Category: Regressive Left

A badly confused piece on free speech

February 27, 2017 • 9:45 am

It’s amusing—though sad—to see Leftist after Leftist confect arguments why free speech isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Isn’t the Left supposed to defend freedom of speech? Sadly, much of that side seems to have abandoned the principle—mainly because they want to suppress what they call “hate speech.” That of course is a dangerous argument, for one person’s “hate speech” (say, criticism of abortion, affirmative action, or Islam) is another person’s free speech—and who is to be the arbiter of which is which?

Nevertheless, the Left persists in its attacks, and now we have a new argument by Mike Sturm at Coffeelicious (reprinted at Medium.com, a venue almost as Regressive Leftist as Puffho). Here’s the title; click on the screenshot to go to the piece—an argument that free speech is overrated:

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I’ll let Sturm give the argument himself (indented):

So here I am asking two questions:

  1. What value do we see in free speech?
  2. Does the current free speech paradigm serve the value we see in speech?

The Proposed Value of Speech

In the world of liberal democracy, freedom in general is a cornerstone value of any society. People ought to be free to live their lives in the best way they see fit — with as little interference as possible. In the case of speech, I think that the reasons that we value free speech fall into two basic categories:

  • We value the freedom to express ourselves — how we feel, who we are, and what we want.
  • We value the freedom to effectively drive change through the things we say. We want our words to matter, and to wield real power — the power of making things happen.

I think that the article of faith, especially in America, for the past 200 years or so has been that both of these aims work together. We have blindly believed that expressing how you feel and what you want end up effectively driving change and giving power to your words, and to you, the speaker. But I see very little reason to believe this.

In fact, I believe that expressing yourself as freely as possible tends to diminish the ability of your words to drive real change.

Now why on earth would expressing yourself freely reduce your effectiveness at creating social change?  He claims that the power of speech derives from both the way it’s enforced (as through law of physical force), and through the power of speech “due to its message and its delivery.” Sturm doesn’t say much about power, but is really concerned with “how you deliver the message.” And, he claims, advocates of free speech tend to deliver their message in maladaptive ways.

What ways are those? They include these (these bullet points are mine):

  • Asserting during your talk that you have the right to free speech.  That, says, Sturm, just turns off the listener: “Whenever your defense of what you say is “I have the right to free speech, I can say this if I please” — you’re closing off 80% of the probability of having a real conversation.” This is a recurrent problem for the article: assuming that a speech itself is a “conversation,” rather than a speech. He completely neglects the possibility that listening to a speech can inspire conversations afterwards.  Further, very few speakers lard their talks with “listen to me because I have free speech.” That would just be dumb. Such assertions are made either beforehand, as in the case of the Chancellor of Berkeley’s statement about Milo Yiannopoulos’s appearance, or afterwards, when we’re arguing about freedom of expression itself.
  • Free speech is only effective insofar as it presents rational arguments and not emotions or desires. As Sturm asserts,

“The more your message is expression — of your feelings, desires, or other emotion, the less likely it will be received by those who have reason to fear it. Just think of how much you have gotten done by yelling and venting your frustration at people, as opposed to sitting them down, and trying to make your point calmly. The more you frame your speech as expression, the less effective it will tend to be at achieving any other goal aside from expressing your feelings.”

But that’s not exactly right. True, when you’re arguing about facts you should deal with the facts and the issues, and avoid “yelling”, but to leave out emotion and feeling from a speech is to emasculate it (was that misogynist?). Think of one of the most powerful and effective speeches in American history: Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech of August 28, 1963. That speech is full of emotions about the moral inequity of segregation. It is by no means calm, but was delivered in the emotional cadences of a Southern preacher. It is the quintessential speech of expression: and it’s not too much to say that it galvanized the nation, leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  What Sturm is doing is equating “expression” with “yelling,” when in fact they need not be the same thing at all.  It’s arguments like this that make me wonder if Sturm has really thought about the issue. Nobody equates “free expression” with “yelling at one’s opponents,” except perhaps Sturm.

Now Sturm is correct that you can’t convince people to change their minds about issues without giving them reasons to think, and that simply demonizing your opponent as stupid, racist, or misogynist won’t work. But presenting stories, experiences, and an emphasis on moral issues (which don’t count as “reasons” but can resonate with the values of the listener) are valid ways of emoting,

  • No speech is effective unless it is itself a conversation. I mentioned this above, and it’s just wrong. Conversations can occur after speech, either as verbal discussions or as a silent conversation in one’s mind.

Sturm continues:

“My take is this: social media has made it easy for us to favor one motivation for speech (expression), while weakening the other (conversing in order to affect real change). Because more people are seen as simply expressing unfiltered emotion, very few on the other aside care to listen.”

“The more everyone continue to do this, the less we listen to each other. We stop talking with each other, and keep talking at each other — yelling, as well. The chances for any kind of progress fade away.”

First, it is the suppression of free speech, as in the cancellation (or interruption) of talks by universities, that inhibit conversation. Does anybody doubt that? And if you think these disinvitations are infrequent, have a look at FIRE’s list of disinvitations on American campuses between 2000 and 2014. Virtually all the speakers have been demonized as being conservatives, which shows that it’s the Left and not the Right that most often goes after free expression.

Further, social media, particularly YouTube and chat sites, have effected tremendous social change, especially in the weakening of religion. It is through such media, for example, that isolated nonbelievers come to learn that they are not alone, and are strengthened in their conviction. It is through social media that we can learn the arguments of our opponents, whether they be pro-lifers or creationists, and thus develop ways to examine, hone, or refine our own beliefs and arguments. Sturm’s false belief that “expression” and “social change” are at odds with one another is what leads him to conclude, in the quote just above, that free speech has slowed social progress.

But with such a conclusion, what does Sturm suggest we should do? One can gather from the context that he favors limits on “free speech,” though, given Sturm’s failure to be explicit, I’m not sure what those limits are. Does he see someone like Yiannopoulos expressing “unfiltered emotion”, thus impeding any rational discourse and social progress? If so, then he should listen to the libertarian Ben Shapiro, who is far more fact-oriented and less emotional than Milo. I disagree with much of what Shapiro has to say, but nobody could accuse him of yelling. And I think Shapiro, disagreeing with him as I do, is nonetheless a very valuable resource for liberals, as he forces us to examine our arguments more closely if we feel he’s wrong.  Those who simply yell in response to Shapiro’s claims make the Left look unreflective.

