I recently analyzed for a client the crazy rant of Chilean conservative thinktanker Axel Kaiser in “This Could End in Civil War” and realized this is a paradigmatic model of all contemporary right-wing delusionality and I should blog it. I covered a different aspect of this problem before, the epistemic side of how these delusions arise (often from a complete, even wilful incompetence at fact-checking, owing to adopting various delusion-reinforcing “trap beliefs”) in A Vital Primer on Media Literacy. But here, I can give you a compact survey of how that failure plays out in forming actual delusions, representing a total break with reality that is actually explicitly dangerous—as in this video Kaiser is literally claiming his wildly false beliefs justify mass violence.
I must first frontload a crucial caveat here in an attempt to shock any delusional readers of this article into not doing what delusional people usually do when confronted with a debunking of their delusions: pull a motte and bailey on us (see Disarming the Motte and Bailey in Cultural Discourse). That’s a trap belief: it’s a behavior designed to prevent you from ever listening to and thus hearing what was actually said, by convincing yourself something completely different was said than actually was, thereby insulating you from ever being exposed to or absorbing any information that would falsify your beliefs.
So Do Not Ignore What Is In This Section Right Here
There is a legitimate critique to be made of the excesses and failures of what is popularly described as “cancel culture.” I’ve covered this well enough already (see The Left and Anti-Left Both Have Much Still to Learn and How the Right and the Left Nuked Atheism Plus and Why Mythicist Milwaukee Is Right and Their Critics Wrong). But what is offered as such critique from conservatives is, too often, delusional bullshit instead. There is nothing new or peculiarly liberal about cancel culture or its excesses: conservatives invented cancel culture and codified in history some of its most outrageous excesses (remember McCarthyism? The Hays Commission? The Hollywood Blacklist? The Comstock Act? And countless other boycotts in the 20th and 21st centuries?). Note that many of these examples were actually laws or otherwise state-enforced, and not just consumers exercising their rights under free market capitalism (much less just “criticizing” people for their actual or alleged behavior or beliefs).
The only thing that has changed is that liberals have more consumer power now, and conservatives are not handling well the turning of the tables this has now entailed. Their own weapon is now being used against them, and they don’t like that. And yet, liberals are not actually doing what conservatives had done (and are still doing): trying to use political force to compel their opinions on others. Look around. There is no Hays Commission or Comstock Act or McCarthy Committee messing with the lives of alleged transphobes and mansplainers or any social justice targets. Yes, there are laws against discrimination, but those aren’t new (they’ve been around for fifty years), and they only limit how you treat people you employ or work with, not what you are allowed to think about them. And the law only does that by compelling you to treat them the same on matters irrelevant to their job performance—and creating a hostile workplace or driving away customers are workplace performance issues. Hence an employer is not legally required by any law to fire an active public member of the KKK. But they are legally allowed to exercise their capitalist freedom to.
And yet there are obvious abuses on all sides. There are disproportionate responses—consumers boycotting, rather than merely criticizing, someone for a stupid reason, or a reason that isn’t even true, or that’s been disingenuously exaggerated. There are immoral responses—consumers boycotting someone for an immoral reason (“because they are gay”; “because they are polyamorous”; “because they worked in porn”; or even, yes sometimes, “merely because they are a conservative or a liberal,” and not for a specific legitimate reason). There are illegal responses—attempts to bypass civil rights law in getting someone punished or fired; or even to write one’s own biases into law and compel people to conform to your opinions. Those things all exist. But they are the extremes. They are not representative of the overall phenomenon. There are far more legitimate boycotts and firings; even legitimate prosecutions for civil rights violations. There are even more that are neither bad nor good, but just reflect the tastes of consumers, which capitalists, alas, must cater to.
That’s the motte. But the critique that follows is a debunking of the delusional “bailey” too many conservatives are Drunk Uncling about these days. It is irrational to respond to this by pretending none of this happened or exists, and retreating instead to defending something “else” (like some other example of a legitimately criticizable “canceling” incident, something nowhere mentioned in Kaiser’s rant). That is retreating to the “motte” of real cases to complain about. I am not criticizing that motte here. I am calling out the delusional absurdity of the bailey. Because it’s at that bailey (not any actual motte) that conservatives like Kaiser are staking out their position and making calls for civil war and violent rebellion. And it is that that is dangerously delusional. Take note.
Fisking the Bailey
- The first thirty seconds:
Right out of the gate Alex Kaiser begins with a wildly delusional falsehood: that straight white men “can’t talk about” race or gender issues lest they be “canceled.” In fact millions of white men speak and write on those issues without being “canceled.” The delusion here is the false equation of (a) what actually is being canceled (rightly or wrongly) is certain things being said, which are deemed racist and sexist or that are based on dismissing or not listening to people affected by racism or sexism, with (b) just anything said whatever. Because Kaiser has conflated what is actually being socially condemned with “anything whatever a white man says,” he has no conscious grasp of what society is actually condemning. This is delusional. He is suffering a complete break from reality. Like someone who doesn’t know roads or automobiles exist complaining about how we can’t transport anything.
People who have not suffered this psychotic break with reality instead grasp the distinction between what is and is not appropriate to say: non-racist, non-sexist (and thus non-condemned, a.k.a. non-canceled) speech is speech that is based on having actually listened to and accounted for those affected by racism and sexism, that includes their experience in assessing reality, and exhibits empathy for their plight, and a genuine desire to alleviate it. It does not require total agreement on solutions or on every specific alleged case. But it does require agreement on basic facts of reality. Criticism and debate are still available, when informed and empathetic. It is dismissive callousness and ignorance that is being condemned (hence see Three Common Tactics of Cranks, Liars, and Trolls). But as cognitive dissonance forbids someone from admitting this about themselves, they choose to delusionally break with and deny reality instead, rather than become a better, more informed person.
Case in point: Kaiser claims Bret Weinstein was expelled for opposing racism against white people, and “the campus was practically burnt down.” That’s delusional. No fire or even significant damage occurred. The worst one could claim was some trivial graffiti in a few random places (documented in a paywalled article at The Olympian); and a few broken windows that were never actually linked to any protestors. In fact, an investigation traced no damage at all to the protests; and terrorist death threats shutting the campus down came from a right-winger—not the supposed liberal “cancel culturalists” who protested and criticized what Weinstein did. Likewise, Weinstein was not expelled. He was not even punished or sanctioned by his school in any way. He resigned. Voluntarily. On his own. And then he sued his school on specious grounds. His school didn’t do anything; he got into a heated argument with some silly protestors who were mildly out of line but that he did not engage with sensibly or diplomatically, and then whined about it like a toddler; he was never in any physical danger and was only trivially inconvenienced.
In effect, Bret Weinstein and his wife (who wasn’t even involved in any of this) chose to quit instead of do their jobs, and claimed a half million dollars severance package. And we are supposed to feel bad for them. Weinstein looks more like an elitist ass after all this; a thin-skinned, cowardly member of the rich exploitative echelon of society. He complains. Until he makes huge wodges of cash off of his complaining. He never actually does anything productive. He never learns anything—like, why he wasn’t even factually accurate in his own protest against a merely proposed voluntary Day of Absence for White students at his school, which was nothing more than a free speech call for people to exercise their free speech, without any compulsion or requirement from anyone. Which he called racist—but didn’t call racist the exact same event for Black students. Which is hypocritical and illogical. And still he has never learned. He remains trapped in the delusion that outraged everyone of sense, and wreaked havoc because of it. In any objective analysis he’s really just a useless parasite in this saga, who did more financial damage with his own ignorant, arrogant behavior, than anyone responding to him did.
A good objective analysis of what really happened, a.k.a. reality, is provided by Inside Higher Ed (in “Who Defines What Is Racist?”) and in the Pacific Standard (in “How Right-Wing Media Has Tried to Stifle Student Speech at Evergreen State College”). Read both. And then you can see how by “leaving out” a lot of pertinent information, a delusional alternative-version of reality has been invented by and about Weinstein that does not accurately correspond to what actually transpired. What offends society is valorizing such a petty, lazy, and parasitic man. Not because he’s a Straight White Man or because he just “voiced some criticisms”; but because of how he specifically acted, and ignored the actual reality of the situation, which all signified a willful ignorance and lack of empathy, which just happened to be directed along racist lines. And all people did was point that out. But Kaiser’s delusional condition does not comprehend this—what actually happened—and instead fabricates a false narrative that makes a hero out of a loser, so he can ignore what really happened, and falsely blame it all on a non-existent racism against white guys. This is literally white fragility.
And we are here only 25 seconds into Kaiser’s delusional rant.
More delusional falsehoods ensue.
- Minute one:
Per the linked articles above, no one was ever “forbidden” to be on the Evergreen campus. The ask—that the campus’s long-held, one-day “stay off campus” tradition be reversed from people of color to white people—was (as it had always been) purely voluntary, and was an idea developed to allow white people to express a protest of recent Trump-era racism if they wanted to. White people were never barred from campus and faced no censure if they went to campus that day. Weinstein falsely misrepresented this from the start, which is one of the reasons he was regarded as a disingenuous racist: even his first emailed critique was essentially telling lies about the event. This is the hallmark behavior of a racist: to falsely characterize race-based issues in line with racist delusions. Had Weinstein been honest and correctly framed his criticism, no one would have taken issue with him. That’s what Kaiser, and all conservatives, should be learning from this incident.
