Things the Right get right

[comelately]

I think its important not to conflate safe spaces and no platforming. The former is (or should) be about letting everyones voices be heard, the latter clearly isn't.

I agree they are largely separate, but I think it's important to be clear on what 'no platforming' actually is and what it isn't.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_platform

"Too many don't understand that their voices have been heard, but that other rights-bearing people have just decided not to give them the time of day."

I ask seriously for examples of 'no platformed' people who have been marginalised to the point they could realistically be said to have been denied a voice. No platforming denies you a platform, not a voice. I'm not denying structural oppression is a thing, but the irony is that this is exactly what 'cultural libertarian' types do - attempting to pretend that their own concerns are actually about 'liberty', when they really clearly are not to anyone who has thought this through.

The entire reasoning behind no-platforming is supposedly to make the whole university a safe space at all times

Supposedly? According to whom exactly?

 

[firefinga]

On the other hand "safe spaces" seem to resonance well with the obsession large parts of the public has developed with "safety" in general. Safety is one of the sales pitches of today.

 

[comelately]

Alexei Sayle (I think**) is presenting a programme on R4 about safe spaces. He doesn't support them. He reckons they make no sense to activists of his (our) generation. Well, they make a damn lot of sense to me. What I'm hearing is a lot of straight white men pontificating about how we all need to be robust enough to take on people with controversial views. Only a person who belongs to no minority at all could fail to understand how truly challenging – often impossible – it is to do this from a minority position. We need safe spaces in order to make ourselves strong. Sometimes this is a matter of survival. My autistic safe space is absolutely essential to my well-being – as safe queer spaces have also been. Sometimes we need not to be challenged and questioned but to know that we are fully understood and accepted – and to have an experience of being the majority........For me, safe spaces enable more robust debate, because they give minorities a place to find a voice so that they can represent themselves in the wider arena.

** It was actually John Gray, funnily enough.

But anyway, this is the expressed view of a friend of mine a couple of months back.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Many of the fiercest advocates for safe spaces are white males, as evidenced by this thread, and believe it or not the idea has critics who are neither white nor male.

 

[comelately]

Yes that's true (though they never argued against the former point), but you've cherry-picked what is almost certainly the weakest point of what they've written, and it's not a point that the rest of their views particularly rely upon.

 

[comelately]

such that it's not a 'debate' at all, just a room full of people telling each other how right they are.

I actually sat through Milo and Bindel having a debate with eachother; 'Is Feminism Cancer?' - plenty they could have disagreed and debated on, they spent 95% of the time telling eachother how right they are on what they agreed upon. Strange.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I actually sat through Milo and Bindel having a debate with eachother; 'Is Feminism Cancer?' - plenty they could have disagreed and debated on, they spent 95% of the time telling eachother how right they are on what they agreed upon. Strange.

Well yeah, see several posts I've written about how the modern right - I mean the capital-R Right - is just as dependent on 'safe spaces' to block out opposing views as the Left is, even if they don't use quite same language to articulate it. This is what I was getting at in the other thread before sufi derailed it by deciding that nonbelief in the lightning manipulation skills of witchdoctors qualified me as a member of fucking Storm Front.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Being "offended" by whatever is already a self fulfilling self-victimisation.

Lol, there's always good old firefinga around to take the heat off me a bit. Cheers bro.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I actually sat through Milo and Bindel having a debate with eachother; 'Is Feminism Cancer?' - plenty they could have disagreed and debated on, they spent 95% of the time telling eachother how right they are on what they agreed upon. Strange.

Think ur exaggerating a bit here. Iirc I think the only thing they agreed upon is that no platforming is generally a bad thing. Other than that their worldviews are obviously fundamentally opposed and this came out in the debate (they debated the wage gap, rape culture etc etc). Yes, it was all very civilised, quite tame compared to what they usually write in their articles maybe, they cracked jokes, they didnt vault over the tables and tear each others faces off, but what do people expect from these things?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Hang on, is this Bindel as in Julie Bindel?

 

[Mr. Tea]

You, it seems to me, are denying there's a problem in the first place.

That's not the case - my position is that the safe space/no platform approach is great at making people feel good about themselves in the short term but is ineffective at treating the problem itself, and may even be making it worse, since it makes the no-platformers look like bullies and absolutists and allows their opponents, with some justification, to claim that they are the ones being silenced. (And yes, you can get pedantic and say that being excluded is not the same as being 'silenced' per se, but it amounts to the same thing in the context of that debate, that event, that university.)

