Suzanne Moore on Twitter, on Twitter:
One thing twitter has ruined for ever is the fantasy that left-wing people are nice. What a bunch of bastards. Spewing out nastiness. I am on the left myself but very rarely pure enough to be as shitty as these true believers.
People complain about how Twitter and the rest of social media, and the internet generally, have enabled nasty and anti-social people to set aside their inhibitions and to be honestly nasty in what they say and how they say it. But this is a feature as well as a bug. I rejoice that the current state of communications technology has caused, in particular, many leftists to rip off their masks of virtue, and to reveal the sheer savagery and malevolence that used to be hid behind those polite masks.
This is one of the many arguments in favour of free and unfettered expression. We get to learn who civilisation’s enemies are. The nasty leftists whom Suzanne Moore refers to do not “mean well”, and now, thanks to social media especially, both she and the rest of us can all see this.
See also: Islam. By any sane definition, the Quran contains a great deal of “hate speech”. But that is a big reason why we all – Muslims and infidels alike – should continue to be allowed to read it, and to see ā in the case of “moderate” Muslims, to face – what it truly says.
I’m pretty sure that “social media” has been invaluable in showing folks just how brilliant revered celebrities/messiahs really are, as well as the validity of the latest “Recent studies show….”.
The terms Bell Curve, Dunning Kruger, and Gell-Mann, have a MUCH broader, (if not misinterpreted) cachet!
Yes, the really smart celebrities pay someone to manage their social media in an inoffensive manner.
This is such a great point Brian. I don’t understand why people want to ban hate speech. Listening to another person is absolutely the best way to understand them (and understand often what a noxious individual they are.) It freezes their hate forever in an easily reproducible form. We shouldn’t ban hate speech, we should encourage it.
As for the snowflakes offended by it I would simply ask this, if someone tells you how much they hate you wouldn’t you rather know so that you can avoid that person, or take steps to protect yourself? Why would you want their hatred masked and hidden from you, allowing them to blindside you? Wouldn’t you rather know when people who have influence over your life hold views utterly repugnant to you so that you can find a way to eliminate their toxic influence?
My only objection to the OP is the suggestion that this hate speech only comes from the left. That plainly isn’t true. There is hate speech from all directions.
Fraser
Thanks for the kind words.
As for your criticism, I certainly did not intend to say that only the nasty lefties (and nasty Muslims) are nasty. As you say “That plainly isn’t true”. And, I don’t believe I did say this, having reread the OP.
But a key the point is that for as long as I’ve been alive, Nazis and the nastier racists and their imitators and hangers on have been regarded as nasty by everybody nice. The internet and social media didn’t unmask them. That they were nasty was already a truism, to almost everyone, well before the internet arrived.
Not so the left. For decades, their frequent personal horridness, and their lust for social catastrophe for the sheer hell of it rather than because they cared about poverty or the Third World or something, was ignored by most influential writers, not least because lots of these influencers were nasty lefties themselves on the quiet, and the non lefties were mostly willing to be polite. At best the venom, both personal and political, was glossed over, or noted but then excused or even praised because of the good results that the nastiness was supposed somehow to contrive, thereby rendering it not that nasty. (By the way, I include Karl Marx in this. If only Karl Marx had had a Twitter account. If he had, we’d all know what a lying piece of shit he was.)
And the internet etc HAS unmasked the lefties, for all who are willing to pay any attention to the process. You (by which I mean I) can of course exaggerate the suddenness and the completeness of the process, but I really do see a sea change here, in the last ten years, and particularly since the Corbynites crawled out from under their various rocks and started tweeting their bile.
Just tried to insert something else, but the editing ran out.
Add this, in the middle of the previous comment, just after the stuff about Nazis and racists:
And anyone right wing who was politically just about tolerable but personally nasty was unmasked also. Again, this was happening long before the internet.
The argument of the OP is utilitarian, as if free expression wouldn’t be good if it didn’t serve some purpose (I am sure that the author of the OP knows this, I am just saying), but let’s turn it around, and say that ‘Unfree expression is bad, dishonest, deceitful, untrustworthy, foul and based on violence or the threat of it‘. Whose right is it to make expression unfree, and what do they hope to gain by that?
