Tolerating dissent
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | Last paragraph = “They just hate us cos they ain’t us”.
I think a more sophisticated critique is possible. It could even be that – as hard as it may be to believe – leftists think that people will be happier under the system they advocate for than the system pushed by the defenders of existing power structures, colonialism, cultural chauvinism and tradition for its own sake. If one starts from the presumption that political views are generally held in good faith, one will be much better at understanding them. |
No, it’s actually not that. Try expressing a reasoned argument against (say) gay marriage last year. The shocked, open mouthed near-outrage that will greet you from otherwise very civil and intelligent centre-left people is nothing like the reaction you will get from most comparable centre right people. There may be a few martinets on each side, but the weight is well on the Left : their views are not just correct but morally good, and therefore just have to be.
Try expressing an anti-abortion view, or a religious view. You stand a very good chance of receiving not just polite disagreement, but real anger and ridicule, from quite nice, otherwise civil people. I don’t think that is the mainstream reaction from people with a similar stance on the right. I’ve watched it many times. It’s quite real.
I also don’t question that many Leftiists hold their views in good faith. But that does not prevent there being deep, instinctive psychological reasons for them, and nor should it prevent speculation on why.
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Last edited by Mugwump on Fri Aug 10, 2018 8:05 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Jezza 
2023 PREMIERS!
Joined: 06 Sep 2010
Location: Ponsford End
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| Mugwump wrote: | Thank you Jezza, i’m an enormous admirer of Peter Hitchens too. I do not agree with him on many things (notably global warming and gun control) but he seems to me a far greater figure than his celebrated brother, who was a brilliant literary critic but a slightly vain and shallow man overall. Peter Hitchens is also a better writer than his brother : less brio, but more depth and beauty. Some of his essays in “First Things” are quite beautiful and moving, notably “A Church that Was”.
Roger Scruton is the other great serious conservative voice of our age, I think.
I would need some persuading that Trump is the inheritor of Buchananism.
Pat Buchanan, to the limited extent I have read him, was an intellectual and a historian, with a strong religious belief. He was also an isolationist, where Trump seems broadly keen to project American power. I think the roots of Trump lie in an older American tradition of raw democratic mountebank politics, along the lines of Huey (“the Kingfish”) Long and William Jennings Bryan. Trump is dumber than those men because America is less serious than it used to be, but that basic belief in the power of emotion over reason seems the mainspring of his success.
What the Leftist establishment really hates about Burkean conservatism, I think, is that they fear, deep down,that ordinary people are happier within it. Like the Soviet Union, they know that a better way is an existential threat and must be exterminated, not tolerated. It’s why they consistently react with outrage and censorship toward us where we can mostly act with tolerance to them. |
Cheers, Mugwump. I haven't heard of Roger Scruton but I'll definitely check him out.
With respect to Trump and Paleoconservatism, I think Trump's stances on various issues mimic those held by Paleocons. His stance on 'fair trade' rather than free trade and supporting the use of tariffs is one example of this. Paleocons also believe in tight border controls and completely oppose illegal immigration, which is one of Trump's prominent stances during the election cycle. Trump's campaign slogan of 'America First' definitely has underlying Paleocons tendencies which is uniquely different to the NeoCon foreign policy position of nation building and spreading democracy around the world.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/trumpism-intellectual-history-populism-paleoconservatives-214518
In saying that, Trump is inconsistent on various policy matters. For example hand, he opposes engaging in any new wars, but the next minute he's talking about 'bombing the shit out of ISIS'. I think your assessments of him being incoherent and not having proper world view are largely correct even if I was more sympathetic to him than I was with Clinton.
Some have argued that Trump is similar to Democrat and 7th president of the US, Andrew Jackson in the sense that both of them are populists. From what was known by historians, Jackson was renowned for his volatile and unpredictable personality which is similar to Trump. It's no secret that Trump is an admirer of Jackson, with him hanging a portrait of him in the Oval Office.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/andrew-jackson-leadership-2017-5?r=US&IR=T#/#jackson-was-from-a-humble-background-and-got-his-first-taste-of-leadership-during-wartime-1
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| Jezza wrote: | | Mugwump wrote: | I didn’t say that the Liberal Party was Leftist. I do say that the Liberal Party’s social policies, as expressed in their last manifesto, would be more acceptable to the Hamburg Marxist school of Marcuse et al, than they would be to an ordinary citizen of 1970. That’s what ideological hegemony looks like.
