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Mr.Carrow

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Posts posted by Mr.Carrow

  1. Posted

    9 minutes ago, Yellow Fever said:

    Good grief. You do go on and keep jumping in feet first. I just put up a couple of very subtle examples of lets call it mild unintended racism so we all know what we were discussing and you go all nuclear again. You don't have to be 'left' or even woke to discuss and accept these subtle forms of racism exist.

    Chill out in BA.

    In that case I encounter "mild unintended racism" pretty much hourly. The point is whether it is really accurate, fair or constructive to project such a loaded "nuclear" term on to well-meaning people who misstep. I've met very few people who have hate and division in their hearts and those who have have generally been in thrall to ideological certainty.

    Billy Bragg sang "I've got Socialism of the heart" and I used to believe that the Left were fundamentally Rousseaian and optimistic about humanity whilst the Right were Hobbesian, negative and dismal. Witnessing the abject misanthropic projections coming from the modern radical Left (plus the disinterest from the rest of the Left in standing up to them), I now have serious doubts.

  2. Posted · Edited by Mr.Carrow

    21 hours ago, Yellow Fever said:

    I share your frustration Badger - I may not wholly agree with your politics or HFs but all I did was to throw up two very subtle yet pernicious forms of 'racism' I witnessed as examples to help elucidate what I thought was being discussed - casual unintended racist preconceptions (admittedly in earlier generations) only be vilified as 'Woke' whatever that means. Still means damn all to me but it seems to be a convenient label to others for their own form of identity politics!

    Who called you Woke? If you want to define racism in terms so broad that it includes people's natural primal biases and caution then you have to take responsibility for the logical repercussions of that. It essentially brands humanity as fundamentally bad (ironically enough a repurposing of original sin) and sets up the situation for quasi-religious movements such as CRT to come along with expensive snake oil promising to cleanse certain groups of their inherent evil. We've already been down that path and we know where it leads.

    As I posted earlier, there is a gentler, kinder, more pragmatic path which is to accept that humanity is flawed and that people's knee jerk reactions can be uncomfortable and problematic, but that education and example can gradually overcome those issues (which all statistics show has been happening in liberal democracies). Branding whole swathes of people racist whilst claiming that the system is fundamentally racist as most on the IdPol Left do is the road to division and chaos.

    Also, just thinking about human reactions to other's immutable characteristics opens up an endless can of worms. Women, across cultures, prefer taller men. Does that make them prejudiced against short guys? By the same token most men wouldn't particularly want to date a woman a foot taller than them, does that make them horribly prejudiced? You could then go on into body type, complexion, hair colour etc.

  3. Posted

    7 hours ago, BigFish said:

    Um yes, that has persuaded me. A student who works for a thinktank foundered by Ian Duncan Smith - no surprises there then

    Rock the Boat was spot on then, how predictable. Are you denying her lived experience then? You know that is racist, right?

  4. Posted · Edited by Mr.Carrow

    Yet another rather inconvenient "opinion". But hey, the out of touch dinosaurs bodger and badger pontificating from their privileged leafy suburbs clearly know more than this informed young lady. 😉

     

  5. Posted

    Just now, horsefly said:

    Why not just say precisely this, and then argue the case against what they are doing. There isn't a necessity to give them any particular label, just point out what is faulty in their arguments. But if you want a label that at least gets close to the specific issue concerned and is the very opposite of a term like "woke", by all means call them "no-platformers". Then, suprise, suprise it becomes possible to have a nuanced and informed debate about whether "no-platforming is ever justified as a restriction on free speech.

    The point is that within a few months you would be complaining that the term "no-platformers" had been hijacked and anybody using it must be right wing and demanding it not be used. 

    Also, the term Woke as used by liberals to define a rogue part of their own movement is far more specific than a vague term such as "male privilege" which has as much evidence against it as for it as a valid term (men being most of the suicides, homeless, addicted, incarcerated, injury and death at work, educational failures, war deaths, PTSD, drugged as children etc etc). None of the terms I listed have been proven to be accurate enough to be acceptable ways of framing the world.

  6. Posted

    1 minute ago, horsefly said:

    Absolutely! which is why use of the term "woke" has now become so contaminated by pejorative uses that it has lost any usefulness it might once have had  in serious debate. Indeed I think this thread proves just how useless it is.

    Most of the links I've provided are by liberals trying to define a part of their own movement that has gone rogue. In order to define something you have to use words. You are then faced with the problem of whether you laboriously list every single nuance of the problem you are trying to highlight every time you refer to it, or whether you come up with a succinct term which broadly covers those ideas. That term unfortunately often becomes a blunt weapon and can be warped and misused for ideological reasons. I accept that this has happened with "Woke" but the truth is had another term been used (critical theory left, say) the same thing would have occurred and you would have been demanding that people don't use it.

