Nutpicking Left and Right

The Left, the Right and the Milkshake

Recently, there occurred an interesting conversation between one Stephen Woodford, better known as Rationality Rules - the title of his YouTube channel, and Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad. It delves into the nature of belief systems and how they're defined and represented.



The crux of the conversation comes down to a video wherein Woodford defines Sargon's overall method as being:

1 - Find a nut.
2 - Ridicule and expose that nut.
3 - Conflate that nut with the entire group to which they belong
4 - Profit

And a response made by Sargon here.

Examples presented by Woodford show Sargon highlighting celebrity leftists and progressive politicians expressing extremist positions on a variety of issues: Michael Moore claiming that white people should be feared, Lily Allen and Jess Philips making similar claims about men, and so on. Woodford charges Sargon with "nutpicking" - which is defined as selecting and presenting a weak member of a particular set as a representative member of that particular set.

Is it really true that "the left" as a whole engages in the wholesale demonization of men and white people? Does it truly hold that all whites are racist, or that all men are rapists, etc? These contentions, among others, are the subject of a cordial discussion had between the two, What's Left?

In this conversation, a resurgent religious right is presented as a possible right wing counterpart to the hardline social justice crowd that Sargon so often likes to attack, at least in the United States. Are anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage fanatics a kind of right wing counterpart to the militant SJWs? Woodford's channel, Rationality Rules (comes with my recommendation, btw) might suggest they are, though I haven't surveyed his material exhaustively so can't say precisely one way or another. But his channel is devoted to promoting atheism, agnosticism, skepticism and criticism of religious claims, with a special focus on the logical fallacies that religious and ideologically dogmatic groups tend to make, so I would be surprised if he took a generous stance towards the religious right. Were I in his shoes, I sure wouldn't.

Is there a meaningful comparison to be had between both the character and influence of the two groups? Are the most strident progressives and Christians representative of the whole?

I'm going to suggest that's perhaps the wrong question to ask. What's more important is this: are the "extreme" positions taken within a particular religious or ideological camp consonant with the broader ideological thrust of that particular religious or ideological camp as a whole?

What do I mean by this?

Suppose one were to claim, based on biblical scripture, that adulterers and homosexuals should be executed for their behaviors. Surely this would be an extreme view, right? One not endorsed by any mainstream or significant Christian denomination and believed by only a small handful of self identifying Christians. This would be true. But now lets suppose a preacher were to come along and call for precisely that - the execution of adulterers and homosexuals. It would surely be wrong to condemn this preacher's views as being in line with Christian thought, right? To hold such a preacher up as exemplary of Christian thought would surely be "nutpicking", right?

To answer this, we'd need to look at and define precisely what Christian thought is. If one definition of Christian thought would be to regard the bible as the irrefutable word of God, than the claims that our violently fanatical Christian preacher do not, in fact, accurately reflect Christian thought fall apart. The bible is actually quite clear in its calling for the execution of adulterers and homosexuals:

Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death.”

Leviticus 20:10: “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife— with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.”

Now one can counter argue that these passages have to be interpreted in a specific context or the like, or one could cite other passages that might call for a more lenient stance: Christ's admonition in John 8:7 that "he who is without sin cast the first stone" or something similar. Or one could even deemphasize scripture all together and hold up "the life of Christ" or some similar concept as the yard stick of Christian thought and action. Any of these are entirely possible and doable.

But one cannot argue, based on the above passages from the Book of Leviticus, that it is not a sound and viable interpretation of Christian doctrine that homosexuals and adulterers actually be put to death, if one takes a view of the bible as the inerrant word of God. And that most certainly is a plausible means of defining what is and is not Christian thought. This matter is obviously quite controversial in Christian clerical circles, and it's also quite obvious that Christians in the west have had to reconcile their doctrine with prevailing attitudes on these matters and soften their stances accordingly. That's all true, and also a bit beside the point.

What matters is that it is consonant within the ideological thrust of the Christian belief system that adulterers and homosexuals be executed for their actions. Their scripture is rather unambiguous in calling for it. That is not the only valid interpretation of Christian doctrine, but it is a valid interpretation of Christian doctrine. That's what really matters here. That such a view is "extreme" or not representative of the typical Christian is ultimately beside the point, even if true in the west in the current year. This is the real reason why one does see evangelical ministers taking such positions from time to time. They're actually valid positions within the belief system they profess, whether the rest of us like it or not.

Along similar lines, let's look at the apparent fringes of Social Justice ideology. Are claims calling whites and males dangerous or at least potential, if not actual rapists something that can fit within their broader ideological framework?

In this, I'm reminded of what is often cited as the most ludicrous straw man position held by feminist theorists: the equation of heterosex with rape. Or at the very least to suggest that heterosexuality itself is structured so as to benefit men at women's expense. To support such a claim, one like Sargon could point to feminist theorists who've supposedly made this claim. Theorists and activists such as the late Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, for instance. They're the usual suspects here.

Of course, these figures and their supporters would answer that they've truly made no such claim and that their statements are being taken out of context. Defenders of feminism would claim that these activists don't represent the whole, that their views are controversial even within feminist circles, and that they're just two out of innumerable feminist advocates and that it's disingenuous to cite them as being exemplary of feminist thought. Then again, Dworkin and MacKinnon could well constitute the no-nonsense 'Leviticus' strand of feminist thought, and be the heterophobic counterparts to homophobic preachers like Steven Anderson and the late Fred Phelps.

Either are possible. And quite beside the point. What we should be considering isn't whether Dworkin or MacKinnon held views that equated heterosex with rape, or at least was part and parcel of male dominance over women. What matters is whether such views are possible under a sound understanding of feminist theory.

