How dare an autistic child think she might have her own agency?
Amanda Vanstone¹ and Brendan O'Neill² talk about Greta Thunberg
Oh dear sweet baby Jesus on a topheavy quadbike in a thunderstorm, I don't think I've heard such a load of tendentious, arrogant circle-jerking and question-beggary in my life.
"And we're querying the degree to which Greta Thunberg is being used by other people. It's a serious question."
No it's not, you supercilious twerp. It's not a question at all. It's been a taken as an axiom that she is from the very concept of the conversation, and everything you two have been furiously agreeing with each other about³ is based around that assumption. "Given that Greta Thunberg is being used by other people, and given that it's a bad thing to use Greta Thunberg, is it a bad thing that Greta Thunberg is being used by other people? Discuss."
Then there's a load of "isn't it unfair when the other side keeps using the 'won't someone please think of the children' argument and I look like a monster when I use my usual rhetorical technique of withering, bullying sophistry on them, and that's taking advantage of children, won't anyone please think of the children." Because it can't possibly be that people have opinions and the right to express them before the age of eighteen, it must be because the Evil Social Marxist Conspiracy in teh ABC is putting them up to it in order to make you look bad.
Oh, and pleading for "won't someone please think of the welfare of Greta, who is delicate and fragile and autistic and has mental health issues and let's just go ahead and imply that young people aren't able to have agency, autistic people aren't able to have agency, therefore Greta must be someone's hand puppet, why are you being so mean to Greta."
Brendan O'Neill said that. Brendan. O'Neill. Said that. The Brendan O'Neill who called her a "millenarian weirdo". The Brendan O'Neill who complains about her "monotone voice"⁵ and "dead eyes".
Oh, won't someone think of the children, indeed.
Is this egregious nonsense the best that the Right has to offer as intellectual justification for itself? This ad hominem, petitio principii, ignoratio elenchi,⁶ incompetent sophistry. Because as an English Essay in year 10, this would get a "1/10, see me" in red pen, and an urgent referral to the school counsellor.
And the next Right Wing intellectual gatekeeper who says one word about "Virtue Signalling" on the Left is going to get a lot of tightly focussed anger and no mercy in the slightest, because I have utterly lost my ability to pretend being able to even with that lazy, ignorant, vacuous, hollow, hypocritical sneer.
And also note very carefully where I said "the Right". I do not mean "conservatives", because I know conservatives who are deeply thoughtful and insightful in debate, even where I disagree with them. (You know who you are.) These people are not "conservatives": they are Right Wing Culture Warriors of the first order, each and every one of them worse than any of the examples on the Left they like to point at accusingly. They are hypocrites and sophists, and if I were to say that they aren't even self aware enough to understand the depth of how fractally wrong they are, that's the charitable option, because the alternative is that they do know, and knowingly and deliberately spout this not-even-wrong poison on purpose.⁷
But what really got me furious at this was that in every word, and behind every assumption, they are taking even the possibility of agency away from Greta Thunberg, on the assumption that it is impossible for an autist, let alone a young one, to have any. And that ableist bullshit is something which cannot be allowed to stand.
(And in answer to the strawman Vanstone and O'Neill preemptively raised in answer to this point, no, it's not that you're not allowed to say that an autist is wrong, it's that you two are trying to claim that she's not even capable of putting forward an opinion: you aren't arguing against her argument, you are attempting to nullify her argument: you are trying to make her argument not have to be answered, purely because she is autistic. That is the definition of ableism, and that is the definition of ad hominem, and that's the high point of your exercise in intellectual masturbation.)
[1] Former Federal Liberal minister for keeping foreigners out, and not the worst Liberal Immigration Minister in living memory but only because all her successors seem to have held a "yeah? Well hold my beer and watch this" attitude to the job, leading to the current incumbent, Dutton.
[2] A sort of Renaissance Horrible Excuse for a Human Being, making him overqualified for the Center for Independent Studies.
[3] including, but not restricted to why adults are right about everything, why people under 18 years old are entitled to their opinions but shouldn't ever actually have the right to express them, why children having agency will lead to them being "entitled"⁴, that and why it's a bad thing that you're not allowed to give kids these days a "clip across the ear".
[4] presumably: entitled to having agency, which is a bad thing if they should disagree with people like Vanstone and O'Neill, but a good thing if they are a member of the Young Liberals.
[5] I dunno, as an autistic 16 year old making speeches to large groups and international gatherings in her second language, I don't think she's doing too badly myself, but then I'm also autistic and presumably don't have the right to an opinion either.
[6] and just, I don't know, look up a list of logical and informal fallacies and check off the ones which aren't present in that discussion.
[7] Which is to say, I have in mind a list of people who I very much suspect to be exactly that sort of populist authoritarian⁸
[8] Some people say that "populist authoritarian" is a good start for a definition of "fascist". (When followed by such details as public subsidy and support of citizens in good standing; no support for and arbitrarily punitive measures of severe strictness against unpersons non-citizens or citizens not of good standing; a restrictive and shrinking definition of who counts as a person citizen of good standing; expanding militarism and militaristic fetishism; and the manipulation of elections to ensure a predetermined result, up to and including bribery and threats of violence. So at least we're safe on that last count. Guess there's nothing to worry about, then.) I couldn't possibly comment. That name you're thinking right now, I didn't say it.
