Could you point out anywhere that Peter supports bigotry? Or even, a single crazy statement in Peter's speech? (I wouldn't defend Trump. I'm defending Peter, who I respect a lot).
The speech runs from 2:40 to 15:50, and can be watched in 7 minutes if you change speed to 2x.
(Thomas, I respect you a lot too. I've never seen or known Peter to do anything like you describe. I posted this video because it helped me understand his position on the election).
How is this a coherent argument? "Here is an individual moment from someone's life. Use it to prove they're bigoted."
How about we cite other moments in his life? Like the (multiple!) Stanford peers he had who recounted his support for apartheid, or the book he wrote about the evils of diversity, or the blog post he wrote for Cato in 2009 lamenting that women had obtained the right to vote? How about getting up on stage and calling a person who repeatedly said that Muslims citizens of the United States should be forced to register themselves --- at their mosques or at lots of other places, we'll figure it out! --- the most honest candidate in the race?
There's a point at which the challenges you choose to raise cross a line into gaslighting --- who are you going to believe, Thiel or your own lying eyes? --- and while you haven't crossed it, writing in a tone that suggests it's unreasonable to question Thiel's inclusiveness definitely brings you right up to it.
> or the blog post he wrote for Cato in 2009 lamenting that women had obtained the right to vote?
He said no such thing in that article[1]. I have no idea about the rest, or about Thiel in general, but I did read the article. Your statement is as bad and inaccurate as any one-liner soundbite on right wing media.
The section in question (emphasis mine):
As one fast-forwards to 2009, the prospects for a
*libertarian politics* appear grim indeed. Exhibit A
is a financial crisis caused by too much debt and
leverage, facilitated by a government that insured
against all sorts of moral hazards — and we know that
the response to this crisis involves way more debt and
leverage, and way more government. Those who have
argued for free markets have been screaming into a
hurricane. The events of recent months shatter any
remaining hopes of *politically minded* libertarians.
For those of us who are libertarian in 2009, our
education culminates with the knowledge that the
broader education of the body politic has become a
fool’s errand.
Indeed, even more pessimistically, the trend has been
going the wrong way for a long time. To return to
finance, the last economic depression in the United
States that did not result in massive government
intervention was the collapse of 1920–21. It was sharp
but short, and entailed the sort of Schumpeterian
“creative destruction” that could lead to a real boom.
The decade that followed — the roaring 1920s — was so
strong that historians have forgotten the depression
that started it. The 1920s were the last decade in
American history during which one could be genuinely
optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast
increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of
the franchise to women — two constituencies that are
notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the
notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.
He's talking about the poor receptivity he (and apparently other libertarians?) believe those groups have to libertarian ideals, specifically of getting them to vote for libertarian policies; he's not lamenting their existence per se.
Indeed, there's a follow-up on this exact topic posted at the bottom of the article:
It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will
be taken away or that this would solve the political
problems that vex us. While I don’t think any class of
people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope
that voting will make things better.
And finally:
I believe that politics is way too intense. That’s why
I’m a libertarian. Politics gets people angry, destroys
relationships, and polarizes peoples’ vision: the world
is us versus them; good people versus the other.
He may be naive or disillusioned or depressed or whatever, but your misleading soundbite perfectly illustrated his point.
"They(Mexicans) are rapists and murderers" Take a look[1] you may have been stranded on an Island the last 2 years and perhaps you did not hear what Trump have said.
Now, not all Trump supporters are racists (maybe Thiel isn't? who knows!), but all of them are telling us implicitly that racism and bigotry are not deal breakers.
Trump said that illegal immigrants are "rapists and murderers and some good people", "not their best people". You can disagree strongly with Trump's claims about what motivates illegal immigration, but Trump's stated view is not racist: he discriminated between two groups within a single race, and did not distinguish between races.
The alt-right gained most of it's momentum during Trump's campaign. You think that's a coincidence? And this, "it's a nationality not a race' is hardly a good reason to denigrate an entire people.
People keep saying he denigrated all mexicans... He didn't, he denigrated illegal immigrants. Unless you are implying all Mexicans are illegal immigrants?
I don't even like trump but this kind of nonsense makes me defend him.
