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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion
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To: TimF who wrote (7297)7/30/2007 6:54:32 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (2) of 10087
 
Boycotts and Ostracism

Roger L. Simon writes of MoveOn and DailyKos:

Whoa! Let's put it simply: attacking sponsorship is at base a sneaky way of suppressing free speech and essentially anti-democratic and reactionary. Brave New Films? Brave New World is more like it. Gilliam's company's name echoing Huxley's dystopia seems like some kind of unconscious admission of a creepy truth.

In my book they have a right to make their views known to sponsors in any legal way they wish (as long as they remain privately funded). But it is hysterically funny to see organizations of this ilk adopt the techniques of Jerry Falwell or the American Decency Association.
It's fair to say these techniques typically rebound on the boycotters.

One of the commenters makes a good point as well, although the phenomenon is hardly as restricted in practice as he suggests:

This relates to one of my hobby horses regarding the left side of the blogosphere: their overuse of ostracism as a politcal (sic) & social tool.

Trying to cast a person (or company) out of polite society is a radical tactic, but it's not always wrong. The way the left uses this tactic, though, is troubling. They regularly use it, or threaten to use it, against people who disagree on purely political matters.

But if you try to cast out someone who disagrees on something like social security reform, for example, what social sanction is left for those who truly should be shunned by society, like neo-Nazi's and NAMBLA members? The left turns to ostracism so much that the tactic could loose its power. That would be a bad thing.

At the school parent gatherings Tigerhawk and I attend, his "W" bumper sticker has provoked screaming and name-calling from otherwise sedate suburbanites, and one of my neighbors became suddenly unfriendly when we enrolled our kids in the Charter School. Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at July 30, 2007 2:43 PM

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