i hate it when people discount me as a voice of reason
Peterson, Harris, etc....
- Thread starter prath92
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My impression was that the alt-right make a conscious, explicit link between "the West" (as in, the civilization) and being white.
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the actual definition of alt right is nebulous and not universally agreed upon but i think him being a white supremacist who worked for breitbart is enough for me to slot him in there. he is blatantly a racist and traffics in the same language as those on the alt right. id be curious for those who are so offended by him being labeled alt right to explain what they think the major difference of opinion are between shaprio and the alt right.
He deleted this a few days later, and said:
the last 3 in particular make it blindingly obvious
1: "western civilization is code for judeo-christian"
2: "multiculturalism as opposed to western civilization"
3: "white people founded western civilization"
1: "western civilization is code for judeo-christian"
2: "multiculturalism as opposed to western civilization"
3: "white people founded western civilization"
I'd say only number 3 there makes an explicit link between being Western and being white, and even there it doesn't seem to be in the sense that I'd associate with the term "alt-right". I'd also be interested to know the context of that tweet, what he's responding to. But of course, I could have this whole alt-right thing wrong.
Frankly I thought the alt right term was basically coined for him and Milo Yanacantspellhisname
I thought it was Richard Spencer who came up with it.
Conservatism is pretty fecked then.
For those of us who are late to the thread, who are the others referred to in the thread title (the etc) aside from Ben Shapiro?
And more importantly then, could any of you provide a summation of what it is you find find so disagreeable about Harris, Peterson & Co? What are the main points of contention?
I personally find the 'controversial' status of Peterson bizarre, but what say you?
And more importantly then, could any of you provide a summation of what it is you find find so disagreeable about Harris, Peterson & Co? What are the main points of contention?
I personally find the 'controversial' status of Peterson bizarre, but what say you?
You're probably right. I guess i started hearing about it around the time they were being talked about a lot and just associated the two myself.
Pretty much anyone i think? Any public intellectual / philosopher type. Christopher Hitchens came up at some point i think?
Harris I dont think people have as much issue with as others. The islamaphobia comes up a fair bit. Peterson ... well thats pretty wide ranging. I find him pretty boring and often absurd mostly these days. Hes become a bit of a poster boy for a group that at times are repellent and i think he plays into that quite a lot. I found his lectures and views on social psychology interesting and everything that popped up after that not.
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Very difficult to synthesize 75 pages worth of discourse and opinion. Land on any one page and you'll get a good sense of peoples' thoughts on the men in question.
As for Peterson, he's recently tended towards a more aggressive, self-important and paranoid demeanour. Maybe it's his all beef diet. Who knows. But you can find point-by-point dissection of his stances in this thread.
Rogan and Harris seem well accepted here, for the most part.
I'm not expecting a thesis or anything, a paragraph will do.
Anyway...the other reason I asked is that I did read through a number of pages and a lot of the contributions are just ad hominem attacks. So I thought the thread could do with a reset.
I imagine it's grating to find yourself repeating the same things over and over and having to contend with fairly consistent misrepresentation in the media; all of which would contribute to a paranoid, world-weary demeanour. In any case I think he's getting over-exposed now.
I'm still amazed that he's deemed 'controversial' though. But then we do live in age where common sense seems increasingly esoteric.
I think there a few differences: generally I'd say the alt-right are a lot more sceptical as to typically valued conservative institutions such as religion and marriage etc, which they'll perhaps regard as absurd to a certain extent, while at the same time lamenting the decay of them at the same time.
Although I do think there's a lot of overlap. Traditional conservatives, for example, may make overtures to racial equality, for example, unlike the alt-right who'll often be a lot more openly racists, but then those same traditional conservatives will still typically implement damaging policy towards racial minorities when it suits them. Similarly even if they're less disparaging to the women than the alt-right, they'll probably still implement fairly regressive policies if they can when it comes to abortion.
So, yeah, for the most part I think the mode of engagement and the rhetoric is the biggest divide. And while the alt-right may break from conservatives on certain matters, I also reckon they'll happily renege on a lot of their own ideas if they've got a conservative like Trump in office who's doing 90% of what they want. Protection of white dominance/white supremacy or something to that effect strikes me as their primary goal above all else.
I think it was @berbatrick who highlighted a good book wherein Trump and the alt-right types are shown to be a lot closer to traditional conservatism than traditional conservatives would like to admit, with the ultimate goal (especially in the US) all aiming towards the protection of hierarchy. The rules have changed, as has the approach, but the goals haven't necessarily altered all that much.
Peterson doesn't say anything that would be viewed as particularly controversial to mainstream audiences, or even to most rational academics for that matter. Only in a campus lefty bubble would you find people contending that his opinions are malevolent or dangerous.
He's definitely suffering from overexposure now though. All this attention, pressure from the media and the bizarre diet has taken its toll.
He's definitely suffering from overexposure now though. All this attention, pressure from the media and the bizarre diet has taken its toll.
Peterson is less controversial. Hes still a weirdo and a bigot just not on the level of Shapiro. The thing with him is that he became famous for a pretty bad misinterpretation of a law and then sold a book of utter pablum to a bunch of incels. Its bizarre because at least Shapiro can turn a phrase, Peterson is so unremarkable to have a personality cult.
