[flyinglizard]

I’m afraid that when the pendulum of public perception inevitably swings away from this insanity, a lot of the social progress we’ve done on discourse and tolerance will be lost.

If I’m reading this and saying “what these people are doing is evil, I’d like to affiliate with the opposite group of people”, I won’t have too many outlets that are not far right.

[thinkingemote]

This has happened before. Read The History Man by Bradbury.

And what will happen is that being "politically unreasonable" will be unfashionable and the society will swing to an equilibrium once again. The extremists will leave or retire and the people who kept their heads down will say "they were a silly bunch". In the UK they were labelled "The Loony Left" and subject to much comedy.

To suggest that it's either one extreme or the other isn't how things will work.

[kangnkodos]

@thinkingemote - Thanks for one of the best comments in this thread.

Also, part of the way this swinging back to equilibrium will work is by the left tearing each other apart with more and more demands to just accept the liberal orthodoxy handed down from on high. At each step along the way, more and more people will pop out and realize that the whole thing is flawed because it is based on the Appeal to Authority logical fallacy.

[TMWNN]

>Also, part of the way this swinging back to equilibrium will work is by the left tearing each other apart with more and more demands to just accept the liberal orthodoxy handed down from on high.

Already happening; see JK Rowling denounced as a "TERF", for example, despite having otherwise impeccable bien-pensant credentials.

[kenneth]

A big reason why the far-right grew is as a rejection of this insanity.

[laurent92]

I take the bus a lot in France and, in conversations I overhear, people don’t seem to mind being racist anymore, discretely but a bus is already quite public. And diverse.

I don’t know whether I have a bias about seeing this trait, but I think 10 years ago, people would at least keep social restraint. Something has definitely snapped.

[oceanghost]

This is such an important point.

You can't tell people they're irredeemable racists and expect them to vote for you.

[curtisblaine]

It's the "inevitably" that worries me. Is it really inevitable? People are so scared to speak against these blatant abuses (because they fear losing their job, or being victims of a Twitter mob) that I don't see the public perception going anywhere, at least for now. If anything, I see these abuses being perpetrated more freely (but that might just be my perception).

[laurent92]

Could it be the goal?

Do those people try to be reasonable, or are they trying to disrupt the rest of society because, for example, they are bitter about it, have no hope, or hate the West’s evils so much that they’d rather take revenge on their own country, “for the good of humanity” (at least according to their ideology)? Which means, they are happy with pendulum swings, as long as it keeps us busy with aimless infighting, rather than being powerful and united in a war against, say, Koweit.

At one point, you have to ask whether they are trying to be logical, or whether they hope to throw despair, illogism and unfairness in all layers of society, because of entrenched hate of something.

[curtisblaine]

They have onboarded big tech and the media, if anything I see them doubling up.