I think you make a valid point re the left downplaying the violence in some protests but I disagree with your claim regarding them denying the Uighur persecution, John Oliver did quite an in depth piece on it only recently and he certainly didn't downplay things. I'm pretty sure Chomsky covered it years ago also

Yes, HCQ, typo. If you think that people ingesting right-wing news are not getting fed research and quotes saying the exact opposite, you're just getting one side of the news. Again, I'm not making a claim about HCQ here. I haven't waded through the research that each side presents; have you?

The narrative in the Twitter-sphere among some rightwing folks is that the Leftist media and corporations (like the NBA, for example) are denying/complicit with the Uighur genocide.

Not sure what you meant about incompatibility, can you clarify? My thought on this is that both sides have narratives they believe strongly and there is distortion present.

I meant to watch that- good? There was a thread that Maajid Nawaz had on twitter for a while, supposedly reporting on it, calling out media outlets to report, etc., without getting much of a response. At any rate, my point was that this has been a narrative, not that I am asserting it as fact. I will say that I'm under the impression that the NBA has avoided the issue in a sketchy way.

If people aren't familiar with projective identification as a concept, I highly recommend doing some reading on it, as I think it plays a huge part in how these types of conversations play out. It's a nuanced concept but worth reflecting on, in my eyes.

Um, okay. I will grant that is a thing that right-wing folks in the Twitter-sphere might say.

What is your point in saying that, though? You don't seem informed enough to be stating an opinion on the topic so you're just regurgitating a "people are saying" argument (one of Trump's favorites!). Why is saying "here is a thing right-wingers are saying on Twitter" an appropriate response to Trolly's post?

Agreed for the most part.

Do you not think this is true of the DNC as well?

In b4 someone else conflates my criticism of both sides with avoidance of taking a stance, and thus being complicit with the bad guys. =)

This whole channel is devoted to looking at group psychology, how narratives form, etc. That's the piece I will comment on.

So your example of how the left is just as misinformed as the right is to show us an example of rightwingers on twitter being completely wrong about what liberals think?

And then there's HCQ, which you don't have any opinion about because you're not an expert, but I guess that's another example of the left being just as bad as the right?

I mean, organize your thoughts here a bit.

Also, the NBA is leftist? WTFBBQ

To be fair, I'm trying to respond to like five people who seem to disagree with me...

I make no claim in quantifying who is more wrong.

A couple of examples of insanity on the left, in my mind: Abolish the police, Denial of biological differences between men and women, cancel culture, opposition to due process with the MeToo movement, permissiveness/denial towards violence and property destruction in the recent riots.

Of course, not hard to pick out stuff from the right, starting with the horrible role model that is Trump and his campaign that clearly markets to the dumbest among us...

I thought this was pretty universally acknowledged, but perhaps not. They have BLM painted on the courts and encourage civil rights slogans on player jerseys except for anything involving Hong Kong, at least is what I have read. I know it will be tempting to read this as me saying I'm anti-BLM or racist or whatever, but that isn't what I'm trying to say. I'm saying that the NBA has pretty publicly aligned with what is considered leftist ideology.

And maybe I have bad info on that, feel free to dispute or send me links.

Do you guys listen to any of the black men that talk about these issues, like Dr. Glenn Loury of Brown U., or Dr. John McWhorter of Columbia U?

I'm probably going to take a break for a bit; I should probably do some actual work.

Appreciate the mostly respectful engagement.

The NBA certainly subscribes to liberal politics (ignoring that no one in this forum uses the word "leftist" correctly), see Black Lives Matter stuff all over their season restarting.

But where Infection screws up here is in thinking this has anything to do with liberal politics whatsoever. The common thread between entities with shitty reactions to human rights violations in China is not "liberal politics", it's (and this is so incredibly obvious, wtf) having business ties there. Blizzard Software is basically apolitical and they're in the same boat as the NBA because they sell lots of video games in China.

You might as well take Sheldon Adelson's business-driven comments & decisions and claim they're representative of conservative politics as a whole. Some might happen to be, but it's wildly inaccurate to suggest they are simply by virtue of him (as a conservative) having said/done them.

But if asked about any of these subjects you'd just claim you're not informed enough on the specific issue to take a strong stance, you're just interested in examining the "group psychology", right?

It's par for the course along with all the both sides equivalence thing. It's a good example of the demand to abandon reason whereby being critical of all sides is castigated when in fact it's what any reasonable and interested person does.

Also think the 'suspending judgement' idea has a lot of mileage in it. It's important to minimise bias and probably helps avoid a lot of the harmful group dynamics. There's something very odd about a world where we demand people reach conclusions when the reality is that they have almost no idea - what happens is that instead of saying 'I don't know so for now I'll trust X' they are forced to decide that they know whatever it was that X believes. Then the cognitive process of justifying a belief they never really held takes over.

For a centrist, you seem to have very right-wing political views. Or at least your views on what the left thinks are a bit off.