Given that Sturm equates “free speech” with “emotional speech and yelling”, it’s hard to know what he thinks of people like the Berkeley protests who prevented Yiannopoulos from speaking. Were they trying to prevent emotional and non-rational speech that could damage society, and thus doing us a service? Or were they themselves yelling and demonizing their opponents in a way that would turn off those who would otherwise listen to their arguments? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect Sturm has no interest in defending Milo, since he says this:

Recently, a big deal has been made about an agitator who lost a book deal about some unabashed commentary regarding pederasty. I won’t dig into the story itself (you can read the link), but the whole thing has made me wonder why we value free speech. I guess like so many of our freedoms, I wonder if it has morphed into a crutch that allows us to be utterly terrible and careless people, rather than making us better.

Milo’s freedom of speech has nothing to do with the subsequent accusations of pedophila that brought him down. Yes, you can say he’s a terrible person, but that’s completely independent of whether, when invited to Berkeley by the College Republicans, he had a right to speak within the limits of the First Amendment.

In the end, Sturm’s piece suffers from a conception of free speech that nobody really holds, from his subsequent conclusion that free speech and positive social change work against each other, and from his failure to be explicit about what he recommends. He winds up sounding like a pablum-fed liberal whose message is simply this: “Why can’t we be nice to each other?”

Milo’s book a bestseller, Regressive Left largely responsible

February 13, 2017 • 12:00 pm

Dangerous, Milo Yiannopoulos’s new book, doesn’t come out until March 14, but it’s already #34 on Amazon, and #1 in 3 categories. On Friday, based on preorders, it had risen briefly to #1.  Milo was paid $250,000 as an advance by Simon and Schuster, and stands to earn much more than that given the sales.

What’s in the book? It’s hard to tell, for there’s precious little information on the Amazon site, and even USA Today‘s article “What we know (and don’t know) about Milo Yiannopoulos’s ‘Dangerous’ book” doesn’t tell us what it’s about. I suspect it’s a combination of his views and his experiences on his “Dangerous Faggot” tour.

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Those many people who have protested Milo’s appearances will be angered by the Dangerous‘s sales, and Sarah Silverman and Judd Apatow even called for boycotting of the book. What was clear to some of us, however, is that these kinds of protests against Milo merely call attention to him and his message, and are grossly counterproductive. It was after the boycott calls, for example, that the book went to Amazon’s #1 spot.

Those who oppose Milo vocally and publicly, and especially those who call for him to be “shut down”, or censored, are actually responsible for his success. If you want to see a good analysis of this, read Ryan Holiday‘s piece at the Observer, “I helped create the Milo trolling playbook. You should stop playing right into it.” Holiday, an author and marketer, wrote the book Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, about how to take advantage of the media’s penchant for controversy to sell products and books. (You can hear an interview with Holiday about Milo here.)  Holiday doesn’t much like Milo’s message, but he doesn’t hate the man, either, and certainly doesn’t think he should be censored. I’ll give you Holiday’s diagnosis of the books’s sudden popularity, which I agree with, and his solution to Milo’s problematic message—a solution I largely disagree with.

The diagnosis (quotes from Holiday are indented) is twofold: 1) Milo gets  publicity by being controversial and inflammatory, and that draws him new followers along with new detractors, and 2) attempts to shut him down on college campuses win him additional sympathizers by giving him the moral high ground. Emphases are as in the original piece:

Most brands and personalities try to appeal to a wide swath of the population. Niche players and polarizing personalities are only ever going to be interesting to a small subgroup. While this might seem like a disadvantage, it’s actually a huge opportunity: Because it allows them to leverage the dismissals, anger, mockery, and contempt of the population at large as proof of their credibility. Someone like Milo or Mike Cernovich doesn’t care that you hate them—they like it. It’s proof to their followers that they are doing something subversive and meaningful. It gives their followers something to talk about. It imbues the whole movement with a sense of urgency and action—it creates purpose and meaning.

You’re worried about “normalizing” their behavior when in fact, that’s the one thing they don’t want to happen. The key tactic of alternative or provocative figures is to leverage the size and platform of their “not-audience” (i.e. their haters in the mainstream) to attract attention and build an actual audience. Let’s say 9 out of 10 people who hear something Milo says will find it repulsive and juvenile. Because of that response rate, it’s going to be hard for someone like Milo to market himself through traditional channels. His potential audience is too spread out, and doesn’t have that much in common. He can’t advertise, he can’t find them one by one. It’s just not going to scale.

But let’s say he can acquire massive amounts of negative publicity by pissing off people in the media? Well now all of a sudden someone is absorbing the cost of this inefficient form of marketing for him. If a CNN story reaches 100,000 people, that’s 90,000 people all patting themselves on the back for how smart and decent they are. They’re just missing the fact that the 10,000 new people that just heard about Milo for the first time. The same goes for when you angrily share on Facebook some godawful thing one of these people has said. The vast majority of your friends rush to agree, but your younger cousin has a dark switch in his brain go on for the first time.

and

That’s what’s so misguided about what happened at UC Berkeley [violent protests, largely from outsiders, attempting to get the talk canceled, which were successful]. From what I understand, most of the violence was perpetrated by infiltrators who were looking to sow chaos and destruction. Yet many of the peaceful protesters and organizers have admitted that they too were attempting to shut down Milo’s talk. The last thing you ever want to do is give an opponent the moral high ground—and attempts to suppress, intimidate and revoke constitutional rights do exactly that.

There is absolutely nothing that Milo has said (and more importantly, done) that ought to revoke his First Amendment right to give a speech on a college campus. It’s profoundly hypocritical for the same activists who demanded safe spaces against microaggressions to march en masse and aggressively shut down a nerdy, gay conservative immigrant with a funny name (a minority if there ever was one) until he flees under armed guard. As much as you might dislike what he’s saying—and I personally dislike it a lot—I promise, you are not setting a good precedent by preventing him from saying it. Worse, you’re giving him more people to say it to when the ensuing media coverage explodes.

The solution: Flood his events with peaceful protestors who don’t try to get his talks canceled, and discuss the issues with Milo and his followers.

If you actually want to fight back against these trolls, here’s a strategy to consider: Organize all you want, get as many people as you can to show up at their events, but don’t try to shut them down. In fact, the only thing you should try to shut down are the instigators who try to incite violence. Regain the moral high ground by saying that you absolutely respect their right to free speech.

And then, actually listen and talk to them. To me, the most effective retorts against the alt-right were when Trevor Noah had Tomi Lahren on his show and when Elle Reeve profiled Richard Spencer for Vice. Both came off looking mostly like jokes. Tomi Lahren showed her age. Richard Spencer revealed his movement to be mostly a collection of a few thousand sad dorks. Wale’s Twitter exchange with Tomi was effective too—there was no outrage, no opposition, just teasing.