That's not because the judge is Mexican, that's because the judge is human and a huge propaganda machine was working against Trump telling everyone that he hates the judges culture.
I don't know how impartial I would be if i thought I was ruling against a hardcore racist who hates my culture.
Well, I hope you're not a Judge then, eh? ;-) (You're supposed to recuse yourself in a situation like that, you know.)
Even if he was trying to impugn human nature and not Mexicans, he's still saying that race trumps Justice (in the person of the Judge.) That's not the values I want my President to treat as normal, because it effectively promotes racialism.
Certainly his election has already emboldened racists to make physical and verbal attacks across the country. Do I care if he's really racist or not?
Variations of that statement are commonly being written or voiced in the mainstream media post election. So apparently it does do well. Van Jones, on national TV, called it "whitelash" and openly described Trump's election as a racist response to Obama's Presidency. The post election has been one mainstream media tirade after another about the racist white voters.
Corrected now, unless I didn't hear right when he refers to Mexico sending people over and then "they are rapists" perhaps his subject changed and he was referring to Aliens?
He is, at least technically, making a more sophisticated argument. I'll rephrase it to make that reading clear:
"Like all countries, Mexico has both great people and rapists/murderers. Unfortunately, the latter group is overrepresented among those illegally in this country."
That's (technically) the point he's making, and it's (technically) not racist.
It's called dog-whistle politics. It's subtle, so you have to listen hard, but here it is: "To the people who are used to influencing our choice of leaders, ..." and he goes on to describe "wealthy" and "successful" types of people. Basically he's talking "to" and "about" people like himself, namely, white men. The man is a bigot, and like all modern bigots, he hides (and shows) his bigotry in coded language like this.
edit: just to clarify, "people who are used to influencing our choice of leaders", I am interpreting in the context of voting rights in the United States, which of course were originally denied to everyone but white men. So those are the ones who are "used to it."
Do you then also suggest that those who called to vote for HRC support the destruction of government data, lying under oath, and support the unlawful invasion of Iraq?
He supports a Presidency which built its campaign, to a large extent, on abject racism and outright sexism. A ticket whose VP supports electro-shocking gay teens to turn them straight.
How, exactly, do you give such people $1.25 million and join their team without at least implicitly endorsing such views?
Ironically, bigotry is defined as "intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself". I'm not defending Trump but it's fairly obvious to any non-partisan that the left wing is just as guilty of this.
Call me when your American Left Wing creates a system where Christians, Republicans and Libertarians are forbidden to dine in restaurants because of their identity, or are prevented from using restrooms, or are afraid to call the police should they be victims of crime, because they expect that the police will either make things worse or at best not take their experience seriously.
"just as guilty" is a false equivalence. The Left has much to answer for certainly; but the claim that there is somehow comparable bigotry in both sides of the political spectrum is not remotely credible.
Bigotry is a state of mind, not a manifestation. I'm not arguing against the existence and dominance of a WASP authoritarian power structure. My point is that accusing someone of being a "bigot" without providing a valid argument for what constitutes that label is no more compelling than any other ad-hominem. All it does is reduce social justice to an empty virtue signaling buzzword that fails to evoke the struggle and pain behind those victims of discrimination that you fight to protect. You will never get your message across to Trump supporters if you continue to lump them all into a basket of deplorables that is beneath contempt and not even worth a thoughtful interaction. Modern liberals, particularly the "social justice warriors", aren't helping progressive causes with their dogmatic approach to political discourse. They could all benefit from reading Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power [1].
Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam met with the KKK in 1961 despite mutual hostility that would never be ameliorated [2]. In 2016, your entire career can be ruined simply for holding the "wrong" opinion. Boy how things have changed.
Yes, but that was before the realignment when the racist white southern conservative faction of the Democratic Party, that had been it's core prior to the New Deal Coalition, abandoned the party over Johnson's support of civil rights and became the base of the Republican Party.
I'm aware of that - but if we have to look over 50 years in the past to try to back up the claim that "the left and right are equally bigotted", then we should really just admit that claim doesn't have a factual basis at the time it was made.
"hold(s) different opinions from oneself" isn't the only characteristic of Nazis, they have other attributes which do justify not tolerating them.
But yes, if it wasn't those attributes, you could still "tolerate" them, in the sense of allowing their opinions to be heard. You don't have to agree. You can even explicitly argue with them.
