[asploder]

It’s interesting that the author considers the conceptual framework of microaggressions spurious, while describing his negative experiences as a conservative Googler in terms of what a feminist might describe as microaggressions. To further undermine his own point, he asserts that several harms against conservatives have been caused by these microaggressions.

The difference between effective negative feedback and harassment/microaggressions is the former encapsulates a desire for the person receiving the feedback to succeed. Or, in the feminist lexicon, empathy.

[Hasknewbie]

I think the author is implicitly referring to more than simply unpleasant interactions at work.

As someone who is neither American nor conservative, I have to give it to them that there is a level of virulence from some on the left that is far beyond mere microagression, but is not acknowledged as such: there are continuous attempts to ban some speeches on campuses. If a ban fails it is picketed (which is OK), sometimes violently (which is not): speakers may receive death threats, and so can attendees. At first nobody cared because it was happening to far right hate-clowns (not that this would be a good reason to ignore this in thebfirst place), but this has drifted toward anything non-left, and now is even happening to people who do not toe the line, however liberal they may be (cf. the edifying story of Bret Weinstein).

Are there conservatives whining at things that are in fact tiny microagressions, and the hypocrisy is funny? Absolutely. But there is also a legitimately more dangerous phenomenon that is slowly growing, and the worrying part is that it is not being acknowledged by the 'moderate' left. The fact that political crusaders on their side routinely attempt to ban free speech, or send death threats, should be very much a concern to progressives. Instead it is oddly glossed over, and/or lumped in with microagressions or counter-demonstrations.

During Obama's first term people on the left could not understand how the American right could tolerate the crazies from the Tea Party and were looking the other way whenever their insane ideas were uttered. But today we are seeing the very same behaviour on the left when these psychotic episodes pop up. That is not normal. Regressive and authoritarian tendencies should be acknowledged and denounced, regardless of what side of the political spectrum they come from.

[Pulcinella]

So what you are saying is that there should be safe spaces for conservatives to express themselves? That conservatives should be welcomed for their diversity? That conservstives should be given a participation trophy and honored for their special snowflake ideas?

[Hasknewbie]

I am going to pretend my previous post was poorly written so as not to offend your sensibilities.

When political activists, regardless of who they are and what they're against, want to ban a meeting because someone they disagree with is going to make a speech there, when they invade a venue with bullhorns so loud people have to leave, when they're sending death threats, or starting physical altercations, or setting things on fire, they're not behaving like progressives or conservatives, but like fascists. Regardless of what side of the aisle they're claiming to be from. Physical suppression of opposing speech is in fact textbook fascism.

There are legitimate ways to protests people and ideas you disagree with in a democratic society: boycotting an event. Writing against it. Picketing or demonstrating/counter-demonstrating. Rest assured you don't have to give them any trophy.

But what adults do is, and I know this is going to sound shocking, they talk to each other. Noam Chomsky debated William F. Buckley. William F. Buckley debated Gore Vidal (and famously lost in the eye of the nation by precisely failing to uphold civilized discourse). Malcolm X debated Martin Luther King Jr, and Martin Luther King Jr debated James J. Kilpatrick. Here in 2017 Cenk Uygur debated Ben Shapiro (...yes, this does not have the same ring to it as 1960s debates).

It is quite embarrassing that, almost 60 years ago, Doctor King could debate a segregationist on live television, while a visible segment of today's youth is reduced to hysterically yelling into a bullhorn (or worse) until people are forced to leave, just because of the perceived slight that someone is going to give a speech.

As a European who knows political trends tend to spill over across the ocean (both ways. We're still sorry for having given you a case of Acute Thatcherism, America), I am quite worried to see fascists not being opposed and denounced by the left simply because this time they are advancing under the mask of progressivism.

[wfo]

>We're still sorry for having given you a case of Acute Thatcherism, America

I've never heard a European apologize for this and didn't realize how much I wanted to until I did; thank you, we hope to one day recover.

And I agree with you to some extent. But many 'conservatives' today are not approaching these issues with any kind of intellectual honesty or a willingness to respect their opponents. When I think campus protests I think Milo, who spews hate with every turn and is in no way intellectual or thoughtful. I think of Richard Spencer, who should be shouted down. Our society hates neo-nazis and while we shouldn't be violent towards them, the clearer it can get that they are universally loathed the better. I should not have to sit and listen to someone advocate gassing minorities, for example, and sit there and politely debate. Their positions aren't reasonable and acknowledging them as a serious intellectual position and putting them on a stage is doing them a favor they should not get.