The concerns of the modern Left are no longer primarily economic. They achieved most of what was possible long ago, and the economic uselessness and barbarity of most hard socialist societies through the second half of the 20th Century shot their fox. Exposed by history, they turned to the destruction of the other bases of social stability, solidarity and order - the family, national borders and patriotism , religion, sobriety, gender, sexuality, and respect for law. By overthrowing these, they can appropriate power amid the ruins of an atomized society. They have largely succceeded. |
I think you mean the Frankfurt School rather than the Hamburg school, but you're definitely on the right track. This is how 'cultural marxism' was born through the universities in the Humanities and Social Sciences in the 1960s, which coincided with the subsequent culture wars.
Marxists such as Marcuse, Adorno and Horkheimer realised that the working classes were too loyal to their nation, churches, family and their cultural values rather than transcending borders with their fellow counterparts to rise up against the bourgeoise, so the way to achieve this was to change the culture and change the way people thought.
When he was in prison under the Mussolini regime in Italy, Antonio Gramsci wrote a series of notebooks known as "The Prison Notebooks' and he explored the notion of "marching through the institutions" (NOTE: this phrase was adopted in 1971 but the ideas behind this phrase were underpinned in Gramsci's writing) through the media, film industry, academia et al and it was only then when Socialist ideas would be embraced by the wider public rather than them being resisted by the public.
Unfortunately you're right in your assessment that they've succeeded. |
I did indeed mean the Frankfurt school. Well spotted. Got my fast food philosophy mixed up in my haste. Which is appropriate, really.
Your scholarly summary of this movement and its concerns, and its intermediate ancestry in an Italian jail is exactly right. It carries forward through Foucault, the murdering Althusser, and Derrida, inter alia.
They’re quite right, of course : who controls the cultural institutions controls the discourse and thereby power. The problem is the way the right surrendered the territory without much fight, because it was focused on winning ordinary political power and making money. From Rock music to the academy, the marxian left have succeeded better than they could ever have hoped. They are now gradually colonizing large orivate businesses.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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^The Marxian Left hardly exists at all. You're confusing it with poststructuralism, which not only outright rejects the Marxian Left, but has accidentally become mainstream by morphing with general socioeconomic trends.
What comes first, more women entering the workforce because they finally can, or the economic demand for more women to enter the workforce? It's a chicken-egg problem. The point being that most of these things are merely a child of their times, not the result of some scheme arising from a university union lounge somewhere.
The main schools of thought which have merged into poststructuralism have been feminism, queer theory and postcolonialism, among a few others. Just what among these areas of thought are causing so much grief on earth that they're worth waging war against? I am always bemused by the feelings of contest here.
Irritating Facebook talk should not be confused with mundane but important topics, from the recognition of unpaid work in the home, to the history of discrimination against disabled folks. As with business and economics, you have filter out the nonsense and take the good stuff in these fields; there is no war against sinister forces to be had here, for goodness' sake. Such talk is the stuff of the old Marxian Left; is the objective to take up their mantle?
Let's also not forget the rot peddled throughout history which has ultimately seen the scales fall from people's eyes; the entire pre-history of vulgar colonialism, slavery, sexism, racism, elitism, discrimination, ethnocentrism, nationalism, abuse by religious institutions, and blocking of access to opportunity by wealth, is the precursor here.
The mass awareness of that ugly pre-history in many ways gave rise to what could be described as a new form of nihilism as people saw that any old BS with enough power behind it could become 'truth'. Curiously, it also happens to be a 'people's nihilism', unlike the last version which was only accessible to elite circles. It is as much responsible for Trump as it is anything on the Left which grates.