They say sunlight is the best disinfectant. But it is also what allows you to see whether the emperor has any clothes. And it’s this sad, and often pathetic reality, that the collective hysteria has beneficently covered up in those it’s trying to fight. What should be seen as farce somehow looks like real fascism.

I agree with this only in part. While I think that odious speech should be checked by counter-speech, I’m starting to think that simply ignoring Milo would be more effective than protesting him. Further, I don’t think talking to people like Milo or Spencer or their followers in private conversation will change their minds: after all, their profession is being provocative. Further, putting them on television is only partly effective. Richard Spencer may come off poorly in that medium, or in a profile (I didn’t hear that one, nor Trevor Noah’s interview with Tomi Lahren), but Milo is eloquent and charming, and I haven’t seen him bested in television interviews and debates. Perhaps the best way to deal with people like Milo and Spencer, given that you oppose their message, is just to ignore them completely.

h/t: Jon

Benighted woman justifies the punching of “Nazis”

February 4, 2017 • 12:15 pm

Dan Arel continues to defend the punching of Nazis (read: “any white supremacist”), tweeting a link to one of the most misguided articles I’ve seen in the past year:

https://twitter.com/danarel/status/827634669730422784

Yes, go have a read at The Establishment of “Why punching Nazis is not only ethical, but imperative,” by Katherine Cross (identified as “Sociologist, Transfeminist, Gaming Critic, Opera-loving slug matron, itinerant Valkyrie, and @Feministing columnist.” She’s also a grad student in sociology at the City University of New York) Her argument, as the title states, is that it’s our moral duty to punch Nazis because of what they did during World War II, because they’re fundamentally antidemocratic, and because they would destroy this country if they were allowed to speak freely (which, she says, they shouldn’t be).

This is the scary kind of violent rhetoric that we predicted from Trump supporters, but is actually coming almost exclusively from the Regressive Left—that group of people who now think that civil disobedience should involve physical assault on people they disagree with. And this attitude appears to be spreading, as we see not only from Arel, who once was sane, but also from the Berkeley anarchists who shut down Milo Yiannopoulos’s talk. (There are more; just Google “punching Nazis,” and you’ll find other apologists like this one.)

Cross is of course referring to Richard Spencer, an odious white supremacist who, while giving an interview on January 20 in Washington (Inauguration Day), was punched in the face by what looks to be a hooded anarchist. Here’s the video:

First of all, is Spencer a Nazi? He denies it, and he’s not a member of the American Nazi Party, but he certain aligns with much of the ideology behind neo-Nazism. As Wikipedia notes:

Spencer has repeatedly quoted from Nazi propaganda and denounced Jews, and has on several occasions refused to denounce Adolf Hitler.

Spencer and his organization drew considerable media attention in the weeks following the 2016 presidential election, where, in response to his cry “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!”, a number of his supporters gave the Nazi salute and chanted in a similar fashion to the Sieg heil chant used at the Nazis’ Nuremberg rallies. Spencer has defended their conduct, stating that the Nazi salute was given in a spirit of “irony and exuberance”.[14]

So he’s an anti-Semitic white supremacist who seems to knowingly co-opt aspects of Nazi behavior. But he’s not a Nazi per se, and we shouldn’t call all white supremacists Nazis, which immediately aligns them with the Hitlerian ideology that may not be appropriate.

Even so, did Spencer deserve to get punched? Cross says “yes,” and that it’s our obligation to punch him. Why? Cross gives several reasons (her words are indented):

1). Spencer should be punched because he conjures up the Holocaust.  Cross says this:

For the mainline liberals and conservatives who lament the punching of Richard Spencer, the young white supremacist activist who coined the term “alt-right,” Nazism remains a theoretical construct, an “idea” that can be debated and defeated without a shot being fired in anger. For the rest of us — for many Jews, for ethnic and religious minorities, for queer people — Nazism is an empirical fact with the solidity of iron roads leading to walled death camps.

The camps are Nazism’s endpoint; it is what Nazism is for. Nazism serves as a refuge for whites dislocated by mass society and modernity, who seek someone to blame for their anomic dread. With that in mind, we must be very explicit about what Nazism’s relationship to democracy must be, and refuse dangerous, whitewashing euphemisms when discussing it (e.g. “you support punching someone who disagrees with you”).

Not all white supremacists are calling for concentration camps for Jews—in fact, I know of none who are. But even if they did, they have the right to say it under the First Amendment, for it doesn’t inspire immediate violence. Of course I’d oppose that call with every atom of my being, and I’m confident enough in today’s world that reminding people of the Holocaust is sufficient to ensure that rational people won’t fall under Spencer’s sway. As for that “whitewashing euphemism,” well, it’s not as euphemistic as you think given the recent political violence we’ve seen. Milo Yiannopoulos, for instance, is not a Nazi, regardless of what you think about him.

2.) Spencer should be punched because his words may actually create a Holocaust of either Jews or African-Americans. 

Yes, it could be said that I “disagree” with Spencer that a genocide of Black Americans is desirable, but I believe he should be punched because of the very real risk that he could galvanize such an event into actually happening. This is a fear supported by the tremendous weight of our history, and by the fact that we had to fight the bloodiest war of our species’ existence the last time Nazism came into conflict with modern democracy. To call this a “disagreement” is an unspeakable slight against millions of dead.

First of all, punching people like Spencer merely gets them sympathy; it doesn’t stop them from promulgating their ideas. And to suppose that our country is on the verge of creating Auschwitz-like camps for anyone is simply unjustified hysteria. But of course the Regressive Left, of which Cross appears to be the type specimen, likes to whip up such hysteria by branding their opponents with the worst names possible: racist, misogynist, Nazi.

3.) Spencer should be punched because his views abuse democracy. We should not let these people speak, and we should beat them up, too.

Fascism is a cancer that turns democracy against itself unto death. There is no reasoning with it. It was specifically engineered to attack the weaknesses of democracy and use them to bring down the entire system, arrogating a right to free speech for itself just long enough to take power and wrench it away from everyone else. Simply allowing Nazis onto a stage, as the BBC did when it let British National Party leader Nick Griffin sit and debate with political luminaries on its Question Time program, is to give them an invaluable moral victory. Like creationists who debate evolutionary biologists, the former benefit mightily from the prestige of the latter.

