Resisting the politically correct line on Protests

In my last article I dealt with the confusion developed by the misuse of the term “moral equivalency”. Here is a quick example from the news recently. Robert Spencer, noted Alt-Right creator and racist. By the way he is not trying to say he is not a racist that is one of the differences between real racists and people who are simply accused to be racists by political opponents. In the video we see Spencer during an interview hit sidelong by a guy coming at him from the side. As the recent news program said this incident lead to internet discussion of whether it was even a crime to attack someone who is a racist.  To many people moral equivalence means that both sides in an argument have the same moral authority or the onlooker can say no, one has the moral high ground so there is no moral equivalence. That is not the meaning of the fallacy of Moral Equivalence! (short meaning; Moral Equivalence: This fallacy compares minor misdeeds with major atrocities.)

The second point of the article was that demonstrations and counter demonstrations, protests and counter protests, marches and counter marches etc. are all about symbols. They are groups getting together to declare their belief in something and the group represents a symbol of the many who hold similar views. In simple terms if a racist group was holding a demonstration or march they are going to give speeches about their beliefs, they are not going to actually enslave others or take away someone’s job or work. The same goes for the counter protester. In the above example they are stating they disagree with the racist but they are not freeing slaves or giving jobs and housing to someone that the racist has taken away. It is all symbolic, either in the symbol of a group or the symbol of the words.

Numerous people who have argued point on internet discussion forums or often just people on Facebook have learned that even with written arguments it is extremely rare for someone to change their belief on something. Having been on discussion forums for years since the late 1990’s I can say that it is pretty rare to know that someone was actually talked out of a specific view. I think I have seen it happen, though it was maybe 10 years later, so perhaps a seed was planted somewhere but it is pretty difficult to know if it was from something that was said in the discussion forum years ago. If that is such a rarity where people are trying to communicate with reasonable arguments what are the chances that some counter protest or demonstration will change anyone of the people being counter protested?

 

Here are a few chants from the website wetheprotesters.org/chants.

Who can you trust, not the police

How do you spell Racist? NYPD

Hands up don’t shoot

Recently in Seattle we heard this chant. “Cops and Klan, Hand in hand. Then there are all the hey hey ho ho chants and the numbers such as 1, 2, 3, 4 We don’t want your f******g war 2, 4, 6, 8 stop the violence stop the hate.

It does seem that in the world of protests we are not dealing with well thought out arguments. We have slogans which again are symbols for the positions that the protesters wish to identify. They often don’t even make sense as the how do you spell racist covers a whole lot of Police men and women of color and no doubt many of them have felt like they are the subjects of racism in their lives and most certainly would not claim the title of racists.

This is where we come up against the politically correct worldview. The politically correct view is that the protesters are standing up for some moral cause. But the reality is that they are not standing up against anything beyond the symbol of their disagreement of belief. They most certainly are not standing up as counter protesters against other protesters by yelling, chanting or spitting or hitting or throwing things. They are not going to change anyone’s views by those kinds of activities. If it is difficult to change someone’s opinion with a reasoned dialog what chance is there for someone yelling a in a scrum at a protest! Or even worse what chance is there when some Antifa member with their head swaddled so they can’t be identified to going to make in changing someone’s opinion?  Zero is the number I would say.

This upheaval in society is not an attempt to stand up against other’s beliefs it is an attempt to divide and belittle. It is not standing up to oppression or racism or Nazi’s or communists or anarchists. It is emotion without reason; it fires up people on either side of the issues and digs the ruts in the road that each side is on deeper. We could remove most of the emotion by simply having the demonstrations without the counter demonstrations. They could have a counter demonstration at a different date or time, the symbols will be the same but there will no longer be the conflict.

If your churches/denominations/organizations have fallen into this fallacy of symbol over substance you must point the way to reason and dialog as the only way to address the issues. We are blessed to live in a Republic where we have representative government and we can call for a redress of concerns. Let us use our well laid laws and Constitutional Foundation to avoid the emotional and irrational abuses that we see in so many protests and counter protests today in America.