[ThrowawayR2]

> So what you are saying is that there should be safe spaces for conservatives to express themselves? That conservatives should be welcomed for their diversity? That conservstives should be given a participation trophy and honored for their special snowflake ideas?

Good grief. Diversity of every imaginable kind is good except for diversity of thought apparently. Whatever happened to "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.", which used to be one of the core principles of liberalism? Has the identity politics-driven faction of the left fallen to the point where that has been abandoned too?

And even if principle weren't a consideration (somehow), consider that even if one chooses to ignore conservative speech and attempt to deny conservatives platforms from which they may speak, they do not magically wink out of existence. In fact, it may galvanize them, as the Democratic Party found to its sorrow in recent elections. Continuing to exclude and deny the beliefs of half the country is a recipe for political suicide, so the sooner that the mainstream left expels the identity politics faction, the better.

[wfo]

A simple "yes" would suffice. All you have to do is admit that diversity is good and you'll get your diversity of ideology there for free. All you have to do is admit that creating safe spaces can be good or necessary, and you can argue for safe spaces for conservatives to speak their minds.

The point isn't that you shouldn't be allowed to express yourself (you should! There should be a safe space for conservatives on campus! There are many in fact, they're called the local frat house, young republicans club, economics study group, bible study) the point is that when you argue that you should be able to do so you use the same arguments conservatives so nastily deride like diversity, participation trophies, snowflakes, safe spaces, etc.

[ThrowawayR2]

> A simple "yes" would suffice.

Kind of you to put words in my mouth but I'm quite able speak for myself. My answer is a resounding "NO". As a liberal, I say we should all find the notion of "safe spaces" odious and contemptible; while we are not required to accept all ideas, there is no idea that may not be discussed and analyzed out in the open, no matter how wrong or unpalatable it may be.

What will it take for your particular faction to comprehend that you cannot _exclude_ your way to power? How many more elections must you lose before it sinks in?

[wfo]

If you think Trump winning had anything to do with safe spaces or whatever gamergate alt-right concerns the 18-34 tech male demographic cares about instead of blatant abject failures of the Democratic party (nominating a horrible candidate and running a horrible campaign), well I've got a bridge to sell you.

Nobody should let Trump winning convince them "well, maybe we should have been more racist".

Safe spaces are not contemptible at all; people who deny them are. Who are you to say I cannot organize with my friends in a place where I let people talk about their problems free of criticism and hate for a moment? Maybe a rape survivor wants to spend a while talking about her experiences with people who are willing to be supportive without having alt-right protesters screaming at her calling her a slut and telling her she deserved it? You can pretend this is about intellectualism, but we all know it isn't; they are about hate and harassment and vile people spewing vile vitriol at others.

And I don't advocate excluding ideas, rather refusing to give ideas that don't deserve respect or attention respect or attention.

[will4274]

It's not a yes. A safe space is a safe free from criticism. Conservatives don't want or need safe spaces. They need spaces free from literal violence and from social violence (calls to firing, disruption of free assemblies, ostrichsization, etc.). Trying to equate these things does not make you clever.

> All you have to do is admit that diversity is good and you'll get your diversity of ideology there for free.

You seemed to have missed the point. The author of the treatise lives in an environment where diversity is widely seen as good and does not feel that he enjoys diversity of ideology. Your point is already disproven by OP.

[wfo]

>A safe space is a safe free from criticism. Conservatives don't want or need safe spaces. They need spaces free from literal violence and from social violence (calls to firing, disruption of free assemblies, ostrichsization, etc.).

No, they don't want a safe space. They want something much more than that, they want a platform to be given to them. Conservatives are free to sit in private in a frat house or country club and talk about how women are dumb all they want (they do, in fact, all around the country!). But of course they want more. They want to be able to say whatever they damn please, no matter how nasty or non-intellectual, and have people listen to them. They want universities to pay for their security and host them in huge lecture halls, giving a tacit endorsement of them as intellectual figures. They want to be able to publish a manifesto at their work describing how they think their coworkers of a certain gender are too stupid to be here and before you call me sexist look at these statistics I am citing while having no qualifications to talk with any expertise about any of these issues.

