[nonsince]

People with racist or otherwise regressive views know that these views will (rightly) get them criticised by the majority, and so they won't couch them in those terms precisely, but it's often very clear when you take context into account. I can't speak for this exact case, because we don't know what his exact words were, but it's telling that even your defence of him describes him criticising protesters at a time when protesters are being shot and having chemical weapons used on them by the police, a state militia who can kill pretty much anyone without threat of consequence. If your stance in this case is to support that militia, their murders and their use of chemical weapons, then I think that it's not remotely unfair to say that you not only do not support the black lives matter movement, but that you support the continuation of black people in the states being murdered without recompense.

When you have such a significant power over someone's higher education and therefore their life earnings, I don't think it's unfair to scrutinise these people's views further than had they little structural power.

[whiddershins]

You are trying to say you can infer racism, and you need to do that to identify the racists because they won’t speak their racism openly?

Can you see how that is a recipe for attacking people and ruining their lives based on something that in the end might be imagined?

Do you see how easily that becomes ... anyone who disagrees with any opinion I have is evil?

[scoutt]

What amazes me most is the cascade of reasoning. It's the most obscene misuse of logic, that might be fine only if it comes from a toddler.

"criticising protesters" leads to "support militia", that leads to "support their murders", so he "do(es) not support the black lives matter", therefore wants "continuation of black people being murdered".

Imagine that for a guy that had his car turned upside down by protesters and was complaining about that.

[lr4444lr]

Okay, so you can check their academic CV and ask for colleague references. Quite another to ruin their professional career for a personal view on Twitter that isn't about planting bombs in black churches, or the like.

[finder83]

I disagree and think that we need more nuance in our speech and understanding, not less. There are a lot of moral issues you just listed, from violent vs peaceful protesting, the limit of authority with police, black lives matter, free speech, and race. And you summed it all up with if someone disagrees with any of those that they are racist or regressive.

But there are a lot of complexities and nuances to each one of those moral issues. Each one really needs a discussion.

Even just separating out BLM, there is the core moral anti-racist belief behind the statement (which I think most people would agree with), but there is also the political association affiliated with the Democratic party that in their belief statement supports abortion, transgenderism, and many other issues that are still at contention in our country. Talking with many of my conservative friends, they have no issue with the race movement of BLM but will not align themselves with a political organization that supports abortion, particularly as they see it as a genocide targeted primarily at inner-city blacks.

Again, we need more nuance, not less. We're already polarized enough. One issue is that peoples' views are not being scrutinized, they're being thrown into a bucket of "racist" and cancelled. Any time a straw man is used to silence a group of people based on mass categorization, it's contributing to division and not unity. These issues, and politics in particular, are and should be complex.

[textgel]

> People with racist or otherwise regressive views know that these views will (rightly) get them criticised by the majority, and so they won't couch them in those terms precisely, but it's often very clear when you take context into account.

When the word racist is being attributed to everything and anything including opposition to complete open borders by bullys and funnily enough, racists it is understandable that people may want to take cover.

> because we don't know what his exact words were, but it's telling that even your defence of him describes him criticising protesters at a time when protesters are being shot and having chemical weapons used on them by the police, a state militia who can kill pretty much anyone without threat of consequence.

It is also quite telling that "When those protesters are also burning down cities and attacking people" is strangely absent from your description.

> If your stance in this case is to support that militia, their murders and their use of chemical weapons, then I think that it's not remotely unfair to say that you not only do not support the black lives matter movement, but that you support the continuation of black people in the states being murdered without recompense.

Very few are in full support of everything the police do but binarizing the support to all or nothing is ridiculous.

[blub]

It's awesome for real racists that now every minor bullshit is considered racist. Suddenly there's a lot more of them, they're in pretty good company and the term has been diluted into meaninglessness.

Another victory for social justice. Brexit, Trump, you guys just can't stop winning.