Open Debate

at

Meanwhile…

Damn you, Smugface.

Meanwhile…

Meanwhile…

This morning/afternoon.

Some reaction to yesterday’s open letter from prominent liberals decrying ‘cancel culture’.

Yesterday: Hello, Yes, I’d Like To Cancel My Subscription To Harper’s

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98 thoughts on “Open Debate

    1. scundered

      Good video, it would be interesting to see the response if a white male made the same video with the same script and maybe from a conservative background, to watch the public reaction, I think all sides of the fence know cancel culture is a bad thing but they will still embrace it if it happens to satisfy their political gain, unfortunately.

      1. SOQ

        Yes true but the problem there is that the conservatives and the right have claimed free speech as their own- so if someone from that background speaks out they will be dismissed as having an agenda.

        I think that what is really fresh about the likes of Ayishat is that she is coming from a very different place- she is coming from the left.

        Personally, I totally get it.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWVemKJH1Gg

        1. scundered

          I dont think its a matter of the right “claiming it”, but rather the left are abandoning it… which goes against all their traditional principles, which just seems nuts to me.

          1. Nigel

            The right don’t actually believe in free speech at all. They’re lying when they say they do. Does anyone actually believe that Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are champions of free speech?

          2. Nigel

            Just to add – what poses the greater threat to free speech? The side that is wrestling with its limitations and consequences in an age of social media and hi-tech instant communications and movements for social equality? Or the side that straight up lies about supporting it in absolute terms? The side that is actually engaging, here and now, in debate about these things? Or the side that is engaged in massive drives of disinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories?

            Like I said yesterday, cancel culture is the antifa of free speech. It exists, sort of, but it’s a distratction friom and a pretext for the guys with the batons and riot gear who will beat the living snot out of you for speaking up.

          3. Clampers Outside

            OK, I’ll bite….

            Q1 “The side that is wrestling with its limitations and consequences in an age of social media and hi-tech instant communications and movements for social equality?” 

            A1 The Right is wrestling with it, while the Left leaning high-tech companies engage their own rules of censoring, which is their right. 

            Q2 “Or the side that straight up lies about supporting it in absolute terms?” 

            A2 The Left doesn’t lie about supporting it, they’re too easily seen celebrating closing down free speech. So that’d leave the Right, right. Pray tell, do provide some examplesof these “straight up lies”. I’ll wait. 

            Q3 “The side that is actually engaging, here and now, in debate about these things?” 

            A4 That’d be the Right. Also, see first part of A3. 

            Q4 “Or the side that is engaged in massive drives of disinformation, propaganda, and conspiracy theories?” 

            A4 That’d be the Left for the most part, but both sides are guilty, see here for examples https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/13/trump-era-conspiracy-theories-left-right

            Your closing bit is an imagined (to the extent you describe) police state, the type that Antifa dream of. One that is currently being tested in theCHAZ/CHOP zones of both Seattle and Baltimore. 
            .
            .
            .
            And what SOQ said.

          4. SOQ

            I think it was a bit of both- but it is the right who are using it as a slogan and a push back against this mad cancelling stuff.

            The right aren’t the ones going after people’s jobs or demanding they are suspended from twitter- that is most definitely the left- and people are fed up of it.

          5. Commenter #1

            “The right aren’t the ones going after people’s jobs or demanding they are suspended from twitter- that is most definitely the left- and people are fed up of it.”

            Lolol Norman Finkelstein, Steven Salaita, and Roderic O’Gorman would probably disagree with you there.

          6. SOQ

            Ok well those first two I never heard, probably as they are in the US but Roderic is a good old fashioned ‘guilt by association’ smear campaign.

          7. SOQ

            Of course they are- as they did with Zappone- a false flag to the real new right in Ireland I suspect because this carry on is just downright thick.

          8. Nigel

            1. The left is wrestling with it literally in and around this letter. Where is the wrestling of the right? (‘Left leaning tech companies?’ That’s just more special pleading by the right.)
            2. Pick any random statement by Trump and a few by Johnson.
            3. The above is literally a debate on the matter. The right’s debate consists of sending the police in to beat up BLM protestors.
            4. Left for the most part? That is utterly indefensible when the right is pushing climate change denial, anti-vaxx, assorted Covid19 conspiracies, turned wearing masks into a culture war thing, inspire and draw support from Qanon, and use the likes of Cambridge Analytica. to push blatantly fake stories around.

