Comment by coffeemaniac
6 years ago
The modern left is constantly diving into the statistics of these topics, and if you think they're not it probably signals more that you're just not a part of that discussion. If you've let your conclusions be influenced by SSC and other reactionary blogs I'd urge you to check out some leftist spaces and ask around.
There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.
SSC is not a "reactionary blog" by any stretch of the imagination. The author is well known for their comprehensive debunking of politically reactionary views.
And the author is ethnically Jewish, atheist/agnostic, and polyamourous, so he definitely doesn't fit into the usual stereotypes of reactionaries if he is one
Don't forget asexual
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I agree that he does not fit the common stereotypes of reactionaries. But that's really beside my point, I'm referring to his ideas and writing, not his ethnic or religious groups etc.
Oh yes it is. His blogroll is absolutely full of neoreactionaries, and the comments sections are a cesspit of racism and sexism (echoing many of his own views in more crude terms), even before you account for many articles he's written where he takes their argumentative points at face value.
We're talking about a guy who once put up cartoons of people making fun of nerds/gamers next to Nazi propaganda to show how they were the same. If that's where you're getting your "arguments" on workplace sexism and police violence, you're probably a reactionary.
This is really not accurate. There are many topics where appealing to evidence or statistics is Not Allowed in leftist discourse. There are certain realities that are defined as not possible, politically, and permitted discourse flows from that.
The far right is even worse about this, appealing to braindead conspiracy theories, bald religion, fascism.
But the left is _really bad_ as well. Not “conspiracy theory gun nut” bad, but nowhere near “well balanced intellectual curiosity.”
That you would contrast "gun nuts" with modern leftists already tells me you probably don't have a meaningful relationship with many of us -- we love guns. There's really too much diversity of thought on the left to consistently characterize it in this way, and there's very rarely an issue where there even is a definitive "leftist" take.
While this isn't the case for far-right arguments, I also wouldn't characterize far-right as "braindead." They're usually arguments crafted very specifically to appeal to a subset of people who already aren't experiencing much distress at our nation's political trajectory. This is why these arguments consistently appeal to HN readers.