I tend to read AlterNet a lot, mostly because I am highly amused about articles with titles like “Shocking Top Nine Republican Lies: The Disastrous Menace of Rampant Vampire Capitalism!” You know where you stand with articles like that. They lay their bias right out front. (Also I totally wrote for them a couple times and I’m generally fond of anyone who gives me money.)
Unfortunately, they believe a lot of things about Republicans that… really, really aren’t true.
The Republican Party accurately reflects the views of its constituents. See, there’s this recurring leftist meme (I remember seeing it when Clinton was president and when the Democrats took the house in 2006 and it happens a lot with Obama) about how the Democratic Party is totally weak! It won’t go after the big banks! Why is it giving in to the Republicans? Obama likes consensus too much! The Republicans are successful and getting everything they want and we get nothing! NOTHING!!!
The problem is that if you go look at conservative websites Obama’s bullies are getting everything they want and are, like, five seconds from taking away your guns and putting everyone into FEMA camps. The Republicans aren’t holding strong on anything– not abortion, not gay marriage, not the deficit, anything! Why do they keep giving into Obama?
I think the actual problem is that both Democrats and Republicans have to appeal to the center and to large donors, so they’re not going to do everything their base wants. Since the base is usually surrounded by other members of the base and thus overestimates the prevalence of its ideas, from the base’s perspective, it looks like the other side is getting everything it wants and our side is inexplicably weak.
Some random idiot reflects the beliefs of the Republican Party. Literally every five minutes on Twitter some idiot Republican says something dumb about abortion or rape or birth control and then we all have to hear about What This Means For The Republican Party, which apparently all secretly believes that you can’t get pregnant from rape and when you use birth control your uterus fills with little crystallized fetuses. Of course, if you go on Breitbart.com (I went on Breitbart.com to research this, I need a shower now), you’ll find out all about how Democrats believe Chavez was a good leader who understood the needs of the poor, rape victims shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves, the sequester cuts should be as painful as possible, etc.
Okay, so none of those are quite as good examples as Mr. Akin. In my defense, I’ve been part of Leftist Internet for years and I could only bear to be on Breitbart.com for five minutes before I wanted to vomit, so my Leftist Internet sample is way better.
Note that I’m not saying that Republicans as a group don’t believe dumb things. They do (“evolution isn’t true!”). Just that you cannot take any random thing some random vaguely famous Republican says, possibly in context and possibly not, and claim that this is what Republicans as a group believe. (It’s possible that the Republican Party has a higher percentage of people that say really dumb shit? But again lefty media don’t tend to trumpet the liberals who say dumb shit, so I don’t know.)
Republicans are a totally united front. Guys, no. The Republican Party has libertarians and conservative Christians in it. I’m amazed they manage to get them to vote for the same people at all, given that in a sensible universe the libertarians and the conservative Christians would have literally opposite opinions about everything. That is some fucking amazing coalition-building there guys good job. The sex-positive vs. radical feminist war suddenly seems way less daunting.
Death threats. A few years back, when Men Call Me Things happened, I saw a lot of arguments that getting death or rape threats was uniquely a result of being a feminist blogger and proved how much anti-feminists hate us. That… kind of fell apart when feminists started sending death threats to Laci Green.
And the thing is… I only know about that because Laci Green is also a feminist. I don’t read conservative blogs; if conservatives got death threats, I would have no fucking idea. I mean. Maybe someone’s going to comment here and be like “actually I am a conservative blogger and there are none of the death threats!” in which case I’ll revise this, but my null hypothesis is that there are horrible people on all sides and sometimes horrible people send people death threats. (Anyway, a cursory Google suggests that lefty people have threatened death against Mitt Romney, Scott Fitzgerald, and Rush Limbaugh, so clearly some of us are willing to.)
Let me be clear: women are far more likely to get death and rape threats, as well as other kinds of horrific insults, online. (Just ask anyone semi-Internet-famous who switched from a male/gender-neutral to a female name, or vice versa.) That is an important conversation to have and one that I’m glad Men Call Me Things kicked off. The conversation about how leftists are uniquely victimized because only we get death threats? Nope.
Thing of Things 
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/03/republican-views-on-evolution-tracking-how-its-changed/
According to Pew 43% of Republicans today believe that “humans evolved over time.” And it was 54% in 2009. Saying that Republicans as a group dis-believe in evolution is not really accurate. Among Republicans evolution is a contested issue and the anti-evolution side has the majority.
Since saying that “republicans dis-believe in evolution as a group” is going to be offensive to the large percentage of Republicans who think evolution is obviously true. Hence I think its misleading and potentially offensive to use the phrase “republicans as a group do not believe in evolution.”
