Category Archives: Ideological Preservation

Big Media and Critical Thought

“The devil gave humans critical thinking, which God didn’t want us to have.”

– Unknown

Big media has ruined critical thought both intentionally and unintentionally. The notion that the internet is truly open is misguided in practice. Firstly, one chooses what to see. Subreddits and Youtube channels are subscribed to, Facebook pages are liked, friend requests are approved, and who you follow on Twitter are all selected. You get to choose your own environment. This is obviously not an issue on its own. However, one still only gets views that one approves of. This is highly dangerous as one view is usually stated over and over, even if this view can easily be proven factually incorrect. It also labels enemies quite easily. If someone if your group posts something that is not approved of by that group, it is fiercely attacked, even if it shows factual basis. People are more likely to respond harshly online as opposed to in-person. This creates a dangerous atmosphere where people might be afraid to post due to fear of backlash. It is also extremely easy to unfollow / unfriend someone, making it easy to simply hide different points of view or posts rather than confront them.

This issue goes farther when sites are catered to one’s preferences, or just outright censors. In 2011, Facebook implemented an algorithm to tailor user’s main pages based on the links that they clicked. This means that content that did not “interest you” (i.e. you didn’t click the links) would be filtered out. Not only can one tailor social media themselves, the companies can do it for you. One now only has a guaranteed singular perspective. There have been reports of Twitter and Facebook silently censoring views or posts that they do not agree with. It is of course up to the company to decide what is acceptable or not, but they primarily censor conservative views, or any hashtags or posts critical of feminism. This brings the ability to hide views up to the highest level. Now even if people want to see opposing views, they do not have the ability to do so.

This leaves us with an illusion that the internet is truly a free flowing area of information. The main point to take away from this, are the effects in real life. If one spends all of their time on Facebook, they are glued to the views that they hold. When someone comes and challenges that view in person, the view is held on to. You have seen many posts and articles about it, it must be true! Even when presented with factual evidence, the articles have trained you to disregard it, because what you have seen can not possibly be wrong, everyone has said it! It does not help when these views are also parroted by mainstream media, and sites such as Buzzfeed. Big media also prevents considering other points of view by using the usual buzzwords. A great example is the phenomenon known as “gamedropping”, where in a completely irrelevant article, Gamergate is mentioned for no reason. This also frequently occurs in any mention of MRAs (men’s rights activists), whom the media frequently paints as “misogynistic manbabies”, while associating them with shooter Elliot Rodger (who was never even related to MRAs in the first place. Nor is it right to blame the actions of one on a few, unless we already hate that group). Big media truly controls what we see, whether we like to or not. It is extremely dangerous, and has been the root of the formation of ideologies such as feminism and the #NeverTrump movement.

Argument by Projection

“Not so! not so!” kettle said to the pot;

“Tis your own dirty image you see”;

For I am so clean – without blemish or blot –

That your blackness is mirrored in me.”

– Anonymous

Argument by projection is when someone makes a point, but is actually against it. This is usually done as a cover so that their argument seems more rational, and their opponent’s argument irrational. I would like to refine this term and distance it from existing ones. Firstly, it is less personal than just being hypocritical, normally projecting, or “pot meet kettle” / “do what I say not what I do” / “it’s okay when we do it”. Argument by projection is meant to be used on entire groups or ideologies. Now, it is of course difficult to gauge what qualifies “an entire group” to be guilty of this. One method is to check if the statement is agreed upon by the majority of people inside the ideology. Another would be if top “experts in the field” or other respected figures agree with the conflicting statements. The closest synonym would be “doublethink”, but argument by projection is meant to be used as a way to discredit another group or bolster one’s own claims.

One of the major examples of this appears in 3rd wave feminism, and the free speech vs. hate speech debate. One of the hot arguments right now is “freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences”. This is an argument that is easy to agree with. However, what do top feminists do? They disable comments on their videos and articles (Salon, The Guardian, Anita Sarkeesian etc). They use block lists to pre-block people on Twitter (GGAutoBlocker). When finally it is unavoidable, they call any criticism harassment. It is then obvious to see that they, in fact, wish to have freedom from consequences.

Another recent example is when the anti-Trump crowd says that “Trump is a threat to democracy in this country”. Who is saying or agreeing with this? Extremist leftist groups such as MoveOn and La Raza. These groups wish to intimidate us from voting for Trump. Another group is the GOP members who are hoping for a brokered convention. They wish to take control over the people’s vote and nominate whoever they want. This is directly a large threat to our democracy. In general it is also an issue. These people are basically saying “We know Trump is leading right now and is who you are voting for, but you shouldn’t vote for him because he won’t win anyway. (or some other fallacious reason)” This is not to say convincing someone to vote for someone else is wrong. However, the anti-Trump groups tend to do it fallaciously and maliciously. For example, the new meme of calling Trump a racist or comparing him to Hitler. When asked to explain, one only receives non-arguments. Whether or not a democratic government can take away the popular vote from a candidate for certain reasons is a debate left for another time.

False Offense Offends Me

If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I say,  “I’m still waiting to hear what your point is”

– Christopher Hitchens

The words “that’s offensive” or “that’s a sensitive subject” have no place in academia or universities, and in blunt honesty, the world. Many things that need to be debated are these so called sensitive issues, such as abortion rights or whether Islam encourages violence. If we are not debating sensitive subjects, what are we? And yes, you can use that right to ignore that people tout so frequently. Either ignore or debate with ideas, however. Do not attack the other side with “I’m offended”.

A similar tactic is to say that the person can not debate a subject due to their race or gender. The whole “you don’t know what it’s like to live as a woman!! ” card. Firstly, this is what ideologies like feminism hinge on. If men can’t criticize / analyze females or feminist ideals because they haven’t had experience as a female, then women can not criticize or analyze how men act because they have no idea what it is like to live as a man. But of course, men can criticize how other men act in a female or feminist perspective. Secondly, there are women who disagree with modern feminism. There are blacks who disagree with Black Lives Matter’s tactics or ideology. This aspect should not matter. But that’s ok. You can just tell them they have internalized misogyny or racism. This entire argumentative device depends highly on polylogism, the same reasoning that brought us actual racism.

Even so, these words bring us the idea that no ideology can have holes. That some issues are too big to criticize. What does this bring us? Things like A Feminist Glaciology or (because I hate it so much) postmodernism in general. It brings grandiose, insane, illogical, and ill-argued ideas. But you can’t criticize them! After all, A Feminist Glaciology is a feminist paper! You wouldn’t understand, silly white boy! There are critiques. There are critiques of critiques. There are critiques of critiques of critiques. This is how academia operates.

 

As a side note, two of the articles on the front page of Google when searching for “A Feminist Glaciology” say it was criticized by conservatives and climate change deniers. Yes, they have criticized it. Anyone with a brain can because they have that right. Always label your opponents and their arguments with the most extremist point of view possible. Especially when you haven’t even heard their criticisms yet, silly white male conservative!!