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Multiheaded comments on George Orwell's Prelude on Politics Is The Mind Killer - Less Wrong
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Comments (285)
They won't make that statement explicitly, but they will accuse people who point out specific cases where said group isn't virtuous or is doing something wrong of racism/sexism/homophobia/Islamophobia/victim bashing.
Yup, but that's mostly unfalsifiable; people with different values can find different things unacceptably racist/*phobic/whatever. And they aren't really hiding the fact that such accusations are just part of ideological warfare, or that they are partisan on those issues.
The point is that they're using these charges to avoid rationally confronting their opponents' arguments.
Uh-huh. But there's a debate on truth-seeking vs. avoiding damage to society about this sort of thing even here on LW, as you know. Also, are there that many articles that only counter a listing of [favoured group]'s flaws with "That's *-ist!"? At the very least and the worst level of argument commonly found, the writers try to make it look like the group's virtues or just its "normality" to ordinary Western folks outweigh the criticism. I'm drawing on my impressions of The Guardian (which I read sporadically to see what British intelligentsia is up to), specifically of its CIF section.
Well, one historical example is the reaction to the Moynihan Report. It's by no means the only example, but it's the one where the people dismissing the report as racist and "victim bashing" probably did the most damage to society.
Wow. That's actually a stunningly interesting report. The conflict caused is also very interesting: one could also argue that the report itself, coming out at such a time, could have done more damage to society than its obfuscation did. The opponents of the Civil Rights movement would, I think, have weaponized it and used it to blame the Blacks entirely for their own problems, not to say they didn't have partial responsibility, of course.
My thoughts exactly! Even today you see the more extreme elements of the Right scouring the net in what can be described as a search for ammunition, their bottom-line being already as entrenched as that of the Left extremists. And most of the radical Right do conspiciously seek to absolve traditional society of whatever stripe they prefer of absolutely any moral guilt. Back to the report in question, it seems well-founded in asserting that the black community had some faulty traditions and regressive ways of raising its new generations (as, from a modern perspective, might some other communities). However, it doesn't outright deny the economic angle of the problem, nor, especially, does it paint a picture of fundamental hostility between the races, yet it is undoubtedly used to "support" such a picture even now by the real racists!
I wonder if Moynihan himself feared that key the message he apparently tried to send - "White people, in view of their historical fortune, have a duty to help struggling minorities out in an intelligent way, even if it might hurt some feelings in the short run when some structural elements of society need to be altered" - would be co-opted by some unsympathetic fucks to "prove" that n**rs are culturally inferior and should be subjugated by the "superior" races.
Why does right wing extremism scare you so much more than left wing extremism when the former is utterly despised as the definition of evil by most Westerners while the latter is only ever lukewarmly condemned?
Do extreme right wingers have some particular super power that I'm not aware of? The right wing are the guys who have been on a losing streak since Stalingrad and if you listen to Moldbug for a century before that too. I need some actual evidence that I should worry about them getting power anywhere in the West without being bombed into the stone age by the US five minutes later (bombing European right wing extremists, especially racist ones is the stuff of victory, moral superiority and war fantasies for them --- check out American video games, adventure novels and action movie villains), than say of me personally being struck by lightning when I'm walking my dog on a rainy Saturday evening.
Reading some of your comments I can't shake the feeling that you for some reason see their intellectual ammunition as so much more formidable than what is usually consumed by intellectuals that it despite the massive incentives against it threatens to one day quite suddenly break out and become popular among the smart fraction. Is this a correct reading?
Having beliefs that correspond to reality?
You would also describe yourself as having beliefs that correspond to reality, but neither you nor me nor the general public would claim that you're some kind of extremist on account, say, of your posts here; you look like a typical secularist conservative/libertarian type to me. While we would clearly disagree about many of each other's values or instrumental decisions, we definitely wouldn't believe that the other is a horrible enemy of civilization.
Sort of yes! I've always been a little terrified of the power of naked, unashamed technocracy, of either despotic or Randian aspect. Even the more ruthless bits of Moldbug's (rather comfortable and watered-down) technocratic fascism are, I fear, hardly a glimpse of what's to come, if the "rationality" of geeks and engineers, finally free from either today's humanist quasi-theocracy and the sober bounds of old-time coonservatism, gets free rein. Perhaps many here on LW, especially non-neurotypical people (who I tend to sympathize with a lot, but also be wary of if their condition includes any change in empathy) would be tempted by such a Ubermensch thing. Think of a hybrid of Speer, Eichmann and a weak UFAI and you'll understand how this nightmare of mine goes.
(I'm actually integrating a sinister-yet-rationalist one world government based on these fears in my science fantasy novel - instead of a generic villainous empire I started out with - except that in my story it was formed by voices of moderation in high places after the Axis victory in WW2 and the ensuing cold war, not as the radical elitist movement that I can phantom it as in the real world.)
That is a very interesting concept! I'd love to read more about it, if you are writing in English and have any drafts you would like someone to read or will eventually publish, please make a post on LW!
"Naked, unashamed technocracy" strikes me as much more similar to the position advocated by the left (ETA: especially the socialist left) then the right.
It seems very unfortunate to me that the concept of "Blaming the victim" has been founded upon such an ill-advised swipe at that report. Certainly such a phenomenon is painfully apparent all the time in daily life and politics, yet Moynihan's intentions to me seem neither aggressive or very patronizing, nor even fuelled by conservative ideology, even if it could end up as ammunition for an unscurpulous ideologist. (he was in the Kennedy administration, so he might well have been a liberal technocrat)
Now this is pure conjencture and indeed fantasy on my part, but I guess that Ryan might've been motivated by the "Hostile media effect", assuming that the report was a nefarious reactionary ploy and missing even the fact that Moynihan places nearly all the blame for the cultural dysfunctions of the black community squarely upon white oppression! (Hardly thought of as a right-wing thought pattern.)
I'm not suggesting that such an accusation of American culture and whites' old behavior towards blacks must conversely be left-wing silliness; the logic of Moynihan's explanation seems sound enough to me - it might be a cliche, but it's probably true. (But then, I believe that Noam Chomsky is frequently spot-on and somewhat of an authority - what else is to be expected of me.)