Hard News: On joining the international troll circuit
179 Responses
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Incidentally, any reader who is interested in the extent to which the Israel lobby is operated like a gutting knife in the body of the British Labour Party ought to read this expert commentary & analysis: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018-08-08/labour-crisis-israel-anti-semitism/
The party exec committee is looking like a robot with a ray-gun having taken a hit to its control system, gone rogue & now zapping its members with random bursts. Now jews are subdividing themselves into good jews & bad jews (mentioned) & couple of days ago I saw a fascinating youTube interview by George Galloway of Prof Rosen, who said now he's being called a bad jew!
Takes me back to childhood in the fifties & constant lecturing about good boys & bad boys. Were there good girls & bad girls?
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Maximising tolerance does actually require you be reasonably intolerant toward particularly intolerant people.
it is disheartening, as fascism rattles the door, that Karl Popper’s Paradox of Intolerance is not parlance for those engaging in political discussion, akin to something like ‘Godwin’s Law’. In the same conversations as we’re holding up our universities as bastions of our education system
The paradox states that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant.
Without that layer of nuance in public discourse it’s all too easy for establishment types like Sir John Well’s son to frame it at an individual level at the expense of addressing systemic discrimination via the state-owned tele network.
"he does make a fair point about free speech and free speech is a very important thing and in the end you mightent like what someone says but you have to, [thud] you have to encourage free speech, it’s an important part of democracy..[…] you chuck your idea out there and let someone tell you your idea is no good, it’s no good, make your decision up”.
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Alice Snedden this morning launching into a rousing patriotic rendition of The Tolerable Bigot to much acclaim.
While they are both racist, their expressions of this are very different. One is just outright hatred and lies, while the other is more slippery. We don’t need to entertain the former, that’s rubbish we can ignore. We don’t learn from it.
But I think we need to hear out the latter, if for no other reason, than we have to understand that point of view so we can overcome it.
The evident incumbent privilege in being in a position to be publicly selective about which racists you feel deserve a fair hearing.
for some reason this keeps coming to mind
Reality is there for us to base our lives on. Sure, part of it is socially constructed, but hiding from it tends to make folks delusional, induces pathologies. Which is what those opposing free speech are demonstrating.
Based on what's been happening in the UK, "patholigies" sounds like a dog whistle.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Were there good girls & bad girls?
a couple of challenging author doxies...
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
Hey, two more speakers with provocative opinions got uninvited! In Oz this time. It's becoming contagious. Only pc opinions allowed. I recall the Mothers of Invention singing "who are the brain police?" Leftists.
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John Farrell, in reply to
What are "PC opinions"?
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mark taslov, in reply to
l̶e̶f̶t̶i̶s̶t̶s̶:
at the risk of burdening your binary absolutism with the complexity of power dynamics I hope you don’t mind if i fix your typo there Dennis:
m̲i̲n̲o̲r̲i̲t̲i̲e̲s̲:minorities existing on multiple axes of oppression generally speaking, e.g wahine toa, folk who don’t commonly get to speak from the paepae.
Brash clarified this earlier:
“Right across the political spectrum from the left to the right people have been very supportive of my right to speak freely on Massey campus and very critical of the vice chancellor,” says Brash.
That’s no spurious claim – leftists got in behind him, in numbers, as he states.
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
Correct, Mark, I over-generalised there. And to John: politically-correct opinions
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John Farrell, in reply to
I know that - I was wanting some examples of these opinions.
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
Just take a look at the instances where the rationale for uninviting rightist speakers has been given in pc logic. The Oz immigrant vc at MU cited the feelings of the sector of students who have a grievance against old wealthy white men expressing political opinions. Evaluate the language she used to spin her perception of her responsibility to protect them from the opinions Brash has expressed. Her mollycoddle stance.
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John Farrell, in reply to
Tell me what "pc logic" is.
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linger, in reply to
Problem is, phrases such as "political correctness", "social engineering", and "nanny state" are loaded terms that often reveal more about the user than about the intended referent. E.g. railing against "nanny-statism" has been used to excuse the blocking or dismantling of regulations around food-origin labelling, building safety, energy efficiency, environmental protection… meanwhile the same governments tend not to see any contradiction at all in enacting laws extending the powers of the state against personal privacy and peaceful protest.
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
Why not try learning from your own experience. Reliance on tuition from others is suitable for children & teenagers. Are you one?
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Tell me what “pc logic” is.
all the great writing mentors say
"Show. Don't tell"
herewith (and pictured above):
VINTAGE IBM LOGIC BASE SYSTEM 3194 COMPUTER ~ 3194-99-18358Them synths can be a tad literal...
;- )
Anyone else enjoying 'Humans'
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John Farrell, in reply to
So - you don't know, or won't say, what you see as "pc logic". Why is that?
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
I'm not likely to answer your questions until you start answering mine. Reciprocity. Are you familiar with the concept?
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I spent 10 years as a chip designer, designing chips for PCs, I know what "PC logic" is, I have ~20 patents on how to build hardware to emulate original PC features.
I also remember where the term "political correctness" came from - it started as a joke on the left, a gentle josh intended to make fun of those who'd gone a bit too far - somewhere in the mid to late 80s people on the right somehow decided this was a real think, not a joke and started taking it seriously, people on the left just shook their heads in disbelief.
"political correctness" as we know it now is essentially an invention of the right, while the left created the words, people on the right made up their meaning
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John Farrell, in reply to
I had a book, years ago, from an outfit called "10 speed press", of politically correct definitions. None of it was serious.
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
We don't live in a binary world, and language evolves by being customised constantly. So centrists, around a third of voters in western countries nowadays, tend to comprehend political correctness as a conformist stance or syndrome similar to group-think. Google says this: "the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against."
Perceived by whom? Leftists, most commentators suggest. However (as a centrist) I find that behaviour just as offensive as that of the establishment folk they demonise. Sometimes more so.
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John Farrell, in reply to
I tend to think of accusations of "political correctness" as a way of avoiding responsibility for racist or misogynist comments.
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
Understandable if that's a behavioural pattern you've noticed, but assuming everyone does that is unrealistic.
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The counter on this site needs a re-wind. I've posted around 20 times since it showed me with 187 & it still shows 187. Or perhaps the spring driving the clockwork cogwheels is broken, or the rubber band needs replacing, or something...
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Perceived by whom?
“groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.”
I find that behaviour just as offensive as that of the establishment folk they demonise
Just to be sure I’ve got this, are you saying you find strong encouragement to avoid forms of expression or action that exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against as offensive as the structurally discriminatory establishment excluding, marginalizing, or insulting minorities?
e.g racism is as offensive as anti-racism?
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What I'm saying is that I think that "political correctness" is largely a right wing concept, you don't hear the left going on about it, while the right essentially have a consensual delusion about this thing that they continually rabbit on about
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Dennis Frank, in reply to
No, the protestors who shout down their opponents and those who use fake excuses to cancel scheduled talks at public venues. It's a sort of reverse-discrimination thing going on. I just prefer equal rights for all.
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