I wish I could agree with you and have a nice balance here. However, my observation is not that nutters flipped wings, but that they flocked to one side. You can certainly change my mind with enough well founded examples and a sound argument tying those together.
Really? You don't see it?
I'm not sure anything I can point out or say will change your mind if you don't see it already. Perhaps you're more of a leftist than an independent, which is fine if those are your values. Curious which values you have that diverge from it...but in the meantime I'll address your points here with my own perspective, which you can take or leave.
1) Religious intolerance, and moral intolerance are not the same thing. For example, if people are intolerant of Nazi behavior on moral grounds, I cannot fault this intolerance one bit. For another example, if someone hates people because they are Muslim, or Christian, then that I would categorize as bigotry. If, on the other hand, if people are wary of fundamentalist Muslim or Christian sects that interfere with freedoms of people in general, I understand that, and is completely different.
Agreed 100%.
2)
Censorship is different from curbing disinformation and self-radicalization. Freedom of speech doesn't include the
to ability yell fire in a crowded theater, Incitement to violence, or incitement in general to break other other laws. You can argue independently if the laws themselves are just or not. Civil disobedience (or more specifically
Satyagraha) of unjust laws has been a common tactic for those who have the moral high-ground for quite some time.
This I'm afraid is bullshit (though full disclosure, I am a hardline free speech advocate). Attempting a top-down curbing of disinformation via censorship only accelerates the problem it tries to correct, because the effort
to control- even if the original intent behind that control was for people's own good- is (rightly) seen as a threat, the way anyone or anything asserting power over anyone or anything else accurately is a threat, and then people will back away entirely from the system, trustless, and operate in the dark instead like a feral cat. Maybe someday it can be done correctly, with a Fact Checking institution that everyone can trust, but most of the current fact checkers are just outsourced propaganda wings of the democratic party, and nobody on the right takes them seriously. Worse, they often just assume the opposite of what they say is the truth. The correct response to bad information or concerns of someone self-radicalizing is not less disseminated information, however bad, via censorship. The correct response is
more disseminated information- get the bad stuff out in the open, let it be vetted against reality and debate. As human beings we should all know well by now that things repressed are made much worse by the repression. High quality new ideas, which are like sporadic flowers that grow on vast fields of shit, are also only possible because of bad ideas and bad information- challenging people to discover
why they are bad, and in doing so discover other things along the way. There really just is no good argument for censorship that I'm aware of, aside of course from the "yelling fire in a crowded theater." But other than
literally that, No.
3) Doxing still seems quite bipartisan. TBH, it seems to be the left doxing those on the left, and the right doxing those on the right, but for entirely different reasons.
4) What book-burning?
5) What does de-platforming mean here? This to me seems like playing victim, after being caught for bad behavior.
These three real quick- the book burning thing came mostly from tictok (my girlfriend is into it and loves to annoy me with progressive videos, among others that genuinely do make me laugh), and she went through this phase a while back of sending me videos of people burning JK Rowling's books because she's anti-trans, or something like that. Also I saw they had a bible burning ceremony in Portland recently, and I've seen various other (likely not entirely serious) calls to burn books that leftists don't like. I know the staff at Penguin Publishers recently had an emotional breakdown trying to block them from publishing Jordan Peterson's new book (not literal burning, but same spirit). Stuff like that, not really a huge deal, but a sign of the culture. Doxing, regardless of whose doing it, is nasty nasty shit. I'm unaware of people on the right doing it, except maybe 4chan hackers/Anonymous or something like that, but I'd be open to examples. As long as we can agree that it's insane, and awful.
De-platforming I think is just another word for cancel culture- the idea that someone should be publicly shamed, fired, never hired again, and presumably die of starvation- for their political beliefs. It also refers to the blocking/protesting/shutting down of any not-radical-left-enough speaker to prevent them from speaking. People like Janet Mock (for being Jewish), Nicholas Dirks (for having a high salary), Anita Alvarez (for being part of law enforcement), Bassem Eid (for being a Palestinian not hard enough on Israel), and the list goes on forever. It is yet another insane practice and terrible idea, particularly as it pertains to the censorship issue I just discussed.
6) Authoritarianism can only come from those who have the authority. Right now the right has the levers of power. If there is abuse of power, it has to come from those who have it. If on the other hand, if this is a reference to being asked to wear masks especially by people in their own homes or their own businesses, then you have a very different notion of authoritarianism than I do.
An authoritarian
leader can only come from those who have the authority to be such, but I was referring to the "authoritarian personality type," as coined by Theodor Adorno at Berkley in 1954. His focus was on right-wing authoritarianist types:
"He found that right-wing authoritarians are submissive to authority figures in their society, tend to become aggressive in the name of those authority figures and hold very conventional views. They strongly agreed with statements such as, "The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while radicals and protestors are usually just 'loud mouths' showing off their ignorance." They would strongly disagree with statements such as, “Everyone should have their own lifestyle, religious beliefs, and sexual preferences, even if it makes them different from everyone else."
Later, Edward Shils identified the left wing authoritarian personality type:
They identified some tell-tale signs of left-wing authoritarians: They believe people in power should be punished and the existing order should be violently overthrown. They see people with opposing political views as inherently immoral and prefer to be surrounded by people who share their values. They think the government or other institutions should forcefully stop people from sharing views they find abhorrent.
Left-wing authoritarians typically strongly agree with the following statements: the rich should be stripped of their belongs and status; deep-down just about all conservatives are racist, sexist and homophobic; classrooms can be safe spaces that protect students from the discussion of harmful ideas.
Sound familiar?
I'll call out any right-winger who blindly listens to authority, or gets aggressive over forcing traditional roles or concepts on other people. I've known and dealt with plenty, though not a whole lot, in my life. The profile of a right wing authoritarian type does not fit the bulk of my conservative peers, but the profile of a left wing authoritarian type fits most- if not all- of my left wing peers. It certainly fits the profile of just about every politically vocal individual on this forum, administrators included. Maybe it's a sample pool thing and I'm wrong? Just speaking to my intuition on that one.
I will say, in regards to authoritarian personalities with their hands on the levers of power, that there are plenty of governors with hands on said levers, and between democrats and republicans, one of the two tends to be far more draconian than the other- as revealed by COVID, and the devastating use of lockdowns.
7) Saying that the left is being racist at a time when known neo-Nazis run the alt-right is a BIG stretch.
I think neo-nazis
are the alt right,
right?
Fuck them and everything about them. I don't know of anyone else who identifies as alt-right except for that tiny,
universally condemned by the majority of sane conservatives as an insane hate group, faction of Hitler groupies. They certainly have absolutely nothing in common with the rest of us. It's a shame leftists can't say the same thing about their own psychos, it would really go a long way towards making them less of a nervous laughing stock in general among conservative circles.
This is, however, a complete non-sequitur to the point that woke culture has gone so backwards in regards to race that it judges people based strictly on it once again. At least Proposition 16, to
repeal an anti-discrimination law, was shot down by voters in California- though it is an accurate representation of the direction leftist radicals want to take people.
Thank you, I'll give these a read when I have some more free time- spent all I had tonight on the thoughts above.