If one considers a belief ridiculous you should be very careful with how you describe a group’s belief in the silly view.
*Note the Pew question specifically asks about human evolution. So anyone who says yes probably fully accepts evolution.
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They are more likely than Democrats to believe evolution isn’t true.
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This has very little to do with my point.
I am claiming if you are going to talk about a groups ridiculous* beliefs you should be precise. Just saying “republicans believe x” is highly unclear. Maybe you mean it in the sense above. But as phrased it sounds like an attack.
*ridiculous as defined by you
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As a relevant example if I go around saying “borderlines are abusive” you would be right to get upset. Despite the fact that (According to you, I have never checked the data) borderlines are more likely to be abusive.
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What does “as a group,” mean? Where’s the cutoff point, approximately?
I have read creationists who believe that humans evolved over time. Young earth creationists at that, usually making arbitrary distinctions between “micro-evolution” and “macro-evolution.”
Is there any reason to distrust the Gallup poll from 2008? It asks different questions, leaving 60% of republicans saying that young earth creationism is “closest to their views.”
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One other thing to remember about surveys is that people seem to use low-value beliefs as tribal identification. There was a study a while back where survey questioners asked a number of questions. The control group got asked straight and were more likely to get things wrong that aligned with their tribal identification (e.g, was the average unemployment rate under W greater than x%). The experimental group was told that if they answered correctly, they had a chance to win some money and was much less likely to get partisan questions wrong.
None of this really takes away from Ozy’s point, but the next time you see a study that surprising numbers of democrats believe Bush knew about and allowed 9/11 or republicans believe Obama is a Kenyan, it’s worth wondering how many would answer the same way if they had to bet money on it.
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Sorry, but that’s completely out of proportion to the rest of the developed world. 43% of people rejecting modern science is not some trivial number. If 43% of people in a defined camp denied the Holocaust or thought that the moon was made of cheese, would we think it irrelevant because they’ve just narrowly avoided being a majority of loons?
There’s no way to spin this or wriggle this away from being a damning indictment of modern movement conservatism in America.
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The 43% are the ones that accept evolution in some form, so it’s 57% that deny evolution. But it’s not as damning of conservatism specifically when you consider base rate neglect; the country as a whole narrowly avoids being “a majority of loons”, with 42% of Americans believing humans were created in their current form.
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Quite frankly what you do is created by what you think. And what you Do changes and modifies who and what you are! You change your essence your value your very character By What You Do.
The Article we are commenting upon is “People are People – regardless of political affiliation” That is the key and crux of our discussion.
My comment is to dispute the premise of the article– I say NO
we do not stay the same or stay somehow unscathed un-effected or changed regardless of our political affiliation. The Premise above is Absolutely FALSE
Let’s use an example of political thought — position — and attitude–
promoted by a political affiliation. let us choose one position of the Democrat party:
In our very current times– we have an organization built upon the ideals thoughts and political position of Margaret Sanger– Called Planned Parenthood
Sanger wanted all the Negroes / blacks DEAD she despised them — FACT Sanger advocated all be exterminated and set in motion sterilization and birth control tactics to seek to eradicate all blacks. She advocated and achieved through her followers an engine and enterprise of DEATH– Planned Parenthood in the news today is revealed as the Butchers they have always been! Supreme Bullies and Cowards that deceive silly women (coining the biblical reference regarding patterns of deceit) For Planned Parenthood does not create any Parents –
for they kill the baby — that would create a mother of that girl carrying that baby.
They seek to kill and sell its parts making VOID any actual parenthood that survives the genesis of life in the womb. And keeping with the cowards they are —
they keep the boy / father completely out of the picture– he will never be a father / parent – for the baby will never come into his arms!
The entire issue and the fake laws created by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade is a prime and perfect example of a political position of a party affiliation.
(Each of you must or should know by now that Abortion law was created upon
a entire lie and disavowed by the very woman Norma McCorvey
who had not been rapped –
but gave her baby up for adoption and became pro-LIFE in 1995.
She decried all of the actions and laws created by the two nefarious women attorneys
who wanted the death of babies by abortion.)
SO — TAKING THIS EXAMPLE– a man or woman who stays affiliated with the Democrat party that promotes and defends both the murder of the smallest and weakest of all humans — the unborn human baby– AND to add fuel to this pyre of Genocide– Demands that every person of every party affiliation must be forced by law to pay public tax monies to support the Butchery
and sale of baby parts by Planned Parenthood!
DOES THIS ABOMINATION somehow remain in its own domain?
I maintain that NO– each person who knows a crime
or act is taking place
and IS A Party to that crime is guilty of that crime.