In using this tactic, Nazis abuse the democratic forum to illegitimately lend credence to something that is otherwise indefensible, the equality of the stage giving the unforgivable appearance of “two sides” to a position that is anathema to public decency. This is not because Nazis love democracy or free speech, but because they know how to use this strategy to unravel them.

Yes, allowing odious speech is “abusing the democratic forum.” In other words, we can’t allow people like Spencer the rights of other citizens in a democracy, like free speech, because they will use those rights to destroy democracy. Now I don’t think Spencer has the inalienable right to a platform in a university, but if he’s legitimately invited, then yes, he should be allowed to speak. Opponents should be allowed to protest peacefully, ask questions in the Q&A session, and engage in counterspeech. And yes, Spencer should be allowed to get a permit to stand on a soapbox in the park and bawl his hatred out to high heaven.

In fact, people like Cross herself are the ones who endanger democracy. As far as I know, Spencer hasn’t called for censoring or physically assaulting anyone. In a country run by Cross, that would not only be legal, but encouraged, and people like Spencer wouldn’t be allowed to speak. (Presumably Cross would be The Decider.) Free speech? Only for those with acceptable views! Further, the “credibility” argument doesn’t hold for me. While I won’t myself debate creationists because that gives them the cachet of having a real scientist think they’re worth debating, I wouldn’t for a moment try to censor them in public talks simply because they’re wrong. (Public schools, of course, are a different matter: teaching creationism is teaching lies to children, and at the same time pushing unconstitutional religious views on them.)

4.) Spencer should be punched because hurting him reveals “the shared humanity that Nazis deny.” With this argument Cross takes herself to Cloud-Cuckoo Land, for in what sense is hurting people you don’t like a form of “shared humanity”? Perhaps in a just war, but surely not among citizens in a democratic land. But listen to Ms. Cross (my emphasis):

As I noted earlier, Nazism is democracy’s anti-matter; coming into contact with it is often destructive for our institutions because it is the personification of bad faith with malice aforethought. The only nonviolent solution is to marginalize Nazism from public life in our society — one may be free to hold these views, but not to try and spread them at the highest echelons of our public fora. When, however, someone like Spencer does come along and is being feted in the mainstream, there are no other options available to us.

The vulnerability of Nazis cannot be revealed through debate — many thinkers who lived through the Second World War, from Karl Popper, to Hannah Arendt, to Jean Paul Sartre, have been quite clear about why dispassionate discourse with men like Richard Spencer is not only pointless, but actively dangerous.

 The use of force, by contrast, does reveal the shared humanity that Nazis deny. Our vulnerability is one of the things that links us all, seven billion strong, in a humane fragility. These are essential aspects of our humanity that both Nazi mythology and channer troll culture deny. Punching a Nazi, by contrast, reveals it. It reveals they are no masters, but quite eminently capable of fear, of pain, of vulnerability. And that takes the shine off; it eliminates their mystique, and it puts the lie to the idea that their ideology is an armor against the pains of modernity.
That alone justifies Richard Spencer being punched in the face on camera.

It is this kind of stuff that scares me about the Regressive Left. They not only twist language out of its normal meaning to justify violence—something that Orwell warned about repeatedly, but use their new language to justify hurting other human beings. Indeed, it’s not just ethical to hurt them, but required.  You know what this leads to: people punching Muslims for their “noncompliance” with the tenets of Western society, Jews for being exponents of occupation and promoting an “apartheid” state, and people like Milo (not a Nazi!) being punched for promoting “hate speech.”

This is not a road that progressives want to travel. I’m far more scared of an authoritarian like Cross than of a white supremacist like Spencer. Spencer will never achieve anything, but Cross, along with Arel and others, is rapidly convincing many progressives that it’s okay to hurt the bodies of people who hurt your feelings.  And that is fundamentally antidemocratic.

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Katherine Cross, Decider of Who Gets Punched

Dan Arel gets more flak

February 3, 2017 • 9:30 am

Not too long ago, Dan Arel, an atheist who once had a good reputation for his book on secular parenting, wrote a piece blaming Dave Rubin and me for a number of sins, including helping Trump get elected and aligning with white nationalism. It was a remarkable piece of misguided polemic, and Arel’s poor writing was exceeded only by the breathless sweep of his lies and distortions. I responded to his post by first providing a summary and a link:

Incredibly, Arel has expanded his list of Nazis and white supremacists to include “classical liberals,” who are said to include Dave Rubin—and me! In a bizarre post on his website called “How classical liberals helped normalize white nationalism and elect Donald Trump,” Arel takes the position that those of us who favor unrestricted freedom of speech (by that I mean speech that doesn’t incite immediate violence or constitute harassment in the workplace), as well as those of us who oppose the incursion of postmodernism into academic or intellectual discourse, are all not only white nationalists, but also helped elect Donald Trump.

Well, you can read my response at the link. Now, however, there are two more. The first is by Jeff Tayler at Quillette, “Free speech and the Regressive Left — the road back to reason.” I’m pleased that Jeff defended Dave and me, but he also offers up criticism of the Regressive Left, of which Arel has become a poster boy. And, self-aggrandizingly, I’ll put up one quote:

On second thought, though, a sample. Coyne and Rubin, per Arel, “welcome white nationalist speakers on campus and complain if students try and stop it, telling them to protest instead, and in turn, complain when they turn out in protest, accusing them of trying to live in a bubble and being an enemy of the free exchange of ideas.” Earlier in his piece, Arel had claimed that they “strawman the very idea of ‘safe spaces’ claiming its leftist liberals begging to be coddled in school, refusing or caring not to listen that these are nothing but the same ‘spaces’ we see in Alcoholics Anonymous, or even at private atheist meetings or gatherings.”

So, are we to see college students as the equivalents of traumatized substance abusers? That’s what Arel gives us to think. True, though, post-pubescent toddlers throwing tantrums on campus when they find themselves confronting differing opinions do cry out for diagnosis (and possibly medication). But the world is an increasingly dangerous place. If said toddlers lack what it takes to get through four years in such cossetted environs, how will they face tough, determined Islamists on either the ideological or the literal battlefield? In any case, Arel might have offered links to samples of what Rubin and Coyne have said about safe spaces and trigger warnings. But stream-of-consciousness editorializing is more easily accomplished unrestrained by facts, to say nothing of respect for the truth.