And Dr David Wood has a lot of theological points about Islam, in his own inimitable style.
@Brian, thanks again. I think though that the internet has also opened up areas of bile on the right, or at least on the non-left. As an example, the “men’s movement”. Although there is a lot in there that I agree with, there is definitely a sub culture in that movement that is deeply misogynistic and frankly rather whiny, especially among the MGTOW. Or any stream of discussion that uses words like “libtard” or “Obummer” or generally asserting that Obama was a muslim trying to impose Sharia law. There is a LOT of that out there.
I think that strain of thought was out there, hidden, before the internet facilitated its dissemination.
But let me suggest that the twitter-verse isn’t just manifesting this culture but is generating it too. Part of the thing the internet in its various applications does is facilitate the gathering of minorities, and the generation of echo chambers and support cultures to espouse every possible viewpoint. This is great if you are interested in 14th Century French poetry or HO model trains, but it also supports viewpoints that are quite vile. So it is not just the freedom to speak that generates these streams of vile speech, but it is also a nurturing point to feed and grow this type of thinking too. (That being true from again, all political and social directions.)
I think the greatest contribution of social media is to clearly show that the radical left has no principles, and those they claim to have are simply opportunistic weapons and tactics.
While I agree with the OP and most comments, I point out that online, we are not “listening to another person”. We don’t know for sure we are even dealing with a person. I have not read “Like Wars” (yet), but a colleague tells me it claims something like 75% of social media posts during the last US Presidential election were plants, either bots or folks paid by China or Russia to disrupt things. And that Russia and China are working hard to disrupt a lot of other societies. Chaos helps them is the strategy I guess?
Whether it’s lefties being nasty or triggered, which I find easy to believe, or Trump fans going viral with something, or any of a thousand other things, I no longer trust that what I read online is from someone/someplace I know. I guess Jordan Peterson and Samizdata.net control their online content in ways that I can trust, so I do. I guess. And my family and friends (real friends, not Facebook “friends”) I trust info I’m getting from them directly, but not things they may link to.
I’m sure there are other estimates of this penetration of legitimate social media posts available…online! It may not be 75% or even 50%, but if it’s significant enough to poison the public square discussion, then it’s significant. How can we root out the bots and paid disruptors? Maybe start a service, like OrchID (academic publishing ID system), for every man. Once we each connect with those we truly know via such means, we can filter out the rest. Let them post their bile and mis-direction…we won’t read it as legitimate discourse. Plenty of smarter technology folks hanging around these parts, so I’d be interested in other, better, and available, means to know who you’re “talking” to online.
Even after 30 years, I’m never sure what nuggets the Sage of Kettering might come up with, apart from a dig at The Economist, but I trust him.
Well, no one here will will be shocked at my referring to the Great & Glorious Obama as “the Sith” or “Demon Spawn,” nor to the PTB in the Democratic Party as “the Dims”; these to me are not terms indicating hatred, but rather metaphorical, snide statements of the simple truth: indicating the right names of things. Sorta.
There are some words whose meanings, in all seriousness, I have never entirely figured out. Among them: “respect” (“seeing again” — I think at root it means acknowledgement); “dignity” (which I’ve always taken as behavior that illustrates the fact that a human is not to be confused with a lower animal; or, self-possessed); “forgive”; “hate.”
Illumination from all quarters on these concepts is welcome.
@Julie near Chicago:
You totally misunderstand the meaning of those words. I refer you to Humpty Dumpty from Alice Through the Looking Glass:
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean ā neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be masterā that’s all.”
The left constantly redefining words means that there is no foundation on which to address their arguments. It is a deliberate tactic to dis-empower the opposition while allowing them to frame the debate on their terms.
Also bear in mind that not everyone has an active social media account, and of those that do only around 10% are active posters.
The proportion of social media bile is from an insignificant (but loud) group of people, it is made bigger than it is by media types (who are usually by nature part of the 10%).
Social media has not only revealed the haters, it also exposes the squeaky wheels destined for government greatness.
Agreed. Twitter has stripped the filter away.
Read through the feeds of people like James Comey, John Brennan, Rice and Clapper – and ruminate on the fact that they presided over the USās intelligence apparatus.