So if the verity is true (as I maintain it is—as it is spoken by Christ The Lord)
Matthew 7:20
That “wherefore by their fruits, ye shall know them”
Then each and every member of the political affiliation known as ‘The Democrat Party’
is an accomplice to the more than Fifty (50) Million murders of innocent babies.
Does that change the persons who support such wanton murder
which is in magnitudes greater than the 911 deaths by brutal terrorists?
Each of the people supporting such bloodshed cannot say
they are immune to the perversion of the mind to allow mothers to kill their babies
or the ‘blindness’ of mind to argue murder is not murder if a woman is ‘pro-choice’
to commit or support other mothers to murder their unborn.
The hardness of hearts created is fully an effect of complicity of the crime
This political affiliation is assuredly accomplices to mass murder!
Examine the word ‘accomplice’ and what it means—
and then consider the premise above!
An “Accomplice” by very definition is:
a person who knowingly, voluntarily, and with common intent
unites with the principal offender in the commission of a crime.
One who is in some way concerned or associated in commission of crime;
partaker of guilt; one who aids or assists, or is an ‘Accessory’.
One who is guilty of complicity in crime charged, either by being present
and aiding or abetting in it,
or having advised and encouraged it,
though absent from place when it was committed,
One is liable as an accomplice to the crime of another
if he or she gave assistance or encouragement
or failed to perform a legal duty to prevent it
with the intent thereby to promote or facilitate commission of the crime.
[ acknowledgment for definition from
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/accomplice ]
SO my fellow readers—do you date murderers? Do you let your daughters date or make friends with wanton hard core killers? NO And why do you not?
Because such people have been changed by their very acts.
Acts caused by their attitudes.
NONE of those with a mindset or heart that is full of the darkness of death; and murder;
and all of those who seek to rationalize away all guilt and shame
for those most foul thoughts and deeds–
remain unsullied by the effects of all that vast bloodshed!
SO NO—you do not stay the same –
you’re not simply People regardless of political affiliation
who can think anything, support anything—
follow anyone in the realm of life;
society
and its warp and weave of consideration of what is right and wrong;
or direction for order or chaos;
true freedom of progress or degradation of morality and integrity
caused by the growing left
in all the horror sought by the me, me, me culture of abject selfishness
that spawns boundless perversions and unbridled lawlessness.
I REJECT the Premise! We change by our beliefs and by our thoughts
And key to those thoughts — is our stance on Politics.
IF You chose Darkness in the arena of Politics / the legal matrix of society—
THEN you devolve to corruption and are filled with Darkness. You become a nightmare!
In a perfect world the Republicans who are actual patriots –
will remove all of their failed and corrupt leadership and re-instate those that love a Republic:
of limited government; State’s rights; and a true Constitutional form of government.
Then perhaps they can abolish the murder industry and prosecute each and every person connected with Planned Parenthood and the murder of innocents.
And finally maybe teach their fellow man, this author (Ozymandias), and you readers that
People’s Political Affiliation – defines who People Are !!
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Eh… I mostly agree with this, but you have to be careful on number two, the random idiot thing. Obviously you can’t assume that 100% of the random conservative idiots are reflective of conservatives in general, but… a lot of them are idiots in precisely the way they’ve been taught to be idiots.
A lot of my family is into the whole Christianist Conservative… thing. I can tell you that for the vast majority of the “random idiotic thing an idiot conservative says” stories I see, I’ve heard the idiotic thing already from them quoting a radio host they admire, a preacher, or a conservative newsletter. Or from reading those newsletters of listening to those radio shows when I’m around them.
Even the “we can’t use wind power because it will rob the earth of kinetic energy” thing that idiot conservative Congressman said- I’d heard that one before. That’s out there. He didn’t make that up- he was repeating ideas I’ve heard from the sort of conservative climate change deniers who show up in my facebook feed, and who can’t figure out why quoting anti global warming “scientists” who also believe in chem trails isn’t a good idea.
And what really kicks this one off is this… conservatives have an AMAZING propaganda machine that operates on one simple trick- it makes arguments that your boyfriend would call motte and baileys, and which I’ve been calling the “Rush Limbaugh Maneuver” since back when Rush was a thing. For example, “Separation of Church and State isn’t in the Constitution.” Remember when Michelle Bachman said that, and then was floored when someone said, “Uh, first amendment?” That was one of them. I’d heard that dozens of times before she opened her mouth. And it always relied on the same game- the literal words “separation of church and state” aren’t there, but the concept is. So if attacked, the propagandists using the argument just use the basic “well, the words aren’t there, people think they are, so those people are dumb” argument, while their constituents (e.g. affinity fraud victims) draw the conclusion that the concept isn’t constitutionally valid.