I'd suggest that they are, and all that's really necessary to come to such conclusions is a willingness to take core principles of feminist theory to deterministic extremes. If we truly live in a patriarchal society, one wherein institutions and relationships are structured for the benefit of men at the expense of women, then the idea that the most intimate of those relationships should reflect this privileging of the male over the female should follow quite logically. Indeed, to exclude heteroromanticism and heterosexuality from a feminist deconstruction that casts them as, if not inherently misogynistic, at least corrupted in a misogynistic manner by the patriarchal societies in which they are normalized, would actually be the out-of-step stance to take.

Of course, in the real world, many women who identify as feminists would identify as heterosexual and are in romantic and erotic relationships with men and enjoy the benefits thereof. This was even true of Dworkin(!) and MacKinnon at some points in time. Plus there are very real questions that one might raise about the societal consequences of a wholesale condemnation of heterosex along feminist lines. Fair enough. Consequences I wished mainstream media pursued a lot further instead of simply taking feminist propositions entirely at face value, but I digress. Feminists would no doubt appeal to a "my body, my choice" line of reasoning when it comes to defending their own heterosexual choices and proclivities, when and where these proclivities exist. Again, fair enough.

The point, however, is that it's not inconceivable under feminist theory to regard any kind of heterosexual relationship as something that oppresses women for the benefit of men. Why exempt personal relationships from the overarching social critique, especially when the personal is the political, after all?

I would go as far as to suggest that to exempt heterosexuality from the inevitable conclusions of feminist theory would be like to exempt homosexuality from condemnation under Christian theology. While it may make the doctrine more socially palatable, it also amounts to a form of cherry picking. So anti-homosex Christians and anti-heterosex feminists alike, far from being "nuts" may in fact be the most consistent in their views. They're willing to follow the logic of their core ideologies to their inevitable end conclusions, even when those conclusions would be quite understandably unpopular.

This isn't to say that their more moderate and liberal takes are "wrong." Sometimes, such as in the case of postwar social democracy vis à vis Marxism, the more moderate and watered down variant of the ideology actually also produces vastly superior results when put into practice. I strongly suspect this would be true of feminism also, and even Christianity were one to define it so loosely as a mere adherence to the golden rule, for instance. But in either case, we have to accept the fact that the more extreme views are not untenable given the core belief systems, and actually tend to hew more faithfully to the underlying axioms of those belief systems.

This goes a good ways towards answering the question of why the "nuts" end up in charge of movements like the religious right and the progressive feminist left. Plus, both belief systems are quite manichean, which is to say they both see things in very black and white terms. It is a valid interpretation of either to claim that you're with Jesus or you're with Satan. You're a feminist or you're a misogynist. Such ideological systems don't easily lend themselves to moderation or accommodation with rival belief systems in their core areas of concern.

They can and do moderate so as to accommodate themselves to the realities of the world they operate in. But this moderation inevitably arises from a begrudging acceptance of the need to work within the realities of the world in exchange for at least a shot at changing the world to at least a little bit better reflect their aims, rather than true compromise on principle. As such, both are susceptible to "revivals" and "reformations" wherein corruption by worldly/patriarchal thought must be excised and the movement returned to an initial pure state. The radical feminists of the 1970s, the SJWs of the 2010s and the religious right of the 1980s and 90s are all examples of this, or at least featured these kinds of revivalist currents within their broader movements.

Suffice it to say, questioning core doctrines in movements with these kinds of ideological systems is not the done thing, to put it mildly. If the bible really is the inerrant word of God, what does it say about you if you question it, or try to interpret it in a way to better reflect a preferred stance or doctrine? In the case of the progressives, it's a bit more nuanced. A bit. But questioning feminist, queer and critical race theorists and activists is frowned on as showing a glaring lack of empathy and commitment to equality at best, especially if done by a white male. At worst, it's outright collusion with the oppressor, just as questioning Marxist Leninist dogma back in the USSR was seen as aligning oneself with capitalists and imperialists and could entail a one way train ride to Siberia.

This is why Sargon can have this conversation with Rationality Rules but not Anita Sarkeesian, and why Rationality Rules couldn't have this conversation with Steven Anderson. When one sees the world in stark good vs evil terms, one does not negotiate with the forces of evil if one is to remain pure on the side of good.

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Right Wing Purity Culture

In a recent conversation I had with him, Carl Benjamin says:

I am honestly of the opinion that the right doesn't have this kind of purity culture, and that's definitely to their advantage. I'm not saying it doesn't ever exist or anything, but as a general rule, the right is less puritanical in this regard. 

This is in reference to the proclivity towards a highly doctrinaire and manichean world view that one often encounters in hard left circles, both in current year and throughout its history. Indeed, the decision of myself and my fellow Facebook page moderators to even have a conversation at all with the dreaded Sargon of Akkad would no doubt face heavy denouncement in typical left wing circles. And not "I disagree with Sargon on the following issues ... " but rather a "How dare you even think of speaking to so someone so racist, fascist, ignorant, stupid etc" kind of response.

Were they to discover that I found Mr. Benjamin to be a reasonable and cordial fellow with whom I would have some ideological disagreements as well as some areas of overlapping concern, that'd be treated as nothing short of blasphemy. And this includes many of the sorts of leftists who advocate a retreat from identity politics in favor of more class struggle. Get the pitchforks and light the burning pyre. We have a witch here. Conversing directly with demons, no less.

I was a youthful target of the Satanic Panic in the late 1980s, so it wouldn't be the first time.

While I realize that Sargon has his detractors and those who've claimed to have had bad experiences with him, that doesn't involve myself and my fellows who took part in the discussion. I felt I'd get that out of the way, because I know what the comments are going to say where ever I post this. You have a problem with Sargon, take it up with him. I'm no one's attack dog, and I'm not getting involved in YouTube drama.