No impulse control, inability to think critically and a complete lack of professionalism.
Thanks to Twitter, theyāve exposed themselves.
A Merry Christmas to all Samizdata readers and contributors. I am about to set off for a Christmas day get-together with a number of people, some of who unthinkingly vote for the intolerable of the Socialist gang and applaud the most Lefty nonsense they can find. Not looking forward to it much. However, it is Christmas and one should be charitable towards the lesser minds among us.
Peace and goodwill, friends.
Dear Me, people actually use the word “libtard”. I prefer “progtard”. And, my god, “Obummer” when “Obamafuck” is correct. Get thee to the fainting couch Fraser Orr.
And now the tweets are protected.
Reddit in particular has some tremendously vicious activists on it that delight in putting people in danger.
Julie:
I’m trying to recall the sense of the word “respect” that I got from French class many years ago. I think it was more along the lines of “a second look” (as in: worthy of)–reassessing (and, presumably, upgrading) your judgement of someone in light of new behaviour they exhibit or new knowledge you have about them.
I’m not very happy seeing people use terms like “Dim” or “libtard.” If the person is incapable of anything more than empty rhetoric I guess I don’t have any particular objection. That’s a person whose words I’m probably going to ignore anyway. But when someone with more to say uses blatantly pejorative rhetoric it feels, to me, like a missed opportunity. They’re making what might well be an important argument but phrasing it in terms that almost ensure that it can never be more than preaching to the converted.
It should go without saying but, since it doesn’t: I defend their right to say it, regardless.
Tedd,
There’s a war going on all around you, but you’re not happy with the use of certain terms. My god, get a spine and tell the fokkers what you really think: I surrender and I’m just waiting to hear your terms.
I’m always torn by this.
Like you, (I think), the derogatory phrases like “libtards” strike me as laziness, in the same way I always counseled my kids that swearing was how you express yourself when you can’t be bothered to think of the right words. The right words are usually a better, more exact choice.
But there is a certain amount of shorthand signaling value in “libtards”, et al. Yes, you’re signaling to the choir how you feel about an entire genre of people and philosophies, and it might be more elegant and exact to “use your words”, but it can function as a timesaver. Call someone a “libtard”, and I know fairly exactly how you stand on many issues.
I may tell someone that I think they are naive in their opinions of Islam and its place in the world, or that they voted for Bernie Sanders because of their lack of knowledge of economics and history, or that their faith in government as Daddy is touching and pitiable, or that their use of racial division as a political tool is evil, and in each case I have told them what I really think, and in each case I have communicated to them more clearly where we disagree, and in each case I think I have exhibited more “spine” than I would have by simply calling them a “libtard.”
Now, to myself, I might well think “there goes a stupid effing libtard”, but I’m not trying to communicate anything to anyone else in that case, so there’s no loss.
Point is, I don’t want someone to merely know that I dislike them. I want them to know specifically why I dislike them.
Henry:
I tell people what I think all the time. But I try to do it in a way that has a chance of actually changing their mind, if I think their mind should change.
bobby b:
While I think your approach is better than what Henry seems to be suggesting, I tend to avoid arguments based on someone’s motivation. Arguments based on an analysis of motivations aren’t much more than a disguised form of ad hominem. It’s too postmodern, for me. It’s not that the argument isn’t true, necessarily (though they often aren’t). It’s just that they’re mostly not relevant to getting at the truth, and they’re generally not convincing to the person you’re directing your argument toward. They mostly play to those who already agree with you and so fall into the “echo chamber” category, much as pejorative rhetoric does.
bobby b,
The point is you can make a cogent argument while hurling well-deserved insults. Insults can be part of the arsenal you use against the enemy, or to rally the troops. “Krauts, Squareheads” anyone. And don’t get me started on Japs, Nips, Gooks and Slopes. The idea is to defeat, demoralize and, yes, laugh at the enemy while you are doing so.
@Henry Cybulski
Get thee to the fainting couch Fraser Orr.
Not to worry Henry, I grabbed the smelling salts. OF course it is certainly possible to form a cogent argument while using words like that, just as it is possible to form a cogent argument is a stream of curse and swearwords. However, it is a signal for a poor quality argument, and moreover a signal that your argument isn’t even worth reading.