Well, this has been going on for… decades. And the result of it is that the conservative base is heavily indoctrinated in these ideas, particularly including those who have been growing up in that culture. Who then become adults and run for office, bringing with them the dumb things they’ve been taught. Which means people outside, uh, my social circle… are starting to hear these dumb arguments and are starting to make fun of them on the internet.
Anyway, TLDR, don’t feel like writing more- when you hear a conservative leader say something mind bogglingly stupid, it’s usually not because he’s a weird outlier. It’s usually because he’s grown up in a particularly wacky conservative sub culture where the stupid thing he said is common wisdom- at least common enough that I and people like me have heard it half a dozen times. You’re totally right to say that we shouldn’t assume that all conservatives believe it- but enough of them seem to believe it that they can get people elected, and that other conservatives are afraid to piss them off. So… yeah.
For what its worth, there are a few weird ideas running around among liberals that I’ve noticed, in particular related to social causes. For example, moral skepticism about zoos, or wacky beliefs about the mortgage market. But they don’t come REMOTELY close. Maybe somewhere there’s a liberal constituency that is just as crazy as my extended family, but I sure haven’t met them, and they sure don’t seem powerful enough to get people into the national legislature.
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> Maybe somewhere there’s a liberal constituency that is just as crazy as my extended family…
I could be wrong, but isn’t there a relatively large segment of the liberal population that believes in New Age stuff ? Crystal healing, electrosensitivity, Bigfoot (or some other crypto-beastie), alien abductions, chakras, auras, etc…
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There are those, and there are the mild conspiracy theorists. Yes, some 9/11 truthers, and other completely insane conspiracy theorists, because there are always conspiracy theorists. But mostly IME it’s not about the Illuminati or whatever, it’s a more plausible sort of Bush/Cheney/Big Corporations thing that doesn’t always bloom into full-on crackpottery.
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I’m disinclined to put them into the “just as crazy as the conservative crazies” camp, because those types don’t seem any worse than any other religious person.
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@Patrick Some of the New Agers and conspiracy theorists can get really weird. Of course, whale.to is way more extreme than most New Age things, and their political alignment is mostly “total insanity” rather than liberal or conservative, but they’re vaguely left-aligned insofar as they’re aligned with anyone.
(This does not necessarily contradict what I said above, and it doesn’t necessarily disagree with you, either. They’re not mainstream, but they exist.)
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Absolutely. Well, maybe not Bigfoot and alien abductions — I get the sense that those are mostly orthogonal forms of crazy — and they generally don’t call it New Age. But alternative medicine is a huge and mostly leftist phenomenon, and so’s all manner of bastardized Eastern or Native American philosophy, quantum woo, and hangovers from 19th-century spiritualism. This is usually justified through some seriously weird epistemology: if you ever want to recalibrate your sense of frustration, I suggest trying to explain cryptography to someone that thinks mathematics is an oppressive framework devised to blind our intuitive sense of connectedness.
That stuff’s relatively apolitical except insofar as evangelicals think it’s the devil and Grays think it’s stupid, though, so it isn’t reflected well in color politics unless someone’s trying to paint their opponent as a gullible hippie.
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> if you ever want to recalibrate your sense of frustration, I suggest trying to explain cryptography to someone that thinks mathematics is an oppressive framework devised to blind our intuitive sense of connectedness.
He’s not kidding, you know. There are people who believe literally this. I’ve met them.
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It’s not quite the same level of crazy as the blatant magic, but anti-GMO nonsense and general nature woo also seems to be pretty common on the (for lack of a better term) “left”.
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Because this is totally the important part of your comment: moral skepticism about zoos is actually reasonably well grounded, because zoo environments are generally pretty bad for an animal’s health.
…possibly I’m proving your point, because when I googled for a link to share, the top results were all PETA.
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Yeah, its not surprising that the top results are all PETA.
Zoos have to do a lot to keep an animal healthy and happy. But the thing is- they DO that stuff. Zoos put a TON of effort into keeping animals not only physically healthy, but mentally stimulated and engaged.
http://www.animalenrichment.org/spider/spider_framework.html
That’s just one link about the topic of keeping animals healthy and mentally engaged.
And on top of that…
Ok, imagine that you’re an archaeologist, and you discover a tomb full of ancient artifacts. And just as you’re about to start carefully writing down every detail about what you’ve found, some jackass with a hammer marches in behind you and starts smashing things. And you can do NOTHING about it. So now you’re running around, desperately grabbing every ancient, irreplaceable thing you can, and hiding it in your car, because otherwise this moron will destroy it forever.
