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by wyclif
2873 days ago
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Oh, please. "Weaponizing old tweets", writings, or politics is not a phenomenon particular to the alt-right. Examples abound: Kevin Williamson, formerly of the National Review, was recently fired by The Atlantic for old tweets. James Damore, a Google engineer, was fired for making controversial statements about gender science that feminists at the company didn't like. Brendan Eich, a software developer who created JavaScript and was a co-founder of Mozilla, was forced to resign as the CEO of that company after making a political donation. And there are many more instances of "repressive tolerance" in Big Tech, which Herbert Marcuse and others have described as a tolerance for 'all viewpoints' which actually contributes to social oppression in our culture. The weaponizing of alternate viewpoints in the interests of "social justice" isn't owned by any one political faction, it's deployed nowadays by all of them, and it leads to a corrosive and toxic public discourse and environment. |
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> Kevin Williamson, formerly of the National Review, was recently fired by The Atlantic for old tweets.
He spoke with the editor who fired him because that was still his viewpoint, not an old tweet he apologised for or regretted.
> Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg forced to conclude that his new hire did, in fact, believe what he said he believed. “The language he used in this podcast — and in my conversations with him in recent days — made it clear that the original tweet did, in fact, represent his carefully considered views,”
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/5/17202182/the-atlantic-kevin-wil...
> James Damore, a Google engineer, was fired for making controversial statements about gender science that feminists at the company didn't like.
He stood by his comments, in fact, he doubled down on them.
> Brendan Eich, a software developer who created JavaScript and was a co-founder of Mozilla, was forced to resign as the CEO of that company after making a political donation.
This isn't historic, that's current behaviour.
> And there are many more instances of "repressive tolerance" in Big Tech, which Herbert Marcuse and others have described as a tolerance for 'all viewpoints' which actually contributes to social oppression in our culture.
> The weaponizing of alternate viewpoints isn't owned by any one political faction, it's deployed nowadays by all of them, and it leads to a corrosive and toxic public environment.
Your examples are different things - it's perfectly reasonable, in fact, I would argue a moral obligation, not to accept bad actions and support of abhorrent policy from those around you.
My point was that people can and do change - if any of these people renounced their viewpoints, acted in good faith and changed, I would happily support them in any endeavour. That isn't what happened in these cases - there is a fundamental difference.
Even if this does happen to people on the right (and I'm sure there must be cases of it, as with all things), that doesn't justify the recent spate of cases being intentionally pushed by the alt-right. The particular instance being discussed here is wrong in the same way it would be wrong if it was someone on the right.