Don’t get me wrong, mockery is a very valuable and effective rhetorical tool, however, it is vastly superior when wielded in a sophisticated manner.
Couching your argument in sophomoric or jejune vocabulary only serves to alienate most audiences with whom you do not 100% agree with.
Of course, as a bonding agent in the echo chamber it is no doubt useful, just as words like “infidels” and “deniers” are. Frankly though, for me much as I might agree with many of the points users of such vocabulary might make, quite frankly it is so off putting to me, being as it is sophomoric, that it actually makes me want to dissociate from its users. I have lots of people who do this in my social media feed, and listening to them makes me wonder if I am on the wrong side. But perhaps that is just me.
I’d rather discuss things with people in language that is agreeable so that the focus can be on ideas not vocabulary. (Re-emphasizing Julie’s excellent point on this previously.) Not a goal I always acheive, but at least I aspire to it.
Nonetheless, Merry Christmas to all.
I don’t disagree with anything you said. Please keep in mind that I was detailing the words I might use in place of “libtard” or “Obamafuck” – if I’m simply trying to convey dislike or distaste, I’d rather convey it meaningfully, communicating the “why” as much as the “what.”
None of my suggested comments would be useful as argument or persuasion, but I wasn’t offering them as such.
Sadly even polite statements that false and defamatory statements and false and defamatory attract censorship.
For example, the Wikipedia article on Mr Carl Benjamin (Sargon) contain false statements (blatantly false and defamatory statements) yet when I pointed it out – I was blocked from editing (this happened today – and my replies to the blocking do not even reply).
The thing is Brian – most people do not know that “nasty people are being nasty” – why should they not BELIEVE what they see on the internet, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and-so-on, after all any attempt to fight back risks a person being kicked off X platform.
This was brought home to me by various people I know repeating things about Senator Ted Cruz – all the things they repeated were FALSE (wildly so), but they had plenty of “citations” and trying to fight back against this sort of stuff attracts punishment from the social media companies – such as Twitter.
Such things as a “Twitter Storm” (often only a few people – but made to look very important by the SJWs who control Twitter) can get people sacked from their jobs – for having the “wrong” political opinions.
“Then set up other internet companies” – people have tried (Minds, Gab….) but the “payment processors” and so on are also controlled by the left, and they hit these companies.
The current situation is nothing to “rejoice” about – the lies of the left are presented as TRUTH (not as “nastiness”) and “freedom of expression” is actually a joke (a sick joke) as anyone who tries to oppose the left on various internet reference and social media sites can tell you. There is plenty of censorship – and it is mostly directed in support of lies, and against the truth.
“Free expression” – yes that would be nice. If that existed I would not have wasted several hours of Christmas Day trying to deal with Wikipedia blocking me.
I refuse to accept two standards – if the left can say X, so can I. Otherwise this stuff about Freedom of Expression is a lie.
Making fun of someone’s name, like making fun of his DNA, is about the most self-degrading thing that can be done with only words by anyone older than about ten.
“Libtard”, “Rethuglican”, and all their analogues are signals to ignore the source.
@Henry Cybulski
My god, get a spine and tell the fokkers what you really think
I’d suggest instead you “get a vocabulary”, it is much more effective in the telling than a spine ever was. How small minded of you to think that people who refrain from mindless insults against their interlocutors, even their enemies, somehow lack courage. It takes a lot more courage to face them on the battlefield of honest ideas than the childish blather of playground talk.
Insults can be part of the arsenal you use against the enemy … The idea is to defeat, demoralize and, yes, laugh at the enemy while you are doing so.
What on earth makes you think that childish insults defeat or demoralize people? They just piss people off, and they make you look like in incompetent boob. Don’t get me wrong, as I said, mockery is one of the most effective rhetorical tools but only if it is the type of mockery that reveals the weakness of the opponents ideas. Calling them a “slopehead” just makes you a dick.
Tedd,
Yes: “A second look,” a “re-assessment,” is certainly within the scope of “re-seeing.” Thanks for pointing that out. And we do use the word that way sometimes, in English. For example, I never thought much of FDR, because of the New Deal. But I’ve come to have some respect for him for (IIRC) helping out the Brits (in particular) and some others with Lend-Lease before we formally entered the War.
