Conspiracy theories and tolerance

[elfs]

Ed Brayton an article today about an incredibly lunatic rant posted at the far-religious-right website Americans for Truth (no link: you want it, look it up yourself, using AltaVista if you have to) in which Peter LaBarbera rants that "gays" are undermining society by coming out of the closet to their friends and family and denying those people the right to demonize homosexuals. No, really, that's his argument: when a gay man comes out and puts a human face on homosexuality he makes it so hard for other people who already like him to suddenly hate him, and that's just so unfair of him to use such a dirty trick.

But one of the things is the comments field caught my attention. Commentor NonyNony wrote:

Right-wing conspiracy theories are about fear of the "other" - some group who is NOT LIKE ME is trying to infiltrate my world and make it different.

The odd thing is, I don't consider myself a right-wing conspiracy theorist, but I completely and totally accept the fact that the world is full of "others" who are not like me and who are trying to infiltrate my world and make it different. After all, that's what I've been trying to do with my blog and my stories and my life: inflitrate the worlds of others and make them different. There's a reason the Journal Entries has had the tagline, Any resemblance to the actual future would be cool.

One aspect of these conspiracy theories that I have never bought into is the naturalization of the "other": the victim of the conspiracy is subject to influence and change, but the conspirators never are. They "are what they are," never subject to change. Even when they are open about their nature, their nature is internal, inherent, and unchangeable. The only way to win is to isolate, to partition, and ultimately to crush the other.

One of the things that bothers me most about "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" has adopted similar rhetoric. We used to be a "melting pot," and then we became a "salad bowl." (Steven Colbert then rightly pointed out that we're headed to becoming "lunchables": "heremetically sealed groups of like-minded citizens."). Speech codes and "speech zones" effectively wall us off from the give-and-take of debate. Alarmingly, even religious has learned to make use of this tool: Prof. Mark Taylor claims in his NY Times Op-Ed that he was ordered to "apologize" to a Christian student who felt threatened by the professor's recommendation that he read Nietzche. The kid reserved to right to keep his "natural" inclinations pure. "Tolerating" others is a disquieting disengament, a refusal to engage in the healthy give-and-take of debate, of a willingness to not look underneath the veneer and examine the foundations. Both "conspiracy theorists" and the "tolerant" engage in the same game, but for different reasons: one is looking for a fight in the wrong place, the other is simply putting off the fight for another day.

Comments

[woggie.livejournal.com]

I can't get at the article, so I don't know for certain, but it seems to me either the student met the Prof in a educational setting, in which case the student was presumably there to learn (in which case, since he's not learning the student better pack his bags and go home) or in a public setting (in which case he's free to ignore the demand).

Why was an apology so necessary?

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[fallenpegasus]

That's true.

But, as Elf pointed out, it wasnt the current crop of Christians who came up with this tactic, they are just taking the tactic commonly employed by folks on the other side, and using it as well.

When a right-ish speaker, invited to come speak at a university by a group of studends, can be shouted down and his talk overrun with an organized mob of people who oppose him speaking, and then have that mob self-rightiously call their actions a "victory of free speech"...

Well, when that stops happening, I will have more support for your statement "his only recourse is to drop the course".

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[elfs.livejournal.com]

You'll be happy to know that, at least in the case of the Gilchrist incident at Columbia University, the university did the right thing (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/president/communications%20files/updatesoncampusseechissues.htm). The Student Council condemned the taking of the stage, the school has affirmed the right of every student group from every political viewpoint to peaceably assemble, and disciplinary action (unfortunately, they claim federal law prohibits them from outlining the action) has been taken against the students who took the stage and drove the speaker off.

[woggie.livejournal.com]

Point and game.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

It wasn't that it was contagious, it was that, since it was clear that they were less than fully human, allowing them to mingle with real people polluted us, so we had to keep them separate to keep ourselves pure.

(Who is 'they'? Pick whatever demonized minority you like. Jews, Blacks, Chinese, Mexicans, homosexuals, Muslims... Look at the racially-driven frenzy Hearst whipped up in his campaign to preserve his pulp-timber profits, for example.)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[woggie.livejournal.com]

The other thing people in the 50s were afraid of was several different imagined things, or things that were associated with the black community.

For instance, blacks were seen as more aggressive than whites, so it was assumed that being a white woman near a black man was just asking to be raped if he saw any skin at all. This is not unlike the attitudes of the Islamic Fundies today with regard to any women anywhere. Really, it amounts to a complete lack of self-control, much the way some people view getting drunk, or fears about someone else losing their self-control. It was just assumed that blacks didn't have very much self-control to begin with.

Another aspect was blacks were associated with disease, which was contagious. Of course, people didn't really stop to consider that the reson so many blacks had problems with diseases was because they got substandard health care...

[acelightning.livejournal.com]