With that all said, I did not follow up with Sargon on this idea of there being far less of a purity culture on the right, but upon reflection, I don't really agree. I suspect it looks that way because the purity culture on the right manifests itself differently from the one on the left. But that doesn't mean it's not there. It comes down to this:

The left's main concerns are with oppression, exploitation and discrimination. And that's perfectly reasonable. But progressives are vulnerable to the idea that any deviation from the established party line on any given issue will inevitably open the door to and enable, if not outrightly perpetuate, oppressive treatment of marginalized peoples. As such, rather like a religious fundamentalist who fears that the edifice of his religion will collapse if any element of the canon is called into question, unquestioning obedience to established orthodoxies is demanded on much of the left wing. Marxist Leninism, feminist theory, critical race theory and queer theory are almost unequivocal on this. These doctrines are the maps and blueprints that one must follow - to the letter - if a just society is to be achieved.

The right's main concerns are with degradation and loss of cultural and economic vitality, and that this would be bad because those things contribute to the strength and health of the polity. Again, well and good. But this likewise lends itself to conservatives fearing that any attempt to reform culture, politics or economy in a way to make them more inclusive or to provide a safety net for those in need will end up enabling behaviors and activities that cause a dilution of both personal morality and relationships that uphold the integrity of society. Right wing theories: neoreaction, libertarianism, white nationalism and religious fundamentalism are all underwritten by this kind of fear. A "camel's nose, once in the tent, the body is sure to follow" kind of mindset prevails in any discussion of either regulating the free market economy, or becoming more permissive regarding social norms and mores. Integrating between the races will dilute the purity of whichever race is superior. Allowing religious pluralism will cause the one true faith revealed by God to be diluted or lost, etc. You get the picture.

The contrasting concerns of social justice and social protectionism result in the respective purity cults of the left and right manifesting in different ways. The purity cult of the left is decidedly ostentatious and demonstrative, in keeping with the nature of the leftist narrative as themselves as some kind of last ditched resistance effort against an encroaching fascist tyranny. Convinced of the powerlessness of the purported targets of this tyranny, stark raving terror actually becomes a "reasonable" result. It's more visible because protest and civil disobedience are much more front and center in leftist theory.

The cringe factor here comes from the fact that Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, while having politics vastly different than mine, are not quite what the hysterical left echo chambers make them out to be. Accusing these men of wanting to "erase" marginalized peoples or believing that women, people of color, LGBTQ people and others "should not exist" actually pushes them beyond being "literally Hitler" and makes them out to be something out of the darkest of speculative fiction, like the wicked Emperor Palpatine or the Dark Lord Sauron. It need not be said that this is hyperbole, not reality.

The purity cult on the right is harder to see because it's less ostentatious. For one thing, the individualism espoused by the right makes them far less likely to organize and protest, and when they do, their predilection for order and personal discipline makes these protests far less rowdy and prone to acts of hysteria. But they do happen, as Tea Party protests against Obama's attempts to bring in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act demonstrate.

More significantly, however, the right's belief in the underlying unity of strength and virtue lends itself to the right wing purity cult expressing itself in displays of strength, not weakness. Thus, rightist denounciation of leftists has about it a definite macho swagger. Hence its denunciations of leftists as snowflakes, cucks, degenerates, too stupid to learn about economics, etc. While the right attacks communism in some of the same terms that the left attacks fascism: condemning its historical brutality and totalitarianism, and the same kind of cringy comparisons of leftist figures like Bernie Sanders with historical tyrants like Josef Stalin as exist on the left comparing Trump to Hitler etc, the right tends to express contempt at the notion that such manly men as themselves would ever need a social safety net or protection from being exploited as a worker, consumer or investor. A crucial difference, perhaps the definitive difference, between left and right.

For the right, the answer is always very simple. Find another job. Start your own business. Don't do stupid stuff. Don't get sick or injured. Be Superman. Predict the future with pure accuracy. Were you as manly as themselves, you wouldn't need no namby-pamby social safety net, union representation or government regulations to protect you from hardship and exploitation. Well, too bad for them that actual human beings in the real world are not made of such stern stuff.

This isn't to say there isn't a place for conservative or libertarian questioning of leftist policy proposals. Sometimes they really are untenable. But the problems arise when pressed for specifics, the rightists resort to their own brand of emotionalism as opposed to reasoned argument. You're too degenerate, cucked, stupid to understand economics, etc. And then they'll go on to sneer the ironically labeled "tolerant" left. Such self awareness.

Much of the US right's entire ideological shtick lies in a constant onslaught of propaganda saying that any government interference in the economy at all is basically tantamount to socialism. Distinction is not made between the light interventions of neoliberals a-la Tony Blair or Bill Clinton, the more heavy interventions advocated by Keynesians, welfare liberals, new dealers and social democrats - think Roosevelt or Attlee, the far reaching but incomplete control advocated by democratic socialists or regimes like Allende's Chile or Chavez's Venezuela and the total control practiced by Stalin and Mao. And where would they stand on small government or even stateless models advanced by some kinds of leftists: anarcho communism/syndicalism, mutualism or the like? These are obviously enormous theoretical differences and yield very different outcomes, but you'd never guess that by reading conservative sources or the responses that right leaning people make in any kind of social media platform, in their own attempts to deplatform their political opponents by implying that they are weak, stupid or degenerate.

