Cursing dissent2
From an email correspondent responding to my previous post on cursing dissent:
The treatment of right wing dissent by the Left is curious. They instinctively want to silence it because they see it as evil rather than merely different. Yet the existence of a few (fewer the better) right wing dissenters serves as a convenient alibi for the Left, or cover, to give the impression that they appreciate democratic debate and the existence of an 'opposition'. In fact, the debate they prefer to tolerate is the kind that would exist between approved groups, such as a feminist arguing with a multiculturalist over the toleration of the Islamic treatment of women. In other respects, they use the existence of right wingers by elevating them to the status of bogey men to enable them to whip their rituals of political hatred, characterised by Orwell as the 'two minutes of hate'. They love this activity because it makes them feel righteous and it serves as a warning to the proles to keep in line.
The attitude to dissent is by no means restricted to the Oz Left. In the words of US gay activist Richard Rosendall: Many leftists have slammed me for having contributed articles to FrontPageMag.com, which is conservative but not anti-gay; they treat the fact of my having been published by David Horowitz as dispositive evidence of my wickedness all by itself, without bothering to refute (or probably even read) the lengthy and footnoted articles that I wrote for FPM. To which I reply, insults are not arguments.
But they are part of attitudes-as-status-markers.
The treatment of right wing dissent by the Left is curious. They instinctively want to silence it because they see it as evil rather than merely different. Yet the existence of a few (fewer the better) right wing dissenters serves as a convenient alibi for the Left, or cover, to give the impression that they appreciate democratic debate and the existence of an 'opposition'. In fact, the debate they prefer to tolerate is the kind that would exist between approved groups, such as a feminist arguing with a multiculturalist over the toleration of the Islamic treatment of women. In other respects, they use the existence of right wingers by elevating them to the status of bogey men to enable them to whip their rituals of political hatred, characterised by Orwell as the 'two minutes of hate'. They love this activity because it makes them feel righteous and it serves as a warning to the proles to keep in line.
The attitude to dissent is by no means restricted to the Oz Left. In the words of US gay activist Richard Rosendall: Many leftists have slammed me for having contributed articles to FrontPageMag.com, which is conservative but not anti-gay; they treat the fact of my having been published by David Horowitz as dispositive evidence of my wickedness all by itself, without bothering to refute (or probably even read) the lengthy and footnoted articles that I wrote for FPM. To which I reply, insults are not arguments.
But they are part of attitudes-as-status-markers.