Next ensues a slipshod harangue that, as far as I can tell, casts Coyne and Rubin and other sane progressives as dastardly villains scheming to undo decades of egalitarian social advancement, destroy the American Way, and establish a sort of Yankee Third Reich, with Hillary’s “deplorables” press-ganged into serving as twenty-first-century Brownshirts. Little of this lends itself to rational rebuttal, but in essence, Arel contends that decriers of the regressive left “got into bed with the wrong crowd and moved into the far-right landscape because of a failure to evaluate Islam at the same critical level they do all other religion,” which is, he says, “a sin both the left and right share.”

If we translate this into standard American English, we get — mirabile dictu! — the point that sane progressives (including Rubin and Coyne, and Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins) have been making all along: that the left’s exculpatory doubletalk about Islam has, broadly speaking, split the movement into genuine progressives and regressive leftists. Or at least that’s how I interpret Arel’s tortured verbiage. With his concluding line he lapses into self-parody: “If atheism is to continue forward progress in the US, it must be a voice of reason, not a megaphone for racist white nationalism.”

Nonbelief as a “voice?” As a “megaphone?” There is neither a valid metaphor nor a truthful assertion lurking in his peroration’s final line.

Since Arel expends 1,400 words attacking Rubin, Coyne, et al, but offers no credible evidence against them, we might, once again, just cite Hitchensian license and punch the delete key on the entire screed.

A critique of Arel is only part of Heather Hastie’s piece on the Regressive Left, “The Authoritarian Left and misdirected animosity in the atheist community“. I’ll omit her defense of Rubin and me, and add one paragraph about data you might not have seen:

In 2009 Phil Zuckerman, a sociology professor at Pitzer College (and later founder of the Department of Secular Studies) wrote ‘Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions‘. His analyses include:

… when we actually compare the values and beliefs of atheists and secular people to those of religious people, the former are markedly less nationalistic, less prejudiced, less anti-Semitic, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less close-minded, and less authoritarian.

You might think about that when atheist blusterers like Arel or other bloggers (who don’t deserve naming) accuse the atheist “movement” of being especially infected by misogyny and racism. By now I must have gone to a couple dozen humanist, atheist, and secular meetings, and while of course there must be some bigots there (I haven’t seen any!), I find the atmosphere refreshingly free of prejudice and rancor, resembling many of the scientific meetings I’ve gone to (scientists also tend to be atheistic and liberal). The tendency for such people to eat their own always mystifies me, especially since, in these Times of Trouble, we should be finding common ground.

Meanwhile, Arel continues his unhinged ranting on Twi**er. This is exactly the wrong way to build a constituency, which Arel seems to want:

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Extra recommended reading: The articles in today’s New York Times on the increasing violence of both anarchists and “anti-fascists”, and one on the free speech battle at Berkeley.

Bill Maher indicts the liberal thought-and-language police for Democratic losses

January 28, 2017 • 1:30 pm

This segment of Bill Maher’s “Real Time”, which was published yesterday, blames Democratic election losses on the party’s having gone “from the party that protects people to the party that protects feelings.” Well, I’m not so sure I agree, but it’s a funny piece nonetheless.

h/t: Barry

Berkeley chancellor’s statement on Milo Yiannopoulos’s upcoming visit: it’s free speech

January 28, 2017 • 10:50 am

Next Wednesday, February 1, the ever-unruly Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart editor, provocateur, “alt-righter”, and reliable inciter of Regressive Left hatred, will be speaking at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), invited by the Berkeley College Republicans (a student organization). Yiannopoulos’s talk is part of his continuing “Dangerous Faggot Tour.”

There will surely be trouble, for Milo + Berkeley = Attempted Censorship. (I’m becoming aware that, taking a playbook from some Muslims, campuses and students are starting to call Milo’s appearances “unsafe”—but precisely because students come out en masse to demonstrate in a violent way, and, once inside the auditoriums, to throw tantrums and try to shut the speaker down. If nobody showed up, or simply tried to demonstrate peacefully, the events would come off without a hitch. But that, of course, would take away one of the excuses for trying to ban Milo in the first place. In other words, the threat of violent retaliation for a perceived “hate speech” offense is a sufficient reason to disinvite the speaker.) In fact, twelve UCB professors originally signed a letter asking the Chancellor to cancel the event, and 90 others have added their names since. Here’s what one signatory said:

“We believe wholeheartedly in free speech and in the presentation of views that may be controversial or disturbing, politically or personally,” said David Landreth, one of the 12 professors who authored the letter, in an email. “However, Mr. Yiannopoulos’s public talks routinely veer into direct personal harassment of individuals; they often also call for such harassment and aim to incite it.”

Even if that were true (and I do deplore the singling out of one transgender student in a talk in Wisconsin), that’s not sufficient reason to cancel a talk. Note, too, the “we believe in free speech BUT” trope: the “but” is a sign you’re dealing with Regressive Leftists. And if they believe in free speech for views that may be “personally” disturbing, why do they decry “personal harassment”? If that harassment is defamatory or slanderous, it’s illegal, as it is if it calls for immediate violence. But if personally harassing individuals is a crime, then many comedians would be out of business now (Don Rickles comes to mind). In fact, Milo rarely calls out individual students, and when he does so they are usually “public figures,” as one could argue the Wisconsin student was. Beware, O beware the claim that speech should be band because it involves “personal harassment of individuals.”

As reported by the student newspaper The Daily Californian, Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks wrote a long letter to the campus community addressing Milo’s appearance. The letter is on the paper’s site, but you can access it more easily here. The good part is that Dirks defends Milo’s right to talk as free speech, e.g.:

Since the announcement of Mr. Yiannopoulos’s visit, we have received many requests that we ban him from campus and cancel the event. Although we have responded to these requests directly, we would like to explain to the entire campus community why the event will be held as planned. First, from a legal perspective, the U.S. Constitution prohibits UC Berkeley, as a public institution, from banning expression based on its content or viewpoints, even when those viewpoints are hateful or discriminatory. Longstanding campus policy permits registered student organizations to invite speakers to campus and to make free use of meeting space in the Student Union for that purpose. As mentioned, the BCR is the host of this event, and therefore it is only they who have the authority to disinvite Mr. Yiannopoulos. Consistent with the dictates of the First Amendment as uniformly and decisively interpreted by the courts, the university cannot censor or prohibit events, or charge differential fees. Some have asked us whether attacks on individuals are also protected. In fact, critical statements and even the demeaning ridicule of individuals are largely protected by the Constitution; in this case, Yiannopoulos’s past words and deeds do not justify prior restraint on his freedom of expression or the cancellation of the event.

