[backpropaganda]

What if they propose a 100% peaceful process? Imagine something like apartheid, i.e. segregated schools, restaurants, etc. There is literally no violence here. Are people allowed to believe in a different set of political axioms (isolationism against multiculturalsim/diversity)?

Note that I'm talking about what stance government and its institutions should take against such rebellion, not who you invite to your private party.

Also, these are not my political beliefs. Just trying to see where the line is being drawn here.

[jacquesm]

> What if they propose a 100% peaceful process? Imagine something like apartheid, i.e. segregated schools, restaurants, etc. There is literally no violence here.

Are you kidding? A 100% peaceful process that will segregate society and return to the days we have fortunately left behind us and you believe that the perpetrators would not use force?

Majority decides that all people of color have to leave and they will just have to abide?

You're going to be in for a rude surprise if you think that would be without violence.

> Are people allowed to believe in a different set of political axioms (isolationism against multiculturalsim/diversity)?

Yes they are, but unfortunately for those people their beliefs are generally against the laws of most or all civilized countries where equality before the law is a very basic principle. What you are advocating is to create classes of humanity that are not equal before the law.

Even if you were to get a majority of a society to accept that there will be an immediate and violent response from the minority that you wish to dis-enfranchise. So there is no '100% peaceful process' to achieve this, that's a pipe dream.

> Note that I'm talking about what stance government and its institutions should take against such rebellion, not who you invite to your private party.

Yes, I got that.

> Also, these are not my political beliefs.

Then you're going to have to be very careful with how you express yourself lest someone mistakenly holds you to account for beliefs you don't have but wish to throw out there as some kind of academic exercise.

> Just trying to see where the line is being drawn here.

Where I deem it to be reasonable: the right for one group to exercise their freedom stops where that group attempts to limit the freedoms of others that they would like to claim for themselves. Symmetry is key.

[backpropaganda]

My conjectured proposal is both symmetrical and consistent with equality: any citizen X is allowed to open restaurant/school which only caters to class Y, for all X and Y. It sure allows apartheid, but there are no perpetrators here. It's perfectly symmetrical.

[jacquesm]

> My conjectured proposal is both symmetrical and consistent with equality: any citizen X is allowed to open restaurant/school which only caters to class Y, for all X and Y. It sure allowed apartheid, but there are no perpetrators here. It's perfectly symmetrical.

No, it is not symmetrical because the number of members of the various classes and their power dynamics are not symmetrical. This obviously would benefit the majority ruling, or in the case of outright apartheid the ones in power or wealthy at the expense of those without power or wealth.

So no, it is not symmetrical, in fact it is the same dumb and fallacious kind of reasoning that whites under the apartheid regime used to justify their position.

The law does not allow whites to create schools where blacks are not welcome any more than it would allow a school created by blacks where whites aren't welcome. Ditto for restaurants and if you wish to create such a society you will likely find that your view is a minority view that will not make you any friends.

[backpropaganda]

While I'm fairly conformist, and "won't make you friends" is sufficient for me to join the diversity bandwagon, I can imagine radicals not buying your counter-arguments. Groups like the altright truly believe that multiculturalism is the Worst Possible Thing Ever™, and fighting against it is noble even if that restricts their friend circle. Here's a Vox piece[1] where Renaud Camus explains much better than me on where altright are coming from. While I abhor violence and believe in Enlightenment ideals, I don't take diversity as an intrinsic good, and I think being against diversity is consistent with other Enlightenment ideals, and is not coming from a position of hatred or ignorance.

[1]: https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/15/16141456/renaud-camus-th...

[jacquesm]

> I can imagine radicals not buying your counter-arguments.

That is because they are not going be be buying any counter arguments at all, regardless of merit.

> While I abhor violence and believe in Enlightenment ideals, I don't take diversity as an intrinsic good, and I think being against diversity is consistent with other Enlightenment ideals, and is not coming from a position of hatred or ignorance.

If you wish to stake out this position right 'on the line' that's your problem, not mine, it's not up to me to supply you with arguments for your feelings. I'm a bit surprised you would use an expensive word such as 'Enlightenment' and then use it to promote a radically un-enlightened position.

Whether diversity as such is an intrinsic good or not is not even up for discussion, diversity is the direct result of having a society where everybody is equal before the law. If you feel that is something that you could argue about you're going to have a hard time finding a country where you will feel comfortable.

As for the root cause: it need not be hatred or ignorance, there is a much simpler and baser emotion at work here: fear.

Ask yourself this: why is it that you feel that you could not share a country with people with a different culture from yours and with a different skin color than yours?