That is the classic definition, but the liberal definition of "bigotry" is more like "intolerance/hostility/oppression to those who have different skin/gender/lifestyles/culture/etc (all the protected class stuff)"
"hold different opinions from oneself" is subjectively tolerance/intolerance. This table exploits word games, because the first column is "in/tolerant to hearing the opions of", and the second is "holds opinions I believe to be exclusive to a special sub-community of society".
You cannot correctly come to a decision about the latter, without listening, which requires the former.
Are you familiar with "point-free style"? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_programming) The above crude table should be read as given: point-free. I don't care about the subject of [in]tolerance even slightly (opinions, smells, beliefs, quasi-scientific theories, what-have-you).
If you are tolerant I will tolerate you, if you are intolerant go screw.
racism and views on climate change are opinions, what else could they be? climate change is a complex and speculative topic that no one understands completely. no one has a climatechangeometer.
HN being full of sociopaths is well known. Being apologists for Thiel's odiousness is a new low.
The man clearly states what he means, trying to 'clarify what he exactly means' is convuluted apologism and revisonism. This is like saying slave trade is wrong but you support it. Ok.
If you agree with his views defend them on the platform of reason.
Let's not get carried away here. Trump has not won because he is racist, nobody now thinks racism is ok. He has won because of the disenchantment with the establishment and his opposite number being widely perceived as a crook.
If you think minorities and women are somehow different from you it will appear as bigotry unless you can offer some evidence or reason beyond generalising entire sections of humanity for some self serving and dubious cause.
Left-wing mccarthyism is as bad as right-wing mccarthyism. People should be able to support one of the two candidates without having to stand up to so much shaming in SV circles. Given the binary choice there may be multiple reasons to pick Trump over Clinton even if you disagree with him on a lot of issues.
Words mean things. McCarthyism was a movement that questioned the citizenship of people who supported socialism, and which demanded of the citizenry that they root out, report, and maintain blacklists of people who weren't stalwart supporters of that effort. McCarthyism had the force of a government behind it.
What you're seeing here isn't an organized movement to find and punish Thiel-supporters. It's people lamenting that other people continue to do business with one specific person, who is being singled out for his own speech and actions. It's an embryonic boycott movement. Boycotts --- something far more specific, pointed, and impactful than what we're seeing in threads like this --- are not "McCarthyism".
We should value tolerance towards minority (in our circles) opinions. Unless you believe half of the country are bigots, you would conclude many people who voted for Trump did so reluctantly and despite all the stupid things he said, and not thanks to them. They prioritized his economic policies or felt Clinton is too indebted to the current establishment to be able to change anything. I know some people who did that and I respect their opinion.
Regarding difference between McCarthyism having government support behind and our media/social media rage not, I am worried that popular opinions become policies in a democracy. If on both ends of the political spectrum people stop respecting each other completely, it won't end well.
I don't think the definition of "McCarthyism" is as narrow as you define it. I used that word because I though the analogy was appropriate and illustrated well what I was trying to express. Accepted definitions do not tie it to the use of government force, see e.g. "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism." from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/mccarthyism?s=t
Words mean things. In the same way that people aren't being "lynched" when dozens of other people berate them online, calls to divest from bigots and their enablers don't constitute "McCarthyism".
Words mean different things depending on the context. And analogy and hyperbole are valid tools for expressing ideas. Now "lynching" would definitely be a bad analogy and way too much hyperbole, but "mccarthyism" was appropriate to illustrate what I was trying to say. At the time people lost ability to be employed because of their political views. You seem to be calling for boycotting anyone who voted or supported Trump in this election because they are bigots. And that is a logical jump I cannot agree with as I tried to explain above. Clearly some people voted for him because maintaining status quo was less acceptable than getting over the things he said. I do think that we would have to get off the high horse of moral superiority and try to understand what happened if we want to avoid surprises like this in the future.
"Given the binary choice there may be multiple reasons to pick Trump over Clinton even if you disagree with him on a lot of issues."
If you're willing to see past the proud racism and misogyny, then sure. If you're willing to see past the blatant disregard for objective facts, then sure. I, for one, would vote for pretty much anyone else before supporting that.