The “dean” (actually president of Evergreen, George Bridges) was never “kidnapped in his office.” Nor did “police have to intervene.” He wasn’t even in his office, but a meeting room, holding a meeting that he convened with the protestors and administrators. Similar lies spread on the internet even claim Bridges was prevented from using the restroom; in fact, they specifically let him use the restroom. Reality? Exactly the opposite of Kaiser’s delusion. Even that article I just linked misconstrues its own video evidence, yet still makes clear this was a meeting already going on that Bridges convened with them, and that the protestors just wanted to make sure it continued (that the administration didn’t try to dodge them); at no point was anyone held against their will. The video itself makes this even clearer (so, don’t listen to someone’s delusional opinion about what’s in the video; actually watch the video yourself): it was a calm and well organized student union action, in which a student protest leader instructs all student protestors that health and safety must be respected, so people can be allowed to leave if that’s the issue; otherwise, they want to make sure the talks continue—similar to literally any union contract action in the last hundred years. Indeed, watching that video is valuable: it shows the difference between reality, and the delusional fiction conservatives invent about it.
As I said, there are legitimate issues regarding excess protest and cancel-culture behavior, but they are much more nuanced (not the psychotically delusional stuff Kaiser is talking about), and they actually plague both right and left (they both do those things). As I noted already, I have written several articles on this, in which I link to a dozen more articles by other, sane, reality-grasping observers, disproving the claim that Straight White Men “can’t” say these things or that “only” Straight White Men are criticizing excesses in left or right protest culture. I’ll give you that list again:
- Why Mythicist Milwaukee Is Right and Their Critics Wrong
- The Left and Anti-Left Both Have Much Still to Learn
- How the Right and the Left Nuked Atheism Plus
I’m a Straight White Guy; and many of the critics I link to in those articles, who echo and voice and share my criticisms of these excesses, are not. The left is continually having honest conversations and debate about all this (from The Washington Post alone, read Megan McArdle and Jennifer Miller). To think they aren’t is literally delusional. And notice: they aren’t being canceled for it.
- Minute two:
John Cochrane was never canceled. He was criticized. Having your arguments and ideas critiqued, is not being canceled. But pretending those are the same thing? That typifies right wing delusions, as we see right here from Kaiser. Whining about being criticized is pathetic, not heroic. And conservatives need to learn this lesson if they want to ever be taken seriously again.
- Minute three:
Bari Weiss resigned from the New York Times because she defended an insurrectionist’s publishing in that periodical an editorial advocating the use of the military to violently suppress civilian liberties, and attacking her own colleagues there for condemning that instead, in result of which the entire staff lost confidence in her ability to make sound decisions for a morally responsible newspaper. Notice how Kaiser omits these facts, thus creating a delusional false narrative of what happened. That’s a total break from reality. Of course Kaiser’s delusion here is just a gullible repetition of Weiss’s own delusional letter of resignation, which also omits the actual facts of what happened and the actual reason she was no longer welcome at the NYT. It is the nature of the delusional to simply believe any claim that agrees with them, rather than fact-check those claims even more carefully than claims they disagree with (a fundamental lesson of critical thought). It’s particularly funny here that Kaiser falsely claims Weiss is a liberal. In fact she is recognized by every objective analyst as a conservative. She calls herself a centrist (like many right-wingers disingenuously do), but she’s actually fairly right-wing: see the evidence assembled at Politico and at Forbes and even her Wikipedia page.
Kaiser then misquotes Lawrence Krauss, who did not say what Kaiser claims, although he said something close and might think the same things. The actual editorial in question (at the conservative Wall Street Journal) is Krauss’s criticism of affirmative action hiring policies in the sciences, which is in my opinion both a wrongheaded and conservative criticism; but that’s not what Kaiser is representing Krauss as having said, as he is making it seem as if Krauss wrote there about “cancel culture.” Nothing in Krauss’s article is about that generally (nor did Krauss ever mention any comparison to Nazis or the USSR as Kaiser claims). There is only one line in the end of that editorial about Dr. Dorian Abbot being condemned for himself condemning affirmative action and attacking diversity in faculties and student bodies. Krauss only mentions this in the context of his opposition to affirmative action.
Nevertheless, possibly Krauss would agree with Kaiser. Krauss has a few fairly sexist and conservative views, as an investigation into his misconduct revealed. But Krauss also misrepresented the facts. He falsely claims Abbot was criticized for advancing sentiments of equality and merit-based hiring; but that’s not so. Abbot was criticized for spreading racist and sexist narratives implying the inferiority of women and minorities. This is a perfect example of the delusional not grasping reality—reality being what Abbot was actually condemned for—and replacing it with a whitewashed narrative of it being an attack on White Men, which is false. For a reality check, see the coverage in The Chicago Maroon. For example, no one asked for Abbot to be fired; they asked that he be “removed from his position as Department Website and Social Media Committee Chair,” which is just one specific sub-committee assignment, which is a reasonable request given what he actually did (which the linked article documents). Their other demands were also reasonable in light of his open racism making minority students uncomfortable. Abbot basically admitted to not believing they were there on merit, and that White Men should have replaced them; which is fundamentally racist and sexist. And yet, no action was taken; Abbot was completely unaffected by this protest, refuting both Kaiser’s and Krauss’s narrative.
- Minute four:
Kaiser misuses Steven Pinker as a supposed example of Kaiser’s delusion. In actual reality, Pinker himself disproves Kaiser’s point: Pinker can openly and easily and readily debate the issue of sex differences in the brain; no cult mindset stops or cancels him, and he can cite tons of recent science on the matter, which shows nothing is stopping such science either (see coverage at the Edge). This disproves Kaiser’s entire thesis. Again, criticism and disagreement are not “censorship” or “canceling.” Only whiners who can’t handle being criticized or disagreed with pretend those are the some thing. Another example of a total break with reality.
- Minute five:
Kaiser has presented, and presents, no examples of anyone being put in “jail” or “fined” or anything the like pertaining to straight white male conservative speech. He didn’t even present an example of anyone being fired for it (a private, not government action). This is the cornerstone of conservative delusions. Actual totalitarianism means actual suppression; it does not mean “criticism and disagreement,” nor even does it mean “firing racists and sexists” from positions where they make decisions concerning minorities, which obviously one should always do (as has been the law here since 1964 and thus in no way “new”). Yet Kaiser gave no examples even of that happening! He didn’t even give any examples of harassment (much less from any government; but not even from private individuals either). Again, “criticism and disagreement” is not of itself “harassment.” Indeed, the only case Kaiser mentioned where harassment occurred was at Evergreen, and there the only real harassment—terrorist death threats—came from a right-winger. Otherwise, Weinstein himself was not really harassed; he got inappropriately shouted at in one single protest action and didn’t handle it well, and even that was a nonviolent call-out of his own actual misbehavior; he wasn’t targeted for just being a white man speaking his mind.
Kaiser eventually claims that in the U.K. “9 people a day” are arrested for comments on social networks. Per any typical delusional behavior, he omits the fact that this is for actual harassment like death threats (see coverage at the BBC, The Washington Post, and CBS News Online), not “merely” expressing an opinion. None of the examples Kaiser gave in his video would result in any arrest under that U.K. anti-harassment law. He is thus lying about the evidence. And if this is a lie he has told himself, it’s another example of his total break with reality: he lives in, and complains about, a fictional world. Meanwhile, in the real world, nothing he is saying is happening, is happening. One could legitimately criticize aspects of the U.K. harassment law Kaiser is talking about; U.K. (and other European) free speech protections have long been noted as problematic and there is much to criticize in them. Hence there is a reason America is known as the free speech capital of the world, and why Kaiser had to jump suddenly and inexplicably to the U.K. (all his examples up to now were from America; so what does it matter what the law is in the U.K. exactly?). And yet even the law in the U.K. that he references doesn’t address anything Kaiser speaks of in this video, so it’s not even relevant. So why did he cite it? Because he has suffered a total break with reality. His ideology has driven him mad.
Even in the U.S., where free speech entails the right of publishers not to publish what they don’t want to (barring contracts they voluntarily signed that say otherwise), the only thing publishers are actually canceling are outright lies or threats or incitement to violence. Even the six books of Dr. Seuss that are no longer being published were withdrawn voluntarily by the owner of their copyright, not the publisher. That wasn’t canceling; it was an act of free speech in full respect of capitalist property rights. It even had good reason (those six books teach obsolete and, we now realize, immoral things), but that isn’t relevant to my point. Dr. Seuss wasn’t canceled, even by Dr. Seuss Enterprises. He has, uhem, more than six books. Kaiser doesn’t mention Dr. Seuss anyway. He’s more obsessed with Facebook, which actually doesn’t even legally count as a publisher (conservatives really don’t understand Section 230; revoking which would force Facebook to be even more restrictive in what it allows its clients to publish, to avoid being sued for libel or incitement to violence or criminality).