It makes perfect sense that we should be floundering as we try to find a way forward despite knowing that everything is ultimately BS. This is the fundamental challenge; the wars we fight against this or the other social demon are a distraction from it.
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^ I have a limited appetite for a debate on the finer points of connection between post structuralism and Marx’s idea of the “superstructure” : it is a little like mediaeval scholasticism at this point. I consider poststructuralists to be part of the Left in their beliefs, and I don’t think that would be a controversial view.
It’s been amply demonstrated that educators tend to be very disproportionately Leftist, especially in the areas outside the natural sciences. If you think that is consistent with cultural freedom, I suspect that is only because you are sympathetic to that point of view, and you would be greatly alarmed if the bias was reversed.
I don’t know where you get the idea that I am blase about history s a catalogue of misery and oppression. We all know that, just as we know that these things can be overcome as humans expand their knowledge, prosperity and security. The values of the enlightenment are still our shared currency, but we are still in negotiation over what to buy with them. Being conservative has never meant opposing reform, and indeed many of the most serious and effective social reforms have been initiated and advanced by Conservatives. It doesn’t mean going back to the past. It means moving out into the future while keeping a careful foot on particular, tested forms of life, rather than relying on collective and universal idealism.
I did have to smile at the fact that the litany of “isms” you set out to deplore managed to overlook communism, which was pehaps the only one not rooted in ancient human nature, but actually arose from modern hubris to imprison and murder whole populations behind walls. Having emerged from dark ages, only reckless transcendental ideology is likely to plunge us back there.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | Last paragraph = “They just hate us cos they ain’t us”.
I think a more sophisticated critique is possible. It could even be that – as hard as it may be to believe – leftists think that people will be happier under the system they advocate for than the system pushed by the defenders of existing power structures, colonialism, cultural chauvinism and tradition for its own sake. If one starts from the presumption that political views are generally held in good faith, one will be much better at understanding them. |
I agree that political views are generally held in good faith, and with the belief that they are for the betterment of, if not all, then the vast majority.
I also agree with Mugwumps response in that when you have a group that appear to not only be unable to tolerate people expressing views counter to their beliefs, they actively try to suppress this. You have experienced this yourself and it's a phenomena far more apparent from those on the left.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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thesoretoothsayer
Joined: 26 Apr 2017
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| Mugwump wrote: | | ...i did have to smile at the fact that the litany of “isms” you set out to deplore managed to overlook communism, which was pehaps the only one not rooted in ancient human nature, but actually arose from modern hubris to imprison and murder whole populations behind walls. Having emerged from dark ages, only reckless transcendental ideology is likely to plunge us back there. |
I was actually discussing the rise of poststructuralism, not deploring isms. Even so, your point is well taken because Communism was the original cause celebre of poststructuralist work, and the immediate reason for its break with the old left, which it saw as trying to salvage the metanarrative underlying Communism.
The popular uptake of communism might have been rooted in indignation arising from those other isms, whether be elitism and classism, or postcolonialism, but it makes the nihilist conclusion even more inescapable: there is no right or righteous position, no matter how justifiably indignant one feels.
Trump can talk nonsense because in the end, all is nonsense. As the history of communism shows, not even righteous indignation can change this; in fact, it only underscores it.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
Help Nick's: http://www.magpies.net/nick/bb/fundraising.htm |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| stui magpie wrote: | | David wrote: | Last paragraph = “They just hate us cos they ain’t us”.
I think a more sophisticated critique is possible. It could even be that – as hard as it may be to believe – leftists think that people will be happier under the system they advocate for than the system pushed by the defenders of existing power structures, colonialism, cultural chauvinism and tradition for its own sake. If one starts from the presumption that political views are generally held in good faith, one will be much better at understanding them. |
I agree that political views are generally held in good faith, and with the belief that they are for the betterment of, if not all, then the vast majority.
