this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2023
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Thank you for responding thoughtfully and giving me things to consider I hadn't thought about much previously.
This seems like a tricky problem to me because, while I understand that there are inherent issues with deplatforming people who are simply edgier and more coarse in their dialog, whether it's due to their culture, socioeconomic status, or otherwise, I also feel like I have a right not to tolerate undue abuse in my online discourse. You mention your own ability to context switch with your use of language and I understand and appreciate that's a luxury and ability many people don't have in life. I guess I don't really see a great solution to the problem you've described other than flattening wealth inequality and getting people to mingle more amongst cultures starting at a young age.
As far as dealing with adults goes right now, though, I'm willing to have conversations with anyone who will genuinely consider my viewpoint and express why they agree or disagree rather than simply attack my character and offer nothing of substance. I'll engage even if they come back in a more hostile tone than I'd normally appreciate. You have not attacked my character and you've replied thoughtfully, so this exchange has been productive (at least for me) 🙂
Circling back to some of my previous thoughts, I think regardless of culture/class one general problem I see is that when we talk amongst our various in-groups, we don't have a direct contrarian viewpoint to challenge. This lets us get lazy in our internal discussions, accept as fact the ideas others would challenge, leave unexplained the concepts that our in-group just tends to know already, and worst of all vilify dissenting viewpoints to a dehumanizing extent. I see it in all groups, but specifically I see it first hand in liberal groups I'm in and I realize that it can be seductive to talk about conservativism (for example) as simply evil. Hell, I often see fellow liberals tearing apart their own if someone doesn't live up to a 100% purity standard they've created.
When I start hearing my liberal in-groups parrot such talking points, I take a step back and remind myself this is emotional, not rational, discourse and is not a productive way to discuss sociopolitical issues with others. Unfortunately, I don't think enough people do this, so we ultimately get shouting matches when different ideologies bump into each other. Thus, my impassioned plea is that we all try to moderate ourselves and our own in-groups to the extent we are able. We can downvote people we might otherwise agree with if they're being assholes, for example. It will make intersectional dialog more enjoyable for everyone.
Liberal groups are squeezed because the middle is disappearing under the steadily tightening contradictions. You only have to walk the streets for a day or two to see the results of liberalism, certainly it has created great productivity but the production is not going to the majority of people. When the soviet union fell the liberal ruling class (which I include conservatives in, they are two halves of liberalism, the political ideology of capitalism) went into overdrive taking away every single benefit given to the people in pursuit of competition with a real threat that sought to improve people's standard of living worldwide.
As such, liberals are radicalising in much the same way that many pushed to the left (communists/anarchists under the umbrella of socialism) are and as much as many pushed to the fascist right are. It was the liberals in the SDP that killed Rosa Luxembourg to prevent the would-have-been sparticist German revolution which then probably led to the nazis taking power, liberals aren't incapable of being "extremist" in their own sense. As they get threatened more and more between the rising far left and the rising far right they themselves become just as radical about maintaining the status quo, this in turn causes them to shut us socialists out of their spaces. And why do they do that? Because they really don't want people like you talking to people like me, because when people like you talk to people like me you come away from the interaction just a little bit more red than you were yesterday. They see that happening everywhere, and the only method they have to deal with it is to prevent the mixing of groups.
This is precisely when someone sometimes needs a verbal slap. One of the only tools we have for moving people in the online space is creating discomfort, and if creating discomfort in someone over the way one interaction occurs brings them towards behaving differently in a future interaction then it is a valid and useful tool to have available. Some people need a dressing down before they open up. Some people do not.