Social Justice Nazis Develop Lifelong Constant-Threshold Brainwash Radio
I recently had Keith Preston on the C-Realm Radio show where he made the point that Milo Yiannopoulis promotes a pretty mainstream Republican agenda. According to Keith, Milo's views are not particularly extreme and don't push the rightward boundary or mainstream political opinion on the contemporary American scene at all. His main distinguishing gimmick is that he is flamboyantly gay and makes a big todo of his sexual exploits. He is also deliberately provocative with the language he uses to provoke feminists in his public appearances. But in terms of his actual political opinions, he is pretty vanilla. And yet I hear (and read), time and again, hysterical leftists assert that Milo is a Nazi and that no tactic is off limits when it comes to stopping Nazis.
I am no Trump supporter, and I do take the danger of his authoritarian brinksmanship seriously, but I maintain that talk of fascism is premature and that talk of Nazism is just plain stupid. In a recent post, I described how I am likely to smile and nod and then change the subject when someone refers to Trump supporters as fascists or Nazis around me, but that, in my mind, I judge them harshly. One reader, who is a regular listener to the C-Realm Podcast, scolded me, writing, "...to think negative thoughts towards people who have these fears... is just wrong. Very wrong."
I responded that his focus on my thinking being wrong is symptomatic of the problem with a considerable fraction of the so-called left in this country. My sin, in his view, is thinking "negative thoughts" about people who use irresponsible, hyperbolic, and alarmist language. I don't assault them or attempt to limit where they go, who they meet with or what they do. I don't even say rude things to them. I make silent, private judgments about them. And that, according to my critic, is just wrong.
I cannot violate someone else's rights with my thoughts. Or, going the other way, nobody has any right to dictate what I think. The legitimate limitations that my government, my culture, and my community can place on me only apply to my actions and, in rare and extreme circumstances, to my speech. To demand that I conform my thoughts to some ideal standard is to endorse totalitarianism. That's the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism. An authoritarian leader won't hesitate to use deadly force should you do or say something to threaten his power, but otherwise, your thoughts remain your own affair. A totalitarian regime is not content with controlling the actions and speech of its subjects. It demands total subservience in action, word AND thought.
I know that I will have to repeat this idea ad nauseum, and, hopefully, I will find a better way to convey it. The language I've used here makes sense to me, but I am under no illusion that what I've written will satisfy my critic or people who think as he does. I could call them Maoists, but I don't know that the example would communicate very clearly. The Cultural Revolution is ancient history to someone born in the 1990s or later. What's worse, calling a keyboard crusader for social justice a Maoist is the same sort of nuance-flattening hyperbole as calling Milo Yiannopoulis a Nazi. I'll have to do better than that, if only for the sake of my self-respect.