Another point I think is worth mentioning here. You've said your usual routine about me being David Mitchell or whoever, being 'reasonable' (by which you mean unreasonable, of course), having unexamined assumptions and all the rest. Which is funny, because for all that you're the first person to accuse others (usually me) of this tendency, of not thinking properly or using their brain, I think you yourself have a very received idea about what's an acceptable or unacceptable thing to think in a fair few contexts. The ideas you've expressed in this thread are not radical or minoritarian for millions of people at universities around the world, but absolutely mainstream and commonsensical and reasonable. Which is not say they're wrong because of this, but I don't think it should make them sacrosanct, either.

 

[comelately]

Think ur exaggerating a bit here. Iirc I think the only thing they agreed upon is that no platforming is generally a bad thing. Other than that their worldviews are obviously fundamentally opposed and this came out in the debate (they debated the wage gap, rape culture etc etc). Yes, it was all very civilised, quite tame compared to what they usually write in their articles maybe, they cracked jokes, they didnt vault over the tables and tear each others faces off, but what do people expect from these things?

Well I don't think I'm exaggerating that much if at all. I don't honestly think either of them addressed eachother's arguments in any real way, and if this is all that can be expected from 'these things' then I am not sure why anyone would consider them worthy of such reverence.

 

[comelately]

(And yes, you can get pedantic and say that being excluded is not the same as being 'silenced' per se, but it amounts to the same thing in the context of that debate, that event, that university

I don't think that's pedantic when the nature of structural oppression and liberty are at the heart of the matter, it's an important philosophical point actually (one that should be important to you, given your thoughts on the primacy of physical violence over other types of oppression). The context you speak of is almost entirely irrelevant, for reason I have pointed out. Again, I challenge you to name someone who has actually been silenced in any meaningful way as a result of no platforming.

 

[luka]

Ugh, it's pointless I've already won anyway

 

[comelately]

The ideas you've expressed in this thread are not radical or minoritarian for millions of people at universities around the world, but absolutely mainstream and commonsensical and reasonable.

Has it occurred to you that there might be a reason for this?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Has it occurred to you that there might be a reason for this?

Shh, I'm playing luka at his own game. Commonsensical and reasonable are bad.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Again, I challenge you to name someone who has actually been silenced in any meaningful way as a result of no platforming.

You mean, like, had their tongue cut out and hands chopped off, Lavinia-style? Oddly enough, I fail your challenge.

And how can the context be "irrelevant"? If you deliberately exclude from a debate anyone with views contrary to the prevailing opinion, what kind of 'debate' are you even left with? It becomes a pointless sham exercise, and that conclusion isn't nullified by the fact that, yes, obviously Germaine Greer or whoever is still free to speak and type whatever she likes in her own time.

 

[comelately]

You mean, like, had their tongue cut out and hands chopped off, Lavinia-style? Oddly enough, I fail your challenge.

Admitting metaphorically conflating structural oppression with violence is an odd move given your previous stance, but I wasn't setting the bar quite that high funnily enough. Can you actually answer the question?

In relation to the other point......christ....let's say you....well not you obv.....somebody wants to have a debate on the nature of rape culture. Do you need somebody arguing that it does not infact exist in order for the debate not to be a sham? Of course not.

 

[luka]

Can you actually answer the question?

Guess you've not met tea before.

 

[baboon2004]

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-you-whos-the-special-snowflake-a6884026.html this is pretty good at cutting through quite a lot of the bullshit/hypocrisy around the issue of no-platforming.

"Let us remember when we speak of “free speech” that those arguments presume everyone’s voice has an equal voice in society." Poor subbing apart, that's the crux of it. No-platforming is already the way of the world at every level; it only becomes an issue when those with a lesser voice use it. Rupert Murdoch and his minions 'no-platform' progressive thinkers every day of the week, and the hateful stuff they commission reaches millions. I don't think they view this approach as being ultimately ineffective.

It's also good to be reminded of what right-minded commentators were saying earlier this year about the wonderful upshot of exposing irrational and hateful ideas to a wide audience - it'd reasonably reject them, of course, problem solved! :
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...ald-trump-abortion-no-platforming-free-speech