Well, you know what? If your precious free market is so fragile that it will collapse if any attempt is made to tinker with it, perhaps it's not that strong either, and maybe libertarians descend into being their own brand of hysterical SJWs for claiming taxation is theft or that regulations stopping them from dumping their pollution into the water or the air as they please constitute a lighter, softer form of the boot of socialism. A sort of economic microaggression, if you will. And notice how triggered they get when you tell them there are sound economic, political and social reasons for taxation and public spending. It's like you're "Marxsplaining" or "Keynesplaining" their oppression to them.

Poor guys.

If you can slow down anything recorded by Ben Shapiro to a pace at which it becomes intelligible, the whole idea being advanced is pretty straight forward. And it's the same with Turning Point and a host of other conservative ideological sources. Bernie Sanders = Joseph Stalin. Obama's America = Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.  Obamacare = Stalinist collectivization. Keynesianism and Marxism are described as being one in the same. Despite the fact that demand management policies have been part and parcel of how all of the world's most successful economies have operated at least as far back as the second world war.

Such hysterical and stupid phrases are not being shrieked aloud for all to hear by outraged women and college students taking to the streets, but they are no less hysterical and stupid for that difference. Any government intervention in the economy, any provision of social welfare, any protection of workers rights reveals a "lack of understanding of economics" and surely won't work despite the fact they have been working for decades now across the developed world. All presented by some wannabe tough guy whose macho swagger implying that he can beat you up so that makes his views correct. This looks different than the SJW's displays of emotional hysteria and terror at even the most tepid step away from his ancap or intersectioal feminist dogmas, but does not alter the fact that, at heart, it's the same thing.

An ideological purity cult.

Besides, there's plenty of precedent for very real and dangerous ideological purity regimens on the right: the various red scares, McCarthyism, the Satanic Panic, to name a few. If the right wing has done it before, why should I think they won't do it again? There's enough love for the likes of Augusto Pinochet among hard line libertarians and reactionaries these days for them to most certainly not have my trust. Perhaps they'd be amenable to a deal, wherein I won't send them to a gulag if they don't throw me out of a helicopter, assuming either of us ever had the chance. But I'm not holding my breath.

Not all right wingers are Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer Warriors or the like, some of you might say. Fine. Some of you are no doubt thinking "straw man" to everything I've said here. Fair enough. Some more conservative leaning people are reasonable, as my discussion with Sargon exemplified. But not all leftists are Antifa either. Rightists get annoyed whenever they're hysterically tarred as racists, nazis, misogynists and the like by the left. Okay, fair enough. Then don't tar the whole of the left as either violent ancom or tankie nutjobs or hysterical feminists with obvious mental health issues either. The right warns the left that its irrationality will drive more people to the right. Fair warning, but that's a two way street. At some point, after being called a cuck and offered enough helicopter rides, more people might start wondering if there's maybe something in Karl Marx's library that these right wingers and their paranoid cries of "cultural Marxism" don't want them to know, and the Streisand Effect takes hold from there.

Listen to myself and my fellow alt-left mods converse with Sargon of Akkad and the Secretary of Akkad here.

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Leftists: Do NOT Support Corporate Censorship!

"Tim Squirrell" embodies everything wrong with the mainstream left of the current year. Viewing his twitter feed, I'm not seeing a whole lot of working class or marginalization here. From his personal website:

I started at the University of Cambridge in 2011, after finishing school in Cyprus. I began studying Medicine, but quickly realized that it wasn't for me, and switched into Natural Sciences, focusing on the History and Philosophy of Science. I graduated with a BA and MSci in 2015, having written my first Masters dissertation on the problem of moral responsibility when delegating medical decisions to cognitive computers.

Good stuff. With a guy like this in our corner, how can we lose? He looks like just the kind of guy I'd expect to meet at a $10,000 a plate Clinton Foundation fundraiser, positioning himself as the "resistance" against the ascendancy of "fascists" such as your typical incel on Reddit or 4chan troll. 

I'll not begrudge a fellow his education, but a look at his twitter feed suggests someone rather full of himself:

We’re not harassing you! You’re harassing us!” the anime avatars scream in their dozens and hundreds

I guess i would be scared of being deplatformed too if my income and indeed the only reason anyone knew or cared about me were all derived from  being arrested for being an edgelord

Regret to announce in a disappointing plot twist i was controlled by the russians all along

Yuk yuk yuk! What a card! Oh Tim, you're just so witty!  Which can be tolerated and ignored. The real problem with this fellow is here:

My mentions are blowing up bc the alt-right have found my attempts to aid in their deplatforming and are Very Upset. Please keep me and my mentions in your prayers at this difficult time.

And in case you missed it:

@slpng_giants another deplatforming success 

In case you don't know, this refers to a group called Sleeping Giants. "A campaign to make bigotry and sexism less profitable." Presumably active in attempts to lean on advertisers and boycott media outlets that host so called "hate speech" or "the alt-right" or whomever. Well, I suppose that's their right. But I have just one request for my fellows on the left who quite rightly want to oppose bigotry and hate but quite wrongly think deplatforming people who aren't really that right wing, bigoted or hateful is the way to do it:

Can we please stop doing this?

Or at the very least, can we at least try to be somewhat intelligent and judicious about what we consider "hate speech?" Last time I checked, Sargon of Akkad and Count Dankula, while not loyal card carrying progressives, were light years from the far right in terms of their actual beliefs. It's not exactly a secret that highly educated professional activists on college campuses and in Silicon Valley willfully smear their opponents as "Nazis" - in a kind of counterpart to the right's long tendency of red-baiting their own political opponents. Indeed, the "hate speech" for which Sargon was apparently deplatformed from Patreon was supposedly satirizing the kind of talk that alt-right clods engage in. Sargon has in fact had notorious quarrels with alt-right leaders, and is generally disliked by them.

