[repolfx]

Physical safety trumps most other things in our culture, rightly so.

So political activists realised they can brainwash or pressure idiots by claiming that any opinion, person or class of people they don't like creates "lack of safety". It's a kneejerk reaction: safety first.

The worst case I saw of this so far was an event organised by my workplace, for teaching programming. But straight white men were banned. If you were a white man you had to show photos from Facebook to prove you were gay. The justification for sexism and racism was stated as creating a "safe" and "collaborative" environment. Implication: straight white men are unsafe. Except when they're teaching, of course. Then they're needed, so stop being unsafe.

There's nothing new about this sort of abuse. Orwell focused on the way leftists constantly manipulate language in 1984 with the idea of Newspeak. Consider the contradictory term "dictatorship of the proletariat" or how every communist country calls itself a People's Republic despite not being a republic, nor run by/for the people.

[cryptica]

>> The worst case I saw of this so far was an event organised by my workplace, for teaching programming. But straight white men were banned. If you were a white man you had to show photos from Facebook to prove you were gay.

Wow I never experienced anything like that.

I do find some things in popular media offensive though nowadays.

For example, I saw on Netflix there was a show called "Dear white people" and I find the title kind of racist. I'm white, I work ridiculously hard (I have no life) but at this stage in my life, I'm basically a loser (and I'm still working very hard to try to change this) so I feel hurt when other people insinuate that white people like me have it easy and don't understand real life. It's rubbing salt into the wound.

I think if there was a show called "Dear black people" or "Dear working single moms", there would rightfully be a massive backlash.

[Faark]

> So political activists realised they can brainwash or pressure idiots by claiming that any opinion, person or class of people they don't like creates "lack of safety". It's a kneejerk reaction: safety first.

People didn't just suddenly start killing jews in nazi germany. It starts with a shift in sentiment and you probably want to stop that before it gains momentum. That makes me understand how e.g. the "there are good people on both sides" comment made people feel unsafe.

> workplace example

That seems so much like a right wing caricature of "the left" that I'd like to read a source to make sure it isn't just exactly that. Not that I'd expect this to never happen... stupid people can be found everywhere in society. A more plausible scenario leading to this might be affirmative action (something I'd expect you to vehemently disagree with anyway) having its budged cut and someone still trying to go through with it by combining multiple things into one, even if this subverts pretty much the entire purpose. I'd expect reasonable lefties to have a similar stance on gayness checks as they have for sex checks on bathrooms... people will generally do the right thing and abusers should suffer consequences.

[repolfx]

Look at codebar.io and then adjust your priors for what you consider a "right wing caricature". In particular read https://codebar.io/student-guide#eligibility (straight white men not eligible) and the preamble on the first page.

No reasonable lefties spoke up against this. Indeed they defended it as necessary and proportionate, as they did when the company started discriminating against men in other ways.

People didn't just suddenly start killing jews in nazi germany

Comparisons to the Nazis are especially stupid in this context because you're right, they didn't just start killing Jews. They started by banning them from various high-status roles and jobs, describing them as the source of problems, hypothesising a Zionist Conspiracy to explain why so many Jews were running rich companies etc.

And that's exactly what we see happening today against ordinary white guys. These days if we're CEOs/on company boards/in high earning jobs it's a problem that needs a "solution" (sound familiar?), it's the result of a conspiracy of the patriarchy, and the solutions start with banning white men from educational opportunities, speaking opportunities, replacing them on boards and so on.

No reasonable lefties spoke up about any of this in Germany either, because the left is fundamentally built on narratives about oppression by one identity group of another. It always has been. It gives people easy excuses for their situation in life. Whether it's the proles vs the capitalists, Jews vs the Aryans, women vs men, blacks vs whites, LGTBQ vs straight white men, if there's a way to treat people as lumpen groups and pit them against each other then you'll find the left doing so as much as they can. The 21st century is no different.