Berkeley is the home of the Free Speech Movement, and the commitment to free expression is embedded in our Principles of Community as the commitment “to ensur(e) freedom of expression and dialogue that elicits the full spectrum of views held by our varied communities.” As a campus administration, we have honored this principle by defending the right of community members who abide by our campus rules to express a wide range of often-conflicting points of view. We have gone so far as to defend in court the constitutional rights of students of all political persuasions to engage in unpopular expression on campus. Moreover, we are defending the right to free expression at an historic moment for our nation, when this right is once again of paramount importance. In this context, we cannot afford to undermine those rights, and feel a need to make a spirited defense of the principle of tolerance, even when it means we tolerate that which may appear to us as intolerant.

But what I find problematic about Dirks’s letter is the bit where the University not only distances itself from Yiannopoulos’s views, which I guess is okay, but details some University actions that look for all the world like an attempt to “persuade” the College Republicans not to host Milo—or to disinvite him. To me, that smacks of attempted censorship.  Read the excerpt from Dirks’s letter below and tell me what you think; the material after the first paragraph almost sounds like attempted prior restraint:

Like all sponsors of similar events, BCR will be required to reimburse the university for the cost of basic event security. Law enforcement professionals in the UCPD have also explained to the BCR that, consistent with legal requirements, security charges were calculated based on neutral, objective criteria having nothing to do with the speaker’s perspectives, prior conduct on other campuses and/or expected protests by those who stand in opposition to his beliefs, rhetoric and behavior.

In addition, however, we have also clearly communicated to the BCR that we regard Yiannopoulos’s act as at odds with the values of this campus. We have emphasized to them that with their autonomy and independence comes a moral responsibility for the consequences of their words, actions, events and invitations – and those of their guest. We have made sure they are aware of how Yiannopoulos has conducted himself at prior events at other universities, and we have explained that his rhetoric is likely to be deeply upsetting and perceived as threatening by some of their fellow students and members of our campus community. Our student groups enjoy the right to invite whomever they wish to speak on campus, but we urge them to consider whether exercising that right in a manner that might unleash harmful attacks on fellow students and other members of the community is consistent with their own and with our community’s values.

Finally, we have also made the BCR aware that some of those who are opposed to Yiannopoulos’s perspectives and conduct have vowed to mount a substantial protest against his presence on our campus. UCPD has been directed to maintain public safety and to do what it can to prevent disruptions and preserve order. It should be noted that the anticipated cost of those additional preparations and measures will be borne entirely by the campus, and will far exceed the basic security costs that are the responsibility of the hosting organization. We will not stand idly by while laws or university policies are violated, no matter who the perpetrators are.

Nothing we have done to plan for this event should be mistaken as an endorsement of Yiannopoulos’s views or tactics. Indeed, we are saddened that anyone would use degrading stunts or verbal assaults on marginalized members of our society to promote a political platform.

That’s pretty damn paternalistic.

I wonder if the Administration does this when an anti-Israeli speaker comes to campus, or an anti-Palestinian speaker? How often does the administration have a sit-down with any student group and let them know with a nod and a wink that it might be better if they disinvited a speaker or hadn’t invited them in the first place?

Am I wrong, or do you think those words are out of place in Dirks’s letter? I can see why they were included: to show that the University is not on board with Milo’s message, thus trying to soothe the easily-offended students. But why should a University have to say any of this stuff in the first place? This wouldn’t have happened at the University of Chicago, where the administration would never try to position itself politically during a kerfuffle over a speaker.

Finally, below is a picture from a post on the San Francisco site Carpe Diem!, calling for people to come out and drive Milo off campus. An excerpt:

Milo Yiannopoulos is a spokesperson for the newly activated far right, an Islamophobic writer for Breitbart, a leader of the Gamergate sexual harassment campaign, and a figurehead for some of the most hateful right-wing elements in Trump’s camp. We should allow no space for his message at UC Berkeley.

We also have to do more than stop one event to prevent these far right elements from recruiting and growing their forces. We have to shut them down and drown out their events in every community they pop up, and we have to undermine them politically as well.

Well, peaceful protest is one thing, but I don’t think this is what this group has in mind. . . .

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h/t: Grania

Dan Arel goes full regressive: accuses “classical liberals” (i.e., me) of “normalizing white nationalism”

January 27, 2017 • 8:30 am

I recently reported that Dan Arel, atheist author and blogger, had justified the sucker-punching of white supremacist Richard Spencer in Washington, D.C., basically saying that it’s okay to punch racists (he called Spencer a “Nazi,” which he’s not). My position is that it’s never okay to use violence against those whose ideas we dislike—unless they use it against you first and you act in self defense.

Incredibly, Arel has expanded his list of Nazis and white supremacists to include “classical liberals,” who are said to include Dave Rubin—and me! In a bizarre post on his website called “How classical liberals helped normalize white nationalism and elect Donald Trump,” Arel takes the position that those of us who favor unrestricted freedom of speech (by that I mean speech that doesn’t incite immediate violence or constitute harassment in the workplace), as well as those of us who oppose the incursion of postmodernism into academic or intellectual discourse, are all not only white nationalists, but also helped elect Donald Trump.

Arel’s thrashings and flailings, in a piece that’s also poorly written, remind me of nothing other than the behavior of a fighting bull that has been goaded by a picador, looking around madly for someone to attack. What’s gored him is apparently the election of Donald Trump, and he apparently has to blame that on somebody. Never mind blaming it on the apathetic Democrats who didn’t come out to vote for Clinton, or on the working-class whites who didn’t respond to the Democratic message. Arel wants to pin it on “classical liberals”. It was we, says Arel, who allowed Milo Yiannopoulus to spew his message of hate! It was we who attacked gender-studies programs in colleges! It was we who tar the entire left as “regressive”, while aligning ourselves with the Right and “white nationalism” on all but a few issues.  And that, he claims, has played directly into the hands of Trump supporters. Before I start masticating the meat of Arel’s argument (which is actually thin gruel), I want to make three points:

  • Arel’s claim that free speech leads to fascism is not only rank intellectual laziness, but betrays him as willfully ignorant of history. There are several well-studied and documented “causes” of fascism, none of which have anything to do with a society fostering the open exchange of ideas.
  • It would be convenient for Arel if everyone who was critical of censorship and thuggery was a Nazi-sympathizing fascist, as he claims. But his flailing and disingenuous hand-waving do not make it so.
  • Arel’s attempt to smear atheists and non-regressive Leftists as “white nationalists” and “Trump supporters” is a transparent attempt to make his readers ignore criticism of his own positions. By calling others names, he conveniently doesn’t have to defend his own positions.