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Oh dear sweet baby Jesus on a topheavy quadbike in a thunderstorm, I don't think I've heard such a load of tendentious, arrogant circle-jerking and question-beggary in my life.
"And we're querying the degree to which Greta Thunberg is being used by other people. It's a serious question."
No it's not, you supercilious twerp. It's not a question at all. It's been a taken as an axiom that she is from the very concept of the conversation, and everything you two have been furiously agreeing with each other about³ is based around that assumption. "Given that Greta Thunberg is being used by other people, and given that it's a bad thing to use Greta Thunberg, is it a bad thing that Greta Thunberg is being used by other people? Discuss."
Then there's a load of "isn't it unfair when the other side keeps using the 'won't someone please think of the children' argument and I look like a monster when I use my usual rhetorical technique of withering, bullying sophistry on them, and that's taking advantage of children, won't anyone please think of the children." Because it can't possibly be that people have opinions and the right to express them before the age of eighteen, it must be because the Evil Social Marxist Conspiracy in teh ABC is putting them up to it in order to make you look bad.
Oh, and pleading for "won't someone please think of the welfare of Greta, who is delicate and fragile and autistic and has mental health issues and let's just go ahead and imply that young people aren't able to have agency, autistic people aren't able to have agency, therefore Greta must be someone's hand puppet, why are you being so mean to Greta."
Brendan O'Neill said that. Brendan. O'Neill. Said that. The Brendan O'Neill who called her a "millenarian weirdo". The Brendan O'Neill who complains about her "monotone voice"⁵ and "dead eyes".
Oh, won't someone think of the children, indeed.
Is this egregious nonsense the best that the Right has to offer as intellectual justification for itself? This ad hominem, petitio principii, ignoratio elenchi,⁶ incompetent sophistry. Because as an English Essay in year 10, this would get a "1/10, see me" in red pen, and an urgent referral to the school counsellor.
And the next Right Wing intellectual gatekeeper who says one word about "Virtue Signalling" on the Left is going to get a lot of tightly focussed anger and no mercy in the slightest, because I have utterly lost my ability to pretend being able to even with that lazy, ignorant, vacuous, hollow, hypocritical sneer.
And also note very carefully where I said "the Right". I do not mean "conservatives", because I know conservatives who are deeply thoughtful and insightful in debate, even where I disagree with them. (You know who you are.) These people are not "conservatives": they are Right Wing Culture Warriors of the first order, each and every one of them worse than any of the examples on the Left they like to point at accusingly. They are hypocrites and sophists, and if I were to say that they aren't even self aware enough to understand the depth of how fractally wrong they are, that's the charitable option, because the alternative is that they do know, and knowingly and deliberately spout this not-even-wrong poison on purpose.⁷
But what really got me furious at this was that in every word, and behind every assumption, they are taking even the possibility of agency away from Greta Thunberg, on the assumption that it is impossible for an autist, let alone a young one, to have any. And that ableist bullshit is something which cannot be allowed to stand.
(And in answer to the strawman Vanstone and O'Neill preemptively raised in answer to this point, no, it's not that you're not allowed to say that an autist is wrong, it's that you two are trying to claim that she's not even capable of putting forward an opinion: you aren't arguing against her argument, you are attempting to nullify her argument: you are trying to make her argument not have to be answered, purely because she is autistic. That is the definition of ableism, and that is the definition of ad hominem, and that's the high point of your exercise in intellectual masturbation.)
[1] Former Federal Liberal minister for keeping foreigners out, and not the worst Liberal Immigration Minister in living memory but only because all her successors seem to have held a "yeah? Well hold my beer and watch this" attitude to the job, leading to the current incumbent, Dutton.
[2] A sort of Renaissance Horrible Excuse for a Human Being, making him overqualified for the Center for Independent Studies.
[3] including, but not restricted to why adults are right about everything, why people under 18 years old are entitled to their opinions but shouldn't ever actually have the right to express them, why children having agency will lead to them being "entitled"⁴, that and why it's a bad thing that you're not allowed to give kids these days a "clip across the ear".
[4] presumably: entitled to having agency, which is a bad thing if they should disagree with people like Vanstone and O'Neill, but a good thing if they are a member of the Young Liberals.
[5] I dunno, as an autistic 16 year old making speeches to large groups and international gatherings in her second language, I don't think she's doing too badly myself, but then I'm also autistic and presumably don't have the right to an opinion either.
[6] and just, I don't know, look up a list of logical and informal fallacies and check off the ones which aren't present in that discussion.
[7] Which is to say, I have in mind a list of people who I very much suspect to be exactly that sort of populist authoritarian⁸
[8] Some people say that "populist authoritarian" is a good start for a definition of "fascist". (When followed by such details as public subsidy and support of citizens in good standing; no support for and arbitrarily punitive measures of severe strictness against unpersons non-citizens or citizens not of good standing; a restrictive and shrinking definition of who counts as a person citizen of good standing; expanding militarism and militaristic fetishism; and the manipulation of elections to ensure a predetermined result, up to and including bribery and threats of violence. So at least we're safe on that last count. Guess there's nothing to worry about, then.) I couldn't possibly comment. That name you're thinking right now, I didn't say it.
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