I actually don't particularly agree with his firing, because I fundamentally disagree with allowing for the tyranny that is the non-unionized American workplace. Imagine if he were poor and couldn't immediately sprint into the alt-right women-hating neo nazi youtube circuit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN1vEfqHGro) and immediately apply for another tech job. In that case, speaking his mind politically would be suicide (perhaps literally, as he'd lose his health insurance).

So yes, I too disagree with allowing business to fire their employees without cause -- google shouldn't be able to fire its workers for their political positions, and this should be solidified explicitly in a union agreement or government regulation. Google also shouldn't be allowed to force their employees to submit to drug tests, for example. Or to fire their employees for not working weekends. Or for "not stepping up enough" or for a lack of "culture fit".

[Moshe_Silnorin]

Summers was put in a struggle session and fired for pointing out an obvious hypothesis that has psychometric backing.

Your ideology is ascendant. Congrats. But please don't tell me destroying someone's earning capacity is a micro aggression.

And know, this can't last. This strange moral fad will pass: our modern Lysenkoism is about to be killed by cognitive genomics.

The lies require constant maintenance while the truth drips in from every pore.

[malandrew]

Thank you for introducing me to the term Lysenkoism.

[amiga-workbench]

I don't see what's micro about losing your job for wrongthink.

[rifung]

> I don't see what's micro about losing your job for wrongthink.

I admit this is my first time hearing the term "wrongthink" but I assume this means something along the lines of "thinking the wrong thing".

If that's true, then nobody loses their job for wrongthink. What they lose it for is actually acting on it, which i guess you could call wrongdoing.

Take for example, sexual harassment. It's okay to find your coworker sexually attractive, and also okay to think about them in a sexual manner, but to openly say something without regard for whether it would make them uncomfortable is not okay.

[amiga-workbench]

Wrongthink is a play on some of the Newspeak terms in George Orwell's 1984, it roughly equates to a thoughtcrime.

Sexual harassment, discrimination, racism and personal attacks absolutely do not belong in the workplace.

The usual advice is to keep politics out of the workplace, but "progressive" ideals are often the default with nobody batting an eyelid. You run the risk of being marked as a non culture fit if you ever voice opposition to or question "progressive" talking points or assertions. I'm not even talking about actionable slights against other staff here, just a difference of opinion which people seem to interpret as a personal attack.

An example would be somebodies thoughts on affirmative action or other methodologies to try and create a more "diverse" environment. Regardless of your intentions, I still see it as a kind of discrimination. I dread to think how uncomfortable I would be knowing that I was a diversity hire, and some arbitrary box I fit in was the reason for my hiring rather than my skills and experience. Its why I have kept it quiet at work that I'm gay, I don't want people walking on eggshells around me, thinking I'm going to flip out at some perceived slight.

I personally also see the diversity-friendly hiring practises as a bit of a bodge, if you believe that under-representation of certain groups is not the correct, natural equilibrium of how things should be, wouldn't it make more sense to try and fix it at the root cause, during peoples social development and education? I understand the value of role models but it seems like there are probably more direct factors at play.

As a child I can't think of anything that would make you more of a social paraih than an interest that is considered "nerdy", from my experience boys get it a bit easier with such interests and attract a bit less derision. Girls seem to be even less understanding when it comes to that kind of interest, especially from other girls. I can very easily see how that kind of social feedback would make you think twice about pursuing certain interests. I didn't really have that many friends growing up, and largely didn't give a shit about what other people thought of me, so I pursued whatever I found interesting and useful.

Sorry if this comment is a bit scatterbrained, its a bit difficult for me to collect my thoughts on the subject, there is a lot to talk about and I feel the need to try and justify my views before I get pecked apart for being a bigot.

[rifung]

I work for Google, opinions are my own.

I completely agree that affirmative action kind of backfires in some ways. I'm not entirely sure what the solution to that is.

> I dread to think how uncomfortable I would be knowing that I was a diversity hire, and some arbitrary box I fit in was the reason for my hiring rather than my skills and experience.

