But that’s because the right has become synonymous with, or at least tacitly supports, insane racists, fascists, bigots and more unpleasant adjectives. You can be pedantic about our wording and try and slide the issue but the data is there.
There are plenty of issues where you can have multiple sides or perspectives and want to allow debate. But that is not what is happening.
My argument is that people are fighting too much on left and right wing lines.
Saying you are left wing or right wing can now be accepted as the distinction of right and wrong, then there is no point of political discussion, as a title puts you in either the right and wrong.
Maybe if you stopped antagonizing and name-calling people with left wing views, you would be met with a lot less hostility.
"There's enough people who pretend to be "the Right" and do support or at least enable [fascists and neo-nazi]. Thus "the Right" is retarded. But some sane parts are OK."
I see it differently. It appears to me that large swaths of the political right have gone over to intellectual relativism, where everything is reduced to mere opinion, equally valid to all other opinions, and facts simply don't matter. See any discussion of climate change for that.
To be fair, it's happening some on the left as well, but not to the degree it's happening on the right.
Of course, that's my opinion, and I'm a leftist, so you can just dismiss me out of hand.
That used to be true. Now, though, it seems that the left is labeling many things as "far right" that are not, and the right is doing the same to the left. Both are trying to shift the Overton Window their way by labeling the other side as "extreme" or "far" - that is, outside the window.
I can win a lot of arguments if I define myself as the only one who should be allowed to speak...
Thank you, and I definitely agree to all points. From my own observations, I feel that the right is often wrong on many things, but the far left has gone off the rails, and most of the left is either, willing, blind, useful idiots or outright evil. There's definitely a few racist, violent right wing assholes in the world, but they don't even compare to the numbers the far left weild.
It also irks me to no end, when people refer to leftists as "liberal" when they are no such thing at this point. I can deal with liberals, and as a libertarian share most of the values. More like Progressive past the point of usefulness to society.
this has more to do with the “ Intolerance to tolerance of other viewpoints”. The right isn’t gonna come to the discussions until the left calms the argumentative behavior. I’m center right and any discussion with someone on the left almost always gets pushed into argument territory.
Absolutely, and I acknowledge that: the right itself is full of completely reasonable people that is being shunned by some of the extremists.
On the other hand, the same thing should apply to the left! Just because someone on the left has not been using logical arguments and acting in bad faith, it doesn't mean the whole left is doing it. People don't get a free pass on claiming "the left caused it" or (EDIT) "the left not talking to them is the reason they have this opinion".
I do. But it’s 2021. If I listed out a ton of problems on the left I’ll get a bunch of people on the left screaming “racist” and “nazi”, etc. Can’t have debates and arguments anymore.
There are plenty of conservatives unfairly bucketed with the extreme right and regularly called Nazis. Due to this, discussion between the left and the right has pretty much disappeared as conversation is always shut down by calling them fascists. Mind you I am a leftist, but also a strong proponent of free speech and open discussion so this trend is disturbing to me.
I think the commentor was as much concerned with the namespace pollution: to some people on the left, there doesn't seem to be a "right" (or even a "center"), anymore, only a "far right". This isn't because because they all share the same views, but rather because there's a lack of nuance to the language used by many people in discussing politics.
(I say people because the same thing occurs in reverse when talking about "extremist leftists")
Describes my experiences as well, both online and off. People love to paint conservatives as dumb and intolerant, but like you I generally find the right to be willing to debate, whereas the left considers themselves right, end of discussion.
From my own highly biased perspective the right has remained more or less in the same place politically over time, whereas the left has lurched violently towards the extreme on some topics, also tending towards the extreme in its tactics. We are not at war; we are not generally living in autocratic regimes; people generally have freedom to conduct their lives in the way they would prefer; so why is the left acting like we are living in a fascist state? Above all we need honest dialog. If anyone saw Cathy Newman's interview of Jordan Peterson, for example, I cannot see how it helps feminism at all to merely shout down those you disagree with rather than having an honest exchange of ideas.
I think this is less about left and right, and more about extreme elements on both sides arguing for actions supported by rhetoric use of factual statements that are easily questioned and where studies are available that would put their view into doubt.
So it turns out that being in favor of allowing multiple points of view to coexist puts you in conflict with people who only want to allow one point of view to be heard. That's... rather unsurprising.
It is my perception that the left is doing better at shutting down opposing speech than the right, and has been since the 90s. If you're going to address the problem that it's happening at all, you have to address the side that's doing it more and better.
I'm generally sympathetic to much of what this article is arguing, but I really wish everybody would agree to stop using "the Left" / "the Right" as if they were meaningful descriptors. Strive for more nuance, not less. I firmly believe that a large percentage of politically sensitive arguments would calm down if people would be specific about what they have a problem with and not try and generalize it.
You may be correct but surely you recognize that the left can just as easily be accused of the same bias you attribute to the right?
The real problem is diverging narratives and very little constructive communication between. Both sides have very valid concerns that aren't understood by the other.
No? The hate speech by the left doesn’t have to be against the right. In fact I believe much of hate speech by the extreme left is targeted onto people who consider themselves on the left too; generally hate speech targets the vulnerable or at least the locally unpopular; no reason to think that skews left or right.
That's an excellent observation. I find myself conflating 'right' with all the bad things mentioned above, even though I find myself (surprisingly) sympathetic to various elements of this 'right' when I take the time to reflect.
In fact, I've been trying to elaborate, then delete, then elaborate again, and ended up with this non-statement because I feel I can't really properly go into this without the end result causing problems with the 'left' that I mostly identify with. It's incredibly frustrating that even under a badly-managed pseudonym on some online 'forum' I feel inhibited to do so, but I do.
I think it would be good to find better words for the various clusters that exist these days. They'll still be imperfect, but man do we gotta lose the one-dimensional left-right divide...
But that’s because the right has become synonymous with, or at least tacitly supports, insane racists, fascists, bigots and more unpleasant adjectives. You can be pedantic about our wording and try and slide the issue but the data is there.
There are plenty of issues where you can have multiple sides or perspectives and want to allow debate. But that is not what is happening.
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