On another note, earlier you made it seems as if you were just 'asking for a friend' ("Also, these are not my political beliefs.") or speaking entirely in hypotheticals and now you actually admit that this is your own position after all. I'm super interested in how you got yourself into that position in the first place, I've yet to meet someone who openly admitted to such a stance so if you could please try to make me understand how you arrived at your position I'm most interested.

[sherjilozair]

> That is because they are not going be be buying any counter arguments at all, regardless of merit.

Assuming that all the intelligent people in the world only belong to your camp is a reliable way to cloud your perspective, and not only unpersuasive, but dangerous. Since while you're complacent about the abilities of your opponent, they are recruiting and growing because they are not that stupid after all.

> radically un-enlightened position

How so? As I said, it's compatible with equality and symmetry. Your argument about minorities and wealth disparity is unfalsifiable. There will never be a time when we'd say that wealth disparity is gone, and discrimination doesn't exist. It's un-enlightened to use unfalsifiable statements as driving principles. This is why we're stuck on a downward spiral right now, because someone forgot to put in a good termination condition.

People have moralized their political stances (diversity in tech), so that disagreement automatically categorizes you as sexist, and possibly Nazi. Bulletproofing your stance from critics by moralizing it is profoundly unenlightened. Enlightenment requires making your idea criticize-able, something we're forgetting how to do.

Also, the Enlightenment and Hellenistic ideal is equality before the law, not "each man is equal", but "each man will be treated equally by the law".

> why is it that you feel that you could not share a country with people with a different culture from yours and with a different skin color than yours?

I'm a non-white non-western immigrant to this country, so I do speak from a very academic point of view. I have no skin in the game, and maybe that's why I am comfortable taking such an extremist position.

Color doesn't matter to me. But culture does. I believe there are inferior and superior cultures in this world, and there is little to be gained from an inferior culture. I've come out of such an inferior culture myself, only because I had the writings and wisdom of great western thinkers, who instilled the spirit of scientific inquiry in me. In no other culture, is science and its spirit as respected.

Culture and community is humanity's greatest strength. Most of what we achieved is due to culture (that we accidentally acquired in the 1700s) and cooperation among people of the same culture. By fucking up our culture, we risk losing the very thing that built western civilization and its ideals, and gain next to nothing.

Do you not see how little freedom of speech is valued these days? How hurtful speech is categorized as violence? FoS got us out of the fucking dark ages, and we plan to abandon and replace with absolutisms like "Nazism and anything which remotely touches Nazism is shoot-on-sight", or even better "I'll decide if you're Nazi or not, coz you mentioned biological differences between sexes/races, and we've already established that punching/killing Nazis is Good".

Since I come from a non-western country, I know the value of western ideals, probably (dare I say) much more than you, since I've lived in the counterfactual. And I see that the west is also denigrating to the same, becoming the worst of multiple cultures mixed together haphazardly, adopting the most base populist idea of each.

> there is a much simpler and baser emotion at work here: fear.

I don't deny this. Fear is not a base emotion though, unlike hatred or ignorance. It's fear of losing what's important. It's not an impulsive misinformed fear either. It's very carefully evaluated and sustained.

> you're going to have a hard time finding a country where you will feel comfortable.

I'm not a radical myself, so I am comfortable being a passive observer in a country going to the dogs. The altright have half the story right, and the other half (violence, anti-semitism) wrong, and it's possible to have a decently rational brain which believes in the first half without the second.

Also, believing in something just because it's comfortable and would make you the most friends is a profoundly unenlightened idea. I'm sure I don't need to recount the countless times in history when people had to take contrarian positions, make enemies, and eventually been proven right. I'm not saying you should abandon your friends, but you shouldn't disrespect people simply because they have an extremely provocative position. Being gay or an atheist was extremely provocative in the dark ages. Are you sure you're objective Right and not simply following a moral fashion?

Can't not mention this here: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

> how you arrived at your position

Radical skepticism. Mistrusting everything mainstream media tells me, and trying to find alternative explanations for the same. The rationalist bloggers (SSC, LW), Sam Harris, a bit of Moldbug, conservative thinkers like Niall Ferguson, Douglas Murray, but mostly my own deductions from facts obtained from unbiased sources, or if not available, reading from ALL the biased sources (instead of just one), and weighting their argument's merit. You should try this. Every time you read an opinion `X`, find someone intelligent who is (for some godforsaken reason) arguing for `not X`, and see if his explanation makes more sense. Most of the time the mainstream opinion would be right, but often it won't.