Get a load of those shoulders
The hostile replies on The Nation’s tweet of that ridiculous article defending “Lia” Thomas and accusing women of “frenzy” continue to pile up. Could it break the record for disastrous ratio? Confidence is high.
Yeesh that photo. I don’t think I’d seen that one before.
This is so heartening.
I stay right away from Twitter as a rule, but have downloaded
. I have converted it into a Word document and have highlighted its most ludicrous bits in yellow. It now resembles one of the Spanish omelettes which were my mother’s specialty when I was a kid. Except in this instance cooked from eggs with very large yolks and little in the way of albumen (aka ‘white’ in the non-racist sense.)
Imagine what Hitchens or Alexander Cockburn would have made of this nonsense.
I’m interested Ophelia. If you had a choice between,
A) People are allowed to openly disagree with The Nation’s trans-ideology on public-square forums such as Twitter, AND, people are allowed to openly disagree with climate scientists on public-square forums such as Twitter. OR:
B) Neither of these are allowed, enforced with bans and shadow-bans by self-appointed guardians protecting us all from “disinformation” and “hate speech” …
… which would you prefer?
The problem is that the role of public-square censor attracts the authoritarian activist who wants to use the role to mould society to their liking.
And while they’ll pay some attention to actual misinformation, what they’ll really put their efforts into is shutting down valid information and opinions that they merely dislike.
We already have ample evidence that that is exactly what happens.
There’s a principle of English jurisprudence that we’d prefer to let 10 guilty people go free than convict one innocent person. I suspect we have to accept a similar principle of tolerating plenty of misinformation to avoid the far worse scenario of public-square censors shutting down truths that they don’t want to hear.
Coel:
Now I am really confused. Please give an example of a real-life ‘authoritarian activist’ who has the power to shut down anything; particularly given the fact that ‘activist’ is a boo-word and mild term of abuse frequently used by the authoritarian, fossil-fuel affiliated, mainstream science-denying and Murdochian Right.
NB: The opposite of an ‘activist’ (boo!) would have to be a passivist (hooray.?) And the classic passivist would have to be your average member of a mob of sheep. (NB: As a rural Australian, I have had a fair bit to do with them in my time.)
@Omar:
Take the last Tweet above, for example, saying: “Because he [Lia Thomas] is a man”. That would have got the user banned under the old Twitter regime (Megan Murphy & Graham Linehan for examples).
Plenty of people would regard it as unacceptable and want it banned or to be actually illegal (if in doubt go and ask on Phyrangula). People have been sacked (Maya Forstater for example) or visited by the police (Harry Miller for example) for saying such things.
The “authoritarian activists” of the “Trust and Safety” committee of the previous Twitter regime *did* have the power to censor it and *did* use it. This applied not only to disagreeing with gender ideology but to a large number of other topics also (e.g. crime, race, covid).
Some of the stuff censored was indeed misinformation, some of it, though, was not, it was true information and valid opinions that were contrary to woke ideology.
Out of interest, what’s your answer to my question?
Coel: Let’s get it clear. I take it you mean the one you asked Ophelia @#4:
Well, as a liberal (note small ‘l’) I would naturally go for your A. Which is what I would hope that YOU would likewise answer. Or would you perhaps not.?
And now, what devastating follow-up clincher do you have in mind.? (Aside: Can’t hardly wait.!)
Omar, the obvious follow-up he’s planning is “and therefore, Elon Musk is the bestest, handsomest, smartest man evah!!!!!!” Coel never misses a chance to hero-worship his favorite billionaire.
Hi Omar, I’m glad you went for A, me too!
There’s no devastating clincher. The point is merely that Ophelia has expressed disapproval of Twitter under Musk reducing content moderation (see her recent post on this re climate change), when it seems to me that it’s part-and-parcel of the same license to bluntly point out that Lia Thomas is a man and a cheat.
Of course the ideal would be disinterested and ideologically neutral content moderation. But, sadly, human beings (and especially Americans these days) don’t really do ideologically neutral anything.
