Comment by scaramanga | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scaramanga | Hacker News Reader

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It absolutely does.

"I invited Hermann Goerring and Martin Luther King to the dinner party, not because I like both of them, but because I dislike both equally and I am trying to expand my intellectual horizons"

The purpose of the sentence is to put them all in to the same category and create a false equivalence.

Don't get me wrong. It's fine if you like Hermann Goerring. It's fine if you dislike Martin Luther King. But you don't get to say they're both the same, then insist on being able to invite both to the dinner party, and then when the dinner party guests complain about Goerring you don't get to tun around and say "see! look at the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" in a way that makes the entire thing a massive narcissistic cry for attention where you are the victim, you're the centre of the story, only your feelings matter and only your needs have to be respected.

Because that sort of stuff is just flat-out far-right-wing trolling.

But maybe you're visiting from an alien planet and aren't familiar with what's going on here on Earth?

"The purpose of the sentence is to put them all in to the same category and create a false equivalence."

In which category do you think Boghossian was trying to put Flat-Earthers, Christian apologists, global climate skeptics, and Occupy Wall Street advocates?

My understanding is that they are all in the category of guest lecturers. That doesn't seem like a false equivalence if they were all guest lecturers.

As explained in the comment you're replying to.

It's a far-right extremist tactic to normalize their belief systems.

The tactic is to put everyone together into a "diversity rainbow" of political beliefs where whatever strand of basic human decency you oppose, you can find someone else who is so extreme, vigorous, and pernicious in their beliefs that even fascism seems moderate.

For example, in the status quo of early 20th century America, a racist might say:

"Well, some radical negro extremists even think that black men ought to be allowed to marry white women. But on the other hand, some people think all the negroes should just be exterminated. As a liberal, I think everyone should be free to speak their minds and hold rallies for whatever viewpoint they like, as long as they uphold all the public order laws."

So the racist occupies an important position, sat in the middle, defending liberal democracy from two extremes. Power stays where it is, thank you very much. And if people try to get racist rallies banned, then I can fend that off by claiming it to be a fundamental attack on freedom of speech, rather than what it actually is: upholding law and order.

The fact to be obscured is that there is a fundamental dissimilarity between the "two extremes". One is just a call for basic human needs and rights to be respected, the other demands a license for some people to run roughshod over the needs and rights of others.

Edit: So yes, in that sentence he is trying to put them in to the category of "guest lecturers." But he is doing that not as a banal exercise in set-comprehension, it's part of a political argument / narcissistic tantrum.

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