alt Hacker NewsYou are missing their point. They are saying they start with relatively benign views, and the intense overreaction to those views drives them to support much more extreme views, like what you are describing, that they otherwise might not have.
I can't speak for Blow, but that definitely seems to accurately describe the arc Rowling has taken over the last 7-8 years.
Replies
I am not missing their point at all, you are missing mine.
>drives them to support much more extreme views, like what you are describing, that they otherwise might not have.
The view I mentioned was the one that got Notch (one of the public figures mentioned by GP) the reaction from the internet in the first place. A bit disingenuous to say this was a moderate conservative talking point before he got sent spiraling into a far right abyss by an angry progressive mob.
>that they otherwise might not have.
I think this is letting people off the hook. We're talking about adults in their 40s and 50s here. When people like that 'suddenly' endorse extreme views it's because they had held them back and feel enabled to say them now, an adult isn't going to become an extremist because someone was mean to them online.
I'm 20 years younger than Blow and even at my age I can tell I'm settled enough psychologically that adopting radically different views would require a lot of internal effort. Views don't exist in a vacuum, to believe radical things you have to radically alter all the other things you belief. I really don't think we should people like this like children without agency.
What are we going to do about those hate mobs in our societies in Western high culture who are so intolerant, intransigent and violent that they radicalise the moderates? I fear for the future. Any good ideas?
> but that definitely seems to accurately describe the arc Rowling has taken over the last 7-8 years.
What a bizarre time we are living in when "men aren't women" and "women should have single-sex spaces and rape crisis centres" are considered extreme views.