And even if we did get ideologically neutral content moderators, they could still sometimes be wrong (humans often are) which is why we still need license to disagree, even with a cross-political consensus.
@Screechy:
Your purely tribal response is noted, and is part of the problem.
Do you have anything worthwhile to say on the topic of how public-square forums such as Twitter should handle content moderation?
Let me guess: “Anything I like should be allowed, anything I don’t like should not”?
Climate change doesn’t care about anybody’s ideology.
Coel,
No, you’re wrong as usual. Ironic that you accuse me of tribalism but assume you know my views on something simple because I find your Musk sycophancy tedious and laughable.
My thoughts are:
1) Twitter is not a “public square,” and this is an unhelpful way to think of things. It leads to government regulation of private speech forums, which is a much worse outcome than “app I like to use has a moderation policy I don’t like.”
2) Per (1), Twitter as a private company can regulate its content however it likes. If Musk wants to turn Twitter into a playground for alt-right shitposters, that’s his prerogative.
3) The rest of us are free to criticize how any particular forum is run, including noting the hypocrisy of “free speech absolutists” doing the same shit they complained about, and vote with our feet/eyeballs.
4) How I would run a web site, social network, discussion forum, etc. is complicated. It would depend on the nature of the community and the purpose of the site — you moderate the discussion group for a Little League parents’ group differently than an irreverant, not-for-the-faint-of-heart dark corner of the internet. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, and even if you’re trying to appeal to the broadest possible user base, you still have to make some decisions. Is it just “stuff I like is ok/stuff I like isn’t?” Well, no, not across the board — to the extent possible, you use viewpoint-neutral rules, so you either allow people to call each other assholes or not, rather than allow people you agree with to do it to people who don’t but not the other way around. But on some level you are making some value judgments, like “it’s ok to call someone an asshole, but not to call them by a racial/ethnic/homophobic slur.” And if one of your value judgments is “we’re going to ban or throttle traffic for misinformation,” then you have to make some determinations about what constitutes misinformation. There is no platonic ideal of content moderation that takes human judgment — and therefore human opinions and value judgments and biases — out of the picture. As Techdirt explained
Coel @10 – “Let me guess: “Anything I like should be allowed, anything I don’t like should not”?”
That’s exactly the way twitter has always been run. The only thing that changes is who “I” is.
Dorsey – Trump should not be allowed.
Musk – Trump should be allowed.
etc. etc.
Coel, unless I forgot how to read, I don’t see Ophelia saying shut it down. I see her questioning the wisdom of a once reputable magazine to print it in the first place. And since it is a private magazine, they are allowed to reject articles they feel don’t fit with their mission.
Do I think climate change deniers should be shut down? No, I think they should be ridiculed for having ideas that violate everything we know about science. Same with trans activists.
Is it better that a group of activists are in charge of content moderation or a capricious king?
In any case you can still get in trouble with the gender goblins and the DEI crowd on Twitter so that odious toad hasn’t improved things, just changed them.
@Screechy:
More tribalism from you, anything that isn’t hating on Musk is “sycophancy”.
I disagree, it’s a de facto public square and should be treated as such, regardless of whether it is privately owned. (In the same way that public utilities such as water and electricity should be regulated for the public good even if privately owned.)
It is entirely normal to regulate companies, particularly when they are monopolies or near monopolies. Lots of governments already regulate the content of social media (see, for example, the laws that Ireland have just passed).
Again, many people think that companies as dominant in market share as Twitter should be regulated as public utilities. Ditto banks and internet providers.
Just because they are (currently) legally entitled to do something doesn’t mean it’s good for society that it be allowed.
For example, suppose, 6 weeks before the next US election they decided to shadow-ban all pro-Democrat content, or all pro-Republican content, and not tell anyone that they’d done it.
Would you support regulation to stop them doing that, or just shrug “… private company blah blah”?
My attitude is that some companies are too powerful and too market-dominant
for the “private company blah blah” shrug (e.g. Twitter, Google, Apple …).
I was asking about a dominant-market-share, de-facto public square such as Twitter.