This is why resorting to censorship over political disagreement is always a bad idea. Ideologues on one side of the spectrum tend to lump everyone on the other side into a single monolith. By similar rationale, if Sargon is a "Nazi" then I must be a raging SJW with my own set of gender pronouns forever calling on white males to check their privilege while donning the black bandanna to head out to "bash the fash." I am alt-left, after all. What stops the Proud Boy types from coming after me at some point, assuming this ever becomes a revenue source for me? After all, the Sleeping Giants and their ilk legitimized such tactics.

And that's the problem with all of this. And doubly so for the left, who've always been the advocates for the small players in the market.

Unless you are going after an institution or truly powerful person abusing their power, you have no business crawling into bed with corporate power and using that power to attack the livelihoods of your political opponents if you call yourself a leftist. Our whole project is built around the securing of the rights of the "little guy" - the common people in the face of the potential for corporate oligopoly to abuse the power that their strong position in the marketplace gives them. Boycotting a corporation over some malpractice or another is one thing. Calling for the ending of an otherwise powerless person's livelihood over a political disagreement is quite another. Doesn't the left typically emphasize the difference between punching up and punching down?

Even if it were the case that this "alternative influence network" really does universally promote far right reactionary views (some of them certainly do, but they're no more a monolith than the left is) what really constitutes the furtherance of the far right's true agenda: allowing reactionaries on social media to speak their minds, or empowering capital to silence those the strongest players in the marketplace, either singly or in concert, do not like?

How long before these kinds of tactics get used on corporate whistle blowers, environmental activists and union leaders? Today, those calling for less globalism and immigration are greater threats to the power and interests of capital (specifically unlimited access to cheap labor) than socialist union militancy is. Hence the far right rather than the left being public enemy number one. For today. But can this be counted on to last indefinitely?

It's especially galling when supposed leftists seem to suddenly start channeling the spirit of Ayn Rand when the subject of corporate censorship and the firing/deplatforming of right wing commentators is raised. "It's not censorship" when private entities do it, they claim. That's funny, because by that rationale, it shouldn't have been "discrimination" when employers, landlords, banks and so on discriminated against gays, racial minorities, atheists and socialists either. We don't get to pick and choose based solely on convenience dictated by political allegiance. And believe me when I say that anti-discrimination laws intended to bring marginalized groups into equal footing were resisted via very similar kinds of claims for a very long time. Segregationists had a long history of opposing "government telling business who they can and can't hire."

It was the left who dealt with blacklisting and persecution during McCarthyism and various red scares. In an increasingly conservative political climate, do we think ourselves immune to such tactics in the future? What happens to our capacity to credibly call it out when we in fact endorse such methods as Tim Squirrell is doing?

It is left wing people who should know that modes and relations of production are fundamental, and that the ideological climate flows from that. It should therefore be of greater import to us to protect smaller dissident voices online that we may disagree with than to call upon the real force for reaction - monopoly capital - to silence those voices.

We have in social media something that generations of leftist media critics could only have dreamed of: a means by which people with little capital and institutional clout can potentially reach a mass audience. A Carl Benjamin would have been unthinkable in the days before social media. So too would a host of leftist outlets: think Jimmy Dore, Kyle Kulinski and the like. Yet today's democratic centralist vanguard of highly educated professional activists chooses to use it to silence others. They are pretty much doing the Atlantic Council's work for them.

I think it says a great deal about just how "left" the Tim Squirrells and Sleeping Giants of this world really are when they have the ears of the corporate oligopolies and opt to use their influence in this manner. If they were leftists in any authentic sense, they should use their influence to advocate for better wages and working conditions in Silicon Valley, clean water in Flint, Michigan, greater protection for renters in Arkansas ... I could go on. On and on and on. There's real social injustice out there to fight. Let's use this powerful new social media tool to truly empower the poor and marginalized, rather than silence those only a tier or two up from the bottom. Even if they do have some genuinely odious opinions. The best way to fight fascism is to embed social democratic principles directly into the fabric of our political and economic structures. Calls for social media censorship push in exactly the opposite direction. Why do I get the feeling that future generations fighting to improve the lot of the poor and working classes will regret the precedents these pseudo leftists are setting?

But then, that would mean it would have to stop being about the egos of the Tim Squirrells of this world. It would have to stop being about what heroes he and Sleeping Giants are, and start being about actually addressing the real roots of marginalization. Which is a mode of production that's working out quite well for the likes of Mr. Squirrell, thank you very much. Must be nice being a professor in an elite educational institution. Check your privilege, good sir!

In short, they are not leftists at all. They are the voices of power and privilege, made all the worse by their adoption of a "progressive" veneer.

Of course, you, dear reader, may do business with whomever you like. You're under no obligation to patronize an outfit who likewise does business in some way you object to. Boycotts are a potentially powerful means of challenging corporate power. But let's be judicious when we employ this strategy, and let's use it to actually challenge rather than uphold corporate power. Let's reserve it for use against corporations that abuse their workers, spoil the environment, or engage in other shady business practices. Giving a platform to someone like Sargon of Akkad simply isn't something that we on the left should be objecting to.

As a bit of an aside, "extrordanormalguy" on twitter asked me this question:

I appreciate your principled view on this issue, but how can you align with the left as a whole anymore. The have largely become an authoritarian group hell bent on stifling free speech, and killing freedom for anyone who disagrees with them. Truly evil people.

