The left seems to not like this guy anymore, but why is this the case? His politics, while not on the far left, certainly seem to be strongly left leaning. Is it just because he's against idpol? Or is he actually malevolent?
He may have done interviews with hacks like Peterson and Shapiro, but he shouldn't be guilty by association.
gee I wonder why the dollar store version of Chris Hitchens is a tool for the alt right
OP here, I legitimately thought those pictures were of Harris for like 2 mins then died laughing when I realised.
What was the context of that quote? Also, in what way has he been a tool for the alt-right? Was it just because of those interviews?
Basically, to sum up, Harris is the epitome of polite neoconservatism, in his books he has said basically that Islam as practiced in the middle east is a fundamentally unreasonable and irrational belief, which is true to a certain extent, but it's hardly alone in the world on that, to be specific Harris thinks his worldview is entirely rational and basically is just the ultimate truth, therefore he has made the statement that if an Islamic theocracy in the middle east were about to achieve nuclear capacity it might be justifiable to hit them with a nuclear first strike as a purely utilitarian and rational action. Let's put aside the fact that Pakistan is already a Muslim theocracy with nukes, the root absurdity is this is the exact kind of sociopathic black and white thinking that he is scared that Muslims have, he is somehow completely unable to see the irony that he is just as much a fundamentalist for Western liberalism as they are for Allah.
When this was pointed out to him some years ago, his response was basically to act persecuted and like the backlash is just because of those damn regressive leftists who can't accept the truth about Islam and so on. Instead of backing down he made more crazy statements while basically using the Peterson tactic of "I didn't say that, if I said that, you misinterpreted it, if you didn't, I didn't mean it" etc and fled into the 'respectable' alt right pipeline stable of Rogan, Peterson, et cetera.
(Former neocon here.) The way neocons snag you is by presenting themselves as the real left and the true, authentic inheritors of the Enlightenment and so on. Christopher Hitchens was very good at this. One of the more recent terms is the "regressive left" (used by Harris, Bill Maher, Dave Rubin, etc.) which is to say that the left are actually the reactionary ones and so on. But the *effect* of signing on with these people is to sign on to American imperial hegemony which is (still) keeping troops in Afghanistan to compete with China and Russia, or dumping weapons into the hands of depraved Saudi feudal lords to contain Iran, which is a more democratic society than Saudi Arabia is. If said in a straightforward way, this would sound insane, so the establishment needs to dress it up in this moralistic language about fighting the reactionary fundies and their Cultural Marxist fifth columnists who use cultural relativism to weaken "Western civilization."
I'm not sure he's a tool for the alt-right, but just that they're both tools for the status quo. The rise of chauvinist-nationalism and fascism in Western countries such as the United States is an organizational structure that serves productive purposes for maintaining a robust military that can wage low-intensity warfare in Russia and China's peripheral zones, and also creating the intellectual atmosphere for selling this project to young men who will be the ones to take the brunt of it.
he's not against idpol, he's just a racist
Uhhhh okay, I didn't know Islam was a race you dumb libtard??? It doesn't matter if Western imperialism is 99% targeted towards brown people, and 'fundamentalist' is just a codeword for Arab, unless you literally say "fuck niggers" out loud it's impossible to call someone racist. Typical SJWs. I mean, if someone does say they want to massacre all Jews multiple times, it's just a prank lol, you bleeding hearts just don't get my sophisticated sense of humour.
that's just a heated gaming moment, the only actual racists are members of the KKK that have their KKK membership card on their person at all times
he's definitely not on the left. In the US he'd be considered a centrist liberal. He'd be happy to vote for Hillary but not Sanders. He's ok with some welfare statism, ok with abortion, and believes in science and climate change. This makes him basically a Democrat in the US, which gets broadly (and wrongly) defined as "the left". But he's also said he'd vote for Dick Cheney over Noam Chomsky. So like many centrist liberals he doesn't agree with the right wing on most things, but he hates the left. If it came down to the reds vs the fash, he's full fash. His emergence as a political voice was basically a result of him being triggered by 9-11 and his response was to adopt reactionary neo-conservative foreign policy ideas and western exceptionalism. He's also a Jewish supremacist (in addition to a western supremacist) who's said he won't criticize Israel no matter what they do, and always rationalizes their war crimes and blames the muslims.
Before and during this he was also popular for stuff about religion and atheism which was sometimes good. To the extent the left ever liked him it was because of that stuff, but when he went to world politics any affinity with the left was ended.