@iknklast:
Did anyone suggest that Ophelia did say that?
Fox News “shadow banned” all Democratic content and promoted election lies. In the process they accused Dominion voting machines of switching votes. We know how that turned out.
Defamation is actionable on social media as well. What kind of government control do we need beyond that?
Any government Department of Misinformation Control would look very much like the Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment in 1930’s Germany. Historically not a good idea.
Coel,
I answered your questions. I couldn’t possibly care less that you disagree.
Coel, the complacent Musk sycophant (‘He’s successful, he’s rich, he must be a Good Thing!’), at his tired gotcha games.
From the Atlantic, and the website ‘Deep Shtetl’:
‘Last night, Elon Musk made two rookie social-media mistakes: He tweeted after 10 p.m., and he echoed paranoid anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. “George Soros reminds me of Magneto,” he declared, likening the financier to the Marvel supervillain, both of them Jewish Holocaust survivors. In case the meaning was unclear, Musk quickly clarified to another user, “He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.”
‘Criticizing George Soros is not inherently anti-Semitic. He is one of the world’s richest men and most influential philanthropists, as well as the Democratic Party’s largest single donor, and his views undoubtedly warrant scrutiny and debate. But Musk was not taking issue with a particular statement or position put forward by Soros; he was presenting him as an avatar of evil. He painted Soros as a literal comic-book villain.
‘This is the language of anti-Semitism through the ages, which perpetually casts powerful Jewish actors as the embodiment of social and political ill. Rather than treat Jews like humans, who are fallible and often mistaken, this mindset refashions them into sinister superhumans who intentionally impose their malign designs on the masses. In recent years, Soros has been a particular target of this treatment, but any Jew or Jewish institution that accumulates some measure of wealth or status tends to attract it, whether the Rothschilds or the state of Israel. In such cases, legitimate criticism is overtaken by conspiracy; the issue is no longer the conduct of the Jewish actor but their very essence.
‘Musk echoing such a sensibility might seem surprising, but it was, in fact, inevitable…’
***
Does Coel think that:
A) Musk was justified in using his powerful position and his Twitter platform to indulge in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories?
or:
B) Does he think that Musk’s anti-Semitic outburst is harmless fun and should be welcomed?
or:
C) It doesn’t matter because people can tweet their disagreement with anti-Semitic tweets, others can choose what they would like to think is right, and if there’s a bit of collateral damage such as a synagogue being shot up, well, that’s the price we have to pay for living in the very desirable libertarian society we should all thirst to live in.
Screechy Monkey#12
Thank you for the link to Techdirt. The piece is intelligent and perceptive, recognises the complexity of things, and doesn’t reduce that complexity to simplistic binary questions.
Not to mention the targeted censorship in Turkey. https://slate.com/technology/2023/05/elon-musk-turkey-twitter-erdogan-india-modi-free-speech.html
In case there is any doubt who can be persuaded to manipulate twitter. At least we still have the ability to point out such things, in several large authoritarian countries (I won’t name names), it could still mean punitive measures, even execution.
From the Bulwark, a website founded by responsible Republicans: it concerns Musk’s welcome of conspiracy theorists, in this case the Laura Loomer who tweeted once above a headline stating that 2,000 refugees had drowned in the Mediterranean between January and July in 2017: ‘Good (applause emoji) here’s to 2,000 more)’:
‘Elon Musk welcomed her (Loomer) back to Twitter as part of a larger reorienting of the platform to, as he put it, prioritize free speech over content moderation; numerous other election deniers came back at the same time. But he didn’t just let them back into the room so they could hang out in their own dark corner; he pulled them into the very center of the action by regularly interacting with them, often assuring them that he would “look into” their claims of censorship, shadowbanning, or other misdeeds on the part of the platform under earlier ownership. And he hangs out online not just with people who believe the election was stolen, but with people like Tom Fitton and Jenna Ellis, who actually tried to help overthrow the 2020 election, and Mike Cernovich, an original Pizzagater.’
@Tim Harries:
Oh look, invented quotes. Not very honest.