Simply because the right will not, and can not deal with this issue effectively. The right's whole history has been about entrenching corporate power. Their recent concerns about free speech are more opportunistic than they are genuine. It wasn't so long ago it was the religious right playing these kinds of games with businesses that sold rock music records and role playing game books. Donald Trump is notoriously no friend of press freedom, however partisan the press has also been in their opposition to him. Furthermore, the right's individualistic framing of social and economic relations mitigates against the impetus to organize, or to see what they're engaged in as a struggle for power wherein their opponents see the need to win at all costs, as opposed to a mere clash of ideas to be resolved through honest and open debate. For a number of reasons, debacles such as these make quite clear the serious limitations of libertarian and conservative thought for all except those rich and powerful enough to benefit from them.

We Live in Strange Times

Moreover, the mainstream right simply doesn't care. That's all there really is to it. Republican leaders in America or prominent Conservative Party politicians in Canada and the UK may occasionally pay lip service to the importance of free speech, but it's not a priority for them, and certainly not for the broader institutions in which they operate. Free speech for YouTube's "alternative influence network" doesn't entail tax cuts for the top 1% of 1% of income earners. Therefore, it's off the radar as far as conservative power is concerned.

More mainstream kinds of conservatives are a heavily programmed and ideological lot, and this issue simply doesn't fall into their constellation of hot button issues. It's not about guns, it's not against abortion, it's not idolizing the flag, it's not in favor of middle-east power projection, it's not demonizing some or another Liberal or Democrat party politician: Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau or whomever. And above all, it's not about tax cuts. Ergo, invisible to the right, with some exceptions, of course.

It's worth noting that the kinds of "reactionaries" and "bigots" that are the targets of these kinds of deplatforming campaigns are themselves strident advocates of free market capitalism, a fact the likes of Tim Squirrell are only too happy to point out. Strange that the so called left seems to be doing a better job than the right of leveraging market power in this scenario. Would that the left used this influence to demand and uphold worker's rights. Likewise, being on the receiving end of this kind of corporate maleficence should hopefully suggest to these libertarian and reactionary social media personalities that unlimited corporate power might not be such a good idea. While I don't condone the right being deplatformed on corporate social media, it bears mentioning that they have no real basis to protest it given their most cherished ideological principles.

Besides, I wonder whose idea of a "leftist" Tim Squirrell really is anyway?

Were I in a position to counsel the "Alternative Influence Network" in any way, I'd suggest the following:

You've been called the so called intellectual dark web. It's time to leave the dark web behind. Stop hiding. It's working against you. You need to make yourself known to the social media outlets who are hosting you. You actually represent their interests better than the social justice crowd does. You want them to pay less taxes and deal with fewer regulations, after all. Why not try to have a dialogue with them and establish a relationship with them? You say sunlight is the best disinfectant, start with yourselves. You know what you believe and why - don't fear. Use marketing strategies devised by the capitalist system you so love and publicly position yourselves as free speech advocates. Make certain you represent yourselves as promoters of something most people think are good. Don't come out against political correctness. Come out in favor of free thought and open dialogue. Know your values and frame the debate.

You've spent most of your time creating ideological content for consumption by like minded viewers out there in YouTube land. While important, this isn't enough. Now you're paying the price for your policy of isolationism. You need to start an outreach program to capture the hearts and minds of the political mainstream. Otherwise the Tim Squirrells of this world will represent you and will control the narrative around who you are and what you stand for. Your recent misadventures with Patreon and SubscribeStar show what the end result of that is.

Take a lesson from the SJWs you despise. The SJWs who figured out that positioning themselves as a radical counter culture was of limited efficacy, and found ways to work within the systems they professed to dislike to advance their agendas and thrust their narratives into the mainstream. They didn't like mainstream media and academia any more than you do now, but the hard truth is that the bulk of the population isn't abandoning legacy media any time soon. It has gravitas and credibility with both the bulk of the population, and policy making elites in positions of influence. It's how the feminist social justice crowd got to where they are today. Study their success and learn from it.

Above all, be you left or right leaning, do NOT spam Tim Squirrell, Sleeping Giants or similar people with threats, insults or hate speech. It only makes you look bad and lends credence to their narratives.

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Feminist men: The Latest Failure of Guilt Based Morality

Sargon of Akkad has released a half hour long indictment of that most ill placed of all creatures, the male feminist. The poor bloody male feminist, his reputation far from secure even before the fall of Harvey Weinstein and countless other outspoken progressive men in Hollywood, the media and even the United States Senate. If there's one thing outspoken feminist women and conservative men seem to agree on, it's the creepy, predatory and dishonest nature of the typical male feminist. He really can't win.  View Sargon's video here:

Is it really fair to tar the male feminist in these kinds of terms? Are they all fated to be outed as creepy, grabby perverts? Perhaps not. And the female feminist does not escape unscathed either. If ever there was a woman who I'd suspect would have no problem, none whatsoever with male leering and so on - provided it were the right man doing it of course, it would be the outspoken feminist. Gloria Steinem apparently rather liked being swept off her feet by strong men. Jessica Valenti once lamented "living in a society that made her regret not getting sexual attention from men," or something such. Even Andrea Dworkin was married to a man. 

And can you blame them? As Jimmy Dore - one of the few Young Turks I can actually stand, recently put it: women who enjoy sexual attention from men are not sluts, and men who enjoy giving women sexual attention are not predators. Provided of course, it's mutually desired. Now go back and reread that sentence. Reread it again. And again. Let Dore's words sink in. They will be needed in the post #MeToo era. 

I think the more pertinent question here is not whether feminist men have failed feminism, but rather does feminism ultimately fail as a moral doctrine?  I believe the answer to be the later. Not only does feminism present an untenable standard of sexual conduct for men and women alike, feminism also unwittingly contributes to the very problems it seeks to solve. It does this by inducing the kinds of cycles of temptation, guilt, and inevitable fall that is the downfall of every breed of puritanical morality.  Male feminism is indeed the truest embodiment of the virgin/whore complex you're likely to find in this day and age.

