john eden

male pale and stale
Plus of course the alt-right eats this stuff up for breakfast, lunch and dinner - as do the vanilla mainstream GOP/Tory right, come to that ("Look at all these crazy people Corbyn associates with, how can anyone take him seriously?").

The alt-right, the vanilla right - and you. Let's not forget that.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Droid you're acting as though the mechanisms liberal democracy have failed minorities. The opposite is true; freedom of speech, assembly, courts, etc. have all been employed to advance and protect the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, women, homosexuals, etc. Are you seriously suggesting that a society based on unaccountable mobs intimidating each other for political ends will yield better results for minorities than a society based on liberal democratic values? The historical precedent all over the world suggests the opposite.

The mechanisms of liberal democracy HAVE failed minorities.

Why are the prisons disproportionately full of black people - and disproportionately empty of rapists?

It's better than mob rule, I will grant you. But it's not like everything has been fixed and there are no more battles to fight.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The Corbyn situation is obviously different in many ways, but the principle of silencing debate is similar. If only Corbyn had never been in the same room as anyone we could call a terrorist, then we'd give him a fair chance!

If only Corbyn didn't repeatedly stick up for his lunatic climate change denier/anti-Semite brother, people might not talk so much about his support for climate change deniers and anti-Semites!
 

firefinga

Well-known member
My two cents:

1) I wholeheartedly believe that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly should be guaranteed to everyone, no matter how heinous their ideology. The responsibility to safeguard these rights falls not only on political institutions and law enforcement, but also on the culture as a whole; individuals have the responsibility to safeguard these rights too.

But freedom of speech was never absolutely universal (it has always been restricted by certain laws) and even liberal western democracies usually take measures to protect istself via laws targeting those trying to undermine its basic principles. Those rights you mention have never been infinite.

In other words: liberalism stops being liberal when supporting/defending illiberalism.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Why are the prisons disproportionately full of black people - and disproportionately empty of rapists?

Prisons are also disproportionately full of men. To go full-on devil's advocate: if the disproportionate number of black people in prison is evidence of oppression, then the same thing can be said about men.

And the conviction rate for rape is slightly higher than the average rate for all crimes.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
It would probably be easier if you responded to what I said, instead of making up statements warping what I said, and arguing against them. The second paragraph below is phenomenal in that regard.

I don't think a conditional acceptance of other people's rights not to be oppressed, which is what you're repeatedly suggesting, is a particularly sound basis for anything. You'd have been making exactly the same arguments against the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and the Suffragette movement - your fantasies may tell you otherwise, but they're just that, fantasies of how you'd act differently in a morally more 'straightforward', mythical past.

Go read James Baldwin's 'The Fire Next Time' or something similar, and engage with what is said about systemic racism. There's something that you're fundamentally not getting/refusing to get about the experience of others. Racism will only end when 'white' people engage with reality instead of perpetual fantasy.

These are in the end very reactionary, anti-progressive arguments you've made (the remark about "fuck off whitey" is so wrong-headed - if only the people who believe they are white WOULD fuck off and leave 'non-white' people alone, then the problem would be solved!), and I'm hardly the first person in this thread to point it out. You've rolled out all the classics.

I don't think that guilt, shame and self-hatred form a particularly sound basis for progressive politics, is the thing. (Someone posted something about this here a few months ago which was quite good on this, I'll see if I can find it - Fisher wrote about it in his 'Vampire's Castle' piece, too.) You're never going to win a popularity contest by telling people they're revolting and shameful, and for better or worse, democracy is a popularity contest. At any rate, it should be no surprise if many people are more inclined to follow someone who seems to be saying something positive about their culture, which unfortunately comes along with a whitewashing of past injustices or a desire to roll back some of the progress that has been made since then. I don't think it's unreasonable that people are going to say to themselves "Why should I support people who say they want to kill me, when they quite clearly don't want my support in the first place?". If we interpret #KillAllWhites to mean simply "fuck off whitey", then it seems like a good idea for white people to do exactly that, rather than insisting on foisting their 'solidarity' on people who very clearly don't want their solidarity or anything to do with them. And the phrase can clearly be interpreted rather more literally, seeing as there have been racially motivated attacks on, and murders of, white people by black people just very recently (contra your cute comment about 'delicate souls getting scared').