    What term would you prefer for the part of the Left which is curtailing free speech and no platforming people as you state?

  8. Posted · Edited by Mr.Carrow

    26 minutes ago, horsefly said:

    Perhaps you should try explaining what you mean by "Woke" as you have never done so. I did provide a definition of woke a long time ago which is the non-pejorative dictionary defintion of someone who is aware of social injustice (It's the one the nice psychologist you mention begins his article with). Clearly you do not accept that definition because you constantly use it in a pejorative sense echoing exactly the views of the Daily Mail, Express, and Telegraph. I also pointed out that what you subsume under the totalising phrase "Left wokism" includes a very diverse range of things in a very thinly disguised attempt to lump every possible complaint about social injustice under one global  straw man theory. What Obama says, what the NYT says, what Stephen Fry says, resembles nothing like your account of "left wokism". They possess the subtlety of thought to point out the very obvious fact that it is possible to hold that social injustices exist while at the same time rejecting attempts to restrict freedom of speech (as happens in some cases of no-platforming for example). It really isn't very difficult to get your mind around this possibilty once you attend to the specific cases and arguments and give up on attempting to describe every complaint against social injustice as "woke leftism". 

    I have listed the ideas that are covered by the term Woke and repeated it when you accused me of not doing so. I think Sullivan's article above covers it well. I have also accepted that the term is blunt and clumsy but is generally used to avoid having to list the ideas I mention (for convenience).

    But I think that there is room for compromise here. I will accept your objections to the term and stop using it, if you accept that terms such as institutionalised racism, systemic racism, white privilege, male privilege, rape culture etc are the same kind of overly simplistic, propagandistic terms largely used to push an ideological agenda.

  12. Posted

    3 minutes ago, horsefly said:

    Yet another straw-man pile of garbage that no one on here supports. You may be impressed by this verbiage, no-one else on here is. So why not drop spouting this pseudo intellectual trash, which itself constitutes the very thing it claims to reject (it attempts to subsume a diverse range of claims under one overarching totalising theory you like to call "woke leftism"), and simply deal with the specific claims actually being made. Sadly that is just too much for you to handle, so no doubt you will be calling everyone and everything you don't agree with "woke" again and accusing us all of describing your girlfriend as a "vile racist ****". 

    What do you think Obama and the NYT mean when they use the term "Woke", and what do they mean by it?

  14. Posted

    Just now, Badger said:

    It is an opinion - not particularly well-supported with evidence: interesting but not the Holy Grail I'm afraid.

    So you will be able to provide a step by step analysis of his points then?

  17. Posted

    Just now, Badger said:

    I'm sorry I ignored your links to the Ministry of Truth 🤣 Accepting propaganda, does not make you informed, I'm afraid, now matter how many times you cite it.

    So do you think Andrew Sullivan is making things up in the article above (you seem to be a bit of an expert on that subject).?

  18. Posted

    "Afterall, the core truth of our condition, this theory argues, is that we live in a system of interlocking oppressions that penalize various identity groups in a society. And all power is zero-sum: you either have power over others or they have power over you. To the extent that men exercise power, for example, women don’t; in so far as straight people wield power, gays don’t; and so on. There is no mutually beneficial, non-zero-sum advancement in this worldview. All power is gained only through some other group’s loss. And so the point became not simply to interpret the world, but to change it, to coin a phrase, an imperative which explains why some critics call this theory a form of neo-Marxism."

    If people cannot see the totalitarian nature of this movement have simply stopped thinking. 

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    1 hour ago, Yellow Fever said:

    Well I have sadly come to the conclusion that only the simple use the made-up term 'woke' to label all and everybody that may think things are a tad more complicated and nuanced than a simple knee jerk reaction. But then that was the point of the word wasn't it - to create a tribal label for the unthinking & unquestioning to use as a shorthand for all they disagree with. As Orwell's 1984 was noted earlier I would add that 'Woke' wouldn't be out of place with Newspeak 'Bellyfeel' or 'Duckspeak' for our true believers. 

    What I do notice is that it's those largely with grudge or chip on their shoulder that use it yet are completely incapable of a moment of introspection. The trouble is few of us fit neatly into any of these boxes like 'woke' or 'lefty' for the simpletons to label. We are all more complicated than that being 'right' on some issues and 'left' on others.

    So why, in your opinion, would a very well respected gay liberal journalist write this? Funnily enough, it's been completely ignored on this thread. It's almost as if people are stuck in their comfortable bubbles and don't want to engage in new information.....https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-roots-of-wokeness

  20. Posted

    4 hours ago, Badger said:

    I'm glad that you acknowledge institutional racism. My recollection was that you not - but perhaps I misremembered.