We'll start by looking at the great work of Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, wherein he examines the connection between untenable belief, guilt and the kind of fanatical zeal we see more and more of in feminists, including fallen male feminists:

Whence comes the impulse to proselytize? 

Intensity of conviction is not the main factor which impels a movement to spread its faith to the four corners of the earth: "religions of great intensity often confine themselves to contemning, destroying or at best pitying what is not themselves." Nor is the impulse to proselytize an expression of an overabundance of power as Bacon has it "is like a great flood that is sure to overflow." The missionary zeal seems rather an expression of some deep misgiving, some pressing feeling of insufficiency at the center. Proselytizing is more a passionate search for something not yet found than a desire to bestow upon the world something we already have. It is a search for a final and irrefutable demonstration that our absolute truth is indeed the one and only truth.

The proselytizing fanatic strengthens his own faith by converting others. The creed whose legitimacy is most easily challenged is likely to develop the strongest proselytizing impulse. It is doubtful whether a movement which does not profess some preposterous and patently irrational dogma can be possessed of that zealous drive which "must either win men or destroy the world." It is also plausible that those movements with the greatest inner contradiction between profession and practice - that is to say with strong feelings of guilt - are likely to be the most fervent in imposing their faith on others. The more unworkable communism proves in Russia, the more its leaders are compelled to compromise and adulterated its original creed, the more brazen and arrogant will be their attack on the non-believing world.

What it's saying, and what I think Sargon is getting at, is that feminism is an untenable doctrine and trying to live up to it with forthrightness is a fool's errand. The outspoken male feminist did not try and fail to live up to a reasonable doctrine. Rather, he never ever succeeded in living up to a preposterous doctrine, and compensated for his guilt by shouting feminism from the rooftops nearly every chance he got, until his deeper failings were finally outed and his hypocrisy exposed. The male feminist is the sick symptom of a much deeper, much deeper sickness that is feminist theory itself. The failures of both are intertwined with and dependent on each other.

ALNS, one of my co-moderators on Alternative Left's Facebook page, suggested that it is a no-win scenario. Indeed, it is very much a Kobayashi Maru - a no win scenario specifically designed as such. A no win scenario in which all too many Captain Kirks have thought they could cheat their way out of over the years.

A very different kind of philosopher, Ayn Rand, in one of her rare moments of clarity, attacks the Catholic stances on original sin and family planning in a similar kind of conceptual term in her essay Of Living Death:

But you say the encyclical ideal will not work?  It was not intended to work. It is intended to induce guilt. It is not intended to be accepted and practiced. It is intended to be accepted and broken, broken by man's "selfish" desire to love, which will thus be turned into a shameful weakness. Men who accept as an ideal an irrational goal they cannot achieve never lift their heads thereafter, and never discover that their bowed heads were the only goal to ever be achieved.

Rand's paragraph there describes feminism's true intent towards the male of the species with absolute perfection. The outspoken male feminist seeks to quell an internal guilt, a guilt that feminist theory itself induces and nurtures. A guilt over being male, especially being a cisgendered heterosexual male. Over the visual and sensory nature of his sexuality in particular. Any expression of sexual agency on his part will be put up to "power", "entitlement" , "male gaze" , "objectification" , "sexualization" or any other misused, bandied about feminist buzzword, and a single slip up and the feminist sympathizing male will be outed as yet another typical male who will not part with his "privilege" at the end of the day.

You'd think we'd have learned our lesson with the failure of puritanism and the sundry sex abuse scandals that have plagued the churches over the years. Comparisons between the the fall of male feminists today and the "family values" conservative with latent homosexual tendencies are thus more appropriate than they even appeared at first glance. They fail for the same reasons. Basing your moral system around guilt and emphasis of your own flaws cannot help but fail. Men with, shall we say, unusual sexual proclivities sometimes seek redemption, the spiritual discipline needed to repress the urges or at least easy opportunities to purchase indulgence and forgiveness via joining a morally pure church.  Perhaps the Catholic Church, perhaps a fundamentalist protestant sect, or perhaps the progressive left, feminist activism especially.  Regardless, it will fail where even relative amorality has at least a chance at success.

The correct response, then, would be to reject the present incarnation of feminist theory's inherent misandry and heterophobia out of hand, no explanations, no compromise. Full stop.

Stop equating sexual attraction with sexual objectification because they're not the same damn things. Objectification is not merely a sexual response to someone else's sexual characteristics. It requires an accompanying belief that women (or men) are valued primarily or exclusively for their sexual characteristics and are viewed with disdain otherwise, typically in situations in which evaluation based on sexual characteristics would be a truly inappropriate means of evaluating someone. Objectification and attraction are conceptually conflated almost constantly, especially in the era of social justice on social media. This conflation is dangerous, and must be challenged at every turn.

The outcome of a more reasonable sexual ethic is no unearned guilt, and thus no psychological toxicity to erode at the male's sense of self, which is the reserve of psychological will that he needs to truly conduct himself with honor and integrity in his dealings with women, as with any other kind of person. Because he does not believe his sexual urges degrade or objectify women, he does not use his sexual urges to, well, degrade and objectify women. People always act out their innermost convictions. That's what's really, truly dangerous about men internalizing feminist theory. If they believe themselves to be oppressors, objectifiers and harassers ipso-facto simply for being male, that's what they'll end up becoming and how they'll behave. Sargon's video is loaded with evidence to this point.

If it is respect for women and their equality with men that you truly have and wish to promote, the best way to start is by abandoning this postmodern take on chivalry and putting women up on pedestals that now calls itself feminism. 

