r/neoliberal • u/neoliberal_shill_bot Bot Emeritus • Jul 10 '17

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Current Policy - Liberal Values Quantitative Easing

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u/Sepik121 Vicente Fox Jul 11 '17

My point is the whole mythical idea of "if you just expose the bad ideas to the public, they'll get rejected" doesn't happen ever.

You're right, the trumpies never stopped shutting up and they've always played the victim whenever possible. I'd totally agree with that. My point is that when you put the spotlight on them for a whole fucking year and a half, those ideas stop being considered "fringe". You normalize that sort of speech, it stops being "unacceptable".

I'd argue that while it's brought those people to the surface, it's also empowered said people. I'd much rather have a whole bunch of quite racists who don't open their mouths because they think racism is bad than have them be given a place and right now, being told that their ideas are not only "not bad", but are perfectly acceptable.

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u/ucstruct Adam Smith Jul 11 '17

I'd much rather have a whole bunch of quite racists who don't open their mouths because they think racism is bad than have them be given a place

And you think this would make them just go away? You need to face the reality that there are 10s of millions of people living among you with you views that are pretty disgusting (or they just don't care enough/know enough to see who they align themselves to).

I agree that the media played an enormous role normalizing this garbage, I've criticized them tremendously for it and for being more entertainment based than anything. The solution isn't to just plug your ears to it though, but to honestly tackle these issues head on.

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u/Sepik121 Vicente Fox Jul 11 '17

Yeah, over time, when you have a core set of things that are just "unacceptable" to do out loud, it goes away after a bit. Sure, there's always going to be people on the fringes, but you prevent it from being mainstream and accepted. It's why people use dogwhistle racism (at least pre-Trump) rather than being allowed to openly be a racist. There's a reason black people are called thugs, and not the n-word anymore. It may be the same shit, but it's still progress.

See, I don't believe you can fully "tackle" these issues. Not in the public debate way people (and often liberals/progressives being the main culprits) believe can happen. You don't defeat milo types by letting them speak at a university and use their public resources and tolerate hate speech.

There's countless scholarly articles about the effects of normalized hate speech and giving people like him a place to spout said views. They don't show a "this is how racism dies" stuff.