            ‘Your closing bit is an imagined (to the extent you describe) police state, the type that Antifa dream of’

            Blaming antifa for what has been happening for the last month or so under a right wing US administration is kind of the height of how bad you are at thinking about things. Bet you think Obama’s to blame for all the families being seperated and put into camps on the border, too.

            And my God, SOQ, the idea that the right aren’t going after people’s jobs or livelihood. Where to even begin? Gamergate was cancel culture on toxic hyper overdrive, alt-right game fans driving women out of gaming and gaming-related industries. And they’ve gone on from there.

          9. Nigel

            ‘a false flag to the real new right in Ireland’

            Even when the right show you exactly what they are you refuse to believe it.

          10. SOQ

            Nigel- there is a big difference between an open mind and a hole in the head- I suspect your doctor was being diplomatic?

          11. Nigel

            Like I say, SOQ. Believe them when they show you what they are. Don’t go making excuses for them.

          12. Nigel

            Clampers – gamergate was a massive, ugly, vicious relentless harassment campaign initially targeted against two women, but expanded to harass almost any woman or LGBTQ person in gaming who dared to show their head above the paprapet, or just exist. I know gamergate. The left has never done anything a fraction as silencing as gamergate.

  1. Gabby

    As usual, Irish media commentators and blog commenters are following the intellectual lead of the USA media and intelligentsia. We saw this only a five weeks ago with BLM following the brutal choking of a black ‘suspect’ to death by a white policeman who apparently knew him. Irish street activists, in one notable case ignoring social distancing guidelines, turned the violent racial situation in America into an Irish issue by bringing the living conditions of asylum seekers into the equation. America as a superpower has since the end of WWII exerted an awe-inspiring cultural influence on the English-speaking world. Up-to-speed thinking = American thinking of a right-on tendency. French culture, partly helped by a different language and particular history, tries to do its own thinking and arts creation.

  2. Junkface

    The Enlightenment never happened. Everybody go bury your heads in the sand until the Guardian and Vox tells us its okay to come out. They are replacing our Phallic shaped cities with vagina shapes.

  3. Toby

    Good to see common sense reemerging. The past few years have been chilling. Like something out of Wicker Man or Crucible. And of course as usual, its never the minorities that are dangerous, its the white woke ghost walkers who claim to be on their side, while in reality they are pushing their own religious of intolerance. As if minorities didn’t suffer enough.

    1. Clampers Outside

      Proper lols when you read that the nonsense in the ‘White Fragility’ book points out that it is the woke progressives, white progressives, who are the most racist… says the author Robin DiAngelo in the book – ” I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of colour. I define white progressive as any white person who thinks he or she is not racist, or is less racist, or in the “choir”, or already “gets it”. White progressives can be the most difficult for people of colour… “

      1. Clampers Outside

        But all is not lost… The author will charge anything from $2,500 to $10,000 to teach you how not to be a racist.

        She’s not selling snake oil through her book, nah, no way, of course not….

      2. Junkface

        That book sounds hilarious! Its the most confused writer I have ever heard of, I mean come on! She is full on deranged. Everyone should read it with a horse whip in their hand and self flagellate for being white in a modern world.

      3. realPolithicks

        Hey clampers, when trump loses in November will you revert to your previous persona or continue with your right wingness?

        1. Clampers Outside

          We all live in hope he loses.

          My persona never changed.

          The Left went a bit doolally and I watched and refused to join the descent. I continue to watch its own self destruction under identity politics.
          And that’s not just me, even Noam Chomsky has being saying that for years.

          1. Nigel

            The *left* went doolally? The right, er, elected Trump? That doesn’t count as doolally and a full-on embrace of identity politicis?

          2. realPolithicks

            Ah clampers, you zoomed to the right after trump. I recall commenting on it at the time, you live it why not own it.

          3. Nigel

            He was the result of the right being doolally, not the left. Why so eager to absolve the right of responsibility for electing someone like Trump?

    1. SOQ

      I believe Andrew Moore now has an actor/actress/whatever for that part and a show is being written.

      Who writes Jarvis Dupont btw?