It’s true that Facebook has a problem with over-censoring, mostly because stupid robots and not educated people are doing it, but importantly its standards satisfy both liberal and conservative demands. For example, “no nudity,” even when it’s classical art or scientific data, is a conservative demand Facebook cancels speech for; “no promotion of ethnic hate,” a liberal one. (One might notice a serious difference in moral seriousness between conservative and liberal demands here; this is why conservatives look especially foolish complaining about this.) And yes, Facebook does indeed “cancel” racism against White People: I had a post nixed there because it included an innocuous Drax meme making fun of Europeans (or Americans, depending on how you look at it—but either way, dude, that meme was funny). And yet even conservatives must admit that Facebook has the fully Libertarian, outright Ayn-Randian, free market capitalist right to not let me use its property to disseminate that meme if they want to. Which policy is easily bypassed anyway: just hang out online somewhere other than Facebook. “Facebook won’t let me do everything I want, therefore we should take up arms against the government and stage a violent coup!” is insane. Reality is more nuanced and explicable than the delusional fictional world Kaiser has invented for himself.
- Minute six:
“There is no longer academic freedom,” he declares. Uhem. Kaiser has cited not a single example of any professor losing a position over free speech. So in what sense is there “no longer academic freedom”? He’s completely delusional here. Total break with reality. I actually think there has never been academic freedom, as the levers of power have always been used by institutions to constrain what professors can say—and so real academic freedom is only available outside those institutions (and indeed, in America at least, it is). But those levers aren’t used the way Kaiser delusionally believes.
For example, no one has ever been fired for merely stating conservative opinions or for criticizing liberal opinions (there is a reason Kaiser failed to present even one example of that happening). But several people have been silenced for expressing liberal opinions. Thomas Brodie was forced into retirement and mandated silence for publishing his doubts about the historicity of Jesus; Thomas Thompson was denied work and grants for years for publishing his doubts about the historicity of Moses. The data show it’s usually liberals, not conservatives, who lose jobs over speech. And yet as that same data reveals, these instances are actually extremely rare—refuting any claim of an epidemic or any broad or rising social problem; and still these actions are usually deployed against liberals, not conservatives.
Even in the rare cases where conservatives are targeted, almost none involve any sitting professor losing a job—and almost all are extreme cases hard to criticize, like openly-pro-sex-crime white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Dangerous Faggot Tour” being denied a venue at a college. One can hardly say that was a bad decision. He wasn’t even a professor. Libertarian, even downright Ayn-Randian property rights entail a college does not have to host speech it disapproves of from people who aren’t even its teachers or students. And the 1964 Civil Rights Act might even require that they not, if that speech is likely to veer into promoting hate crimes or other illegal acts.
I could adduce a scant few examples of the immoral suppression of free speech by private actors (not institutions), such as where students disrupt lectures to prevent the audience hearing a person they brought in to speak (which is an act of fascism: the use of force to compel political compliance). But even the left criticizes that. And many are not even that intentional. The disruption of Weinstein’s class, which happened only one time, was part of a general campus protest of several issues, not specifically about him, during which he was singled out and engaged in a debate at an inappropriate time. Which was not an intent to silence him; but also wasn’t moral behavior toward his students, who had a right to benefit from class that day. And nearly every liberal actually agrees with me on that point. Even the Huffington Post called that behavior “problematic and counterproductive.” It’s also, accordingly, rare. Rarer even than school shootings (if you are looking for a more genuine problem to be worried about). This kind of misbehavior isn’t some looming crisis. It’s been a thing for over a hundred years. And such incidents are notably more peaceful now than in past generations (remember Kent State?); they aren’t actual riots, and people aren’t actually getting killed. Indeed now they’re all isolated, bottom-up private protest actions, not institutional top-down acts of oppression (remember Kent State?).
Instead, the only laws in the United States ever passed in its history restricting academic freedom have been right wing—like the recent state bans on teaching Critical Race Theory or the civil rights and needs of gay students, and beyond (e.g. “Florida Legislature Passes Bill That Limits How Schools and Workplaces Teach about Race and Identity”; “Why Are States Banning Critical Race Theory?”; “Teachers Are under Fire in Increasingly Bizarre Ways”; “Proposed Legislation in Florida Resurrects an Old Assumption about Same-Sex Couples”; “How Social-Emotional Learning Became a Target for Ron DeSantis and Conservatives”; “Schools Nationwide Are Quietly Removing Books from Their Libraries”; “These Are Books School Systems Don’t Want You to Read, and Why”; “The Next Book Ban: States Aim to Limit Titles Students Can Search For”; “South Carolina Bill Outlaws Websites That Tell How to Get an Abortion”; “LGBTQ clubs were havens for students. Now they’re under attack.”; “It’s Making Us More Ignorant”; Red States Threaten Librarians with Prison — as Blue Atates Work to Protect Them). It’s conservatives who are threatening free speech and academic freedom far more than liberals, and precisely because of the delusional madness of the very ideology Kaiser is spewing. This is why his delusion is dangerous.
Meanwhile, the idea that there is “no freedom of speech,” coming from a still-employed fellow of a major university think-tank in America in a universally available video no one opposed or took down, is so laughably ridiculous I cannot fathom how these guys take themselves seriously. In the same absurd vein, Kaiser claims some literature is being “eliminated,” but that’s, again, bullshit. A publisher no longer publishing something does not “eliminate” the literature. It’s not a delete button. No liberals are ever burning books (though conservatives still are, acting on the very same delusional panic Kaiser is spreading). And books “no longer published” still exist, everywhere in libraries—and often still published by other publishers (especially once their copyrights expire and they become the people’s property; then anyone can publish them—even Kaiser!).
In the U.S. some primary and secondary schools (which means pre-adult education) have changed their curriculum to exclude outdated books and replace them with more current and relevant literature (as colleges have always done for hundreds of years); but that does not constitute “banning” them (no one is forbidden to read them; nor are they made inaccessible to anyone). Same with art and everything else. There is a reason Kaiser gives no actual examples of what he’s claiming; doing so would expose the fact that reality does not comport with what he is saying. Thus Kaiser has no grasp of actual reality here. He is hopelessly delusional, locked in a psychotic grievance culture.
- Minute seven:
For right-wingers to use the fact that they are losing the argument, that their ideas are not holding up, are being criticized and declining in influence, as an excuse to threaten mass violence and political coups is indeed very typical of right-wingers. It is, in fact, fascism. Kaiser is thus, essentially, a fascist: we can’t get our way by persuasion and argument, ‘so eat our guns motherfuckers’. That’s fascism. The irony is not lost on me that Kaiser delusionally thinks he is the one fighting non-existent fascists when he’s the actual fascist. The word fascism comes from the fasces, the bundle of rods and axes Roman lictors carried ahead of government magistrates signaling they had the right to beat or kill anyone they wanted. It signals today any ideology that replaces persuasion, and democracy, with any use of force meant to bypass both. If you can’t win an argument in the market of public discourse, resort to violence. That’s the fascist motto. And here Kaiser is, singing it.
- Minute eight:
No, Mr. Kaiser, the Oscars never said they would “not” give awards to good movies if they weren’t diverse enough. This is Kaiser’s delusional break with reality once again. The actual diversity rules the Oscars recently adopted fully allow all possible movies to succeed for the top award, because their diversity requirements can be fully met in behind-camera hiring, and quite easily—in fact any business enterprise not meeting even that minimal bar is definitely not an equitable workplace and is probably already violating 1960s Civil Rights law.
- Minute nine:
Note that it is this total break from reality, a disease peculiar to right wingers, that creates the social polarization Kaiser is complaining about. And he is here explicitly using this to justify violent revolution, in effect threatening liberals with death lest they acquiesce to his delusions. Kaiser is thus an insane man complaining about all the damage to society his insanity is causing; and getting violently menacing as reality continues to fail to conform to his madness. If conservatives would re-acquaint themselves with reality and develop reality-based beliefs instead of these psychotic delusions contrary to all facts, then we could have more bipartisan cooperation, in state and culture, and actually have productive debate between conservative and liberal policy goals, and even make progress in moderating the excesses of cancel and protest culture. But they are the ones who refuse to enter back into reality. That’s not the fault of liberals. That’s the fault of conservatives. They are causing everything they are complaining about. Which means their own complaints can only be addressed if they correct their own epistemic behavior. No one else can fix any of this but them.
Conclusion
“Misinformation is very disproportionately a problem on one side—the right,” that wing of humanity that is now suffering a global collective insanity. The data disturbingly confirm this (example, example, example, example, example, example, example, example, example, example, example, example, example, example). It’s not that liberals are immune to the same cognitive biases and fallacies, and the resulting risk of delusion; but rather that conservatives are so much more vulnerable and prone to them that it has driven them insane en masse. Whereas the core of liberalism correctively hews more toward reality decade after decade, the conservative worldview increasingly deviates from reality—and so far now in many cases as to not even resemble reality, as we see with Kaiser. This trend has completely destroyed their ability to assess information reliably or critically, and the result is literal ideological psychosis. Which is leading to an increasing propensity toward violence (example, example, example, example, example).
In large part this is because conservative beliefs are highly driven by emotion (rage, fear, paranoia, hate; latent dysfunctional feelings about gender and sex; simplistic feelings about economic or criminal justice), and they won’t listen to their own slogan that facts don’t care about their feelings. But, Dear Conservative, they really don’t. Please wake up. Please course-correct. Check your emotions. Actually listen and pay attention to what is actually being said and done. Genuinely vet your facts. Question your own methods of ascertaining what’s true; deploy, only and ever, reliable critical thinking skills. Start aligning your beliefs with reality—for all humanity’s sake, and your own. Otherwise, we have to simply write you off as dangerous lunatics with nothing left to contribute to society in respect to ideas.