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Beware Sargonism

Lord Keynes over at Social Democracy for the 21st Century is a sharp fellow.  He makes the following observation:

Ever since Gamergate, there has been a newfound hostility to SJWism, Cultural Leftism, and Third Wave feminism amongst some Liberals and leftists, especially the young.
This movement has manifested itself in the popular YouTube personalities like these: 

(1) Sargon of Akkad

(2) Dave Rubin, The Rubin Report

(3) Gad Saad 

The most popular of these are probably Sargon of Akkad and Dave Rubin.  The ideology of these latter two is rapidly degenerating into Classical Liberalism and libertarianism-lite, because they lack any alternative perspective on economics.

Keynes later warns us:

"Sargonism,” if we can call it that, is an intellectual dead end, and a Hayekian-lite rehash of the libertarian movement of the early 2010s. Don’t be seduced."

Sargon of Akkad (the Kekistani, not the Mesopotamian) comes in for a lot of flak and criticism, most of it unjustified.  On any given day, he's attacked from the neoreactionary right for being a cuck and a liberal sellout.  From the left he's attacked for being a nazi, a misogynist and an all round garbage person.  Welcome to the club, Sargon.  If you're catching flak from both sides, it means you're doing something right.

But Lord Keynes's issues are not so easily dismissed, although Sargon does come across as recognizing some need for curbs on the excesses of capitalism.  But this is not merely about Sargon himself, but about the recent surge in opposition to the excesses of cultural leftism overall.  Just about every anti-SJW space I've seen online seems prone to a sort of rightward drift.  The SJW criticism of libertarianism and liberalism as a sort of camel's nose that once let in the tent is quickly followed by a more decidedly reactionary and even hateful body does seem to verify itself with disheartening frequency in anti-SJW spaces.  It was largely for this reason that I decided to involve myself in the alt-left.

The issues that I have with the cultural libertarian and skeptical communities are basically these: 1) I distrust the libertarian stance on economics and 2) I saw and continue to see these movements and their supporters repeatedly overshoot the mark in their opposition to political correctness and descend into genuinely hateful and spiteful views. It's one thing to rightly object to the campus feminist's love of censorship or bouts of misandry. It's quite another to attack her personally, mock her appearance and weight, and engage in doxing, threats and the like.  Like the social justice warriors, the cultural libertarians - who inevitably succumb to capture from the alt-right, are essentially postmodern: they're movements of identity and self serving moral relativism, not movements of principle.

Another problem with both the SJWs and the Alt-Right is that both are economically blind, and this blindness is actually driving a lot of the toxic narratives on both sides. No, Ms. Intersectional Feminist and Mr. Neoreactionary, neither the patriarchy nor the Elders of Zion are out to ruin your life. You're victims of rapacious global capitalism.  This is exactly where the unions were telling us we'd end up back in the mid 1990s when globalization, deregulation, privatization and free trade were touted as the ultimate panacea. 

The social injustices sustained by women and people of color, as well as the economic dislocation suffered by working class white males, had no means of articulating itself via economic theory, so the only thing either one could do was to keep doubling down on a cultural or identitarian critique that has no chance of addressing their real grievances because the whole realm of political economy is essentially invisible to them.  But, as long as these grievances are not effectively addressed, these movements will continue to exist and will only grow more strident.  The situation seemed hopeless to me until I saw the public enthusiasm for the campaign of Bernie Sanders for POTUS. Of course Sanders was far from perfect, but he showed that there was potential for a candidate running as a socialist, even in the USA.

The anti-SJW left is in a tricky position. It's turned out to be difficult to disentangle the culture of leftism - the revolutionary romanticism, as I think of it - from the actual economics of publicly or cooperatively owned (or at least regulated) economic institutions. It comes naturally to me because I have actual experience in housing cooperatives, labour unions and non-profit societies that are actually run by the same kinds of people who operate heavy machinery and crunch numbers in cubicles all day, instead of deconstructing the patriarchal elements of Shakespeare or LARPing as anarchist revolutionaries on college campuses. The real problem, though, is that the organs of the left have long since been hijacked by the kinds of people who figure that African blacks were the real lost tribes of Israel or that all penetrative sexual intercourse equates to rape. This loss of direction began innocently enough back in the 1970s, but is likely to be next to impossible to recover from except over a long time span, regardless of how harmful it is to the left. Narratives hold a powerful grip on the human mind.

Cultural libertarians and the skeptical community have a mirror image of the same problem. Their admirable message that free speech should be absolute and that the mob and the state have no business in the bedrooms of the nation gets too easily hijacked by people who figure a Jewish conspiracy is behind the decision to abandon the gold standard, or that the emergent trans-acceptance movement is the latest wedge of a cultural Marxist plot obsessed with destroying western civilization. 

Plus, neither the SJWs nor the alt-right have any kind of real answers to the economic side of either rising inequality or of national decline.  The entry level libertarian or Marxist platitudes they're respectively prone to expressing aren't going to cut it. Beneath the veneer of admiration for Che Guevara or Augusto Pinochet is virtually zero understanding of how macroeconomics actually work in any real appreciable way.   

People like Lord Keynes and myself are in a difficult position. We are navigating between Scylla and Charybdis, and the raft we're doing it on is not at all that seaworthy.  Sargon of Akkad, Dave Rubin and their ilk are one half of the map we need to not crash upon the rocks.  But if we don't likewise want to sink and drown, we'd do well to steer clear of the economic ideas Hayek and Friedman.  Civil libertarianism and a solid regulatory welfare state cannot be mutually exclusive.  In fact, they need each other.

Lord Keynes blogs regularly at Social Democracy for the 21st Century and can also be found on Twitter.  Highly recommended.