And along comes PETA’s equivalent and tells you that what you’re doing is wrong. You’re engaged in cultural imperialism, and ancient tombs deserve to remain undesecrated. Which sounds LOVELY, sure, but there’s this guy in there with a hammer smashing everything, and you DON’T HAVE TIME TO DISCUSS THIS.
Zoos are basically that, for animals. They’re filled with people who desperately want you to meet some weird crustacean with an unusual number of eyes and unique courtship rituals, and want you to learn to love that weird little creature, because if you don’t that jerk with a hammer is going to murder all of them, forever, and they will never again be seen upon the earth.
Which is why it annoys the hell out of me when people get all weird about zoos. Yes, sure, it would be wonderful if the manatees were swimming free. But if we stop taking them in and sheltering them, they’ll all die. So fix that, then we’ll talk. And yeah, technically not every animal in a zoo is in desperate need of rescue. But you know what? The zoos need your money, and you won’t visit unless they have the stuff you want to see. And you know where that money goes? Back to that weird little crustacean no one cares about.
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Obligatory crustacean. Look at his giant head! And he has a marsupium! Which is a pouch thing for babies.
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@Patrick — That’s a gorgeous little critter.
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It’s pretty weird that people object to zoos in principle but are totally OK with pet.
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I missed an S.
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@Patrick
I don’t disagree with you all that much in practice, BUT:
(1) Your analogy is not historically accurate. Originally, zoos were simply collections of animals — like an art gallery, only with critters instead of paintings. Conservation of species became one of their major goals only in the 1970s.
(2) As a result of (1), many zoos that actually exist today, especially outside the richest Western countries, still haven’t been converted to the new, animal-friendly paradigm. And in relatively poorer places, the change happens slowly, so many animals are currently kept in small cages and other bad conditions.
What should be considered a “typical” zoo depends on the context of the debate, of course. But clearly not all of them are aspiring-animal-paradises focused on conservation.
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@Nita
Yes, but that just means we should accelerate the improvements, rather than abandoning the whole concept.
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@nita- I can’t argue about foreign zoos. Some suck, and which ones suck is usually predicted easily by the wealth of the country. But if you live in a nation where the zoos are all AZA accredited environmentalism based havens, it seems a bit unnecessary to base your views of zoos on the second and third world.
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Noticing that bad traits are shared by many of your family members doesn’t change the “random idiot” problem. It’s not as if your family members are randomly chosen from the pool of all Republicans; the beliefs of family members are correlated.
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Right, but the point is that they got these things from a larger social structure into which they are tapped. The size of my family isn’t the issue, its the fact that they got their crazy stuff from conservative mass media.
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Their susceptibility to mass media is correlated as well. You can’t conclude that typical Republicans are highly affected by mass media just because your family members are.
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Nothing I said relies on the assumption that conservatives are highly, or unusually, vulnerable to mass media.
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Hi Patrick
1) IMHO, you’re correct that while it’s not safe to assume that “random idiots” in the GOP or Dem party are representative, it’s also not safe to assume they’re not significant parts of the base. So while I think it’s safe to say that most Dems probably are not concerned about islands capsizing, I’m less sure how many think that GMO foods are not safe or that western science is hiding the truth about alternative medicine, and similarly for the Republicans on their tribal beliefs.
2) But to challenge you a little, the fact that you’ve met several idiots doesn’t really tell you whether or not they’re sufficiently rare as to be called “random.”
3) To challenge you a little more, I think it’s worthwhile to steelman the idiots every so often. My best argument for the Bachman issue would be: (a) the Constitution literally does not say that “separation of church and state is required,” it states that the government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; (b) while those terms are similar, the line of thought deriving from “separation” is often used to challenge de minimis or facially neutral involvement that might be harder to justify using the “establishment” language. Relatively minor entanglement such as busing both public and religious school students to school or allowing a creche in a public square doesn’t establish a religion in any meaningful sense.
I think Bachman still has the worst of that argument – while it’s literally true that separation of church and state doesn’t appear in the Constitution, it’s in the letters of Thomas Jefferson, and the Supreme Court has been relying on Jefferson’s formulation for more than a century. However, it’s challenging to call someone an idiot for believing something that’s true unless you know exactly what they mean by it.
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If you want to know what Bachman meant, you don’t steelman her. That’s no better than strawmanning her. Both have the same flaw- you’re substituting what someone actually meant for what it is convenient for you.
Instead, ask whether Bachman has gone on record discussing religion and politics further, and whether that adds context. Ask how her remarks have been interpreted by get target audience, and whether she’s clarified for them. Ask whether she is part of a community with a certain discourse about religion and politics that might clarify her remarks.
