Filters can be necessary
This is annoying. Someone called Iona Italia wrote a post about Richard Dawkins’s de-platforming from a speaking event at radio KPFA in Berkeley. I think the de-platforming is rude and stupid and also shockingly under-justified by the people at KPFA, whose written explanation is about as cogent as a Trump tweet. But in writing about this Italia basically says it’s great that Richard is so rude. Yeah no – it’s not.
Dawkins has always been a man without a filter, who says exactly what he thinks, without worrying whether it might offend. This means that, in his public statements on politics, he occasionally sounds goofy or politically incorrect or voices a sentiment without considering how it will be interpreted by others. He’s no diplomat, no politician. But his frankness is one of his most important qualities, a manifestation of the passion his new book title alludes to, a passion for truth. He has real integrity: he always says what he believes to be true, unafraid of how it will be received. He sometimes admits he’s wrong and corrects himself but he never self-censors in advance. He always speaks truth to power.
Excuse me but that is crap. He does not always speak truth to power – he very often speaks belligerently and rudely to people with no power, and he very often does it for no reason of principle but just because he gets impatient and/or he is indignant at being contradicted…much like Trump.
And this business of having no filter and saying whatever one thinks without worrying whether it might offend is – obviously – far from always a virtue. Yes it’s often useful to shock the respectable, yes it’s often a good thing to shake up conventions; that does not mean it’s always awesome to blurt whatever pops into your head and then shout at anyone who talks back. There’s being a rebel and there’s being an asshole, and it’s just not the case that Richard is always the first and never the second.
I wish people made this distinction more often.
Very good.
It seems to me that the people who are most effective communicators are those who know how to adjust their filters according to the desired impact on the intended audience. And over the many years of watching Dawkins, I have to say that there is plenty of evidence that he is (most of the time) deliberately (though perhaps not always so carefully) choosing his message according to the first-order effects at least. But sometimes the first-order rebel results in a second-order asshole (especially when he doubles down, as he certainly has a tendency to do). And certainly, sometimes he does simply engage in first-order assholery (which of course he can often get away with, simply by virtue of being a white rich British bloke).
But the second part of this that really disturbs me is not about Dawkins at all – it’s about the idea that there is some inherent value (or even virtue) in not being thoughtful about what one says, and not caring who one offends (independent of the validity of the message). It seems to me that this is one of the major contributions to DJT’s ascendancy, and I am thoroughly tired of hearing people say things like, “I don’t often agree with what Trump says, but ya gotta respect his forthrightness and openness”. (No, I don’t gotta do any such thing.)
The problem with Dawkins isn’t merely that he’s ‘politically incorrect’–it’s that he’s quite often factually incorrect, particularly on issues of social justice, and is unwilling to be corrected on those points.
It is possible to have allies, and even give admiring regard, to people who can be impulsive and cranky. Dawkins is another argument against Twitter, and reading his autobiographical stuff shows that he doesn’t lack shallow patches in his grasp of things.
But the KPFA no-platforming appears to be one. more. instance. of pseudo-progressives grovelling on demand for the ‘offended’ Muslim Community Leaders.
It really seems like a cold war hangover, the way so many seem to think that anyone who wants to kill Jews or Americans is magically transformed into an ally of progress. Other than the Russian support for Arab tyrants, since Nasser in 1956, what other reason would anyone buy this idiocy?
Yeah… I’m really not a fan of no-platforming as a result of external pressures. I mean, this is Dawkins. He’s not obscure, you knew what you were getting when you issued the invitation. Are you really going to tell me you didn’t understand you’d get some push back about choosing him? Because I don’t think I believe that… And, anyway, if you invited someone you don’t suddenly turn round and say, “X says you were nasty to him/her! So you can’t come any more.” You stand by the speaker you chose. If you really want to go the appeasement route then maybe a disclaimer, “Professor Dawkins is a speaker known to be both entertaining and controversial. Inviting him to speak does not indicate wholesale support for his views.” But even that’s weaselish and will probably get you into trouble from both sides…
Dawkins, oh dear, I used to be a tremendous fan of his (up to about the time of The God Delusion). I think much of his writing is brilliant, and many of his ideas are far more nuanced than they are represented by his detractors (the religious teaching/child abuse analogy that he’s fond of, for instance). Unfortunately Twitter is not a medium that tolerates nuance, and that’s part of the reason his message gets lost and/or distorted.
The other reason is Dawkins himself. To rich, straight, white, middle aged and male, you can add “senior academic”. In the words of a good friend of mine, “All those guys think their dicks are bigger than Africa.” Dawkins has an ego which has been indulged and stroked too often, so that he has lost most of his ability to self-reflect. He’s been right so many times – and been told he’s right even more often – that the possibility that his world view might be wrong is unthinkable. In the words of Leonard Cohen (whom I suspect was actually thinking of Dawkins when he wrote this), he is “the Great Professor/of all there is to know,” and that’s a dangerous ego state to exist in. The idea that you might be wrong in your view of the world, not just now but over your whole life, is a really tough thing for these guys to acknowledge, let alone accept. It’s easier to shut down and dismiss the people who aren’t like you because appreciating that you have profoundly misunderstood things is very, very scary. It’s even easier when you have a chorus of acolytes reassuring you that no, you’re right, all those other people – those female people, those brown people – they’re the ones who are wrong. It’s the inevitable outcome of living in that kind of echo chamber.