I mean tbh, if you have to go through someone's pockets to find out if they're a reactionary that wants to murder all non whites isn't that just as bad as fascism itself really? I don't think we could condemn that man unless say he were wearing his membership card on his lanyard.
Are we sure he's not running a social experiment to see how much he can get away with? I mean, to see how divided America is?
Marx and all the others past couldn't have imagined atheism redirected into consumerism like the youtube New Atheists managed to render it. They could not see the savage irony of atheism becoming like that which it critiqued, an opiate, a method to trick people into ideology and indoctrination. Atheism has basically become counter-rev alternative religion for effete liberals, not a rebellious attack on society. It figures that with god being dead and the corpse being infested with televangelists, the atheists would get their own talking heads and pyramid schemes.
A lot of this results from his class, as well. Petit-bourg with his father being the Western actor Berkeley Harris. His mother was the producer for The Golden Girls. A Jewish guy from California whose parents were in the entertainment business isn't going to openly identify with the butt-rock right-wing nationalists so they present as classical liberals or whatever you like.
bad design
"LIGHT IN THE DARK" should be the same color
unreasoning hysteria and hatred of society seems like a great alternative to whatever koolaid society is inhaling by the gallons rn. if this is rational i dont want to be rational. prole feels > their so-called reals
"dawkins circle" just… just absolutely degenerate. what an intelligent guy hopped up on egotism fucking old cunt let atheism die too
"'god is dead' is dead"
The left hates him because:
a) He's pro-war-on-terror (the legitimate reason to be critical of him).
b) He gave an audience to Shapiro and Peterson (the retarded reason to be critical of him).
Deplatforming works, anyone who breaks bread with the far right pipeline should be chased out. Debating them isn't the same of course but when you sit down for a pleasant chat that's just enabling them.
That's why don't Trump is president and has appointed hundreds of far right judges who will continue running things long after he's done right?
What does that have to do with leftists deplatforming? You think if the media had went even softer on white supremacy than they already did Trump would have lost?
Do you think America is a functioning democracy and that if Trump lost Hillary Clinton would have actually been better and wouldn't just make certain people feel better about living in a,slowly collapsing nation?
lmao this is ben shapiro-tier "debating", the guy you're talking about never mentioned any of that stuff, you're just fishing for an angle since your original point was so dumb he dismantled it with a sentence
This board is against idpol, if anything it's the fact that he's not anti-idpol in the slightest
No, new atheism is about promoting secular, universalist, enlightenment values and destroying the influence of fundamentalist christians on American politics. They should be critically supported in this. Religion is a brainworm that prevents people from thinking critically about policy.
citation needed
I prefer the old communist atheism. Bring back Madalyn Murray O'Hair
I don't understand this criticism, Sam is arguably worse than those two because he's the most disingenuous about his intentions.
Why are we even having this thread? Sam Harris is another fascist spawn of a fascist system.
Sounds like a fake or very out of context quote tbh, and I fucking hate Sam Harris.
fixed
This is factually inaccurate.
This is also not true. He had someone on his podcast who promoted that stuff. Sam saw data, but he criticized it too.
Sam Harris is a leftist if you look at his positions. Not a leftist in the sense of this board. However, in America, he is definitely on the left side of politics. The dude is a total hippy if you really look into him. He has said some stupid shit before, but that shouldn't negate him completely. I think he's been smeared and taken out of context a lot. So much too the point that people on the left just see him as on the other team, when really that isn't the case.
The only genuine criticism I've heard about him is stupid things said in the past that he's changed his position on, and his stubborness/ego getting in the way of him admitting the times he's said stupid shit
That's libtard logic. Some members of the KKK just believe in upholding their HERITAGE, NOT HATE.
The only REAL racists, are people who have the words "Hello, I am a big racist" tatooed directly on their foreheads and eyeballs.
(people who only have it on their foreheads are obviously just doing it ironically as a joke)
He doesnt buy into 'woke' twitter.
I'm a leftist, but I am also biased because I've been following Sam Harris for a while and value some of his work. Just disclosing that.
Sam Harris is disappointing politically in a few ways, but he is still clearly on the left when it comes to American politics. Not nearly as much as I'd like him to be.
With that said, his podcast is sometimes interesting, and so are his guides on meditation.
With that also said, other than his work in his respective field and the enjoyment I get from some of his podcasts/guides, that's as far as I respect him. He lets his ego get in the way of going back on positions that he should know aren't right. Despite an often mentioned positive effect of meditation supposedly being more empathy for others, some of his political positions conflict with this being the case for him.