Yikes! The timing on this is spooky.
You saw Dr. Price on Pinecreek Doug’s show, I’m sure.
I didn’t. But heard about it after I published this (and then went and watched it). My take on Facebook.
I was curious what you would say. I find it to be yet another indication of a good reason to be skeptical of open Trumpists.
Good observation, Fred. Let us also be skeptical of male feminists who are banned from multiple conferences. Of course, given how every feminist I’ve ever met is on head meds (in addition to having bad tattoos and making terrible art), I’m inclined to believe those women, in our host’s case at least, are lying psychopaths and so I have no reason to doubt our host’s side of the story. However, he was in fact cancelled, at least to a certain degree. Not to the degree that others have been, but nonetheless cancelled. You also have people like Krauss, Shermer, and Silverman who also had bull-shit allegations thrown their way (Krauss’ case is especially bull-shit given the evidence). Are there real accusations of sexual assault in the community that are legit? Of course, I won’t let you steal my motte AND bomb my Bailey (look it up).
I spent last night listening to the entire Bob Price interview that everyone is screaming their heads off over. Without going into every single thing he said, I will say first that I don’t like how he called the Civil War the “war between the states” since by definition the Confederacy was no longer a system of states but of a micro-nation that abdicated its right to exist. However, the minority shop owners who were violently attacked and threatened with death will be the first to tell you how those people are pieces of garbage who shouldn’t be let out on their signature like every white liberal on the internet said they should. Countless white people were sharing “bail funds” to let those thugs out (yes, a white person can be a thug too, it’s not “code for the n-word” like some four eyed cat hoarding professors say). The shit about the election being “stolen” is tiresome and I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Biden’s son’s computer, but asking why the Black Lives Matter movement seems to be anti-father is not a racist question. As Price correctly noted, a quick glance at their list of goals does not include eliminating gang related crime in the black community but it does include eliminating the nuclear family. That single motherhood is tied to poverty is not limited to the black community but includes whites as well. Go to any pen and survey the number of inmates, regardless of race, who grew up either without a dad or, if they had one, one who was a decent man.
At the end of all of this, I think instead of eating our own, like the Facebook memes describe us, maybe focus on Biblical scholarship? Having a flame war between other mythicists is only going to fulfill a two thousand year old prophecy “A house divided cannot stand”. Indeed. As Price correctly pointed out, one can be a Nazi and still a good philosopher, just not a good person. Hitler was arguably the most evil man in history but his views on affordable cars were spot on. John Searle is a sexual predator but his Chinese Room Argument still stands. Colin McGinn is even worse yet he remains the top representative of naturalistic mysterianism. For what it is worth, Trump himself is most likely an Atheist, as Michael Huemer noted on his blog, even if Trump won’t admit it in public. So we have a list of almost every major male atheist in the community who was accused of sexual assault or misconduct and obviously the burden of proof lies on the one making the claim but good grief dudes, to pretend that cancel culture does not exist WHEN THE FUCKING OWNER OF THIS SITE was cancelled is mind-numbingly [ableist slur deleted by editor–RCC]. That’s like the (probably apocryphal) story of Bertrand Russell realizing he “exists” because some old woman came up to him and announced (ironically) that she too was a solipsist!
Bill, we believe in evidence-based reasoning here.
So your false equivalencies are not sound arguments.
Robert Price has openly called for racist violence and made numerous blatantly racist remarks (as well as sexist and transphobic remarks). That’s a documented fact. You even repeat a lot of his other false racists assertions yourself (e.g. there is nothing “anti-father” about BLM; that’s made-up racist and sexist bullshit). And you don’t even realize it. You actually believe Price’s racist rhetoric. So your judgment is clearly not sound here.
But for those who do exercise sound judgment, unlike Price’s case (and indeed the others you name), anything claimed about me actually stands against documented evidence. That there are people (liberal and conservative, feminist and misogynist) who foolishly make judgments contrary to the evidence does not justify ignoring cases that are based on well-established facts. Likewise that there are people (liberal and conservative, feminist and misogynist) who foolishly equate the mild with the serious does not justify anyone else just as foolishly equating the serious with the mild.
Bill: Putting aside that you don’t even have the integrity to look at what Price said, or the broader context of Trumpists, and make a comparison…
1) Someone being on “head meds” and “doing bad art” (in your clearly inestimable and infallible artistic opinion and psychiatric capability!) doesn’t make someone a lying psychopath
2) Extrapolating from the feminists you know to all of them is bankrupt, and it’s transparently obvious that not all feminists are on psychiatric medication or doing bad art
3) I am a feminist and on no medication, and Richard is also a feminist, so all you’ve proven is that you have a small social network, maybe because you’re such an asshole that you would alienate feminists out of your social circle given your proclivity to just assume they’re lying psychopaths
4) Your earlier calls for intellectual charity are exposed as utter hypocrisy given your lazy ableist armchair diagnosis of your opposition
5) You have absolutely no reason to think that the accusations against Krauss, Shermer or Silverman are bullshit, and ignore that even if they were Krauss and Silverman have gone on to make public statements (Silverman especially) that demonstrate them to have always been virtue-signaling asshats, so that their “cancelling” goes beyond accusations
6) You happily accept accusations of murder on nothing but testimony, even though sexual harassment is both far more common than murder and is being testified to by the victims themselves which is impossible with murder, so you expose your epistemic standards as being “I believe accusations against people I like but not people I don’t”
7) Who are “those people”? And how does their conduct after an arrest prove they should have been arrested? Are you saying they should be held to account for behavior they hadn’t committed yet? Can I call for the imprisonment of Trumpists given their proven tendency toward rape, insurrection, treason, legal fraud and fascist violence?
8) Downplaying stolen election claims as “tiresome” instead of dangerous and even racist (given that they implicitly make the claims that the disproportionately non-white Dems just clearly can’t be voting honestly, and explicitly when there’s racial targeting and accusations on racist lines) exposes nothing but your double standard
9) While you are happy to allege racism among mainstream media, you won’t accept the clear racist signaling where BLM conferences are viewed as anti-father in ways that quite vile right-wing conferences won’t be because of the association between black men and broken families, for absolutely no good reason, and won’t hold Price to account for not actually finding policy positions that BLM has that would be anti-father
10) Your conclusion that differences on matters of things like fundamental values should see people not comment and not condemn demonstrates total cravenness, and contradicts your guilt by association standard for Swami
Is there any hypocrisy you won’t reach, Bill? Will you ever bother to even try to express fact-based reasoning?
“You happily accept accusations of murder on nothing but testimony, even though sexual harassment is both far more common than murder and is being testified to by the victims themselves, which is impossible with murder, so you expose your epistemic standards as being “I believe accusations against people I like but not people I don’t”
Dude, the guy accused of shooting Sulochan was CONVICTED. That’s the difference. Radhanath Swami was not charged due to the complexity of the situation (there’s a reason he rarely leaves India) but there is plenty of first-hand evidence that he was involved, not least his post-humous adoration of the guy who ordered the hit, Kirtanananda Swami. Several books have been written on it and the internet is filled with all the primary sources dealing with the investigations not just in relation to Sulochan Das’ murder but the countless other scandals (including other killings) within the Hare Krishna sect. That’s far from “on nothing but testimony” in the sense of mere hearsay.
https://www.amazon.com/Monkey-Stick-Murder-Madness-Krishnas/dp/0151620865
https://www.amazon.com/Eleven-Naked-Emperors-Charismatic-Succession-ebook/dp/B0824B8VLP/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31EHY0E02MH5Q&keywords=11+naked+emperors&qid=1650238159&s=books&sprefix=11+naked+empe%2Cstripbooks%2C260&sr=1-1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0794FD7TY/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
As far as Krauss goes, he posted the picture in question which clearly shows him moving his hand away from the alleged victim. I’m not an expert on the Shermer and Silverman cases.
As far as “transphobia” is concerned, can you blame any sane human for being apprehensive about people who identify as “trans” given what happened at the Koreatown Spa in LA and similar incidents? Most of these “transphobes” appear to be women. I have met several people who were born male but identify as female but I have only met one who did the reverse. Question: if the patriarchy is real, why would men make the conscious decision to become part of the sex that is considered “inferior” by the standards of the supposed patriarchy that currently exists?
https://nypost.com/2022/04/14/edna-mahan-womens-prisoners-pregnant-after-sex-with-transgender-inmate/
This case above shows the problems with the “transrights” movement.
As far as BLM being anti-nuclear family, that has been well documented for years. Apparently they “erased” that since getting negative feedback on that:
https://nypost.com/2020/09/24/blm-removes-website-language-blasting-nuclear-family-structure/
Hardly “racist” to point that out.
From a copy of their statement: “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”
https://uca.edu/training/files/2020/09/black-Lives-Matter-Handout.pdf
Anybody who accuses someone of “racism” for merely repeating what this organization has openly declared on their website is either incapable of looking it up or just wants to “show off”. None of this ignores or draws attention away from similar issues amongst poor whites or other racial or ethnic groups, but that BLM has openly stated this is beyond doubt.
Finally, let me say that regardless of your views of Bob Price, mythicism isn’t as hot as it used to be. Acharya S passed away, Salm hasn’t written anything in almost a decade, Doherty vanished off the face of the earth (we still don’t know where the hell he got his BA from or what he even looks like), Wells abandoned mythicism a while ago. Mythicists can’t afford to lose any allies in the fight against historicism.