This was actually brought up by a woman at one of the TGIFs at Google and the response was that we don't hire people just because they fit into some arbitrary category. I do think that we make an attempt to get a more diverse group of people into the application pipeline, but you certainly wouldn't be hired just for the sake of diversity. That doesn't stop people, even within the company, from being misinformed however.

> As a child I can't think of anything that would make you more of a social paraih than an interest that is considered "nerdy", from my experience boys get it a bit easier with such interests and attract a bit less derision. Girls seem to be even less understanding when it comes to that kind of interest, especially from other girls. I can very easily see how that kind of social feedback would make you think twice about pursuing certain interests. I didn't really have that many friends growing up, and largely didn't give a shit about what other people thought of me, so I pursued whatever I found interesting and useful.

I think that Google does try to do this. This is why we have many programs encouraging women to get into CS majors and the such, because like you say, it's difficult to get more diverse hires if the application pool is not diverse.

[mos_basik]

It's from Orwell's 1984: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime

>nobody loses their job for wrongthink

By definition, to use the term to describe a behavior at all implies that someone (specifically who depends on the wording, of course) considers that behavior termination-worthy.

[Edit: I'm having trouble putting this into words. Let me try again.

The point of using this term is to remind your listener of the novel and imply that the situation being discussed is similar, i.e., that there exists an near-omnipotent authority that is willing and capable to punish you for actions that any reasonable person would consider innocuous.

In 1984, it would be Ingsoc punishing people for thinking party-proscribed thoughts. In the current context, it might be BigCo punishing people for expressing their thoughts about hiring practices.

One could go on all day about there being a difference between thinking a thought and emailing your company, whether that difference is quantitative or qualitative, and whether the comparison to the novel is valid. But then one would be missing the point, which is simply that whoever used the term considers the comparison valid.]

[rhizome]

actions that any reasonable person would consider innocuous.

What is said in the post is certainly the kind of thing it's reasonable to lose friends and possibly family members over, and certainly acquaintances. The kind of thing you hear at a party and decide not to make friends with someone. Despite it being -- or maybe because it's -- not even very well argued, if it's even possible to do so, which I don't think it is.

It's funny that work is pretty much the only place it's proposed that the words not entertain a reaction. This person affects hiring decisions and performance reviews!

[will4274]

> nobody loses their job for wrongthink

Except, of course, that people actually do. We have laws against termination for political viewpoints in this country and hundreds of cases are successfully prosecuted every year. People do lose their jobs for wrongthink and sometimes they win lawsuits and their former employers are prosecuted for it. Of course, as these things go, some people also probably lose their job for the same reason and fail to pursue or win a lawsuit.

[humanrebar]

...or being officially stereotyped (privileged, overrepresented). Or being explicitly excluded (mentioned several times in the article).

[rhizome]

Do you believe in the term, "culture fit?" How Google responds to this describes theirs. If you say that "it's different," or, "it depends on the department," then that's just a difference of degree, not of kind.

[amiga-workbench]

Not personally, no. But the majority of workplaces do, and one has to act in accordance with that and self censor.

I'm more interested in outcomes rather than the way somebody works and thinks.

[skywhopper]

Who has lost their job for wrongthink?

[defen]

Nobel Prize winner James Watson

Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt

Harvard President Lawrence Summers

are the three that immediately come to mind.

[chocolateboy]

Several more are listed here: https://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-bad...

[HarryHirsch]

I've heard from several people who knew James Watson personally that he was completely off his rocker. He lost his position because he was a total embarrassment, this wasn't the PC police at work. No opinion about the other names.

[defen]

I believe it, although that makes me think they should have found a more dignified way to retire him than turn him into a pariah.

[throwanem]

Brendan Eich.

[DalaiObama]

When extremely powerful people like that lose their jobs, everyone else gets the message.

[Spivak]

What message? That you either think what the majority tells you to think, or they'll ruin you? Not exactly winning hearts and minds.

[jacobolus]

Summers lost his job as university president because he alienated a significant portion of the faculty by making dramatic political decisions without buy-in from the rest of the community. (Firing popular administrative staff, diverting budget from long-running projects with internal political support, getting in aggressive fights with influential faculty members, etc.) Overall he made for a divisive and relatively ineffective leader of the university. His poorly considered sex differences comments were just a convenient excuse to put someone more politically savvy and charismatic in as a leader.

