//If anybody on the 'Left' had any regard for the freedom of expression, they would put somebody up against Milo who could match him. Can they ?//

What I wouldn't give to see a debate between Milo and the late Christopher Hitchens. Poor little boy would get Hitch-slapped so hard it'd make his head spin.

I suspect the Hitch was not the last of the great debaters, and that there a quite a few who could give mop the floor with our hero. Last time I bothered watching one of Milo's 'debates', his arguments were one big fallacy-fest and his strongest tactic was to constantly interrupt and speak over his opponent. Of course, his opponent was no better.

Somebody like Stephen Fry would tear him a new one. But I'll wager that you never get to see it happen. Milo doesn't seem like the sort of bloke who'd get into a debate with somebody who is better at it than him. Losing would damage his brand and his ego. Far easier to shoot fish in barrels and then sit back and receive the adulation of the easily impressed.

Joe,

It appears you’re now a Milo convert. I’m not sure why you think his arguments are so good.

I can think of plenty of lefties who could take him down pretty damn quickly in a debate. The names Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens immediately come to mind. Then there’s Stephen Fry. Matt Dillahunty, the guy in the video I linked to earlier, who regularly engages in formal debates, could absolutely take the little show pony down quite easily.

If Milo wants to debate Islam specifically, then I would recommend he go up against Maajid Nawaz. I suspect Milo would be as confused and as caught-off-guard as what the Right think the Left are over Milo’s seemingly contradictory sexuality and political views.

Heck even I’d be happy to debate Milo. I’ve seen plenty of his material now and could point to a few areas in which he is wrong, and, more importantly, why he is wrong (in fact, I’ve already done so in this thread).

I’ve even seen right-wingers (e.g. Ben Shapiro) discredit some of his arguments, and using the same lines of reasoning that lefties would.

It appears you’ve seen a few rowdy protesters, and an informal debate of Milo’s with one bimbo Muslim, and suddenly think his arguments are bulletproof.

P.S. You can stop putting quotation marks around ‘Left’. The two sides of the political spectrum are an inadequate dichotomy, and can even overlap in certain areas. I’m not sure you really understand what constitutes Left and Right

Hi AJ,

No, I don't agree with most of his positions. But I do enjoy how he operates. I just wish the 'Left' had people who could counter him - certainly, rather that the the anarchist-fascist tactics of brute force. I'm sure you wouldn't support that alternative. :)

Cheers,

Joe

Joe,

No, I don’t support “anarchist-fascist tactics of brute force”. The video I linked to earlier should have made that clear.

I don’t like how Milo operates. I probably would have liked it more ten years ago, but I realise now just how counter-productive his style is, as people will all-too-often use a strident tone to dismiss everything you say - especially when it conflicts with their views. I’ve also been finding it increasingly distasteful, and for no apparent reason other than perhaps the fact that I’m just getting older. I’ve been getting into the whole ‘street epistemology’ approach to communicating, it appears immensely effective (for both sides), and it's more how I'd discuss differences of opinion face-to-face. But street epistemology is a topic for another day...

<<I just wish the 'Left' had people who could counter him - certainly, rather that the anarchist-fascist tactics of brute force.>>

Well, Toni Lavis and I have mentioned some. Or do the quotation marks around ‘Left’ denote a section of the Left meant to remain ambiguous?

Hi AJ,

I suppose the Left (including the 'Left') is a very broad church - I still think of myself as being out on one tiny wing of it (if churches had wings). As an ex-communist and -Maoist, I don't think of the Labor Party as being all that Left, and - excuse me - I think, up their inside my tiny brain, of the Greens as generally belonging to various factions of the 'Left'. Some of them might even be genuinely Left.

What's the difference ? God, it's so hard to put into words. To my slow (and slowly deteriorating) mind, support for Rohingyas would be one touchstone. A clear-eyed and qualified support for refugees, climate change action, Indigenous affairs and public funding in health and education would be included. In fact, most issues would be open to qualification, nothing much is 100 % squeaky-clean progressive, in my view.

In his last years, Karl Popper described himself as a liberal and a socialist. I'm not quite sure how to square those positions, except that neither is perfect, and each has its positives. In my last years, I'm comfortable with that/those positions. Nothing is perfect, nor will it ever be. When I was a Marxist, and actually reading Marx and even more so Lenin (and of course Mao), I had a few doubts about some of their basic assumptions. It didn't seem, for example, that the workers were becoming ever-more immigrated: they seemed back then too be doing not too bad. Skills seemed to be an ever-expanding proliferation rather than an ever-simplification.

Looking back,

[TBC]

[continued]

Looking back into the sixties and seventies, it seems that my view of Marxist-Leninist socialism has expanded from a naive notion that all of us would become willing workers, Stakhanovites, pulling together in common cause, to a more nuanced differentiation between Stakhanovites, 'managers' and executioners: and one could always easily see which 'socialists' favoured which branch-line.

And I realised how few Stakhanovites there might be in our future perfect society: socialists would prefer to be either - as they were in Soviet society and now Chinese society - managers, planners, organisers, administrators, dictating to the masses, and/or secret police, executioners, winkling out dissidents. I thought, bugger it, I'm condemned to remain a dissident and, where it was possible, a Stakhanovite. So I realised I would never fit into actual, real-life socialist society.

Then I read about the Mafia, about patron-client systems, and realised that the socialist and/or communist apparatus was just another one: a manager-type or executioner-type could as easily spout Marxist slogans as work for Tony Soprano, or Ferdinand Marcos. Hence the attraction on the 'Left' for Saddam or Gaddafi,or even Mugabe, I suppose.

I don't know how the Greens are organised but I imagine their structure and activities could operate similar to a Mafia-type organisation, tarted up of course as a socialist one. What put my spinning brain off-track ? Probably reading Solzhenitsin; Mao's murder of Lin Piao; of course, Pol Pot, all back in the seventies. And sheer life experience.

It's lonely out here, AJ. :). But to thine self be true. I hope this is useful.

Cheers,

Joe