s no record there was an official party at the frat the weekend of the first home game in several weeks, and therefore there was no party at our house”). The WaPo and other re-reports turned up several people recalling the events in a way that cast them in a better light than her version did, and some things she thought were true that weren’t, like the accused perpetrator being a member of the frat when he wasn’t, that are utterly irrelevant.
So, no. No direct evidence she was lying. Just a lot of credibility attacks, many trivial, some irrelevant, a few ridiculous and the people who were inclined to disbelieve her latched onto it and proclaimed themselves vindicated.
Like I said, “he’s doing the exact same thing here that he did in those which was to treat his subjective experience, cultural norms and worldview formed through his life experience as a white male in this society as objective and universal, or at least the norm.”
It’s a meta-critique dealing with what I see as the causal factor underlying the flaw in his argument.
And, like I also said, that perceptual bias, and being utterly blind to it even when it’s pointed out directly, is a common problem among white American males, whether they call themselves liberal or conservative. Instead, they reject it out of hand,refuse to engage in even a modicum of self-reflection about whether there’s any underlying truth to it because they’ve been so heavily socialized into believing that norms and beliefs resulting from their subjective experience as white male Americans reflect universal objective truth, they literally cannot conceptualize the problem. So, instead, they sneer and trivialize.
Are you saying Amanda is sneering and trivializing? If so, insightful! Just as the Republicans got in a circular firing squad and whoever got injured badly enough to fall back from that circle got labeled a Republican In Name Only, now we liberals can decide who is a Liberal In Name Only.
Screw that. We suck. All of us human beings suck. We’re fallen. But we’re still human beings here on the liberal side, while the “conservatives” mostly aren’t. So can we quiet down on the left factionalism for a while? I’m as happy to insult people as the next white guy. But damn it, can we please focus on the enemy rather than trying to purify each other?
I like some of what Chait writes about but this column seemed a mess to me. I don’t observe what he is complaining about very much. There is too much conflating free speech with the right to be rude other people. I don’t have much patience for that.
No. That is not at all what Im saying. That’s the opposite of what I’m saying. I’m not clear on whether you actually misunderstand me or whether you’re being tendentious.
And FFS, no one hates purity trolling more than me. I’m more often accused of unity trolling.
And that’s why I’m not getting why this is so hard for people to get. I like Chait. I agree with him on most things, most of the time. But when he starts talking about issues of race and gender equality, he has a real blind spot that causes him to be dismissive of liberal viewpoints that don’t accept the universality of his experience and beliefs, a tendency that should be subject to close self-scrutiny precisely because it is fundamental to the threatened white privilege grievance mongering that marks post-Civil Rights Era American conservatism.
Well, that’s ostensibly his point. But I think Alex Pareene (and yes, Salon and Gawker and irony noted) did a good job of calling him out on his real point:
The thing that Chait mostly can’t deal with is any criticism of charter schools. His wife works for one of the big charter school companies and he has bought the entire hate the teachers unions crap hook, line and sinker. When your best argument for something you want is “My wife is wonderful, therefore any ideas she has must be wonderful” you need to lay off that subject entirely because you only make a fool out of yourself.
Yeah, I saw that link yesterday but didn’t read it. Ironically I saw it when Greenwald, who himself controls a vast troll army and stoically volunteers to be an arbiter of liberalism, was defending it.
I was referring to verbally attacking, and no, Chait made no such distinction. One of his prominent examples was Hannah Rosin’s book being mocked on Twitter with #RIPpatriarchy jokes, hardly serious intimidation or threatening, and there were a number of similar ones.
davidfrum: Of course @ggreenwald is legendary for the good grace w which he accepts criticism. https://t.co/pXV6E0S5AG 2nd only to Sarah Palin, really
Edit to add: Sweet Jesus, you really must read the Greenwald response to Chait’s article and see if you can spot the hypocrisy. He even links to his “Frequently told lies about Glenn Greenwald” piece again, playing the victim while calling Chait whiny. Oy vey.
So criticizing someone for not being, in the view of the critic, sufficiently feminist is an exercise in free speech, but criticizing the criticism is an attack on free speech? Chait wasn’t calling for the criticism of Rosin to be banned. He was just questioning whether it was warranted or useful.
A single article that wraps up my love-hate relationship with the guy. Incisive and insightful skewering of a third party mixed with weighty introspection that is both genuine and yet also self-servingly calculated to act as a veil for his hypocrisy, self-righteous defensiveness and general dickishess.
Makes me feel the way Doc Hollday did in the scene in Tombstone where he first meets Johnny Ringo.
The underlying assertion of the conservative douchecanoes was “she’s just making it up for the attention or because she had consensual sex and now regrets it.”
This is hilarious and awesome, you’re doing the exact same kind of ingroup-outgroup exercises that Chait is specifically calling out. A whole lot of the substance of the criticisms in even those earliest articles weren’t even focused on the girl, it was on the reporting. But again, you’re just jumping to an easier narrative in which you create a larger critique of legitimately crummy conservative attitudes, find a code word or two to mark any kind of article as being a part of these attitudes, and move on. You’re doing this because you’re taking on a warrior standpoint that any kind of story which might hurt a larger narrative needs to be defended from onslaught, facts be damned. You’ve made up your mind on these issues within a few seconds of seeing the relevant TPM headline.
You are - still - wrong, both about this case and in how you approach issues. You are wrong in a way that’s undermining liberalism. Stop, please.
Actually, you’re doing the exact thing that Marcotte, Pareene, Greenwald and about 80% of the rest of the liberal Internet are pointing out that Chait is doing. But I’m not loftily telling you to “stop please.” Because I realize I’m neither the guardian of liberalism nor the boss of you.