I’ll wait. I know what the outcome will be. You’ll find that she and her community believe that America is intrinsically Christian, and that Christianity deserves a long list of special rights not due to other faiths. And that’s just the first step down a long, dark rabbit hole.
And for the record, while the Supreme Court has quoted Jefferson, they aren’t relying on him for binding authority. The constitution prohibits laws “respecting” an establishment of religion, not just actual establishments. And the free exercise clause gets its shots in as well.
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Patrick: That can lead to a catch-22 where someone can say X and have no way to prevent it from getting interpreted as Y by you unless they disavow all their associations.
Imagine doing it for the blues instead of the reds: “Science says that global warming is real.” “Yes, it’s literally true that science says that global warming is real. But the intended community will interpret it as ‘science validates so-and-so radical anti-global-warming policy’. Science hasn’t really validated that, so their statement is a lie.”
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Patrick: I’m too lazy (or optimistically, rationally ignorant) for that. I’ll grant that if she were taking a position like “Obama should pass a law forbidding non-Christians from holding public office,” then the separation argument would be idiotic, but then you don’t need the separation statement to establish idiocy.
I’d argue that the position I’m defending is “I don’t know if Bachman was being an idiot when she said ‘Separaton of Church and State isn’t in the Constitution, and I am not sure whether Patrick does.”
(IIRC, somebody else did get burned when she played that card, was told that it was in the Constution, and was stuck. To be fair, there are lots of stories of Constitutional ignorance on both sides, though. Internet commenters look smart because we have wikipedia, but people speaking publically usually seem dumber that people with a Google windown open.).
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But if people are people regardless of political affiliation, what will we threaten dissenters with? 😛
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Reflecting views: this is an issue with pretty much every political party ever. The “doomsday clock at 11!” meme seems to be because it’s difficult to motivate anyone to do anything other than repost awareness campaigns unless THE THREAT IS TOTES ON OUR DOORSTEP YO.
Random idiots: radfems spouting idiocies like “all sex is rape” and the like are an example of the left’s equivalent. Environmentalists that cock up irreplaceable heritage sites? Yeah, those stupid lefty treehuggers. Et cetera. Thing is, like the right, leftists don’t see these morons as representing them, so they don’t realise that this is the image of them that the right holds up in response.
United front: yeah, the red side treat their allies like allies. They don’t go and, say, attack a contingent that have been fairly reliable (if quiet) allies in defense of someone who was engaging in poor behaviour, thereby uniting a bunch of different issues under one banner and doing untold damage to their credibility and support. Just as an example.
Death threats: okay, here we go.
Yeah, right-wingers get these too. Ask Larry Correia, a former machinegun dealer (no really!) and current author. He caused a bit of a kerfuffle recently at the Hugos, and apparently it dramatically increased the amount of death threats he got. Which he laughs off, because for god’s sake he’s a 7-foot behemoth with a bushel of guns to hand. And even if he wasn’t… the left’s views tend toward politics of oppression, and publishing death threats reinforces the view of “we are under threat”. The right despises this victim mentality, so they actively try not to bring it up.
Lastly, there’s the limited online presence of conservatives. There are simply fewer targets, and they keep their heads down – a lot of the online world is concerned with entertainment, and most of that crowd leans heavily left, so there are literal real-life penalties associated with speaking out as a red. Again, coming back to Correia – go and check what was being said about him online for the crime of recommending right-leaning authors for the Hugos. He put up an explanation post that goes over a lot of it, which I won’t link here because I understand that some folks don’t like following direct links to red sites, but you can look it up on Monster Hunter Nation.
Anyway… he makes an easy example, because of how outspoken he is, but in doing so he’s the exception that betrays the rule.
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Thing is, like the right, leftists don’t see these morons as representing them, so they don’t realise that this is the image of them that the right holds up in response.
IDK if it’s just me, but do these non-representative morons of the right seem to get more air time than those of the left? I’m sure I’ve never seen either of the two examples you mention depicted as respectable authorities by mainstream media.
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When most of the people are X, the anti-X group that you hear about will be extremists, not only because X influences the media, but also because any moderate members of anti-X will have to hide their anti-X to avoid becoming outcasts. Extremists are outcasts anyway because of their other beliefs and being seen as anti-X as well won’t damage them any further.
In other words, moderate MRAs have to hide it to avoid being attacked by feminists. Extremist MRAs will get attacked regardless of what they do so they have no reason to be silent.
This also works for other beliefs. In Europe, vocal opponents of immigration are mostly racist because anyone who is not racist but anti-immigration will end up being accused of being racist. Actual racists will get accused of being racist regardless of their stance on immigration, so speaking up about it doesn’t hurt them.
