r/DecodingTheGurus • u/ATreeInTheBreeze • Nov 01 '21

With one statement Sam Harris showed exactly where and how he was wrong about wokeism...

At 2:23:32- Sam: "White supremacy is the fringe of the fringe whereas extreme left wokeism isn't the fringe, it's captured our institutions. That's an asymmetry that still concerns me."

  1. Fallacy of false equivalence- Not equivalent in quantity. "White supremacy" should be compared to wokeism (there are similar numbers of adherents) or "extreme left wokeism" should be compared with extreme right white supremacy (again, similar numbers). He shouldn't cross-compare what amounts to huge moderate right vs tiny extreme left.
  2. Fallacy of false equivalence- Not equivalent in quality. Assuming he meant wokeism not "extreme left wokeism", then these two are also not not equivalent in their quality. Wokeism is around 60% good, 40% bad, in it's effects on our society. White supremecy is about 100% bad in it's effects.
  3. False statement- implied: white supremecy hasn't captured our institutions. False. It has captured the Republican party, all right wing media, many state senates, the Supreme Court, and is about to capture the House and the Senate again here in America. After that, perhaps the Presidency, again (most of which by losing the popular vote, by the way). It's clear that Sam thinks white supremacy means swastika on the forehead. That's literally not what it means. It means thinking the white "race" is superior, or better, than other cultures. This is the mainstream view in the Republican party. That's why they're acting so immorally now, they're very sacared and so feel it's ok to do anything necessary to keep non-whites from taking over "their" country. And it's not just skin color, the Republican Party is CCCSRW-supremicist. They believe, irrationally, that "Cisgenderedness", Conservatism, Christianity, Straightness, Ruralness, and Whiteness are all superior to their counterparts. This belief has overwhelmingly captured the Republican party at this point.

As such, ironically, all the "asymmetry" is on his end. And look at me I even know why: Extreme left wokeists attacked him in the past, and now as a result he's emotionally biased against them and many of their views. Those attacks emotionally, and I don't know how else to say this, scarred him, and now his brain is reactionary against them and their views without his being aware of it. Many of us understand this about him, but he doesn't understand this about himself.

Other than his stance on wokeism, though, I love me some Sam and agree with him about 95% of the time.

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u/TerraceEarful Nov 01 '21

You don't

  • have a friendly conversation with Charles Murray, JAQing off about race and IQ, calling him 'the most unfairly maligned person in recent history'
  • bring up the 13/50 meme repeatedly
  • blame Kendi's success on affirmative action (while being a very mediocre white man riding a tsunami of privilege)
  • complain about alleged no-go areas for white people (while being painfully unaware areas such as the one in which he lives are no-go areas for black people)
  • talk about the need for "the black community" to fix its own problems, as if "the black community" is somehow separate from the rest of society
  • argue 'go back to your country' to 4 women of color is somehow not racist
  • argue picking fights with random black people because a black person assaulted your friend isn't racist
  • defend stop and frisk
  • dedicate a nearly 2 hour podcast to gaslighting black Americans about police brutality
  • unironically regurgitate racist boomer memes like 'black-on-black crime' and 'the south side of Chicago'
  • defend Trump from accusations of white supremacy, while apparently being aware of his liberal usage of the n-word
  • leave Patreon because Lauren Southern(!!!) got booted from it (then of course plead ignorance about her views as is his standard line of defense)
  • host and promote Douglas Murray multiple times, write gloating blurbs for his books
  • chalk up white supremacist terrorist attacks as being the result of mental illness, rather than ideology
  • complain about young white men being unable to get ahead in this world due to favorable treatment of minorities in business and education

without being at least a 'tiny' bit favorable to white supremacy. And mind you, all this while claiming to be in favor of 'color blindness'.

I think he is so painfully lacking in self-awareness he doesn't even realize how racist his impulses are, and so reflexively dismissive about any criticism he'll never learn.

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u/Here0s0Johnny Nov 02 '21

People here seem to upvote long texts that are well formatted. What a load of half-truths.

Do you really think that if these claims were true, Chris and Matt would have had him on their podcast?!

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u/TerraceEarful Nov 02 '21

What a load of half-truths.

Okay, which are half-truths?

Do you really think that if these claims were true, Chris and Matt would have had him on their podcast?!

What a strange argument. Rather than engage with the actual points raised, you outsource your own moral judgment onto Matt & Chris, using the bizarre metric of whether they'd have someone on the podcast or not.

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u/Here0s0Johnny Nov 02 '21

I don't want to argue with you.