
Will the left survive Millennials? - danielam
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/opinion/will-the-left-survive-the-millennials.html?_r=0
======
deadmik3
"In Australia, where I spoke, Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act
makes it unlawful to do or say anything likely to “offend, insult, humiliate
or intimidate,” providing alarming latitude in the restriction of free
speech."

I really find it shocking that there are laws regarding supposed hate speech
with such subjective terms as "likely to offend".

As a registered democrat, this author really captured my feelings about the
left. It used to make so much sense, let everyone do what they want, that's
being liberal. Now the radical minority is getting louder and more persuasive
to younger generations as they dress up these ideas in comedy and media.

~~~
bbctol
The author seems to be pulling things out of context in bad faith. It is
unlawful, though not a criminal offense, in Australia to publicly say things
likely to offend people of a different race, based on their racial group,
provided the statements are not meant "(a) in the performance, exhibition or
distribution of an artistic work; or (b) in the course of any statement,
publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic,
artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public
interest; or (c) in making or publishing: (i) a fair and accurate report of
any event or matter of public interest; or (ii) a fair comment on any event or
matter of public interest if the comment is an expression of a genuine belief
held by the person making the comment." (as explained in 18D).

~~~
wnoise
What does "unlawful, but not a criminal offense" mean?

~~~
dragonwriter
> What does "unlawful, but not a criminal offense" mean?

Generally, that phrasing would describe civil wrongs. Criminal law isn't the
whole of the law.

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bbctol
The 18C provision of the Australian Racial Discrimination Act he mentions was
brought in in 1995, a little early for the "millennials" he wants to decry.
Nor does someone walking out of a speech strike me as even tangentially linked
to censorship--it seems quite the opposite, yielding a space to someone else
because you don't want to either be there silently or interrupt and argue.
Yeah, maybe the left would be better off if the young had a more nuanced view
of privilege and controversy, but we'd sure as hell be better off if the older
generation could contain themselves when making any criticism and stick to
reasonable, evidence-based discourse, not a condescending string of random
criticisms towards them dang kids.

~~~
Veen
> a little early for the "millennials" he wants to decry.

The author is a woman.

~~~
etjossem
To be fair, NYT op-ed has a long and storied history of middle-aged white
dudes writing about kids these days. Easy mistake.

~~~
Veen
What's wrong with older, more experienced people expressing an opinion about
the politics and behavior of younger, inexperienced people. Seems like a
reversal of common sense to assert that elders have nothing to say to or about
the generations that come after them.

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dj-wonk
Well said. These parts are striking to me:

> In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is
> growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for
> using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation
> to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that
> many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is
> the intention of the identity-politics cabal — and maybe my generation
> should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another
> apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math.

> But do we really want every intellectual conversation to be scrupulously
> cleansed of any whiff of controversy?

~~~
RileyKyeden
The reactionaries on the side I lean to have mostly settled down, but the
reactionaries to the reactionaries are still primed to explode.

One can't even gently suggest that a person's words, probably said with good
intentions, support an -ism or -phobia without getting a tirade about
censorship in response, and an accusation of being a "social justice warrior."

~~~
hyperdunc
Such tirades are a necessary correction to the insanity that "social justice"
has become. Once the influence of these so -called warriors declines then
hopefully the discourse will settle down.

~~~
RileyKyeden
On my side, it calmed down because people criticized call-out culture.[1] How
does one criticize reflexive fury toward social justice activism without being
lumped in with the "warriors"?

[1] For example: [http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/call-out-
accountability/](http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/call-out-accountability/)

~~~
hyperdunc
We can remind people that there are "sides within sides" and that we should
allow people's positions to change.

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blackflame7000
The Millennials are not the ones rigging DNC elections. The Millennials are
not the ones running the institutions passing absurd sensitivity requirements.
It is unfair to make this a generation argument when in reality its much
deeper. What it ultimately boils down to is to what degree an individual deems
it appropriate to silence dissenting points of view. To some the answer is
none and to others, legitimizing an opposing view is interpreted as a form of
oppression in and of itself. Age doesn't appear to have much of a correlation
with ones stance on that spectrum.

~~~
Cacti
Uh... the Democrat Presidental primaries were "rigged"? Would you care to be a
little more specific?