Additionally, it’s hard to feel bad for him as the way he “lost his job” was by being offered an extraordinarily prestigious named professorship (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University_Professor), giving him the ability to work on pretty much whatever he wants for the rest of his life, with a great salary, benefits, etc., and with few required duties.

[defen]

Do you think he would not have been fired for his comments if he had been popular / well-regarded in his role as president? What does it mean that you can basically be terrible at your job but not get fired until you express a minor deviation from orthodox thought?

[jacobolus]

Yes, that is correct. I don’t think the same comments would have gotten him removed as president if he hadn’t already otherwise lost political support from many in the faculty. Obviously even a widely supported and popular university president making such tactless comments would have still created a public firestorm, but I don’t think it would have been an insurmountable problem.

I think he would have been removed (or removed himself) as university president sooner or later regardless given his other political blunders, but it might have taken a few years longer. As I mentioned, the comments about sex differences provided a convenient excuse and rallying point for his critics.

I wouldn’t say he was “terrible” at his job. Naïve, undiplomatic, and bull-headed, with good intentions but without enough political skill to persuade his opponents to follow him or enough empathy to understand their objections and moderate his positions.

Disclaimer: I was a first year undergraduate at the time, and my understanding comes from talking to various people at Harvard during and after the controversy, including both critics and supporters of Summers. I wasn’t well enough connected to be the ideal first-hand source about this topic.

[rocky1138]

There was also that scientist involved in the Mars landings that wore an anime shirt.

[sobani]

I only know of the case of a Matt Taylor, who was part of the Rosetta project (land a probe on a comet) that was branded a sexist for wearing a shirt given to him by a woman.

[rocky1138]

Yes! You're right. We are speaking about the same person. My mistake.

[gspetr]

PyCon 2013 joke incident might also qualify. Everyone lost there - both the accuser and the accused lost their jobs.

[smsm42]

I think there's a bit of a difference in conservatives complaining about their ideas not being honestly considered and being excluded because of (perceived) groupthink, and claims like saying "America is the land of opportunity" or wearing a sombrero or making a burrito while being white as "aggression", micro or not. If the question were about some people, out of sexist or other considerations, would exclude feminists from being considered the part of intellectual discourse, that complaint would not get much pushback. Most reasonable people would agree that feminists should have equal chance to present their case, and for it to be considered on merits. What gets significantly more pushback is widespread attempt to use "microagression" framework to police everyday conduct and "micro"-criminalize or shame routine behavior - food choices, activity choices, clothing choices, even how a person sits - it all can be "microagression". Microagressions are[1]: "Where are you from?", "America is a melting pot", "I believe the most qualified person should get the job.", presence of liquor stores in certain neighborhoods, commenting on certain behaviors (note there how telling person of one race about being loud and another about being quiet is aggression, but the reverse is not, because obviously everything depends on the race!) posting a funny picture about Obama[2], or "Statements that indicate that a White person does not want to or need to acknowledge race" and "statement made when bias is denied"[3]. I think there's a bit of a difference here between the complaints.

[1] http://sph.umn.edu/site/docs/hewg/microaggressions.pdf [2] http://time.com/32618/microaggression-is-the-new-racism-on-c... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...

[santoshalper]

I noticed that as well. I find it interesting that the alt-right has started to embrace so much of modern feminist/liberal terminology and tacitly accepted so many of the premises.

The modern alt-right conservative: "I don't believe in safe spaces, but please stop bullying me!"

[twh270]

This is incredibly disingenuous. Much of the left considers simple disagreement to be micro-aggression, while at the same time finding it perfectly acceptable to launch hate-filled screeds of animosity and hatred at anyone who doesn't toe the line, e.g. "You're a fucking animal that deserves to be put down!!"

Your comment implicitly supports this sort of misbehavior, implying that any complaint by an "alt-righter" is just whining and carries no legitimacy.

Both the far left and alt-right have adopted extremist positions and in general have nothing good to say about each other. Please don't legitimize hateful, unacceptable behavior from the left just because the alt-right has learned to play some of the same games.