Here, as far as I can make them out, are Arel’s claims. They’re all in support of his thesis that “left-wing” atheists are actually white nationalists who helped get Trump elected, stated below:

The so-called alt-right white nationalists have seemingly infected every fabric of American culture, no thanks in part to the media insistence on normalizing such a movement. Unfortunately, the atheist community, one that readily prides itself on rational thought, has not been immune to such infection, and many of the loudest voices have fought to not only normalize but also help amplify the voices of white nationalism.

Arel’s points:

Defending people’s rights to speak, including Yiannopolous’s, is not defending free speech, because people like him have no right to a platform.  My position has consistently been that anyone invited to a University or other venue properly should be allowed to speak without interruption or cancellation, though nobody has an absolute right to be invited. Nevertheless, given the prevalence of right-wing, pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, and other diverse student groups on campus, it’s inevitable that speakers will be invited with whom some (or many) disagree. If you don’t want to hear them, don’t go. Or, have counter-talks, or demonstrate outside the talk, or write some pieces for the student newspaper. There are also question-and-answer sesssions if you want to have direct discourse.

As for Yiannopoulos, my dislike for most of his views has been on display here for a while, and I rebuked him for calling out a transgender student at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Despite that, Arel says this:

Professor-emeritus and author of Faith vs. Fact, Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago attacked this petition and accused the left of suppressing Yiannopoulos’ free speech rights. Of course, Yiannopoulos has a right to his hate speech, but he does not have a right to a university stage, and the school has a responsibility to protect its students. Had the government shown up and arrested Yiannopoulos for such speech, Coyne would have a case. Instead, Coyne and others on his side are only giving rise to voices like Yiannopoulos’ and doing nothing to defend the people being harassed.

Coyne was satisfied with Yiannopoulos merely agreeing to not mock students again and not actually paying a price for his actions. Yet those students who feared the damage Yiannopoulos to other students was brushed off by Coyne as regressive and anti-free speech. This view is hypocritical.

I’m wondering what price Arel expects Yiannopoulos to pay for his actions. Milo’s churlish singling out of a transgender student surely cut down on the number of his invitations, for that looked bad to many people. Does Arel want Milo to be punched?

Further, Arel makes the serious mistake of saying that a violation of free speech occurs only when the government shuts somebody up. That’s not the case. Violations occur whenever somebody has a legal right to speak in a public place but then is not allowed to speak. On college campuses, that involves either blockading a venue or disrupting a speech so severely that the speaker can’t continue. And it doesn’t just happen to Yiannopoulos: Maryam Namazie experienced this same kind of suppression when she tried to speak about reforming Islam in Britain.

We free-speech advocates try to deny free speech to those whose views we don’t like.

Arel says this:

When Yiannopoulos recently signed a $250,000 book deal with Simon & Schuster, many on the left, including celebrities such as comedian Sarah Silverman and director Judd Apatow called for the publisher to abandon the book deal. In response to this, atheist Michael Shermer called the duo “Milo haters,” and asked when they would be holding a “book burning.” All calls for boycotts became “regressive” leftist extremism and Yiannopoulos’ racism, bigotry, and hate was again defended the loudest by classic liberalists.

The classicists defend “free speech” at every turn unless it’s speech they disagree with. Yiannopoulos, in their view, must be given this book deal, a university platform, and be left to spread his hate without consequence. However, the second you speak up, using your own free speech, you’re attacked and silenced as the enemy.

This new hypocritical brand of atheism is void [sic] of critical thinking. It is void [sic] of compassion. It is completely void [sic] of any sense of humanism. It holds nothing but unquestioned contempt for the left while marching goose-step with the right, turning a blind eye to the bigotry they claim to disavow.

Like that goose-step analogy? Think it’s accidental? Well, that aside, whoever said that Yiannopoulos has to be given book deals or university platforms? A company agreed to publish his book, and if you don’t like what he says or writes, don’t read it. But don’t ban it, either. As for university platforms, well, if some student group wants to invite Milo, and he accepts, then trying to ban him or shut him down is indeed a violation of free speech. I will defend anyone’s right to speak under those circumstances, whether or not I like what they say. When have I ever urged censorship of anyone? Throughout the article, Arel’s characterizations of my positions can charitably called lies.

And there’s this:

It would rather align itself with those Hillary Clinton referred to as “deplorables” simply because they share an equal hatred of Islam, and feminism, rather than align themselves with the left, which has been responsible for the decades of forward progress in the US.

Umm. . . I voted for Clinton and have always despised Trump. On the Rubin show, I said I considered myself a liberal and as someone on the Left, and had always voted Democratic. Arel goes on:

They [Rubin, I, and our minions, apparently] strawman the very idea of “safe spaces” claiming its leftist liberals begging to be coddled in school, refusing or caring not to listen that these are nothing but the same “spaces” we see in Alcoholics Anonymous, or even at private atheist meetings or gatherings.

Instead of listening to these reasonable demands, they attack and mock them. They welcome white nationalist speakers on campus and complain if students try and stop it, telling them to protest instead, and in turn, complain when they turn out in protest, accusing them of trying to live in a bubble and being an enemy of the free exchange of ideas.

I have listened to these demands, winnowed the reasonable ones from the unreasonable ones (not all are reasonable!) and explained why. I welcome all speakers on campus if they’ve been properly invited, and my complaints are not against protesting those speakers, but when those students try to “stop it,” i.e., shut down such speakers. Again, I’ve encouraged those who oppose speakers to picket, ask questions during the Q&A sessions, stage counterspeeches, and argue in the public forums. I have not argued that such protests should not occur (though I think they’re sometimes misguided), but only that their intent cannot be to prevent someone from speaking.

Apparently Arel is the one who’s in favor of censorship, approving of the punching of Spencer, apparently agreeing that publishers should abandon book deals if people protest their hate speech, and urging people to deny Yiannopoulos a platform to speak, even after he’s been invited. Remember, too, that Arel approved of Richard Spencer’s being sucker-punched, which is not only violence but also an attack on free speech. If you want to read two very nice pieces by free-speech lawyers about why we shouldn’t approve of such violence, or of shutting down “hate speech”, see these two articles.

“On punching Nazis,” by Ken White at the Popehat site. One excerpt:

“Applying social and legal norms about punching or prosecuting people based on speech shouldn’t be confused for treating all speech as equivalent. All speech isn’t equivalent. Nazis are scum. They don’t support the social or legal norms in question and in fact support killing people based on skin color, religion, or disagreement. Saying they are scum, and that their speech is qualitatively different than other speech, and that they ought to be shunned and reviled, is not the same as punching or prosecuting them. It is a good thing to identify Nazis as scum and treat them – socially and rhetorically — accordingly.”

