Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "So, You Think You're Tolerant? | 5 Minute Video" video.
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I was responding to this sentence:
" If you make Nazi salutes, you can hardly cry that you're being picked up when people call you a Nazi. "
That makes sense only if you assume that the persons complaining about being called Nazis are the persons giving the Nazi salutes. We don't complain when people acting like Nazis get called Nazis (nor do the Nazis, they're proud of it). We complain when Trump supporters are being called Nazis across the board. And it is not just Trump. They called Reagan a fascist, they called Bush Jr. a fascist. The escalating violence is a natural outgrowth of the escalating rhetoric. If X is a Nazi, it's ok to hit him a biff, to beat him, to shoot him. If words are a "microaggression" then aggression in response is called for.
"in America at the moment the most serious abuses are certainly coming from the Republican side."
Are Republicans attacking their opposition at opposition political rallies? Are Republicans doxing people and harrassing them at their homes and in public places? Are Republicans seeking to deplatform and censor their opposition? Are Democrat congressmen getting shot by Republicans like Republicans are by Democrats?
I know this polemic mode seems justified to you, because it is what you are taught in school nowadays in place of critical thinking. Rather than go to the effort of engaging your opponent's arguments and data, you give yourself an excuse for dismissing it. This is Bulverism:
Quote from Bulverism by C. S. Lewis:
You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly.
In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism". Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — "Oh you say that because you are a man." "At that moment", E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the natural dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.
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+mankeytoes
"How is Fox not mainstream media?"
When all the newsrooms of the broadcast media, public funded broadcasting, a significant bloc of newspapers, all the cable news outlets save one, and the gatekeepers of the Internet are an opinion monolith against which to balance 1 cable news network, a few web sites, and a majority of talk radio, the term "mainstream media" is a useful, indeed vital, term for speaking clearly about the situation. Sorry -Bigfoot Hawk, you replied after I started writing.
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+mankytoes
"I mean it isn't normal, is it? I don't remember either Bushes or Reagan having their supporters do that."
By "having them do" I presume you don't mean "encouraging them to do"
"Maybe because you aren't Europeans?"
That has something to do with it. Nationalist parties with racial overtones are a significant voting bloc in many European countries. They are not so here. By the most tendentiously pessimistic estimates, the KKK and the Neo-Nazi and racist skinhead groups all together have less than a million members nationwide in the US, a nation of about 350 million. They are not a political power, they are a universally despised tiny minority, despised by Repubs/ Dems/ Trumpers/ never Trumpers, by all and sundry. They are NOT a POLITICAL player here. While extremely irritating, the worse they can do is a bit of amateur violence and terrorism on a small scale, a relatively minor police matter not an existential crisis. While it is a shame that they manage to ruin their own lives and damn their own souls, they are impotent to do much else.
"I hope you apply the same logic to your opponents, like not labelling people communists just because they wave communist flags."
Dude, by now it must be clear, even to you, that you are being deliberately obtuse. You would be justified in assuming, to first order, that people giving Nazi salutes in a political rally are Nazis. You ARE NOT justified in saying "Trump supporters" or "a significant number of Trump supporters" are Nazis when there ARE NOT a significant number of Trump supporters making Nazi salutes or supporting Nazi policies, like state control of major industries, abortion, racial discrimination in hiring, wage and price controls, censorship, criminalization of opposing parties and views, using the law enforcement and military for partisan political purposes, and an increase in the power and money centralized in the government. All of these policies are the policies the Democrats have in common with the Nazis of yore, which conservatives and Trumpistas oppose.
"To survive in the world you've got to recognise danger signs, it's in the most base parts of our programming, and a Nazi salute is just about the biggest red flag you can get."
What are we supposed to do? Drop our political principles because some bad guys say they're on our side? Don't worry, we are watching our house, look to yours. You act like this slander of yours is new! The leftists have been calling conservatives and Republicans racists for over 50 years now in this country. It is a deception tactic that has run its course. Bulverism, as I said. "You can fool all of the people some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time." - FDR who was an expert on the subject.
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