I also agree with Mugwumps response in that when you have a group that appear to not only be unable to tolerate people expressing views counter to their beliefs, they actively try to suppress this. You have experienced this yourself and it's a phenomena far more apparent from those on the left. |
Personally, I’m very sceptical about these claims that the left is uniquely censorious and hostile to opposing views. I cop it worse from the left because most people I associate are of the left (and even then, I can’t recall ever having been censored; I merely choose not to engage with certain topics because I’m sick of the arguments that eventuate). Otherwise, I can think of any number of cases of the right acting like the “snowflakes” they deride: the treatment of Yassmin Abdel-Magied after her Anzac Day tweet; the vicious (and mostly successful) attacks on the Safe Schools program by right-wing politicians and media personalities; the extreme, vile abuse directed at feminists and other minorities on the internet. And let’s not even get started on right-wing governments such as our own, which right-wing members of the public vote for, and which is, at this very moment, seeking a media blackout on their prosecution of a whistleblower who revealed Australian crimes in Timor-Leste. What breathtaking hypocrisy for representatives of that party to ever pontificate on free speech!
Do all right-wingers act like that? No, I’m sure they don’t. But neither do many of those on the left; these university speaking bans, for instance (which I oppose), come from small groups of agitators and student politicians who are unrepresentative of broader views on campus, let alone society at large. If it were true that the right were more ardent defenders of free speech than the left, I would acknowledge that to be so; my impression, though, is that a great deal of right-wing discourse on freedom of speech is selective and disingenuous. I respect hardcore libertarians like David Leyonhjelm for actually being ideologically consistent on these matters; the rest, by and large – your Andrew Bolts, etc. – are barely even closet authoritarians; many offer lip service to enlightenment values but would throw them under the bus at a moment’s notice.
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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I never said "the left is uniquely censorious and hostile to opposing views." I said " it's a phenomena far more apparent from those on the left."
Edit, as far as the examples you put up all I'll say is that Yassmin idiot is extremely worthy of derision and if you think the grief that feminists cop is bad (and I'm sure it is) jump on twitter sometime and see the abuse that right wing females (and males) get. It's next level.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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^ I’m not sure who gets it worse; all I know is that right-wing internet types tend to give as good as they get. YouTube and Facebook comments sections are the worst.
Anyway, you (and many others) think that Abdel-Magied is worthy of derision; she (and many others) undoubtedly think that right-wingers are worthy of the same. I guess that’s why this stuff happens. People don’t respect differences of opinion.
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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Extremists and nutjobs on all sides are abusive. It’s what they do. My point is only that the average essentially decent person on the left is apt to be censorious if not incredulous at dissent, whereas those on the soft right seem less so. It might be my position on that spectrum, but I do not think so.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| David wrote: | ^ I’m not sure who gets it worse; all I know is that right-wing internet types tend to give as good as they get. YouTube and Facebook comments sections are the worst.
Anyway, you (and many others) think that Abdel-Magied is worthy of derision; she (and many others) undoubtedly think that right-wingers are worthy of the same. I guess that’s why this stuff happens. People don’t respect differences of opinion. |
You really should check out twitter. Or maybe not for your sanity.
Abdel-Magied is a self promoting professional Victim and England is welcome to her. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Pi
Joined: 13 Feb 2006
Location: SA
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| Mugwump wrote: | | Extremists and nutjobs on all sides are abusive. It’s what they do. My point is only that the average essentially decent person on the left is apt to be censorious if not incredulous at dissent, whereas those on the soft right seem less so. It might be my position on that spectrum, but I do not think so. |
here's an example:
in the American context this guy would be on the left
senator Chris Murphy
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/aug/8/chris-murphy-democratic-senator-classic-case-whats/
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Skids 
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
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ALEX JONES DEMANDS RIGHT TO CONGRESSIONAL HEARING“You may not like me, you may despise my politics, but I am the canary in the coal mine”
“I respectfully ask Congress to allow me to face my accusers,” he tweeted. “There have been multiple hearings where the banning of Infowars has been discussed & lobbied for by Democrats. Now it’s happened. I want to attend an open session where I am allowed to defend my right to free speech.”
https://www.infowars.com/alex-jones-demands-right-to-congressional-hearing/
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