It’s not an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, that’s way too much of a stretch. Soros is influential and criticising him is fair game. And no-one is attributing anything conspiritorial to Soros, it’s pretty much all in the open.
Much of this hating on Musk is just because he does indeed allow voices from across the political spectrum on Twitter, much to the dislike of the woke, who think that they should get to be the content moderators.
Anyone with a modicum of intelligence, Coel, will have realised that the ‘quotation’ was not intended as a direct quotation of something you actually said, but was intended to sum up what comes across as your puerile, fanboy attitude towards Elon Musk.
Yes, the anti-Semitism is certainly in the open. I suggest that you read Musk’s second tweet about Soros before lamely repeating Yair Rosenberg’s point that ‘Criticizing George Soros is not inherently anti-Semitic’, and ignoring that second tweet. Go back and read what Rosenberg writes carefully, will you?
And then we get to the tired cliché that ‘wokeness’ is the great problem, and the ‘woke’ are always trying to shut down things they don’t like. And, of course, the ready accusation that anyone who disagrees with you must be ‘woke’ in the pejorative sense that the Braverman, Truss, Rees-Mogg, de Santis and other ideologues like to use it. You have got the aggrieved, self-pitying tone down to a tee, haven’t you?
Tim @# 26:
I have a bit of trouble with ‘woke’ as a term of abuse. It must have an interesting recent etymology, I guess largely coming out of the American Black Rights movement.
Whatever the antonym of ‘woke’ is in the minds of the users of it as a term of abuse, I immediately think of people asleep, or sleepwalking, or somnambulant zombies out of some horror movie. They would have to be totally obedient to whoever was in command and control of them; in short, the ideal workforce out of George Orwell’s dystopia as depicted in his ‘1984.’
Consequently, whenever I have been accused of being ‘woke’ in some online discussion, I have thanked my accuser for the compliment, and let them make what they will of that.
For Koestler, (‘The Sleepwalkers’) the term conjured up for him figures from the histories of science and of ideas, and he suggests that discoveries in science “arise through a process akin to sleepwalking. Not that they arise by chance, but rather that scientists are neither fully aware of what guides their research, nor are they fully aware of the implications of what they discover.”
The Wikipedia article on Koestler in regard to this is well worth a read, IMHO. (See link below.)
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleepwalkers_(Koestler_book)
I return to Ophelia’s opening statement for this thread:
Perhaps at this point this most interesting and diverse discussion could benefit from a poetic note:? Here is an offering, all my own work:
A trans rugbyist from Outer Mongolia, / Said “Than thou, I am definitely holier, / Though I might sometimes have blundered / Broken necks by the hundred / Heaven should always be ultimate goal for yer..”
Said a another from Saudi Arabia / “There is nothing I know that can save yer /Although you’re my pal / You just ain’t halal / And that has been what has depraved yer.”
OK, OK. I can find my own way out.
@Tim Harries:
And does so about as accurately as India Willoughby “summing up” Kathleen Stock. This is not an honest way to discuss things. It’s a tactic resorted to by those who can’t do better.
The second Tweet (“He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity”) is not anti-Semitic either.
So what’s it about? Well, it’s about Soros’s campaign to end “mass incarceration” in the US. He does that by funding election campaigns of DAs who will then refuse to prosecute. This leads to a crime spiral, as criminals are not locked up.
This is seen clearly in central San Francisco (where Musk has been spending time, it being where Twitter headquarters are). Shoplifting is rampant, because the police/DAs don’t do anything about it, so all the stores close down, so the centre spirals into crime and decay. (E.g., Walgreens has shut down 22 stores in San Francisco since 2016.)
This de-criminalisation of crime is what Musk sees as Soros “erod[ing] the very fabric of civilization”. You can’t have civilisation without a rule of law.
All this has nothing at all to do with Soros being Jewish. Really, it doesn’t. The Tweet might have been hyperbolic and overblown, and you can argue about the merits and demerits of Soros’s policies, but the Tweet wasn’t anti-Semitic.