You say, “Dude, the guy accused of shooting Sulochan was CONVICTED. That’s the difference. Radhanath Swami was not charged due to the complexity of the situation (there’s a reason he rarely leaves India) but there is plenty of first-hand evidence that he was involved, not least his post-humous adoration of the guy who ordered the hit, Kirtanananda Swami”.
Which is a very roundabout way of saying “Swami has never been convicted of the crime I accused him of, but some other guy was”. Swami being the guy you walked about. Not anyone else. And your only stated standard for assuming that Swami was involved is that Swami applauded the guy who actually ordered the hit.
Hey. Bill. Asshole. (Seriously, I am so far past being courteous here; you are openly justifying being crappy to countless people while also justifying circling the wagons to protect your own beliefs, never mind that you loudly disagree with Richard on topics not related to mythicism thus undermining your own fucking call for action).
Do you know how many people applauded the January 6th riots? Applauded people who have supported abortion doctor murderers? Applauded Dennis Hastert before they knew he was a child molester?
If you take this stance, that support for someone who called a hit on someone else increases the likelihood even marginally that you’re involved in that hit, the entire American right-wing is guilty of countless crimes.
You. Don’t. Fucking. Take. That. Stance.
You just do it when you don’t like it.
The hypocrisy is goddamn transparent. Swami wasn’t convicted, but you act as if that conviction is essentially a matter of certainty, even though you give one piece of evidence and it’s awful. Trump admits to being a rapist on camera, his wife kicks his ass in civil proceedings by describing what is clearly rape, and we should be skeptical that he’s a rapist when he’s accused of it? Should we fucking cancel Bill Cosby now, or did we have to wait for the trial? Only now Cosby had a conviction reversed for procedural reasons, so we apparently should be totally okay with him! Shermer, Krauss, Kavanaugh… they’re all innocent!
“Several books have been written on it and the internet is filled with all the primary sources dealing with the investigations not just in relation to Sulochan Das’ murder but the countless other scandals (including other killings) within the Hare Krishna sect. That’s far from “on nothing but testimony” in the sense of mere hearsay.”
Tons of stuff on the Internet accuses the Clintons of murdering people that don’t even exist. This is a fucking joke, Bill. I’m actually less convinced of Swami’s guilt than I was before, because this is apparently as good as you’ve got.
You say, “As far as Krauss goes, he posted the picture in question which clearly shows him moving his hand away from the alleged victim. I’m not an expert on the Shermer and Silverman cases.”
https://www.vox.com/a/sexual-harassment-assault-allegations-list/lawrence-krauss
He has multiple accusations. So even if this is relevant, it doesn’t answer the actual issue.
And you’re not an expert on cases you didn’t fucking mention, but were apparently sure that cancellation in their cases wasn’t justified.
For Swami? His support for a guy and investigations of a broad group prove he is guilty of a single proximate act. For Krauss? Supposedly debunk one moment using one picture (never mind that that can’t possibly disprove that Krauss acted inappropiately, and couldn’t even if there was video) and that’s enough to satisfy you, BIll!
Super fucking gross, Bill.
You say, “As far as “transphobia” is concerned, can you blame any sane human for being apprehensive about people who identify as “trans” given what happened at the Koreatown Spa in LA and similar incidents?”
Uhhh… yes.
Just like it would be vile to call all Republicans neo-Nazis even after January 6th and even after David Duke endorsed Trump and even after King and even after substantial intrusion into Trump-supporting movements like Q.
Let’s flip this script, shall we? Can you blame any sane human for doubting Krauss, Shermer, Silverman, Trump, or Kavanaugh, given the countless number of times white men have gotten away with sexual assault, given men like Hastert?
You don’t find that compelling. Why the fuck would you find this compelling?
“This case above shows the problems with the “transrights” movement.”
Does it? You… do realize that if we were to put trans men into male prisons, they could get pregnant too, right?
How about… doing a better job in imprisonment, especially for trans inmates, who experience really awful treatment?
Nope! Fuck that! Let’s be transphobes instead!
“As far as BLM being anti-nuclear family, that has been well documented for years. Apparently they “erased” that since getting negative feedback on that:
https://nypost.com/2020/09/24/blm-removes-website-language-blasting-nuclear-family-structure/
Hardly “racist” to point that out.”
So… you rely on the New York Post… to tell you… that BLM… removed language… that is anti-nuclear…family.
I really, really am starting to wonder if something is wrong with your brain. It’s such a colossal failure of reasoning. But bigotry really is a hell of a drug.
1) “Nuclear family” is not cognate of “family”. You can tell that from the fact that there’s a word in front of “family” in the phrase “nuclear family”. You can criticize any individual kind of family structure without being anti-family.
2) In fact, conservatives need that to be true, because extended family apparatuses common among black communities are still families, and yet conservatives criticize them all the time, on racist grounds.
3) The fact that BLM removed the language actually goes to show that they’re not anti-family. Because they stopped endorsing the idea.
4) The BLM website is not cognate of the entire movement. But hey, glad to know you’ll agree with me that the entirety of the Republican Party are all child molesting Nazis now!
5) The BLM language wasn’t even anti-nuclear family, you fucking liar. It’s against the presumption that only the nuclear family is good. “Vanilla ice cream isn’t the only good ice cream” is not the same as “Vanilla ice cream sucks”, but hey, fuck intellectual charity when it comes to black people, right? Only white Republicans deserve it!
Hey, Bill, can I accuse Republicans of being pro-imperialism because of their support for it back in the 1920s? Or can organizations remove language and change their public position?
““We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable”. That’s not anti-family, BIll. Not unless you’re racist and culturally colonialist.
You say, “Anybody who accuses someone of “racism” for merely repeating what this organization has openly declared on their website is either incapable of looking it up or just wants to “show off”. None of this ignores or draws attention away from similar issues amongst poor whites or other racial or ethnic groups, but that BLM has openly stated this is beyond doubt”.
Non sequitur.
You can make a claim about an organization’s actual stance, then be racist in how you apply that information. The later premises can be racist.
Like conflating anti-nuclear family with anti-family. And conflating being against the requirement of the nuclear family with being anti-family. And racistly being against extended family structures and support.
Something only right-wing lunatics do.
By the way, you may want to look up Richard’s position on polyamory and the assumption of the nuclear family as the only valid one. Is he anti-family too? Or just not reductive and bigoted?
“Finally, let me say that regardless of your views of Bob Price, mythicism isn’t as hot as it used to be. Acharya S passed away, Salm hasn’t written anything in almost a decade, Doherty vanished off the face of the earth (we still don’t know where the hell he got his BA from or what he even looks like), Wells abandoned mythicism a while ago. Mythicists can’t afford to lose any allies in the fight against historicism.”
Wow, so a bunch of crazies and/or amateurs died or stopped writing! That means that it’s in bad shape! Never mind that I’m hearing way more about historicity, that Christians are rushing to defend historicity in ways they never had to before, that people like Matt Dillahunty have had to express their views on the topic, that MythVision is able to constantly host ideas that help to question the field!
And if Swami were to say that Hare Krishnas are struggling enough that criticism should stop, you would fucking call that cowardice out.
But here, your woobie is just too important to even acknowledge that someone was being shitty. Richard didn’t make a whole article about it. He just wrote a Facebook post and acknowledged the question. That’s it. He even made pretty clear he’s not going to dissociate himself from Price.
Holy crap you have no spine.
“5) You have absolutely no reason to think that the accusations against Krauss, Shermer or Silverman are bullshit, and ignore that even if they were Krauss and Silverman have gone on to make public statements (Silverman especially) that demonstrate them to have always been virtue-signaling asshats, so that their “cancelling” goes beyond accusations”
Remember the part about practicing the intellectual equivalent of cannibalism? I am reminded of apologists or even secular scholars like Ehrman who will say something like “Oh, Matt, Luke, and Johnny are all bull-shit BUT Mark isn’t!” I’m not saying the Gospel of Mark IS reliable or that Carrier is guilty, what I am saying is that “all those other gospels are fictional except this” is epistemically equivalent to “all those other male atheists accused publicly are guilty except this one”. I haven’t spent countless hours researching the Silverman case like some others have (I’m not an attorney or a judge, nor am I a huge fan of his regardless) but the Krauss case, like the Carrier one, seemed cut and dry false. I’m not into the whole BDSM scene so the technicalities of what constitutes “consent” in a sexual act that is all about stimulating control over someone else is not my expertise. For a critique of porn in general, especially BDSM from a feminist perspective, check out
https://www.amazon.com/Pornography-Meat-New-Updated/dp/1501364391/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+pornography+of+meat&qid=1650430933&sr=8-1
I haven’t read this “updated” version but I have read the original. Her book “Neither Man nor beast” is also interesting and insightful as are the works of Naomi Wolf. Both were earlier pioneers of third wave feminism.
The amount of time that goes into publicly refuting claims like that makes me suspect Carrier as well as Krauss et.al are more likely than not victims of a smear campaign. I took one look at Carrier’s accusers in one of the videos they uploaded (side note: who the fuck posts pictures of cats on a website about sexual assault???) and every single one of them looked like the type to make up stuff. When you have millions of followers, it’s extremely easy for people to get jealous. When you have people who look like they haven’t left the house in years spending all their time on the internet, one gets suspicious. None of that by itself proves anything, but it makes one wonder.