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#2 is a good example of the dangers of motte-and-bailey accusations. The other party’s platform seems like a motte, defending the crazy idiots; our party’s platform is an honest-to-God bailey.
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In response to your point about how conservatives get bible thumpers and Ron Paul devotees to vote for the same dude, it’s largely by doing what we’re complaining about here; by demonizing their political opponents and whipping up fear and hatred of the other guy. It’s practically necessary in a two-party system where both political parties have to represent a very wide range of people, who often don’t have many interests in common, and it’s done by the left in America as well as the right.
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“Let me be clear: women are far more likely to get death and rape threats, as well as other kinds of horrific insults, online.”
That sounds obvious but in fact it isn’t exactly true:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/04/men-are-harassed-more-than-women-online.html
It’s partially true – the form of abuse differs by gender, because different genders have different buttons to push. Men get rape threats, and in addition they get accusations of child pornography which are in effect threats of rape day after day after day, which due to sexist stereotypes among law enforcement types, women are pretty much immune to.
“(Just ask anyone semi-Internet-famous who switched from a male/gender-neutral to a female name, or vice versa.)”
I don’t doubt this one bit. It may be anecdata, but anecdotes are data points.
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I can believe that men receive more abusive tweets, but did that study really classify a message as abusive if it contained “bloody”, “damn”, “God”, “cyalis”, “lmfao” or “xxx”? This method seems a bit vulnerable to noise.
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Their exact methodology isn’t clear. They also include abuse to be directed at someone if it contains “@[someone’s ‘nym]”, the obvious problem being that it doesn’t necessarily mean the abuse was directed at them. Subtweeting (possibly unlikely when dealing with famous people) and tweeting at multiple people could easily give false positives.
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This stuff seems hard to measure in a neutral way. For example, I can imagine a group of (mostly) men on a weightlifting forum or martial arts forums routinely shittalking each other in ways that could be read as abuse, but which those men don’t find abusive. By contrast, I can see a notable feminist woman receiving very similar tweets that to her are enormously menacing. Furthermore, I think that such a woman would be right to be concerned. Consider: if she gets doxxed, she now gets to worry that the next Elliot Rogers will make a special effort to kill her first. Does the weightlifting bro have a similar worry?
We have two cases where very similar behavior has manifestly different value. How does one measure this? Does insisting on a context-free “objective” measure actually get you to the truth?
(By the way, I’m not saying bro culture is great or we should be totally happy that men treat each other this way. On the other hand, the bros seem to like it. On the third hand, this sounds pretty toxic for not-bros who want to lift weights or whatever. I don’t have an easy answer to this.)
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“This method seems a bit vulnerable to noise.”
You are real charitable, Nita. That’s a very charitable way to describe it. But that’s a feature of most of these studies – sloppy terms, tendentious terms, special pleading exceptions and an inability to see any kind of scale, a default to hard and fast categories.
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@veronica d,
You are assuming your own conclusion. I have no doubt you can “imagine” all sorts of things that reinforce your existing prejudices. I can imagine a lot of typical heated Internet natter directed at women, which no one involved seriously interpreted as a threat, being used to pad their “harassment” stats. And by contrast, I can see a lot of messed up shit directed at men being overlooked because people don’t take men being in potential danger nearly as seriously.
The only empirical evidence we have that’s anywhere close to objective suggests that men receive more harassment overall, but women are more likely to be the recipients of that specific subset of harassment that’s sexual in nature. This fits in well with existing real world distributions, where men are more likely to be the targets for violence but women are more likely to be the targets of sexual violence.
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@pocketjacks — My point is we need to look at the entire context. Men who shittalk on weightlifting forums probably have a good idea how their speech will be received. Men who threaten feminists with “I’m outside your house with a gun” also can guess the effects of their threats. Will an “objective” measure capture the differences in intentions and effects? Those matter.
This link showed up the other day in the SCC comments: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10208418/Twitter-abuse-What-women-hating-trolls-really-believe.html
I suggest that you cannot really call this stuff “isolated,” given how numerous and overwhelming the attacks have been. However, if one dude calls another dude a “faggot,” it counts as an attack. If he says, “I’ll kick your ass bitch” to some random guy (with whom he is arguing over the relative merits of dead lifts versus squats), it counts as a threat of violence, measured as equal to the specific threats of targeted violence against people like Sarkeesian and Wu. These are not good measures.
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I’d also suggest Sarah Palin as a target of a lot of death and rape and who knows what else threats.
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Re: Death threats.