      1. Junkface

        Comedy is the best way to ridicule stupidity and return the culture on the crazy Left to critical thinking, enlightenment values and sanity.

        1. Nigel

          Calling the left crazy while on the right there is a massive conspiracy theory dervied from a fake story about child sex slaves in the basement of a pizza parlour that didn’t have a basement shows just how utterly out of skew everyone’s judgement is. It’s not just you, Junkface, everyone just accepts that’s the way the right is, while getting hyper-critical of the left. That’s because you can criticise the left, you can engage it in discussion, however fractious. The right will just ignore you and keep on lying to your face and making stuff up. How are you going to get them back to critical thinking, enlightenment values and sanity?

          1. Junkface

            Oh God! I consider myself on the Left. What I meant was ‘the crazy Left’, as in this new group of hysterical children on the left. Traditionally the Left wing has applauded free speech and free debate, 5 or 6 years ago everything began to change for the worst.
            Of course everyone can see that Trump loves to threaten shutting things down if they criticize him, but he never manages it. Ditto for Boris trying to silence reports he does not like. They never succeed in shutting things down and it drives them crazy.

            …but at this point in time, the crazy Left are lying all over the place and contradicting themselves to full comedic effect. That’s what someone like Titania exposes. It is now farce!

            Right wing politics have rightly been ridiculed for years in the media, to great affect. I loved the Colbert Report for this reason.

            …nothing seems to be getting through to you Nigel, you have to leave your bubble. Most friends I have are on the left and they all agree that the current situation (cancel culture) is full on crazy.

          2. Scundered

            Nigel, it’s the right who are being cancelled everywhere by the left, the left have become so intolerant they cannot debate anything anymore, they just insist anyone that disagrees with them be cancelled.

            Do you seriously feel left wing politics is open minded anymore? Or did I maybe not pick up on some sarcasm since I just don’t know you?

          3. Commenter #1

            What principles or policies associated with the left do you support?

            ETA: “Nigel, it’s the right who are being cancelled everywhere by the left, the left have become so intolerant they cannot debate anything anymore, they just insist anyone that disagrees with them be cancelled.”

            True for you. You can’t move for leftist-dominated governments and institutions these days.

          4. Junkface

            I voted for Gay marriage and abortion. I am pro social welfare systems, I have always fully supported women’s rights and independence, I am against croney capitalism , I am pro Enlightenment, Science and seeking the truth.

            I have never voted for a right wing party.

          5. Clampers Outside

            Same here, but I’m apparently…

            … drowning in far right extremism, promoting it, championing it, adopting it, embracing it, taking it up, taking it to my heart, accepting of it, welcoming of it, supporting it, backing it, giving help to it, assisting it, aiding it, am on the side of it, siding with it, am in favour of it, prefer it, abet it, voting for it, allying myself with it, standing behind it, fallen in with it, standing up for it, defending it, taking part in it, taking up the cudgels for it, sponsoring it, vouching for it, promoting it, furthering it, endorsing it, advocating it, sanctioning it, approving of it, giving my blessing to it, smile upon it, sticking up for it, throwing my weight behind it…

            … or simply, espousing the lifestyle of a Nazi.

            … so Nigel says anyway

            LOL :)

          6. Commenter #1

            I would agree with you on all those issues, JF. But I guess I would agree with Nigel that the particularly vocal voices on the left that are associated with “cancel culture” hold far less institutional power than those they are targeting. If I see literal billionaires, editors of newspapers, and/or politicians getting yelled at on Twitter, I know exactly who holds the power.

          7. Clampers Outside

            “everyone just accepts that’s the way the right is”

            … says Nigel, speaking on everyone’s behalf while citing the fringe of the Right.

          8. Nigel

            ‘…but at this point in time, the crazy Left are lying all over the place and contradicting themselves’

            Whose lying? Contradicting I get – these are complex issues, and often it’s just a matter of priorities and point of view.

            As for your being on the left – good on you. Keep your eyes on the real problem – you know, the rise of intolerant dangerous extremist right wingers who will scream about freedom of speech right up until they get into power.

            Scundered – who, on the right, has been canceled by anyone on the left? ‘Canceling,’ such as it is, only works on people with principles of some sort. Not many of those on the right at the moment.