You cite a radio host like Matt Dillahunty (who as far as I know is not, nor has he ever been an academic, but I could be wrong) as proof that mythicism is still going strong but that’s not a good example. Find me ten non-tenured or tenured history professors or ancient near eastern professors who are mythicists in the English-speaking world and that will be solid evidence that mythicism is gaining acceptance in academia.
I don’t see any valid epistemic principles in the way you reach conclusions, Bill. Too many non sequiturs.
For those who instead want to apply legitimate evidence-based reasoning on this matter, I have a guide.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, was wondering the same thing after reading this blog.
Thanks. I have no social media but YT.
Your comments are virtually the same ones I made while watching the live stream. These were self-inflicted wounds. It’s a shame.
Yeah, the entire notion of “cancel culture” as the right imagines it is delusional claptrap.
Almost no one reconstructs where it actually began: among queer communities of color on Twitter, who didn’t want to have to deal with a particular person. It was always defined as people not investing their own attention into people who have proven themselves unworthy of it. It was a mental survival tool, a way of avoiding burnout and useless anger.
The media dishonestly never talks about this. I have seen countless pearl-clutching thinkpieces on cancel culture that never pose the issue in this way. Because if they did, the massive entitlement would be obvious. You have no right to someone’s attention. What conservatives are shrieking about is that they can become unpopular. Period.
Kaiser’s opening is a great example. It’s literally self-refuting. He’s doing the thing he is claiming he can’t do. The only way one can take someone talking like this, even if we grant them the most charity possible in terms of them being polemical rather than literal, is that they think that the ability to talk about something means the ability to talk about it in public without public rejoinder. In other words, intellectual monarchism and elitism, made worse because the people demanding that right are doing so essentially because of their gonads or the color of their skin rather than their actual qualifications. People like Kaiser would despise the idea that they should shut up and only let experts talk. But they have the same norm. (And these are also the people who hate common left-wing tropes asking people in categories of power to stop talking and learn for a little bit, while themselves asking for much more permanent silence on everyone else’s part).
The fact that people can be hatemobbed illegitimately is irrelevant to the broader point. Any tool can be misused. Conservatives don’t abandon the notion of policing when cops shoot innocent suspects and are even found guilty of it, they don’t abandon the notion of military service even when the Republican Party realizes in the bulk that the Iraq War was waged stupidly, etc. I’ll happily lose “cancel culture” to win the fight that conservatives abandon any of their stupid ideas when they provably don’t work. But no one does this, and no one should. We need evidence that a tool is at least in the balance negative. And attempts to argue that from cancel culture always put the jobs of people with power, the vast majority of whom rebound (Louis CK started touring, Dave Chappelle will almost certainly get more tours and more jobs, etc.), in the balance against nothing. Because the sincere attempts to actually count the benefits of cancel culture in terms of what it provably avoids wouldn’t give the right answer, without admitting the game: not valuing the needs of marginalized people.
And even if we want to discuss the matter at the broadest, theoretical level, it is still moronic to do it as the right-wing and their intellectual thralls among centrists would demand.
Take “the free market of ideas”, for example. Regular free markets routinely fail. I personally think we should use participatory planning instead, but even market socialists can agree that markets need some particular augmenting institutions to work. Why would we trust something that can’t give us food safely to give us ideas safely?
“Cancel culture” disputants tend to just decide to ignore that not all debates can be had civilly. “You deserve to die” is not a debate that “you” and “I” can have equally well. I have a lot less to lose from the debate. This is why we have things like standards of criminal guilt: if the topic at hand involves loss of life and liberty, we want to get it right. But we almost never do this with debates about the rights of people and the needs of marginalized folks. We never make those who would demand something like transgender people not having the right to compete in sports in their identity or to go to the bathroom matching their gender identity meet the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Rationality Rules famously failed to do this.
An honest conversation would balance our need as a society to let people express themselves and explore ideas with an equal informal demand on responsibility for us doing so. We would demand both that people be patient with others as they express themselves in order to avoid mob dynamics, and also that people who express ideas have actually thought them through for forty-five seconds.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2057047320961562 is a great addition to your thoughts.
All good points. And a helpful link. Thank you.
Your analysis raises themes discussed by Wilhelm Reich in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Writing in the context of the rise of Hitler to power, Reich’s psychoanalysis of the Nazi movement explored, like your discussion, how the emotional nature of conservative tribal views is incompatible with reason, and how such views are expressed in ways that reveal unconscious delusion.
Placing this social analysis in the context of psychology, Carl Jung’s theory of a collective unconscious is helpful to see how mass delusion springs from cultural rationalisation, ignoring the lived experience of others while using a spurious bubble consensus to justify views like those of Kaiser that you critique.
Jung held that archetypal symbols express collective unconscious sentiment, and often serve to reinforce deluded fantasies, constructing an imaginary world that is resistant to evidence and logic.
Reich saw sexual repression as a driver of fascist sentiment, channelling energy into violence rather than understanding or dialogue. While his Freudian sexual focus is too narrow, the psychology of repression helps to explain how collective energies can evolve to create twisted distortions of reality. In the psychoanalytic framework, a repressed energy emerges in sublimated form through the power of libido, generating a shadow energy to express sentiments that exist more widely in the collective unconscious. In this way, demagogues achieve mass popularity that defies rational explanation and causes massive harm and trauma. Spouting lies is a first sign of the demagogue.
As lies fossilise into myths, the society loses the capacity for courteous dialogue. Your good metaphor of the motte and bailey castle describes this failure of civic engagement by comparing it to the tactical retreat to a citadel only to reoccupy the field when possible. In debate this describes an unethical refusal to engage on the content of ideas.
Cancel culture has a long history. Christianity pioneered the suppression of heresy in order to cancel from view the information and opinions that challenged orthodox dogma. The social effect of denying a platform can be big, with chilling ripples across society, producing a broad self-censorship among those who sympathise with the cancelled view. Heretics often bring a corrective to the failings of popular views, but face intimidation and hostility for what Orwell called thoughtcrime.
Thanks for explaining the Roman origin of the fascist valorisation of violence over dialogue. It is a growing problem.
Robbie: This is pretty thoughtful, and I think you’re taking Richard seriously by thinking about “cancel culture”, but I do think some of the framing you’re using may not be very useful.
Like, say, “The social effect of denying a platform can be big, with chilling ripples across society, producing a broad self-censorship among those who sympathise with the cancelled view”. That’s… the only effect of denying a platform? What if a certain Hitler chap had been denied some platforms, not given some political opportunities? I guess “can be” could mean that you’re admitting that the effect can be both small and possibly even positive, but…
You provide examples of heretics and Christian treatment, but those aren’t examples of deplatforming. Galileo wasn’t just deplatformed: he was imprisoned and censored. Heretics were killed, or tortured. That’s what chills discussion. I don’t see any evidence that informal norms on their own are anywhere near as powerful. I see people complaining that they are, and those people demonstrate themselves to be unreliable and dishonest quite frequently. And informal norms aren’t even deplatforming.
And conflating debates about something like “Does God exist?” and “Do people deserve to have equal rights?” isn’t really valid, yet your analysis seems to do that. Just like not all conduct is made equal, not all speech is made equal, from libel to commands for criminal activity. For example: A situation where a person would not be able to get a job for being a person of color or a Democrat is not the same as a person struggling to get a job for being a Nazi. It is actually quite reasonable to be skeptical of a Nazi’s ability to work with their colleagues and with the community in any position in a way that isn’t harmful, discriminatory or cruel.
If society really needs to go beyond simply giving everyone the right to publish speech that is not overtly harmful (e.g. libelous) on their own platform on their own time, no one shown that. It’s just assumed, and then harms are inferred based off of cases where there was actual force or deprivation behind them. And even in that case, we still need to discuss what we are asking the victims of free speech to give up, and if that is a fair request.
I don’t even know if it’s a growing problem that we “[valorize]… violence over dialogue”. It seems like what many disingenuous people are complaining about is that others are valorizing some kind of dialog over others. Right-wing terror and efforts to silence protesters led by the right are real, but I don’t know if the problem is actually growing in any historically meaningful sense. Repression of dissidents is omnipresent.
Yes I have some very conservative friends and when talking with them about political issues of the day it is almost like they live in some alternate universe with a reality that consists of a different set of facts.
They believe things that a quick Google search could easily dispel. For example I was at a party a few months ago and this guy went on explaining in elaborate detail this conspiracy about how someone had applied for a patent on the Corona Virus a few years before the whole Covid thing. This is something that he seemed to have put a lot of time and energy looking into. So when I got home I decided to do a quick fact check and discovered what I had expected to be the case, that the patent in question for for some other Corona Virus (it was actually for birds) of the Corona family, it wasn’t for Covid-19 specifically.
Another example is many of my conservative friends (and right-wing media) will continuously point out that even vaccinated people test positive for the Covid-19 (which is true). But when I point out to them that unvaccinated adults are 97 times more likely than vaccinated adults they seem annoyed by such inconvenient facts. As a matter of fact they seem annoyed by “Fact Checking” in general. They seem to really by bothered by the very practice of fact checking.
It is a strange thing indeed.
And to be clear I don’t identify as being a “liberal” either. I look at each political view based on it’s own merit, not caring if my position places me on one side of the political aisle of the other.