[freshhawk]

As an actual leftist, and the type of person who is on HN, I'd like to say that what you are describing is not "the left" or "far left" by any reasonable definition. You are describing neoliberal centrists, which can still contain extremists (are we calling this the "alt-center" now? I'm not sure, it's kinda dumb). Political spectrum and how extreme the tactics one uses are orthogonal.

[smhost]

> This is incredibly disingenuous.

> Much of the left considers simple disagreement to be micro-aggression...

Tone down on the hypocrisy. If you want your side's arguments to be evaluated fairly, don't make ridiculous oversimplifications of the other side's positions.

[smsm42]

Reading the lists of micro-aggressions, like this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... one can not fail to notice that some of them are clearly political disagreements and that disagreeing with the left tribe dogmas is declared to be micro-aggression there. I can agree that this is ridiculous, but apparently whoever wrote those lists does not think so.

[DalaiObama]

Have you tried actually disagreeing with leftists?

Many can handle it fine and have a decent discussion. But many will explode in self righteous rage and do all the things people blinded by hate do.

[LyndsySimon]

This is my experience as well. On the right, extremists tend to sort of "clam up" and just stop engaging in meaningful dialogue. On the left, they tend to attack the person challenging them.

I say this as as extreme libertarian, so I have my share of disagreements with both.

[twh270]

It's hardly a 'simplification' when people on the left regularly use the kind of speech I described to attack people who disagree with them. The right is just as guilty, but the comment I responded to was giving the left a pass on it, which is what I object to.

[rhizome]

They weren't giving the left a pass on it, they said the offended-right was using the same language.

[humanrebar]

To be fair, it was a reply to a comment pointing out hypocrisy with at least a bit of snark.

[freshhawk]

I'm not surprised by it at all, because I think it's not that they have started to embrace the premises but always did and used them as the foundation for their ideology.

It is, to generalize, a group of white, middle class people who were raised in this modern feminist/neo-liberal framework that struggled to translate very academic ideas into a pop culture suitable form. Those poor approximations got mutated by internet forum culture (tumblr and 4chan most famously, but it happened everywhere).

The alt-right people looked at this incoherent pop-ideology and, not totally unfairly, saw it as saying that race and culture are the same and are very real, unless you are white. Sex and gender are the same, are real for men but a constructed form of oppression for women. It's not a fair description of the actual ideas, but the pop-ideology was and is an incoherent mess. So a group of mostly middle class, mostly white and mostly men rejected the parts they didn't like and used the incoherent aspects that benefited them as weapons. The parts they did like remain unexamined, so while they ridicule the language used by their "enemies" they still think inside that ideology.

[sjg007]

Could you explicate the last part a little more? I'm interested in understanding the argument but I don't quite follow.

[humanrebar]

I just commented about this elsewhere, but my take is that some people who previously resisted identity politics finally threw up their hands and decided to accept it, as someone being attacked. So the hypocrisy and contradictions are better understood as protecting their own people from aggression.

As in, the substance of the argument is less important than the parties involved.

As in, "So women have special interest groups and dedicated clubs? Fine. Then it's OK for men to work to get their seat at the table, too." This explains a lot of the eagerness for leaders who know how to "fight". It also explains the lack of caring around ideological hypocrisy. It's like lawyer logic on some level:

"My client was not in town that night. And if he was in town, he did not borrow the mower. And if he did borrow the mower, it was with the consent of the plaintiff. And at any rate, the mower was already broken. And if it wasn't already broken, it broke itself."

...the important part of the argument is the defense of that particular client, not the logical coherence of the narrative.

[freshhawk]

There is that disingenuous aspect to it for sure. But there are true believers as well.

To take racism as an example, if you grew being told that racism means race-based prejudice and it is wrong and that one can be racist against anyone but a white person, you say "that's ridiculous".

The actual idea behind that is that racism is more than simple prejudice and crucially includes a societal power differential between two groups. And that race is a constructed concept and very important because society is structured around it, valid or not.

The pop explanation implies we are engaging in collective punishment against whites and men because of current and historical wrongs. That's wrong, but a lot of people on every side believe it. You almost couldn't have designed a situation better to create a new white nationalist and anti-feminist movement if you tried.