            Clampers – you walk like a duck, talk like a duck, think like a duck and argue like a duck, so in general I’m a lot kinder to you than I would be otherwise out of sheer pity.

            Oh. You just called Donlad Trump and Boris Johnson the fringe of the right, you absolute quack-brain.

          9. Clampers Outside

            No longer denying that labeling then. Well, finally, some honest comment from you :)

          10. Nigel

            Junkface: ‘They never succeed in shutting things down and it drives them crazy.’

            They both certainly failed to shut things down properly during the pandemic and it is costing many, many lives. But someone was mean to rich and famous JK Rowling, who somehow remains both rich and famous.

          11. Nigel

            And finally –
            Scundered – ‘Do you seriously feel left wing politics is open minded anymore?’

            I certainly think there are some ideas and opinions that more and more on the left don’t think should be up for debate any more. Such as whether racism exists, or is bad, or whether trans people exist and are not a danger to children, that climate change is real and vaccines work, the equality of women, and that fascism is dangerous and evil. The fact that they don’t want to debate these things with you doesn’t mean that you don’t have the right to hold and express such ideas, it’s just that some people think they are not issues for debate on the merits. Which is their right.

          12. Clampers Outside

            Who says racism isn’t bad, only extremists ffs. All the stuff you listed are agreed with by people left, right and centre… Youve made a stance in the common area of a venn diagram :)

            Again it’s the extremes where you are going to have to go to make your point mean anything :)

          13. Nigel

            But right wing extremists are currently in charge of the US and the UK and quite a few other countries too, Clampers, or hadn’t you noticed because you were too busy checking people’s genitalia before they used the bathroom?

          14. Clampers Outside

            If you think Johnson is literally an extremist… It only shows how fat left you’ve gone.

          15. Clampers Outside

            I’d bet you think Thatcher was far-Right at this point. An extremist even.

          16. Clampers Outside

            Remember that the Left has moved so far Left, that Obama”s first campaign for President would by today’s measures be seen as Right wing, and Clinton’s too. Look it up, its quite revealing.

          17. f_lawless

            But isn’t it the modern left who, over the last 30 years or more, have all but given up on issues like wealth disparity, declining social mobility – the concentration of much of the wealth to a small minority, rising poverty, job insecurity etc? These are the issues which effect the growing majority of people whether progressively-minded or conservatively-minded. Instead of unifying behind these types of issues in order to challenge the dominance of right-wing corporate power, mainstream leftist movements have largely distracted themselves with social justice issues, identity politics, etc – including people’s genitalia as you put it.

          18. Nigel

            I personally don’t think that there’s anything that precludes both. If trans rights are under attack what use is the left if its willing to throw them under the bus?

          19. Nigel

            ‘If you think Johnson is literally an extremist… It only shows how fat left you’ve gone.?’

            Johnson’s an opportunist and a grifter, same as Trump, riding a wave of right wing extrremism.

          20. Clampers Outside

            LOL, wtf…. Its a wonder you’re able to get out of bed in the morning with all your fear mongering. Name one far-Right group in the UK that Boris is supporting or riding the wave of…. Where do you get this sh**?

          21. Nigel

            ‘Remember that the Left has moved so far Left, that Obama”s first campaign for President would by today’s measures be seen as Right wing, ‘

            Obama and Clinton were always hawkish centrists. Plenty of people said so at the time. It’s just that by the standards of US politics that makes them veritable communists. However, they were liberal on social issues, and did not deny things like climate change, and thought the environment needed protection from rapacious capitalists, which goes a long way with me.

          22. Clampers Outside

            You agree then that they wouldn’t get elected on their campaigns if they were running today. Campaigns which were once seen as Left wing but are now considered Right wing. That’s was my point.

            The Left is moving far-Left all the time and you are clearly in support of that.

          23. Clampers Outside

            Sure she was that’s why she supported abortion rights and the decriminalisation of homosexuality…. in 1966. Bleedin’ extremist, eh Nigel… >_<

          24. SOQ

            @f_lawless- Hard to have a conversion on this subject with Nigel’s white noise but anyways.

            All the real left issues like housing and healthcare have been hollowed out by his group whom in the main are actually very affluent and privileged- which is why Andrew Moore’s Titania McGrath character has struck such a chord.