But I do think that in English we mean something else by it. For instance, speaking of “dignity,” we say things like “we must respect human dignity.” Or, “We grant people respect until they’ve shown they don’t deserve it [=we acknowledge that humans are humans and ought to be treated as such]” — Jordan Peterson to the contrary.
.
And, completely O/T but I need to get it off my chest: I am not a great fan of Dr. Peterson, although I agree strongly with some of his positions. “There! I said it!” — And speaking of respect, I absolutely respect the man for coming out so strongly against legally-compelled speech. Especially given the possible price of that for his career.
Fraser! “A dick”? You mean a detective??? š
And now that it is no longer Christmas anywhere in the continental U.S. (except far-western Alaska), and it’s well past Christmas in the Mother Country, let me say:
Merry post-Christmas and Happiness of the Season to all who infest the Samizdatan parish. I hope everyone feasted well and happily with family, friends, and sundry others. (The four-legged are included in Family, of course.)
You are all terrific companions!
A few points:
1) I didn’t say mindless insults, I said well-deserved insults,
2) Throughout my entire life I’ve never called anyone a slopehead. But I have called some arrogant prick of a German a squarehead,
3) I used the word “insult” when I should have said mockery. (I’m an ex-pat Canadian who has lived in Spain for 26 years and sometimes, through lack of practice, the proper English word eludes me,
4) Referring to somebody as a “Rethuglican” is almost always an incorrect descriptor, whereas “Progtard” is almost always a correct descriptor,
5) Why be wordy when you can be succinct, hence insults,
6 Whew, I’m tired of using all that vocabulary.
Cheers
Of course I meant to type “even saying that a false and defamatory statement is a false and defamatory statement, is censored”.
We live in an upside down internet word – false statements (even wildly and blatantly false statements) are presented as truth on the “mainstream” internet sites, but to contradict these statements (to show that they are false) is forbidden, and meets with censorship and “banning”. Establishment “sources” must NOT be exposed as the collection of lies that they are.
And this is even true of Islam (not just of “liberalism” or “Progressivism”) – Brian is quite correct, the Koran and the Hadiths are quite legal – and it is quite legal to proclaim that these works are good and that Muhammed was a good man. But let someone try and show that the Koran and Hadiths are evil works and that Muhammed was an evil man – and the government of Mrs May will not allow them into this country.
“But they are still allowed to connect with Britain via the internet Paul” – for the present, but it gets harder every day.
The internet companies (and the payment processing companies) work hand in hand with governments, and ever more closely – and the objective is to promote lies (as long as these lies help undermine evil-white-male-capitalist society) and crush the truth. Yes the leading companies work to crush capitalism – it is strange, but it is the case.
The vision of most internet company managers (and their “trust and safety teams”) is a sort of soft socialism – of the “Star Trek: New Generation” sort and they will ally with anything (anything at all) that is an enemy of “white-male-straight-capitalist-Christian society, even allying with Islam.
This insanity that dominates Western governments and the leading companies comes from the education system, from the schools and universities, it is truly the “treason of the intellectuals”.
As they censor-and-ban “reactionary” ideas and arguments (and PEOPLE), internet company executives do not even have a clear idea what these ideas are – their minions (who really control them – rather than the other way round) censor-and-ban before the actual owners of these companies can even really see them.
Practical experience?
Google operates in the San Francisco area – its people see the failure of Big Government polices every day (even from their limos they can see the homeless on the streets – and when they open the car door or window they can smell the human excrement and the general decay), but this practical experience has NO EFFECT on them. Nor does paying very high taxes. Nor does crowds of leftist activists (the very people they SUBSIDISE and SUPPORT) screaming for their destruction in “protests” have any effect on the minds of the executives.
It is baffling.
“It is baffling,” writes Paul.
George Reisman thinks so too. Or at least, he has a diagnosis and a long corrective to what he sees as the ignorance of the Buffetts and other such looney limousine liberals. Personally, I think a lot more is at work than mere ignorance, but I’m just a heterosexual “white,” mostly-Anglo-Saxon, former though not presently Protestant — though female — girl.