[freshhawk]

Fair point, I was trying to keep it short as no one wants to read essay length comments. Which aspect of that last part? The messy pop-culture version of academic discussions of race/gender, the alt-right use of them, both?

[humanrebar]

> I find it interesting that the alt-right has started to embrace so much of modern feminist/liberal terminology and tacitly accepted so many of the premises.

The alt-right, to some degree, is a movement that has accepted the framework of progressive identity politics and has decided that they better start fighting for themselves, too. The complaint about safe spaces is an argument about equality and power ("If I don't get safe spaces, nobody does!") than an argument from principle.

I find the whole thing distasteful, but I can understand why if someone finds identity politics a foregone conclusion why they would start fighting on the battle lines they think were drawn for them.

So I'm not sure how to get out of this mess, but I think a first step is trying to understand people, even if they're wrong.

[smsm42]

There's a difference between asking not to be fired because somebody overheard and misunderstood your conversation as being "microagression" and asking mentioning anything that might upset you to be proscribed. In fact, the persons doing the latter are very likely to be the perpetrators, and not the victims, in the former. So it's completely logical - what they are saying is "we do not believe in declaring everything that we disagree with is violence and should be purged from existence, and we do not want to be purged from existence because we think so". I think there's nothing wrong in such opinion.

[LyndsySimon]

Many on the right now use that terminology to implicitly underscore contradictions in those belief systems.

I think it would be a mistake to believe that they subscribe to those viewpoints. Rather, a core characteristic of conservativism is a desire for rules to be followed and equally enforced. Pointing out places where the left is inconsistent is their way of discrediting those views.

[throwanem]

What surprises you about this? Historically speaking, it seems high time for a synthesis to arise.

I'm not sure what you find incompatible in "I don't believe in safe spaces" and "please stop bullying me". Hiding from bullies is a tacit concession. Confronting them is not. You might confront a bully and lose, but you might confront a bully and win, too.

Many at least - I think most if not all - who embraced the "alt-right" label, before its cynical and unjust equation by their enemies with Nazism, perceive themselves to be and have been bullied by those with whom they have the intolerable temerity to disagree. But those safe spaces which they have attempted to establish have not been permitted the conventional inviolability, but rather been gleefully invaded and their inhabitants shamed and castigated without scruple. Why "believe in safe spaces" when you are not permitted to have them, but rather encouraged with great firmness to accept that only once you have surrendered your dissent, and publicly abased yourself in hope of expiation for the sins you now forswear, will there be even a chance you may be allowed to feel safe?

As in every case where bullies run rampant and are unchecked by any impartial force majeure, the only passive defense has been invisibility, and it is very hard to remain unseen indefinitely. Your enemies only have to be good, or lucky, for a moment. You have to be good, and lucky, all the time. When you inevitably slip, or when your good fortune inevitably runs out, you are at their mercy. The social, educational, vocational, and even legal consequences can be severe - and, worse, it is not in your power whether they will be or won't be. But, like any bully, they're probably going to work you over that much harder for making them go to the effort of catching you, instead of politely submitting yourself for violation like a good little victim.

And as with any bully, there's no merit in what they do to you. No doubt every bully imagines himself enforcing some sort of right ordering upon society, in whatever sphere his power enables him to encompass. But this is a lie. The bully does what he does to his victim because his victim cannot or will not be what the bully demands he be. But even this is a lie. In truth the bully does what he does because he can, and because it's easy, and because it brings him pleasure.

Some grow out of this over time. Not all do. And power is seductive. It can easily betray you into doing things to others which you would never suffer upon yourself. It can give you any number of reasons for the former to seem virtuous even though the latter is iniquitous. The danger comes in the difficulty of differentiating this betrayal from reality. There are times when it truly is virtuous to, for example, break someone's nose, and times when it truly is iniquitous. Standing up to a bully, for example, bears virtue. Imagining one stands up to a bully, while in fact behaving as a bully oneself, does not. It is vitally important for everyone, but especially everyone with the power to crowdsource the sort of vengeful mob that can so easily destroy someone's social and professional and educational life, to bear this distinction sharply in mind. To fail in so doing risks erring into shameful, unjust, indeed frankly abusive behavior. And I suspect there are few on any side of any political divide who would be willing to argue that abusive behavior merits tolerance from those whom it would make its victims.