    Given that you constantly attribute things to me that I haven't written, it seems you misremember quite a lot. There is a big difference between saying there are racists within institutions and that institutions are fundamentally racist or "the system is racist" as you put it. There are also very good reasons why ideological groups would want to frame the world in this way and there are many people explaining the workings behind it, a few of which I've shared on different threads. You've ignored all of them. You are not informed.

  21. Posted · Edited by Mr.Carrow

    8 hours ago, Yellow Fever said:

    Thanks for the defense HF - I actually didn't think these simple observations here where that contentious or threatening to some.

    As to Carrow's leap into the abyss - frankly don't know what he's on about but it looks dark down there.

    However, amused me slightly as a serious girlfriend I had long ago was German (Black Forest area), her father injured and limped (bullet in leg) from WW2. He'd been 'conscripted' into' Hitler Youth (and no he really didn't have a serious choice!). 

    When your girlfriend only exists because when the ideologically possessed mob came for her father, he only survived because he tried to shoot himself in the heart by pulling the trigger of a rifle with his toe and missed. He was rushed to hospital and the doctors pulled him through and hid his identity. His crime? Being a very accomplished and popular teacher in Cambodia during Pol Pot's reign of evil. To the day he died he was receiving thank you letters from ex-students doing very well for themselves all around the world. I know ideological possession when I see it, and I very definitely see it on the Woke Left. If you don't see it I would think you probably only engage in media which refuses to cover it. So yes, when you see sheltered, know nothing know alls angling for history to repeat itself you could say that is coming from a dark place.

    I'm currently living in a hostel in Buenos Aires full of immigrant workers from around South America. Many have lost their income due to the pandemic but everybody tries to help each other and there is a jovial, egalitarian if very earthy and very politically incorrect atmosphere. According to your definition they are all racists but have far more respect for these honest people than some of the contributors to this thread.

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    8 minutes ago, Badger said:

    Good - and do you also accept that it exists in our society and institutions?

    I do and have written as such. I just don't accept the totalising framing and language employed by the Woke left nor do I like and trust the movement and philosophy behind it (applied post modern critical theory). Given that I've posted loads of links,none of which you've engaged with, I think it's clear you simply don't want to actually understand what I'm getting at and would rather constantly throw out falsehoods.

  23. Posted · Edited by Mr.Carrow

    8 minutes ago, horsefly said:

    Yet again you sound off like a Daily Express journalist shouting out ad hominem accusations, generalised slurs, and refusing to address any of the specific issues raised. Every time you shout out "Woke" to anyone who has the audacity to mention anything to do with institutionalised racism, or says anything you happen to disagree with, makes the right-wing establishment in this country glow with pride. 

    So I ask again, please explain how your pathetic right-wing rant constitutes even remotely a possible interpretation of what YF said. I'll even copy both quotes here to make things easy for you

    Yellow Fever's post:

    Your response

    Truly ridiculous, but that's no surprise.

    By YF's own definition my girlfriend,her family and many of the people I have met traveling are racists. I have a more kind, charitable outlook in that I think their bias is natural (if unfortunate) and based on tribal reactions and ignorance.  You then have a choice as to whether to vilify and condemn (as Woke does to the "deplorable" working classes) or to gently educate and show there is a better way. I choose positive; I choose the latter. 

  24. Posted · Edited by Mr.Carrow

    28 minutes ago, Badger said:

    Neatly side-stepped the fact that you have directly contradicted yourself in successive posts. I directly quoted you, but rather than deal with it, you resort to personal abuse.

    I think that I am more saddened than annoyed😩 It is only an internet chatroom, you don't have to turn everything into an argument that you have to win  you know - it is meant to be an exchange of ideas....

    I have argued in good faith throughout and I genuinely have no idea what point you are trying to make (and I don't think you do). If you want I can do what I had to do on other threads and provide direct quotes from my posts proving that you were lying. I have said time and again that racism still (pretty f*ckng obviously) exists. We have been disagreeing about the extent and the language used to describe it, and what the motivations are behind such language. 

    Also a good faith "exchange of ideas" doesn't generally include accusing people of believing and posting stuff when they have actually posted the opposite and then gaslighting them when they point it out. So, provide a quote in which I denied that racism exists in individuals (I can provide plenty of quotes from me stating the opposite) or apologise and I will chalk it down as a mistake. Don't worry, I won't try and cancel you for it....

  25. Posted

    Just now, keelansgrandad said:

    But the ones you mention are hardly Marxists. The three greatest mass murderers in history.

    Its not that its never been tried properly, its that its never been tried.

    I think the best argument to this is that what is required to implement these policies when coming up against human nature leads to the horrific outcomes of those regimes. The evidence seems to suggest this. The question is do we want to try it all again to find out?

    • Like 1
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