The link to the point about the low frequency of freedom of speech suppressions says that only 90 cases were looked at with 60 being on campus. Maybe Im missing something here but is that the only amount the author could find? The author states that the sample size was small so I don’t know how many colleges he actually looked at before he published. The Vox article mentions how many colleges are in the U.S but the medium article doesn’t mention how many colleges he looked at to get 60 cases.
The point is that even if you only looked at a tiny fraction of the number of colleges, say only the number of colleges just in “liberal states” (heck, just California and New York), the number is so far off and so radically unsupportive of the idea that it’s targeting the right specifically that it demonstrates the conservative argument to be baseless hysterics. They don’t have a better method. They’re only recycling the few cases, like trying to use whatever happens to Peterson or Bret Weinstein or Ann Coulter or Milo, or even Aziz Ansari or whoever else, that they know about and are well-known.
Yep. That was it. That was all they could find.
That is not a sample. It’s the complete set.
At least, it’s the complete set of all cases reported by verifiable sources online, via their web aggregator (plus they ask for any omissions to be reported for inclusion directly; but from what I can tell, their aggregator misses lttle). Obviously incidents nowhere reported can’t be tracked, but it seems unlikely any significant incident in America would never get reported; especially given the intense need of liberals and conservatives to parade them.
Hello,
Dr. Carrier, I know that you are a busy man, but I just wanted to see if you had the time to respond to this reddit page: https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/twj7nc/richard_carrier_doesnt_get_enough_criticism_for/. Now I am aware that you have probably already responded to this nonsense, but I would be curious what your actual response would be.
I never respond to anything on Reddit. Reddit is a cesspool of trolls and garbage. No one should ever be referencing it as a source.
Dr. Carrier wrote:
Right out of the gate Alex Kaiser begins with a wildly delusional falsehood: that straight white men “can’t talk about” race or gender issues lest they be “canceled.” In fact millions of white men speak and write on those issues without being “canceled.”
-and-
“Weinstein was not expelled. He was not even punished or sanctioned by his school in any way. He resigned. Voluntarily.”
Response: If what is alledged in this article is true then there is more to this story then the professor resigning “voluntarily” following some protests.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/evergreen-professor-at-center-of-protests-resigns-college-will-pay-500000/
The article states:
Bret Weinstein and his wife, Heather Heying, resigned from their faculty positions effective Friday. The couple filed a $3.85 million tort claim in July alleging the college failed to “protect its employees from repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence,” according to the claim.
If the accusations about threats of physical violence against him are true then it might not simply be a case of a “voluntary” resignation (as you’ve suggested).
And if true then I think think one could make the case that this specific situation could be an example (result) of Cancel Culture.
The article also states:
“Weinstein had criticized changes to the school’s annual Day of Absence after white students who chose to participate were asked to go off campus to talk about race issues.
He called the event “an act of oppression”.
I notice that you didn’t address this specific point (which started all of this) head on. And I think the point that Weinstein makes here is absolutely correct.
Can you imagine what would happen today if non-white students were excluded from participation in any event/discussion simply because of their race? (rhetorical question)
(1) As the articles I link to document (including an official investigative report), there was no threat or violence against them that the school failed to address. That was a made-up complaint. The only real threat of violence was by a right-winger and not directed against them but the school. School security only advised Weinstein one time that he might have an easier time staying away from campus on one particular day of a scheduled protest (one that didn’t have to do with him, but a completely separate matter, as my article explains). He refused. And no threats were carried out against him. All that ensued was an awkward conversation at an inappropriate time. That’s it. That’s all that happened.
And the school admitted no fault in the settlement, which was only for half a million as a severance package to get rid of a nuissance (as he had by then made himself into). Anyone can claim anything in a lawsuit; it often becomes cheaper to buy them off than fight for the truth in court, so you cannot cite the mere existence of a lawsuit that never went to trial as evidence of anything. If you really care about this, you can get and read the lawsuit itself (these tend to be public records) and see what claims are made by both sides in the original complaint and reply, what evidence (if even any; often it’s none) is presented in them, and check them against the ensuing investigative report I linked to, to see what’s even credible to maintain.
(2) I do indeed discuss his false claim of oppression and explain in detail why it was false and how it was based (in his own emails) on false claims about the event in question. I also linked to documentation of these facts. I strongly urge you to take your blinders off and re-read that part of my article until its words actually are comprehended. Because you evidently somehow “blanked” on half the sentences in my article. Why? How did you allow that to happen? This should disturb you. Because it means you can’t read an article coherently; and something caused this defect in you. Which means you have a serious problem you need to address. You need to fix your broken epistemology. And step one is figuring out how it failed you so catastrophically this time.
So… if accusations of physical violence against him are true… that means that the college cancelled him? But even the complaint, which you take at face value for no good reason (and if you have that epistemic standard then you have to accept “cancel culture” because lots of people are according to accusations doing things that should have them imprisoned, let alone being disliked in public), doesn’t say that. It just says that they failed to protect him. That would be a reason to critique the people who did the specific actions.
Hey, remember when GamerGate overtly shielded harassers, doxxers and awful people? Remember how many excuses we heard about how collective responsibility isn’t a thing? Do you have any actual evidence that any bad behavior was being led by movement leaders on campus?
The fact is that Weinstein left. Even if there were threats, and his undocumented and self-serving claim to that effect which would get him money after he had already proven himself to be dishonest publicly should not be taken as gospel (though they should be taken seriously), that was still his choice. And wasn’t a result of college policy. What could the college have done?
You then try to link this to cancel culture. But that’s just reprehensible equivocation. Trying to pretend that people calling for Twitter bans or just not wanting to engage with bigots is relevantly connected to this incident is just presuming what you clearly want to be true. And doing exactly what Richard warned against: confusing individual bad elements of a movement or a technique for the broad strokes of it, in a way that is irrational and almost always hypocritically applied. He called people out for this, apparently including you, and you went on to do it.
This isn’t a way to have a conversation. If we want to be concerned about the free speech implications of “cancellation”, discussing death threats isn’t an honest way to do it, because no one is calling for or justifying death threats. (Well, except manospherians and alt-righters). We all agree death threats are bad. If what Weinstein alleges happened, that’s bad. It doesn’t make him not a disingenuous, dishonest right-wing jackass, and it doesn’t mean we need to pay attention to him or take him seriously again.
And frankly, if there were some overt non-white exclusion, the right-wing would fawn over themselves to find some excuse for it.. Trump got elected in 2016. Your implication that there’s somehow broad consensus on anti-racism in this society is just that, an implication that frankly comes off like a cowardly hyperbolic driveby. But it’s worse. Because we do have an example of what you’re talking about. The college’s existing day where they ask blacks not to show up. Which apparently received no attention, despite some of its unfortunate implications (well-meaning I am sure it is), until some people asked it to be reversed onto whites to make the exact same point, and suddenly there was hysterics. This very case falsifies your view here, and you simply don’t want to talk about it. You even cite Weinstein calling people being asked to do something “an act of oppression”. How loud was Weinstein about, I don’t know, two decades of police violence against people of color?
You should see the video of the protests where Bret Weinstein is actually confronted by the protestors and tries to engage with them. I think it’s a shoddy mischaracterization to say “he didn’t try to engage with them” and that they were “only slightly out of line”. And I believe protestors did indeed harass him because he showed up on a “white people stay home” day because he didn’t agree with the message of the planned absence.
(1) I didn’t say he didn’t try to engage with them. I said he engaged with them poorly. That you mistook the one for the other should alarm you. There is something wrong with your ability to correctly read an article here that you need to fix in yourself.
(2) All that happens in that video is a conversation that disrupted one single class. No violence. No threats. No property destruction. That’s what “slightly out of line” means.
(3) None of this happened on that day, nor had anything to do with his attendance on that day. You have succumbed to conflation mythology. You need to ask yourself why. How did you allow yourself to be taken in by the false belief that any of this occurred because “he showed up on” on the proposed “white people stay home” day? The actual reasons it happened are detailed in the article you are commenting on. Please reread it more carefully.
These three failures to grasp reality are bizarre. There is something deeply defective in your epistemology. Please fix it.
Chris: Do you believe Weinstein accurately expressed the position of those who disagreed with him? I don’t.
Do you believe that the media, which rushed to his defense, routinely got the other side? I saw that Weinstein was immediately martyred on his own say-so, and there were countless articles that winged about the issue without actually talking to the people who disagreed with Weinstein.
And do you think Weinstein’s conduct afterward has proven himself to really just be a liberal disagreeing with other liberals, or a crypto-conservative?
Whatever poor behavior occurred (or didn’t), the fact is that Weinstein simply deliberately misunderstood people on an important issue. That should be relevant to you.
In this article it suggests that the “Stay of Campus” aspect of this was an entirely new twist on the event, but makes no mention of a same whites-only type of event having occurred. You’ve indicated that was in fact the case. Can you provide your source or proof of that as being factual? Because if all you can provide is proof that up to then there had been off-site campus events by both whites and non-whites, then that wouldn’t be relevant to Weinstein’s specific objection about this specifically planned event.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/22/evergreen-state-cancels-day-absence-set-series-protests-and-controversies
I don’t understand your question. You are the one who claimed he was harassed for attending that day. I just explained that that’s false. And you are now the one who points out the day never occurred. I never said it did. You did. So you are only arguing against yourself here.