In fact you sound like you're saying the cure for racism is for black people to harass, beat and shoot white people until whites simply agree not to be racist any more. Which sounds about as likely as Islamist terrorism eventually defeating Islamophobia.



The suffragettes used disruptive tactics in support of demands for a specific privilege - a privilege men already had - which they eventually achieved. Ditto the civil rights campaigners of the 1960s. They weren't just spewing random hate in all directions. I appreciate that most race and gender activists don't do that, obviously, but inevitably it's the ones who do that get the most attention.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
If only Corbyn didn't repeatedly stick up for his lunatic climate change denier/anti-Semite brother, people might not talk so much about his support for climate change deniers and anti-Semites!

By 'people', you mean that famous supporter of Jewish rights, the Daily Mail?

I'm fine with people talking about the things Corbyn's done wrong, if it wasn't coming from politicised selective moralism. This argument has been done to death. The right wing media will attempt to assassinate left wing candidates. It's not even about Corbyn in particular, it's a general principle.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Prisons are also disproportionately full of men. And the conviction rate for rape is slightly higher than the average rate for all crimes.

Slightly higher than crimes where the perpetrator isn't even known to the victim? Great.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Slightly higher than crimes where the perpetrator isn't even known to the victim? Great.

I'm not sure what you mean. It sounded like you were appealing to the widespread misconception that the conviction rate for rape is extremely low. It's true that the attrition rate is very low, but that's in large part because many victims don't come forward because they think there's no point, because they think the conviction rate is far lower than it is. And as with any crime, there will be cases where there isn't enough evidence to secure a conviction.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I'm not sure what you mean. It sounded like you were appealing to the widespread misconception that the conviction rate for rape is extremely low. It's true that the attrition rate is very low, but that's in large part because many victims don't come forward because they think there's no point, because they think the conviction rate is far lower than it is. And as with any crime, there will be cases where there isn't enough evidence to secure a conviction.

Me: The large amount of black people and the lack of rapists in prison might be an indicator that liberal democracy is failing oppressed people

You: No actually there are plenty of rapists in prison.

(My secondary point is that if you compare the rate of conviction for rape against "all crimes" then that will include things like burglary, which has a very low conviction rate because usually the victim and perpetrator do not meet. Same as cyber crime. Or sending racist hatemail through the post or the internet. So that's not really a good metric.)
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
https://leftfootforward.org/2013/02/rape-low-conviction-rate-in-the-uk/

To add: the conviction rate is incredibly low when you compare rapes reported to the police to convictions. But the number of cases actually prosecuted that lead to convictions, is 30-40% in general.

So it's not a widespread misconception that conviction rates are low related to the number of women coming forward to report rapes, but rather there is a significant sleight of hand in the way that some authorities report the statistics e.g. http://www.rapecrisisscotland.org.u...-for-rape-in-scotland-what-is-the-real-story/

And as the article says, which of these is the more important statistic? (After all, I don't think there could be any crime in which the ratio of convictions to cases prosecuted was extremely low, else it would all be perceived as a massive waste of time and effort in the courts. Happy to be proved wrong on that one though)
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
https://leftfootforward.org/2013/02/rape-low-conviction-rate-in-the-uk/

To add: the conviction rate is incredibly low when you compare rapes reported to the police to convictions. But the number of cases actually prosecuted that lead to convictions, is 30-40% in general.

The value the Guardian gave a few years was 58%, as against 57% for crime in general, if memory serves.

Rape is unfortunately a very difficult crime to prosecute because evidence is often circumstantial or verging on non-existent, so it comes down to one person's word against another's.

I'm sure more could and should be done to bring complaints of rape to court, but there's that big third category of rapes that are never even reported in the first place, at least in part because of the widespread belief that the conviction rate is only a few percent.
 
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luka

Well-known member
What do you think?... But let's not get sidetracked. The important thing is to tell Oliver (either one) he's wrong, and to make insinuating remarks about his real political allegiances

Thread got sidetracked
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
meaning

Brian_May_playing_red_secial_Ian_Gavan_92391_690x513.jpg
,

naturally.
 
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