“Defend Donald Trump’s right to free speech” by Marc Randazza on CNN. And one excerpt from that:

“It is a fair opinion to think Trump’s speech is offensive, problematic, or hateful. But, the First Amendment requires neither tact nor politeness. It requires that we permit all views to set up stalls in the marketplace of ideas, and we let that marketplace decide which ideas prevail. That is why it is called “the marketplace of ideas,” not “the marketplace of gangs beating each other up.”

Would Trump similarly stand up for the rights of others? I doubt it. But that is not the point.

If you don’t stand up for Trump’s liberty today, someone may come for yours tomorrow

If we believe in free speech, we need to believe in Trump’s as well.”

The regressive norms about speech adhered to by people like Arel will (and have been) used against those who encourage them. For instance, if the person who punched Spencer were black (he wasn’t), could he be prosecuted for a “hate crime” against whites? It’s not inconceivable.

Nobody, including Arel, should set themselves up as arbiters of what is “good” speech and what is “hate” speech that is okay to censor.  No speech should be censored, for the free exchange of ideas is designed to lead to the victory for the best ideas. That this is true is demonstrated by the advance of moral thought is a free society (in the U.S., for instance, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, including marriage), and the lack of such advances in societies where discussion is prohibited or criminalized.

Decrying postmodern gibberish and extreme regressive leftism (e.g. excusing Muslim-based misogyny) is an offense to social justice and aligns the critics with white nationalism.

Arel thinks that my mockery of postmodernism, especially in gender studies, amounts to a critique of feminism itself. In fact, he contradicts himself below by saying that we atheist fascists do indeed support women’s rights, but yet we “mock gender-studies”. And look what I’ve put in bold!

These community appointed leaders argue for a further centrist, or a right-of-center libertarian model of government, one they cling to as “classic liberalism.” They break from the right only by supporting women’s rights, same-sex marriage, and a wall between the separation of church and state, yet the join the right in fighting against feminism, progressive social justice, and go as far as to mock gender-studies. Instead of embracing the political left and the strides it has made in those areas of social justice, Rubin, Coyne, and the like, lambaste the left as extremists, while aligning closely with white nationalism.

They give voice to the worst humanity has to offer and work to silence and shame those who stand up against such bigotry. This is because they accuse the entire left of being “regressive.”

There is no contradiction in promoting feminism and, at the same time, mocking the gibberish that comes out of not only gender-studies programs, but other areas of the humanities, including science studies. I am not aware of having written off gender-studies, science studies or other areas of the humanities as a whole; as readers will know, I claim that these areas are infected to greater or lesser degrees with postmodern cant and relativism, and call it out when I see it—as in the notorious “feminist glaciology” study, or academic work on the whiteness of pumpkins or the racism of Pilates.  Such studies are palpable nonsense, and I haven’t particularly concentrated on work coming out of gender-studies programs. Nonsense is nonsense, and a lot of it comes from postmodernism in the humanities. Science itself, which does accept the notion of progress towards truth, isn’t so afflicted.

As for aligning ourselves with “white nationalism”, which I take to mean white supremacy, Arel is simply lying. I’ll speak just for myself when I ask anybody to name one instance when I’ve lambasted the entire left as extremist, or, especially, “aligned closely with white nationalism.”

What we see here is the most classic regressive-Left technique: when you don’t want to deal with someone’s arguments, tar them with the worst epithets you can think of: racist, misogynist, and so on. That puts them beyond the pale, demonizing them to such an extent that one no longer needs to pay attention to what they say. Even on this site a reader will occasionally say that they have written off somebody’s entire oeuvre because of one thing they’ve said. That’s not wise, for everyone sometimes says foolish or invidious things.

 Such tactics have led to the accusation that in fact it is people like Arel, not me, who, through their policing of language and thought, have pushed a lot of disaffected and discouraged people into the Trump camp. As I’ve said, I’m not so sure about that claim, but I bet that accusation has stung people like Arel, leading to his and others’ attempt to throw the blame for Trump on the progressive Left.

I’ve already run on too long, for in truth I don’t think Arel’s slander deserves a response this thorough (and, truth be told, his commenters have kicked his tuchas so hard that he won’t be sitting down for a month), but I want to say one more thing about Dave Rubin. Arel indicts him, as have others, for failing to call out the right-wing views of some of his guests. Arel:

Host of the online talk-show The Rubin Report, Dave Rubin, an outspoken atheist, invites the likes of former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro, or Breitbart’s controversial Milo Yiannopoulos to speak for hours without offering counter arguments or forcing them to defend their white nationalist and xenophobic ideologies. Instead, Rubin looks for points of agreement and forms bonds. The alt-right, in turn, enjoys Rubin’s large audience to spread their message of hate. Rubin has stated his choice of guests help him push his own agenda, so if one is confused as to why he brings on such voices, it’s because Rubin himself is pushing this same agenda.

Rubin claims to be a champion of the free exchange of ideas, but you’d be hard pressed to find a guest he disagrees with. He goes as far as to blame the left for the election of Donald Trump, accusing the politically correct culture of rallying the right around Trump’s message.

What Rubin ignores is the fact that he gave a megaphone to many of Trump’s loudest supporters, giving rise and credibility to their ideas, empowering the white nationalist movement and bringing them to new audiences. It’s not the left that helped elect Trump, it was racism, sexism, anti-Muslim bigotry, and those who helped raise those voices above the rest.

If you consider who Rubin’s had on, including Sam Harris, Gaad Sad, Milo, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lawrence Krauss, Inna Shevchenko, Sarah Haider, and so on, you’d be hard pressed to see these as fitting into any consistent agenda, much less the “alt-right” one or any adherence to “the white nationalist movement” (some of these guests, after all, aren’t white!). Rubin’s model for a talk show is not Jerry Springer, but Larry King, where guests get to simply air their views. Now you may say that Rubin lets some pretty odious views pass uncriticized, but remember that, as he’s always emphasized, he’s drawing out people’s ideas in an attempt to have his audience find a place where both Left and Right can sit on common ground.  It is the division between people, both culturally and politically, that has led to our extremely polarized society. If we’re to fix that, we either have to increase the polarization, and foment a revolution, or try to find compromise within our democracy. Rubin, I think, is engaged in the latter project.

Recommended reading: “The new totalitarians are here” by Tom Nichols on The Federalist (2015).

h/t: Grania