Not at all.
You had stated the following:
I’m simply pointing out that (according to this article) this had been an off-site event. But in 2017 it was changed to on campus event, and the request for white people to stay off campus for that event is what he was specifically protesting about.
So my point is that unless you can show me that prior to that on-campus event, there had been the same type of whites only on-campus event (without his objection), then your assertions of him being “hypocritical and illogical” in that respect appear to be without merit.
First, he wasn’t protesting the request. He was protesting a non-existent mandate. The thing he was protesting didn’t even exist.
Second, you must not understand the facts. He objected do the “day of absence.” That can only ever be by definition an on-campus event. There was never any “off campus” form of that.
What he never objected to before was the black people’s day of absence. Only when they asked white people to do it did he flip his lid. Not because anyone was required to do it. Merely the suggestion was intolerable. This makes no sense. Hence not flipping his led when it was black people being asked to do it is what is hypocritical and racist of him.
Leftists live in fear, it is their primary character trait. That fear drives them to need to control every aspect of their reality, us, often to death. That is what Carrier is attempting to do here. There is never enough control to overcome their unsubstantiated fear. That is why they will kill you if they can’t control you, like they did about 200 million times in the 20th century. When the death toll is finally tallied from this recent bio-attack, they will have exceeded that death toll by about 1500%, in about 5 years. This is why politicians should have to take psychological exams before holding office… for our self-defense.
https://mantracare.org/therapy/narcissistic/warning-signs-of-narcissistic-psychopaths/
You are describing right-wingers.
But people often project their own fears onto others. That is almost the defining causal feature of bigotry.
The rest of what you just said is fantastically delusional; indeed, total paranoid fantasy. You have thus provided me with another example proving the entire point of my article. Thank you.
Another strange thing about many conservatives is that they admittedly don’t like and get really annoyed by fact checkers (fact checking).
The only real complaint that anyone should ever have with fact checking is if the finding itself were in error (or dispute). But that is not even it. That is not their complaint (specifically). They simply don’t like facts getting in the way of what they claim to know as being the “truth”. I think that is how beliefs like the big lie (stolen election) still persists among many conservatives. For them it is like if the facts don’t line up with their “truth” then they simply don’t want any part of them.
This is true. It’s a symptom of delusionality. Which indicates only the delusional can maintain a conservative worldview now.
That didn’t have to be the case. Like supernaturalism vs. naturalism, it could have empirically turned out to be the other way around. But that it didn’t is why conservatism has become, essentially, just a new false religion, and not a representative of progress in human knowledge about the world or the way it actually works.
But even though this is precisely what the actual facts entail, it will be dismissed by conservatives as a false narrative. Because they are delusional. They are stuck in an inescapable trap belief, as I point out in my Primer on Media Literacy. Just as with fundamentalist Christians, it requires exceptional effort to discover this about oneself and escape.
“Why? How did you allow that to happen? This should disturb you. Because it means you can’t read an article coherently; and something caused this defect in you. Which means you have a serious problem you need to address. You need to fix your broken epistemology. And step one is figuring out how it failed you so catastrophically this time.”
Richard, this sort of thing is by no measure isolated.
I’ve got to say : it’s way too often that I get an awfully caddy vibe from you when reading your replies to people. You wish to weaponize ideological processes to make people feel like they should eat shit and it’s extremely nauseating. FYI this was a huge factor in why your atheism plus video took such a nosedive in the like vs dislike ratio and it’s something you really ought to reflect on at some point in your life : the fact that you’re often a bully. Why? It should disturb you who I presume to otherwise be an intelligent person. Because it indicates that your understanding of psychology is poor and your empathy is superficial and selective. It means you treat many people badly, and something caused this defect in you. You have a disgusting character flaw you ought to address. You need to fix your broken strategy for engaging with others, and step one is actually caring about how you come off, and how someone else might actually be right (for a change) about a shortcoming you have.
But alas, I’m not gonna hold my breathe.
I’ll see if you have anything worth reading in another 12 months or so, as it so happens is my current pattern, and I’ll coincidentally find out then whether you’re still a dick.
Tone trolling is not an argument for anything. All it does is emotively express your lack of any substantive reply.
And calling someone who logically proves their points with evidence a bully only emotively expresses your dislike of being wrong.
I suggest you replace that with a dislike of remaining wrong, and heed when evidence and logic have proved you wrong—and change your belief accordingly.
I want to see the Drax meme that Facebook didn’t like!
Indeed, I wanted to include it. I tried finding it again but it appears to have been purged from the internet. (Or else I am not using the right search terms to find it.) There is a different version of it I found, but it isn’t as funny, so there’s no point in including that one.
Please use your awesome (seriously) logical and statistical skills, which in your books so impressed and convinced me of your thesis regarding Christianity, to analyze the 20th-Century body count: Left vs Right. I’m thinking of the killings committed by the governments of Hitler (arguably a socialist), Mussolini (arguably a socialist), Lenin (absolutely a socialist), Stalin (absolutely a socialist), Mao (absolutely a socialist), and Pol Pot (absolutely a socialist). Obviously an abridged version of a long list. I’m struggling to come up with comparable body counts attributable to those you might characterize as “right wing.” You might also use your analytical skills to determine, say, the US gun-crime murder rate among NRA members, or licensed gun owners, vs others. Very sorry to say that, having reveled in your reason-based take on the origins of Christianity, on discovering your blog I find you to be more of a typical hateful and dismissive left-wing ideologue than a reasoned thinker. Perhaps I’m wrong—please convince me.
The whole idea of that comparison is scientifically incoherent.
For example, Hitler was not a socialist in the relevant sense: the Nazis were a right-wing party, not a left-wing one (literally: they sat in the right wing of parliament, which is where these terms originated). The use of the word “socialist” in their moniker had a completely different sense than you are employing.
You are also using the word “socialist” over broadly, creating a false generalization. For example, there is nothing at all comparable between the EU and the modern Scandanavian nations and “Stalin” and “Mao.” The latter are fascists. They organize their fascism around communism, which is a sub-category of socialism not evinced in the EU or Scandanavia, and thus not equivalent to “socialism” in the sense your proposal requires; and even “communism” is not inherently fascist: Marxism is a sub-category of communism, yet the model actually proposed by Marx looks nothing whatsoever like what was built by Mao and Stalin (it looks more like employee-ownership of all business enterprises, under an anarcho-democratic national order).
If we reconceptualized your project more intelligibly, the comparison should be between Republicans and Democrats; and limited to the sandbox of the United States as the experimental theatre. Because the controlling liberal and conservative parties in the EU, UK, Scandanavia, and other “First World” peers, from Japan to Australia, significantly differ from America in their platforms, e.g. they all support socialist healthcare and have a crime rate several times lower than ours. So any study would have to uniquely apply by regime, because the U.S. is an enormous outlier (it therefore doesn’t translate to any other regimes, nor do those other regimes translate into ours).
And when I say you’d have to compare Republican and Democratic outcome metrics, that means their actual empowered wings (so, Republicans actually in power; and the power-majority of actual Democratic elected officials and legislators), not their disempowered or marginalized extremes.
Provided there is one. The current Republican party is more and more looking like the white Christian nationalists it claims not to be, whereas the socialism of the likes of Bernie Sanders is marginalized in the Democratic party by plutocratic mainstreamers like Biden. There is no longer any effective tempering force in the Republican party, so its centrists have been marginalized, indeed even driven out of power by mass retirement, while its extremists are increasingly empowered. The opposite is the case in the DNC, where centrists are marginalizing the socialists. Which is why we still don’t even have socialized health care, much less Yang’s dream of Universal Basic Income.
In any event, once we frame an actually intelligible experimental arena, empowered Republicans compared to empowered Democrats within the American theatre, the metrics look very bad for the GOP platform over against the DNC’s. Every comparison chronologically and geographically shows crime rates average much worse in conservative controlled areas, likewise public health and prosperity, and thus overall death and disability rates. Example. Example. Examples.
This was what the Gregory Paul studies also showed, since religiosity tracks conservativism, revealing the same metrics: red states have more crime, poverty, disease, higher mortality, higher teen pregnancy rates, and so on. This also tracks across nations (the U.S. is worse on all metrics, yet wouldn’t be if you removed the red state data: the U.S. would then look a lot more like the EU or Australia). See my discussion of this point in my McDurmon debate, with linked bibliography (for another summary, read Sue Blackmore’s).
My politics are evidence-based, not ideology-based. And the evidence establishes a hybrid capitalist-socialist system outperforms every other on every metric (including subjective measures of population happiness). This is where each provides checks and balances against the excesses of the other, leaving a stable equilibrium of stability and prosperity. By contrast, when I check the facts, I find Conservatives tend to be wrong about everything, logically and factually. That is simply how it turned out. Which is why I don’t truck with their view of the world. It’s false. And it’s destructive of human welfare. By contrast, liberals are right at least more than half the time; which is to say, not all of the time, but still far more often than conservatives.
Which means all we have to do is temper liberal policy platforms with more evidence-based selection and then we’d zero in on the correct state model, if by “correct” we mean that in which everyone does better, by every pertinent metric. By contrast, the conservative platform has almost no salvageable utility. It serves only plutocracy at the expense of the majority welfare, rather than the welfare of all.