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In a rather well-timed yet coincidental counterpoint to Why we're Losing the Internet to the Culture of Hate, Milo Yiannopoulos over at Breitbart brings us this:
A warped currency today governs popular culture. Instead of creativity, talent and boldness, those who succeed are often those who can best demonstrate outrage, grievance and victimhood.
Even conservatives are buying into it. Witness, in the days since Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon was announced as Donald Trump's campaign manager, how establishment stooges have bought into the worst smear-tactics of the left. As with the left, nothing is evaluated on its quality, or whether it's factually accurate, thought-provoking or even amusing: only whether it can be deemed sexist, racist or homophobic.
Campuses are where the illness takes its most severe form. Students running for safe spaces at the slightest hint of a challenge to their coddled worldview. Faculties and administrations desperately trying to sabotage visits from conservative speakers (often me!) to avoid the inevitable complaints from tearful lefty students.
In this maelstrom of grievance, there is one group boldly swimming against the tide: trolls.
Trolling has become a byword for everything the left disagrees with, particularly if it's boisterous, mischievous and provocative. Even straightforward political disagreement, not intended to provoke, is sometimes described as "trolling" by leftists who can't tell the difference between someone who doesn't believe as they do and an "abuser" or "harasser."
Yeah, you knew I wouldn't let that kinda SJW nonsense slide without comment.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shortscreen on Sunday August 21 2016, @08:02PM
The other article smeared a broad group of people as "trolls." This time, people the author has a beef with are simply "the left."
Is everyone who supports old school leftist causes like workers' rights and environmentalism automatically part of the PC police as well? I think not.
This is how we end up with useless political discourse. Guilt by association. Strawmen. Lesser of two evils. etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @08:39PM
Um, no, the other article DID NOT smear a broad group of people as trolls.
Unless you consider every ideology the author disagrees with as a broad group (here's a hint- they are to the right of him).
A token gesture to appear fair-minded aside, the previous article couched 99.9999% of trolling as originating from a particular political class. Except everyone who isn't ideologically bound and has spent more than 5 minutes on the web knows it goes both ways.
The opposite is not true however, as Milo freely accepts that he does in fact troll, and that's a good thing in maintaining the fringe for other less than popular opinions.
One of the two is advocating for more speech, the other less.
They are not even remotely similar.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:03PM
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Both "anyone who disagrees" and "anyone to the right" sound like very broad groups in my book.
Yes, and I favor free speech myself. Who is opposed to it? I guess Stein is, but he is not representative of the entire political left.
The right has factions who advocate for censorship as well (against blasphemy, porn, anti-American speech, whatever). This is my whole point. You can't take an issue like free speech and frame it as left-vs.-right. It isn't. The venn diagram will end up looking like string theory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21 2016, @09:37PM
Was porn, blasphemy, or anti-American sentiments mentioned by either? Why bring it up then? If Stein was arguing against derogatory depictions of women, Islamophobia, NRA lobbying, the response would have still been the same. The ideologies involved matter less than as a justification as to why it is just and good when we do it.
However, Stein does argue for censoring everything from MRAs to gamergate advocates to which there is no counterpart on the right except through proxy. That's not writing off a particular instance as trolling, but an entire viewpoint. And it originates from a particular side.
This is exactly why leftist have been distancing themselves from this new breed of progressives, calling it the regressive left or SJWs.
Again one side is arguing for more speech while the other is not.
And when the Christian Right decides to try and ban porn, again, they will be mocked as well.