Is this the best you can do? You exemplify what is wrong with debate today, you just want to slap labels on anyone you disagree with and sneer.
PS Weren’t you ignoring me?
PPS Ophelia, I would be interested in your answer to the original question. Do you want a Twitter where people can bluntly call Lia Thomas a man and a cheat (however “offensive” that is to some) — or do you want it run by the sort of people who subject Lia Thomas’s team mates to a weekly indoctrination session and threaten them with expulsion if they utter a peep?
PPPS Others are welcome to answer also.
Even the Israeli Foreign Ministry finds Musk’s remarks on Soros unacceptable, as does Ted Deutsch (D-Fl), who is Jewish, but doubtless they can be dismissed as part of a vast ‘woke’ conspiracy, as can CNN & the website Raw Story which reports this exchange on CNN:
‘Tech billionaire Elon Musk is under fire for a rant on Twitter comparing Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros to the comic book supervillain Magneto, with Israel’s foreign ministry even condemning the remark as anti-Semitic.
‘Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, former Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), who is Jewish himself, weighed in on the matter.
“Obviously criticizing George Soros is not inherently anti-Semitic,” said anchor Jake Tapper. “Did you think comparing him to an evil supervillain who is, like George Soros, Jewish and a Holocaust survivor, (and saying) that he ‘hates humanity,’ did that cross a line for you?”
‘”Sure. Of course it did, Jake,” said Deutch. “You know, it’s not unacceptable to criticize George Soros or anyone else, but it is clearly not an accident when you compare him to a cartoon villain who, like George Soros, survived the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz.”
‘”The tweet about this notion that Soros ‘hates humanity,’ is trying to destroy civilization, plays into the classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about — about Jewish wealth and power,” said Deutch. “And we’ve seen anti-semitism surge since Musk took over Twitter. We’ve seen massive cuts to the moderation team at Twitter, and our own survey showed that two thirds of Jews have experienced anti-Semitism, seen anti-Semitism online, 85 percent of those under 30. And people feel physically threatened as a result.”
‘”There are repercussions when you do things like this,” Deutch added. “It’s unacceptable. It’s dangerous, and it plays into these classic conspiracy theories that are inherently anti-Semitic.”‘
***
One notices that about the only people who use the word ‘woke’ nowadays are on the extreme right. Because it is so amorphous and vague in reference, cynical people find it useful as a smear or as a last resort when an argument has been lost.
I might add, lest I be considered overly ‘woke’ (not that I care about the such a charge from people for whom I have no respect), that I thought that it was right that the Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson was criticised strongly and charged with anti-Semitism for a cartoon about Boris Johnson’s relationship with Richard Sharp, the chairman of the BBC, who is Jewish.
And thank you, Omar, for the reminder about Koestler. I read ‘The Sleepwalkers’, oh, hundreds of years ago, and probably still have it on my shelves.
You can quote one Jew who sees Musk’s Tweets as anti-Semitic? OK, well I can quote one who doesn’t, and who supports Musk in seeing Soros’s influence as harmful: See here.
Labelling this as “anti-Semitic” is just the common woke tactic of attempting to shut down honest conversations they don’t like, akin to terms such as “transphobe”, “terf” and “racist”.
But I’m not surprised that the woke don’t want to discuss what happens when woke policies are actually implemented, as in San Francisco regarding drugs, homelessness and crime.
And soon San Francisco will be implementing a policy of giving $5 million (yes, that’s $5 million) to every black resident just to flag up how “anti-racist” they are. Anyone doubting the wisdom or viability of this will, of course, be labelled “white supremacist”.
Tim: @#32: You’re welcome.
Coel @#33: If you so incline, could you tell us what in your view constitute the major dividing lines in America.?
Here in Australia it is between a. traditional conservatives and b. the rest: radicals of one sort or another; which includes Greens, trans etc minorities (~ 2% max) and the traditional Labor Party. (Curiously, despite having an impressive trade union [AFL-CIO] tradition, the US has never produced a political party of the trade unions, and has instead got itself just the Tweedledum-Tweedledee division of Republicans and Democrats.)