It’s more deeply reflective of a bigger problem in society, which is that the birth-control pill has enabled women to compete with men on a fairly equal footing.
ffs
ffs
He pushes the same buttons as any other self-help charlatan. Clean your room. Get up early. Organize your life. Fear the chaos dragon of western feminism.
Peterson does more than that though. He plays into the hands who basically equate feminism with white genocide. You know, white women don't want to have 5 children anymore because they want a career and that's why white people die out. Even if Petereson doesn't explicitly say that he touts into the same horn as those white supremacists and alt-right idiots who propagate this idea on all social media channels but he does it in a way that is very appealing to the centrists because he comes across as a very rational person. The real danger though comes from people who are not willing to dismantle his ideas but instead start screaming at him. In the eyes of most centrist you have lost the argument at this point by default. So no matter how horrible of a person Peterson and Shapiro are if you just scream at them you are playing right into their hands.
In addition to him clealry being a bit of a misogynist, Peterson also misrepresents facts, and lies a lot. He's every bit as intellectually dishonest as Ben Shapiro, it just comes in more respectable looking, less racist package.
He's a hypocrite, who came to prominence for championing free speech (with some transphobia sprinkled on top), before then coming up with a plan to shut down departments he didn't agree with.
Then there's the fact that he very much believes that culrural Marxism is a thing and that leftists are trying to destroy Western society by subverting Judeo-Christian values.
He's a hypocrite, who came to prominence for championing free speech (with some transphobia sprinkled on top), before then coming up with a plan to shut down departments he didn't agree with.
Then there's the fact that he very much believes that culrural Marxism is a thing and that leftists are trying to destroy Western society by subverting Judeo-Christian values.
where my race science at yo
Would it surprise you to know that, based on my experience in academia, most academics either don't know who Peterson is, or think that he's a massive, fecking bellend?
Rubin is the dumbest motherfecker around by quite some distance.
Also, when did "leftists hate videogames" become a thing?
about the same time gamergate started sending death threats to women who talk about them
What all these guys show is that if you really really really want to believe in something, you will believe it, no matter how untrue that thing obviously is for everyone else. They realized it and make a living from it.
A bit like penalties in football but with real life effects.
A bit like penalties in football but with real life effects.
Figures. Hating regressive, misogynistic, racist chucklefecks who harass and send death threats to women is clearly the same as hating videogames.
A couple of years ago leftists loved videogames because supposedly leftists don't like to work or something.
"kids these days" is still a thing for conservatives,
since someone brought it up earlier - the major difference between normal conservatives and the alt right is that the alt right is 20 and 30something year old who are conservatives but also like to scream the n word on psn
I guess academia is too loose a term for the point I was making but no it wouldnt surprise me that people find him any number of things. On the other hand every academic I know, albeit these are all in science, who has heard of him is either apathetic or a mild fan.
The point is that even in his most cherry picked quotes there's nothing I would even call edgy, other than to the ears of a far left ideologue. There's nothing edgy about saying that 'we don't know the full ramifications of birth control on society yet' or that 'men don't know how to handle crazy women'. Because it's true, we don't. And the last time I checked being a religiously minded prude was not an extreme position either.
As per his debates with Sam Harris it's very easy to deconstruct Peterson's more hair brained ideas. Which is why you know anyone who responds to Peterson with alt right hysteria is either off the rails or intellectually vacant.
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um excuse me sir birth control is responsible for the fall of western civilisation you need to watch 7000 hours of peterson or you wouldn't be making such wild mischaracterisations
women be shoppin
imagine believing a man who can't handle cider is going to punch a motherfecker
youre a campus lefty bubble.
@me when you're quoting and replying to my post.
Academics agree with him on climate change? Philosophy has debated ethics for millennia, they agree with him that true atheists would kill people?
And he did not say that "we don't know the full ramifications of birth control on society yet". He explicitly called it a "fundamental problem" which has "enabled women to compete equally", in a discussion about women and sexual harassment in the workplace. Academics generally agree that "insane women can't be handled because they can't be beaten"? THat last line is a line from a standup comic not an academic.
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You're splitting hairs on the difference between a viewpoint that is insidious or just generally disagreed with.
I don't know nor do I care to find out about his deeper views on climate change. But I bet they're more nuanced than how you would present them: "He thinks we should keep ideology away from the science - ergo climate change denier". That aside, theologians, philosophers and psychologists have been batting around the moralistic values of atheism for centuries. It's not a controversial topic.
And you're still wilfully misrepresenting his birth control quote.
"It’s more deeply reflective of a bigger problem in society, which is that the birth-control pill has enabled women to compete with men on a fairly equal footing. But we still don’t know what the rules are that should govern the behavior, the interaction between men and women in places like the workplace.
The bigger problem he is referring to is obviously the bit in bold, not that women can now compete on an equal footing.
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shock horror as man who misunderstood human right protections for trans people has also never read HR leaflet
so fecking nuanced, drizzle that nuance all over me baby