So for any who may have missed it, Dr. Reisman in 2012 published an Open Letter to Warren Buffett on the woeful ignorance of Buffett.
https://mises.org/library/open-letter-warren-buffett
Note: I do hope that the adjective “looney” applied to the set “limousine liberals” (in itself of questionable permissibility) does not transcend the sensibilities of Samizdata’s owner mor of its readership. :>)
. . .
Tedd, above on Christmas at 8:25 p.m.:
“I tend to avoid arguments based on someoneās motivation.”
Amen to that. There’s entirely too much “psychologizing” in discussions of perverse lefty or librul “motivations,” even by the High and Learned who ought to know better (not to name any names of course), that claim to diagnose The Problem with these L-L folks. In my non-Edumacated, entirely lay opinion, there are multiple factors at work in this anti-productive social “movements.”
No, they are not all chiefly motivated by hate, self-hatred, envy, etc., etc. Some like the adrenaline high that often accompanies displays of anger or protest. Some have malformed or damaged characters. Some get caught up in the same sort of “mob mentality” or “animal spirits” that are said to cause a good many financial bubbles, such as the Tulip Mania. Some want to feel “In” rather than “Out.” Some don’t think about it all that deeply and certainly don’t get heavily involved in educating themselves about economic theory, or moral philosophy either…and among these are probably a very large number of well-meaning, good-hearted folks to whom the general cant seems plausible and in line with society’s general opinion of what constitutes humaneness.
Etc.
@Julie near Chicago
but Iām just a heterosexual āwhite,ā mostly-Anglo-Saxon, former though not presently Protestant ā though female ā girl.
I was going to say that “female – girl” is tautological, but I guess these days it isn’t.
That’s true, Fraser — that nowadays it’s not tautological anymore. *g*
Besides, aren’t we supposed to hate and deplore White Anglo-Saxon Prostant Males, the source of all our ills? So I felt it necessary to point out where I differ from the standard Patriarchal WASP, including my identification as one who lacks the “dangly bits,” a.k.a. a Female.
Actually, I intended a swipe at the nitwits who get all bent out of shape when grown women are called “girls.” Call it a snideswipe.
I think there’s still nothing unspeakably demeaning about wives who allow that their gents have gone out bowling or drinking or to the opera with the other boys, meaning their grownup male pals. And I see nothing wrong with husbands who say, Oh, the girls are out having lunch.
True feminism means that in general, sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, and vice-versa.
“Prostant”???? š
Julie – a good letter from George Reisman.
And Warren Buffett is clearly a hypocrite – he preaches ever higher tax rates for “the rich” and ever more regulations (even endorsing Barack Obama – moral bankruptcy for a capitalist, and something that so many of the American rich “liberals” are guilty of, and I-curse-them-for-it), but he lives in conservative Nebraska – far from the Progressive States, such as New York, New Jersey, and California, with their high tax rates and endless regulations.
Nebraska actually borders the most conservative State of all – the State with the least government spending as a proportion of its economy. South Dakota.
Laura Loomer opposes Islamic doctrine – the lady does not use curse words or threaten violence, but the lady has been banned.
Banned by Twitter, and banned by “Go Fund Me”, and so on.
So much for the “Freedom of Expression” that Brian talks of. Who needs government censorship – when the Corporations (especially the Silicon Valley Cartel and the “payment processors”) are the hand maidens of the left.
One of the central libertarian arguments is that the market is concerned with commerce – that business enterprises do not care about race, or sex, or who you sleep with, or what you have said at some point in your life, or what religion you are, or anything else – that the only thing they care about is money.
The Social Justice Warriors – who tug at the chains of the “education” of the corporate managers (reminding them of how they “should” behave), have shown this view of markets to be mistaken.
Companies such as “PayPal” will throw away money – because the activists remind them of how they “should” behave, and the managers at such companies have “internalised” Marxism (under such names as “Critical Theory” – they do not even know it is Marxism) at school and university.
If you control minds, as the left do (via their control the education system and the media) you do not have to control the law – but you, eventually, control the law as well.
A great state that is part-time home to some fine people!