~~~
jontas
I'd guess this is what they were referring to:

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-
san...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-
sanders_us_579381fbe4b02d5d5ed1d157)

~~~
leereeves
Also:

[http://www.salon.com/2016/03/30/10_ways_the_democratic_prima...](http://www.salon.com/2016/03/30/10_ways_the_democratic_primary_has_been_rigged_from_the_start_partner/)

------
etjossem
Will the New York Times survive Baby Boomer hot takes?

The opinion piece is dripping with hypocrisy. If Yassmin Abdel-Magied wants to
walk out of the author's speech and go blog about her discomfort, so what?
That's a form of speech too, and we shouldn't be trying to discourage it.

I defend the author's right to say all this, but the shallow "Millenials
should talk less and smile more" angle really doesn't speak to me.

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jimmywanger
Geez. People these days don't seem to understand a simple fact.

You cannot control events that happen to you, but you can control how you
react to them.

I sadly clicked through to the article where the millennial walked out of the
talk. What a histrionic, self-absorbed rant that was.

~~~
etjossem
You really wanted to say "kids these days", didn't you?

~~~
jimmywanger
What a useless comment. I personally think that self absorbed, histrionic
people come in all ages.

Just look at the frequency of the use of the personal pronoun in that article
(the article written by the person who walked out). It's "I", "I", "me" over
and over.

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CM30
Well, the left sure won't survive millennials in the UK. The parties on that
side of the political spectrum seem to be really bad at picking good leaders
and unable to win popular support for a pretty long time...

Oh, it's about the social justice thing. In which case, it probably will.
Social justice warriors are an issue, but there's still a decent part of the
left who utterly hate them and their obsession with 'identity politics', and I
can easily see a more libertarian left party or group getting popular in the
near future.

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seanca
This is about the left, not about millennials. In the past it was the right
condemning behaviors, but now it's the left. The left has taken on the motto
of "intolerance for intolerance"; what that really means though is, if I don't
agree with it it shouldn't be allowed. The left aren't advocating for free
speech, but for specifically allowed speech. And that's more dangerous than
the alleged bigotry they think they're stopping.

~~~
erikpukinskis
This is like saying that the right wants a white-only country. Sure, some do,
but not most. Very few on the left are against free speech.

Most of the people I've seen who make this argument don't seem to
differentiate between "I don't want certain speech in my living quarters" or
"I don't want certain speech in this specific course" from "I don't think this
speech has any place in society".

Free speech doesn't mean you get to say whatever you want wherever you want.
It means you have a right to say it somewhere. And I have a right to have
conversations that exclude you.

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perfectfire
From piece in the guardian:

>It was a monologue about the right to exploit the stories of “others”, simply
because it is useful for one’s story.

I thought the talk was about fiction, which by definition is made-up stories,
so how could they exploit the stories of others? Stories of other people would
be non-fiction. I'm guessing the quotes around "others" is the key to the
mystery here.

~~~
gizmo686
"Others" in this context refers to your out-group. For example, if I am a
straight white male, then it is kosher for me to write a fictional story about
fictional straight white males because they are part of my group.

But if I try writing about a fictional gay black women, then I am exploiting
the groups of gays, blacks, and women.

~~~
perfectfire
> exploiting the groups of gays, blacks, and women

Ok, that I can follow (I don't really agree with it). But what she said was
"exploit the stories" of your out-group. Since the work is fiction it's
nobody's story. Not my group's nor my out-group's. I guess the claim is your
"group" retains the exclusive right to produce works of art that feature a
fictional representation of someone or something related to your group.

~~~
int_19h
The whole "cultural appropriation" thing is, essentially, an assertion that
there's some kind of implicit intellectual property like relationship that one
has with one's culture and its collective experiences. So when you need to
"use" a culture that's "not yours", you have to ask for permission, and
conform to the rules that the other party frames their grant of such around.

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squozzer
To the general question, probably. It survived the boomers, who in the 1960s
succeeded the socialists and New Dealers of the 1930s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left)

Not sure what direction it will take, it would surprise me to see the Newest
Left revive Basic Income and other dormant redistribution ideas.

~~~
tracker1
It might be interesting that we may well see a division closer to statist vs
libertarian as a divide in the future.

~~~
undersuit
I'd enjoy us not trying to map the whole political spectrum onto a binary
distinction.

~~~
hyperdunc
The parent may have been suggesting a spectrum instead. Tools like that found
at politicalcompass.org can take us away from the currently oversimplified
left-right notion of politics, while still being easy to understand.

