Tribalism runs deep in politics. No matter how ‘fair-minded’ we like to tell ourselves we are, it’s hard to resist the temptation to see ‘us’ through the prism of goodness and ‘them’ as the incarnation of wrong. Mostly, this involves ‘my-side bias’: focusing on only the good of your side and the bad of the other.
Which may be why it seems that the hard left at the moment are violently intolerant. After all, how many Antifa thugs ganging up to beat down journalists, or enraged leftists attacking people in MAGA hats do we need to see? Still, while there’s probably no small amount of my-side bias involved, here are just a couple of recent items which really do make it seem as though the centre and right are, generally, genuinely tolerant of opposing views and people.
Occupy Democrats Logic is a hugely popular Facebook page (close on a million followers) set up in conscious opposition to one of the most popular leftist social media pages on the internet, Occupy Democrats. Yet when ODL recently ran an attack piece on Bernie Sanders, their followers were almost uniform in their disgust at what was an obvious fake news piece.
“Most of this was definitely taken out of context”, commented one. “You can’t have the audacity to call yourself ‘Occupy Democrats Logic’ and rail on their misleading and selective content if you’re just going to cherry pick and selectively edit quotes to fit your own agenda”, scolded another. “You are starting to become the very thing you swore to destroy. YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE”, berated another.
Then the same page ran this article as a comedy piece:
Students Taunt Athlete From Rival School With Photos From His Gay Dating Profile: ‘Stick to Grindr’[…]
Grindr is a dating app geared toward the LGBT community and widely associated with gay men.
Other attendees at the game held up photos allegedly taken from the Siena College player’s dating profile, according to LGBT outlet Queerty.
But if they were expecting their followers to haw-haw-haw along with them, they were sadly mistaken.
“Yes, because bullying is something to be sooo proud of or laughed about or celebrated.”
“Certainly not something to be condoned.”
“What you do in the bedroom is none of my business. Just don’t impose your life on mine, and we’re peachy keen.”
“I don’t support drag-queen story hour or the “biology don’t real” stuff being pushed on 5th graders by the administration, but this ain’t cool.”
pluralist.com/monmouth-univeristy-homophobic-taunt/
Then there’s free speech. While the left too often seem to think that free speech means only allowing people they like to speak, genuine free speech advocates are willing to walk the walk and defend people they don’t like.
Suzanne Moore once said she wanted to vomit on me. So I’m guessing she’s not a fan. Alas, defending freedom of speech, standing up for the essential liberty of intellectual and moral dissent, often means defending people who despise you. Even people who want to puke on you. And so I must defend Ms Moore from the army of censorious misogynists keen to shut her down because – let’s be frank – she thinks that if you have a dick you are a man, not a woman.
[…]Ms Moore, not for the first time, finds herself alongside these other trans-questioning feminists on the misogynists’ hitlist. Her speechcrime this time was to write a column in the Guardian saying it is bonkers to see sex as a social construct and insisting that women should have the right to self-organise.
This is cancel culture with a sexist twist. It is the silencing of women by men.
Brendan O’Neill might not like Suzanne Moore, and she quite obviously does not like him. But, as O’Neill shows, that’s beside the point. Unless you defend the free speech of people you despise, you’re not really in favour of free speech.
Suzanne Moore should now feel free to vomit on this article.
spiked-online.com/2020/03/10/in-defence-of-suzanne-moore/
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