            Prince Harry is now left wing apparently- preaching from his mansion. So people are naturally going to look elsewhere for something more real.

          25. Nigel

            Clampers – uh, Brexit?
            And, yes, Obama’s and Clinton’s centrism is unsatisfactory to a lot of people now, especially when they see how ineffective they were against the roaring extremism of Trump and the Republicans.

            Flawless – if the left have failed in those other areas, it’s not because of social justice issues, it’s because they capitulate to the right in those areas, whereas those affected by social justice issues have no choice but to keep standing up for themselves. Their reward is to be scapegoated for failures in other areas, apparently, even to be blamed for the rise of Trumpism, an absolutely extraordinary claim by Clampers and others.

            Clampers again – you’re complaining that the left is moving hard left while also complaining they’re not left enough. And Thatcher wasn’t right wing? Tell it to the miners.

            SOQ: ‘All the real left issues like housing and healthcare have been hollowed out by his group’

            Absolute balderdash. They’ve been hollowed out by successive right wing or centre right governments while the left wing parties stayed carefully out of power or even gave them a helping hand. Blaming minorities and minority issues for this is utterly hateful.

      2. class wario

        the articles in whichever red top are the absolute nadir of this particular ‘bit’. 500 words made up of seemingly unrelated sentences where the author progressively lets the mask slip more and more until they’re just complaining about x or y perceived grievance.

  4. Vanessanelle

    Cancel Culture
    Is insta gen talk for what was known in my day as
    Out with so and so

    Like We’re out with each other or oh I’m out with X cause she supports Nemo
    When explaining why you weren’t talking to someone anymore

    1. Ghost of Yep

      Did you try to get a parent/sibling sacked when you were “out with” them?

    2. Mick

      My father-in-law used to say to Mrs. Mick when she was a young wan and had a fight with her friend, “Are ye not heeding anymore?”
      Same thing.

  5. Dr.Fart

    the whole cancel thing keeps ol’ Farty looking over his shoulder i can tell you.

  6. jamesjoist

    Seems to me that people on both sides are addicted to ‘Righteous Outrage ‘ .

  7. :-Joe

    Too many people, once just merely atomised into simple categories for propaganda, now digitally surveiled, profiled into a detailed, specific granular set of identifiable wants, needs, fears and desires…

    A colossal mass of polarised people with nothing much to say of any importance, lashing out instantly without thinking. Often without the capacity for rational thought, shouting at the top of their anger from the safety of a digital avatar of not who they are but what they want you to believe they can be…

    All attacking their percieved major existential threat of the moment, always their idealogical opposite and all of them making deafeningly loud but strangely empty noise at the same time…

    a.k.a. “How to get people to pay attention and keep on clicking even more passionately so that it can be converted into dolla-bill’s y’al.”.
    -The Silly-con valley 101 playbook of staying relevant and making money from a known negative effect on global human mental health.

    TLDR : As the great song’ s always keep saying in black and white…

    Don’t worry…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_ebdER-Egk

    Where we’re goin… ! …la la la…
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIfFJCfCiWg

    Oh, and btw..
    The gurgle/CRAPple API partnership and app’s that use it is not designed or intended to be useful for covid19 track and trace, it’s part of a worldwide globalist move to normalise surveillance in the west, in (new world)order to compete with China’s advancing cabability in AI.

    Here’s some proof, only part of the puzzle obtained by FOI request by EPIC The Electronic privacy information centre.

    Source
    https://www.epic.org/foia/epic-v-ai-commission/

    The playbook for converting the west, primarily ‘murica into chinese style digital authoritarianism for corporate competitiveness.
    (i.e. So already corrupt elite oligarchical f***’s get even more obscenely wealthy.at your expense.)
    https://www.epic.org/foia/epic-v-ai-commission/EPIC-19-09-11-NSCAI-FOIA-20200331-3rd-Production-pt9.pdf

    Fourth industrial revolution.. Anyone?

    Anthropocene?..

    The new covid19 app is another scam. It won’t work and you’re making it all worse by downloading and using it.
    – Educate yourself and become Online / Digital / Internet, Privacy / Security, Civil & Human Rights.. literate just on the basics at least.. Or stay as you are, claiming ignorance and being part of the problem.

    Debate that if you dare !..

    :-J – https://www.privacytools.io

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