From shaming to intellectual challenge

[timelets]

I see a beginning of a pragmatic shift within a more farsighted academia: away from shaming alt-right ideologues to challenging them intellectually. Shaming works only as long as the society is unified in its cultural norms. Once the norms fracture, one has to find a deeper cultural background for discussing ideas. For example, the tag "alt-right" itself is a misnomer akin to "horseless carriage." That is, it denotes what the thing is not, rather than what it actually stands for. This is a sign of an early-stage innovation where the future is highly uncertain and open to interpretation. No wonder it attracts amoral opportunists like Trump and Co.

Comments

[ecreet]

Challenging *them* intellectually is pointless: one can't have a discussion with somebody who deals in "alternative facts", just like one can't broker a deal with someone who places no value in their own promises. Well, one can, but it is useless.

Academics challenging *their ideology*, or rather interpretations of what they say and do that even make sense as fragments of an ideology, is a sad thing: it means revisiting certain questions that have already been discussed and agreed upon, and offering them up for discussion again: so, is a brown American's citizenship any different from a white American's citizenship? Who knows? Must have an academic discussion about that! It is a step back.

Studying what these people (people who call themselves alt-right, or people who agree with those who call themselves alt-right on many points) say and do is, of course, tremendously useful and should be done.

[timelets]

It does feel like a step back into darker times. But ignoring the phenomena intellectually would be a mistake because the perceived agreement on basic social norms doesn't seem to work well enough to produce expected results.