1. There are lots of other cases where we would agree there’s some form of silencing going on, even as a group has many supporters and rich, famous spokespeople
2. In fact, taboo opinions seem to promote a culture of celebrity
3. Fame lets people avoid social repercussions, but that doesn’t mean those repercussions don’t exist for ordinary people
4. If you spend decades inventing a powerful decentralized network to allow unpopular voices to be heard, sometimes you end up with unpopular voices being heard
5. When the IDW claims they are threatened, harassed, and blacklisted, people should at least consider that they are referring to the actual well-known incidents of threats, harassment, and blacklisting against them rather than imagining this is code for “they demand to be universally liked”
6. The IDW probably still censor themselves
7. Nobody in this discussion seems to really understand how silencing works.
Both sides are violently trying to force their beliefs on everyone else, and both sides think they're right and anyone who doesn't believe the same things as them is outright wrong and deserves to be destroyed.
Anyone who doesn't take a side, is basically considered to be worth nothing, and either mocked or considered as bad as the enemy.
The sheer amount of HATE that flows out of the US is mind boggling.
However, recent events have proven that (short term) political success can be attained by pushing the edges. Now, instead of parties following the relatively centrist positions of the majority of people, they are actively pushing more extreme agendas, pulling people away from the centre (using various propaganda techniques), and locking large blocks of voters in behind positions quite distant and clearly distinct from those of their opponents. The success of this approach seems to be predicated on creating ambiguities, obfuscation and false dichotomies. I’d suggest that many fervent followers would be unable to correctly articulate actual policies of their parties vs repeating glib partisan mantras.
Or at least that’s how it seems to me.
It hasn't, at least in the way you describe.
> In the past it used to be about “chasing the centre”
It wasn't, at least not anything like recently; that turnout determines elections and even unaffiliated voters are just as consistently partisan in how they vote as party loyalists has been well known by both political scientists and political campaigners for decades, and deeply integrated into political strategy; it's he reason behind both GOTV efforts and selective voter suppression, neither of which are new elements of the political playbook.
> Now, instead of parties following the relatively centrist positions of the majority of people
They don't do that because there is no such thing. Distribution of political opinion doesn't have a central peak.
But I'm not talking about "political opinion". I'm talking about "common sense" (reflective of things that may lie at the core of policies devoid of partisan spin). For example, according to a recent poll [0], a significant majority of Americans support immigration. A visiting alien might think that a consensus policy position could be achieved based on a result like that. Clearly however, that's not the case in reality. Similarly for background checks on gun buyers [1], yet, like immigration, it seems that when couched in absolutist, us-vs-them rhetoric, bipartisan policy is totally out of reach.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/us/immigration-polls-dona... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-guns-poll/over-90-per...
The SF libertarians that always show up for these threads think they'll get swept up with the tide of the elite despite not comprehending that even with their wealth the majority of them are orders of magnitude off from the even most basic of antes.
I guess it is possible that genuine consensus in these groups has lowered in quality, but I personally can't believe that, communities I've been in for awhile changed and got very intense within the last 3 years. It's unfortunate to see.
The right has plenty of problems (plenty!) but the what seems to be unique to the left (or at least much more prevalent/vocal) is this Sith-like perspective that anyone who disagrees (or even just agrees less than 110%) is some kind of immoral/evil opponent for whom no type or amount of righteous retaliation is undeserved.
But of course that might just be be how it looks from the perspective of a "smug, ignorant centris[t]."
[0] Although not well-known enough. Good starting points might be the Chomsky's political books (they're extensively referenced - don't just take his word for things, read his sources too), and Scott Noble's documentaries: http://metanoia-films.org/
Also, I think you're misusing the term "liberalism" here. Liberalism is an ideology that supports freedom of expression and diverse viewpoints. The illiberal leftist ideologies that you seem to be referring to are not a part of liberalism (the issue is that liberalism and the political left tend to get conflated in American usage).
I actually think it's incredibly telling that a group that used to identify themselves as "liberal" have renamed themselves "progressive". Rather than freedom of expression and ideology, they now espouse a mandated direction "forward" and no longer value freedom.
The man has one of the most popular podcasts in the world, but still can get the times to write an article about how he's some underground thinker.
If you dig deeper into these kinds of complaints from these kinds of people, it usually turns into "The people _I_ want to like me do not". They expect universal admiration, and when they don't they yell about some sort of conspiracy.
The fact that everyone even knows about the popular people making these complaints disproves the thesis that they can't get out there and make their arguments.
It just turns out that none of these alternative thinkers can handle any sort of criticism against their ideas, and think there's a mass conspiracy. Ocamm's razor suggests otherwise
The problem is not that they can't accept criticism, the problem is other people disenfranchising them for their opinions.
He's a fairly blatant racist - I think that's a bit more than "unpopular" when it comes to views.
> livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined > Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange Loop
In what way did "not being invited to speak at a conference" destroy his livelihood or ruin his life?
When I met Curtis Yarvin, he told me about some efforts he’d been taking to reduce the risk of violence to him and his family. I disagree with him on pretty much everything, but it saddened me that he had to worry about that.
I mean, sure, that's inconvenient but it's really nothing in the grand scheme of things.
> some efforts he’d been taking to reduce the risk of violence to him and his family
If people have threatened him or his family, that definitely sucks and I cannot condone or support those people.
If you spout bad opinions people like you less. If you show bad judgement people won’t want to hire you.
If you preach an ideology that implicitly concludes that a certain set of people are biologically inferior, it’s not a surprise that people who disagree will fight you about it. What else do you expect? What other outcome? “Oh cool yeah you think I’m subhuman. awesome. Let’s get to work.” In what universe does _that_ align with free association?
These sorts of conversations contrast mainstream media (TV and headline news) because the participants are free to speak for hours, not minutes, and are not put on their heels the entire time.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/sep/25/bath-spa-u...
Also, Bath Spa University is a relatively small, relatively new university with a less established research tradition than most of the UK's universities. It wouldn't surprise me if its ethics committees were less confident too.
None of which is to say that the student isn't right, just that we currently only have his word for it and the university is quite correctly saying nothing. But I'm pretty sceptical.
I don't really care whether celebrities feel persecuted or not. (I believe there's too much cult of celebrity already, so I do not feel any more sympathy for them than I do for everyone else.) I'm not really sure why a few different people thought my comment was relevant specifically to that NY Times IDW article.
The danger I was referring to is the danger to _anyone_ and the reason behind an academic journal being created to allow regular academics to publish under pseudonyms. This is a far more serious issue than celebrities feeling unloved and blaming a conspiracy.
For instance I've personally seen multiple people ostracized from their predominantly-left-leaning friend groups for saying something mildly positive about something Trump has done in office, or for arguing that not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist. I'm not sure how rational political discussion can be held when saying such innocuous things as I've mentioned can result in instant ostracization. Fortunately I noticed this happening before I too said something that would end the same way for me. (I already learned not to discuss politics with my very right-leaning dad, so adding "most of my friends" to the do-not-discuss-politics-with-them list was fairly easy.) Although I'm in a very liberal area so I see this primarily happening in fervently left-leaning circles, I understand that similar happens in fervently right-leaning circles as well. I can only imagine how much one has to censor themselves when publishing something that shouldn't be controversial at all in an academic journal! This is seriously not good.