I only said it *seems* overblown to me, considering people like Rubin, Peterson, etc are treating it like it’s the defining problem of our era. I’m open to having my mind changed with sufficient evidence.
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It’s a problem, for sure, but ‘the problem of our time’ seems hyperbolic. How many students does this problem entangle? And how much power do they have overall? How much will their current ideologies temper with age? (Probably a lot.)
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These students are wrong and misinformed, no doubt, but let’s not forget that, in the US, Fox News is the most watched news source, there are 300 million guns, and oligarchy is creeping. These are massive problems, just to name a few.
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Strongly agree that it's overblown compared with the standard right-wing public personality take on it.
But, without caring to back Peterson or Rubin (nor their interpretations), it *is* still a massive problem - and fighting sophistry with sophistry as pr. Vox is bad.
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Well, agreed.
Radical leftists of the campus-dwelling variety *in particular* - that is, people more interested in controlling discourse than making political changes - have drenched the entire thing with gasoline. The reactionaries are just throwing matches at this point.
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I have many leftist friends who take exception to being lumped in with this bunch, but hey, just because *they* aren't comfortably affluent college professors who identify as revolutionaries to inflate their already considerable sense of self-importance...
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The problem is definitely real (I mean, Jesus, the Evergreen situation was so fucked and completely derailed Bret Weinstein’s career), but what I want to know is how widespread it is and is there evidence that it is spreading in a significant way.
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There is a certain consilience from the sheer amount of different sources.
Anecdotes are anecdotes, but you have evidence of speech prohibition in the US and Canada, and the UK has had problems with censorious student bodies for at least a decade now - it's easy to fact check.
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You mentioned Weinstein. When a scientist of some stature suddenly becomes a figurehead for reactionary right-wingers, because of the crap treatment he got, that tells you something of the potential damage - you can't limit the analysis to the damage done to individuals.
Every casualty like this is another hurrah for the Molyneux-Cernovich-Shapiro-Rubin (etc.) reactionary-industrial complex.
A bunch of personalities, all utterly irrelevant, are given notoriety by the actions of their ideological opponents. Stupid situation.
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All that said, for actual numbers I have no idea. I hope @Ruminorang's source proves informative.
But you don't need many examples to produce a chilling effect.