There’s been tons of death threats and doxing in both directions in the course of Gamergate–eg @lizzyf620 (woman, liberal, pro-GG) was exhaustively and probably professionally doxed just this week, has gone dark and appears to be off the net for good. The pro-GG side is designated conservative/fascist in the wider culture war (even though survey data suggests they’re modally left-libertarian). So, yes: conservatives get tons of threats, they just don’t get signal-boosted and you don’t hear about it.
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Note also that some persons have stated publicly that they do not say when they receive death threats, or how frequent it is, to limit publicity/copycat behavior and due to perceived lack of realistic intent/danger. I’m not wholly supporting this line of thought, and there is a difference to draw between the threats (realistically, little chance of something happening in meatspace) and doxing (with little effort, huge consequences possible in meatspace w.r.t. work, potential swatting, mailing of illegal stuff). If you judge by the potential consequences, a doxer (or supporter of doxing) should be seen as a more nefarious person than a person spouting death threats and promises of violence.
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I agree with the thrust of the OP. While I am liberal on most issues (I’m centrist on a few issues, such as guns and free trade and most “social justice”/identity politics issues except for gender; I’m only outright Right by American political classifications when it comes to gender issues), I’ve lived in Blue bubbles my entire life yet a disproportionate number of my close friends have been conservative or libertarian. In college I dated a McCain supporter, which if you consider the college I went to (not saying which one because I’m a fiend for Internet privacy; between this and a bunch of other clues I bet someone out there could suss out who I am) and the political gender divide, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she was the only one on campus. I think maybe like at least one-third of my friends at any one time are libertarian and conservative, whereby the actual distribution in my localized peer group is probably like 10% libertarian or conservative at most. So I’m all for separating a person’s politics from the person, and that politics can be a blind spot for everyone and doesn’t impact how good of a person they are.
However, I do disagree with some of the sentiment behind #2 on the OP’s list. I believe that every camp is responsible for the extremists it chooses to get in bed with.
If a particular camp harbors a particular brand of extremists, the question isn’t really what percentage do the extremists make up. The fact that they only make up 5% or 10% of their total body doesn’t matter. The real question is, why that particular extremism, and not others? Because it’s probably indicative of broader prejudices and bigotries in that camp at large.
Suppose there’s two warring nations out there, the A’s and the B’s. The fact that 10% of one camp favor genocide against the A’s, fucking matters. It’s not a neutral non-issue because 90% don’t. (What would make it a neutral non-issue, oddly enough, is if there were a 10% rump on the other side that supported genocide against the B’s. I’m assuming, in order to deem this a non-issue, that no one involved has anything close to any capacity to act on these beliefs.) In this situation, the conclusion that this camp most likely harbors hatred against A’s is entirely reasonable. Because genocide is an extreme belief, and such beliefs won’t have sprung up in a vacuum. In real life, the way this tends to work, there’s probably another 10% who don’t support genocide, mind you, but… you know. Another 30% who are just garden variety rabidly pro-A and anti-B, even as they feign objectivity. And another 40% who claim to be neutral on the issue, but it’s just that the maaaainstreeeaaam and the mainstream media has such a pro-B bias that they have to balance it out from time to time. So all in all, a very hostile place for an A-er to be.
I picked an extreme example to make my point, but it extrapolates to every issue under the sun. As such, I do believe that every camp is in some fashion has to answer for the extremists hiding under their wings. Generally, this comes in the form of active disavowal and denunciation of them. I know that the general “camp” I often represent in places like these, the “pro-male” side of politicized gender debates, has its share of hateful clownish morons, such as Matt Forney or Ferdinand Bardamu or Roissy/Roosh. Have I said that enough yet in my time here? They are hateful clownish morons, and they don’t speak for me. If you want a list of areas where I’d break with them publicly, I can have it alphabetized for you. (Though that might take a while; I’m a busy man.) I expect everyone else to have the same attitude, and I’d be suspicious of ones who don’t. I’d be suspicious that they’re barely any better than the extremists, just more cowardly, and they want to sneak their extreme agenda in through the backdoor.
I realize that there needs to be a limit to this and that it could potentially get petty and ridiculous – your camp has 4% of these extremists, while mine has 2%, I demand an explanation before we proceed with any discussion! – but I think the fear and suspicion that an opposing side is trying to good-cop-bad-cop an extreme agenda through the backdoor are valid ones.
Sorry in advance for any 3 am incoherence or mixed metaphors.
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> Let me be clear: women are far more likely to get death and rape threats, as well as other kinds of horrific insults, online.
I don’t think so. Anyone with an opinion will get threats regardless of gender.
There was a study one or two years ago, which has shown that both gender receives similar amount of harassment, but that their types were different: women would typically receive sexual threats, and men would receive death threats and threats against their family.
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