Coel @33 — “Labelling this as “anti-Semitic” is just the common woke tactic of attempting to shut down honest conversations they don’t like, akin to terms such as “transphobe”, “terf” and “racist”.” (sic)
Labelling this as “woke” is just the common adolescent tactic of attempting to shut down honest conversations they don’t like, akin to terms such as “transphobe”, “terf,” and “racist.”
Your musings are sophomoric.
Do you have trouble spelling Harris (multiple times), or are you just that petulant. And don’t think I didn’t see your puerile misspellings of my pseudonym either before Ophelia corrected several of them not so long ago. My guess is that you are indeed just that petulant.
@twiliter:
No, it’s not. The difference is that “woke” is a term first chosen by woke people themselves which they used for themselves. It then became used more widely as a useful descriptor. It’s thus more akin to “gender critical” than “transphobe”.
Sure, some people will use the term with distaste, but then some people use terms like “gender critical” or “liberal” with distaste. That’s not the fault of the terms.
The woke don’t want any term for themselves used by non-woke people, since they don’t want non-woke people to speak. They would object to any alternative term to “woke”, so we may as well continue using “woke”.
It was similar with the term “Critical Race Theory”, again a term they chose, but when others tried to criticise CRT they objected to the labelling as a tactic to disable dissent.
Anyhow, me using “woke” is not an attempt to avoid discussing the issues, whereas “transphobe” is clearly an attempt to disallow discussion and labels of “anti-Semitism” are indeed an attempt to disallow criticism of Soros’s policies.
@Omar:
Simplistically, Republicans versus Democrats (obviously!), but, more than that, the problem is that (through a mixture of gerymandering and processes for choosing candidates), the people who get elected are those who appeal to the activist wing of their party, not the electorate at large.
Hence there is an intense tribalism, with an in-group of perhaps 15% of the populace, who talk only to themselves and who yell at the 15% tribe on the opposite wing. The 70% in between get ignored.
So the Republicans go with loony policies regarding (for example) abortion, guns and Trump, while the Democrats go for equally loony policies (e.g. making everything about race while refusing to have honest conversations on the topic, wanting racial-quotas for everything regardless of merit, enforced by racial commissars who shut down questioning).
This tribalism is on display here. Because I haven’t performed the in-group ritual of hating on Musk, it is concluded that I’m a “sychophant”. The realisation that there is a rather large swath of open prairie between being a “hater” and a “sycophant” doesn’t occur to the tribal minded.
I suggest that everybody who has contributed to this thread should read ‘The proto-fascism of Elon Musk:
Libertarianism turns rancid’, which has just appeared on Nick Cohen’s website, ‘Writing from London’. It is intelligent, angry, and fair.
Something from the Guardian about ‘wokeness’, the catch-all, go-to word that allows certain people to indulge their hysteria when their prejudices are challenged:
‘As you’ve probably noticed, the word “woke” has been entirely wrung of any meaning in recent years. BlackRock and Silicon Valley Bank are “woke”, according to the right. Walt Disney is woke. Pope Francis is woke. Even the US military industrial complex is woke.
‘The newest target? Miller Lite. Conservatives are hopping mad after discovering a two-month-old Miller Lite commercial that was released during Women’s History Month…’
‘What exactly is the problem with this ad? Well, it seems that people are taking extreme offense to the fact that the ad humorously points out that there is a long history of misogyny in beer advertising, including Miller’s own legacy of using women in skimpy bikinis to sell lager. Fully-clothed women drinking beer? Woke!’
The beer protest was initially about Dylan Mulvaney’s picture adorning cans of Bud Lite. It expanded later to other instances of beer marketing and advertising.
The Bud Light maker reacted to the protests, and now a QUILTBAG group is suspending the maker’s employer rating over their reaction. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Miller Lite withdrew the commercial after seeing the backlash against Bud Light. So is anyone suspending the Miller Lite maker’s rating over caving to misogynistic protests?
What sensible person, female or male, would drink their insipid stuff anyway – Bud or Miller?