The NBA is a billion-dollar corporation that sucks up to authoritarians in China. Aside from some performative BLM support, its interests aren't at all aligned with liberal politics. You have heard wind that the left isn't too happy with billionaires these days, right?


Huh, I just got done listening to his Great Courses series on the history of language. It's very good!

To elaborate, it seems like you have lots of your own narratives at play here. You seem happy to adopt some bizarre, right-wing friendly stances like "leftists are shitty on China" based on the actions of the National Basketball Association (?????), or claiming "opposition to due process with the MeToo movement" is "insanity" (????????).

But when challenged on these things you just retreat and claim you're only interested in the group psychology, you don't actually mean to stand behind these things. Okay, but then why are you posting in a politics forum? Maybe this is a better topic for SMP or your blog thread, but in a politics forum I think it's pretty reasonable to ask you to support and defend the claims you make.

I think we get your point. I mean as centrists we should all be comfortable calling out the lefts blatant and obvious fear mongering with respect to Covid and their laughable inconsistencies on borders and masks. When the right says they caught a virus from a mask, we should point out we aren’t doctors and can’t evaluate the details except hypothetically, not look into the claims even if a specific one is given and remember that psychology tells us we’re all heroes of our own narrative.

And you claimed I said Gohmert is the most important story out there. That’s obviously a willful misreading. I said Covid is the most important story and Gohmert was obviously commenting on Covid.

Also where do these people (Infection is not the only one) get some of these weird tics like using "DNC" to talk about the Democratic Party? It's like they all came out of the same factory.

I mean I think you can probably find elements of that or things that closely resemble it in lots of groups of people--just the nature of politics is ripe for it imo.

At least from my perspective the elevating of pols to god-like/quasi-religious status always looks kinda weird(St Ronnie, God-Emperor etc). Coalescing around ideas/ideals seems a little more reasonable.

Group dynamics in politics is very important. If you're not interested then just skip the thread

That might be true. But if the argument being made is supported by a bunch of wildly inaccurate claims about one's own group, I'm not sure why one is obligated not to contest them.

There's no obligation. There's also no obligation to not criticise inaccurate claims from any side. They are also part of the group dynamics. However the dynamics do not actually rely on the specifics of particular claims which are dealt with in a myriad of threads. making it about the specifics will, as always, make it much harder to consider the political dynamics.

You and I will have our usual disagreement but let's not pretend some aren't here to dunk and troll rather than to make it productive.

Why are those mutually exclusive? When right-wing lies are dunked on in this forum, is it not also productive to have added greater clarity to the facts at hand in doing so?

lol a nice thread once again being ruined by bias and a guy trying to prove a point to himself sigh keep it ot

Did you guys know that Basque isn't an Indo-European language? It's in a totally different family from every other language out there. I learned that from McWhorter's lectures.

Any understanding of the dynamics will have to be able to account for the current situation but over-focusing on specifics of the current situation is simply a mistake if in fact your goal is to be productive in understanding the dynamics.

Holy crap, there is a lot of emotion ITT.

I guess it’s not realistic to address everything, and probably at this point everyone has made up their mind, but I’ll hit a few pieces from my perspective:

Goofyballer – I think business interest absolutely influences the politics of an organization. Maybe I’m missing something? Is there a disagreement here? And I mean leftist, not liberal in the classical sense. I consider myself a liberal in many ways.
And no, dude, I will talk about those issues. You’re just shoving words in my mouth. I haven’t done the research to talk about HCQ efficacy, but I’m pretty comfortable talking about the others. Not saying I know everything.

Trolly – Re: my view of the left, I’m going by a combination of what I see from public figures and personal experiences I have with people on the left working with educators and recently having attended grad school. One of my videos posted ITT highlights a convo with an old friend from the far left. Many of my friends are lefties. It’s hard to pin down an entire ideology of a group because of individual differences, so I wouldn’t claim it to be 100% accurate or descriptive of everyone who sees themselves as on the left.
Re: the NBA, if you’re saying that they are trying to appear Left for PR reasons but behind the scenes aren’t about it, then…okay? I don’t think whether other Lefties have a “problem with billionaires” determines how we should categorize their political stance, though. I also don’t see the evidence that the Left is anti-NBA, even if they claim to be anti-billionaires in general.

Goofyballer – I’m wondering if you misread the piece about the due process. I’m hopeful that it’s not a mystery as to why denial of due process might be considered insane. Gulag Archipelago is a good read if that is actually the case.

Escriture – You seem really intent on this idea that I’m pro-Gohmert or something. I don’t know how to make it more clear: That narrative around the mask definitely sounds stupid as s***, it sounds like we would agree, if that’s the whole story. Is there an argument we’re even having here? Calm down, dawg.

Mr. Wookie – What do you think I’m claiming as “My Group”? I’m not a Republican. I voted for Obama. At this point I’m disgusted by both parties.

Chezlaw – On point

lol, you guys never change