I think your general idea is right, it sounds reasonable that the insane cancelation mania can bring some conservatives to dig into deeper holes. It is probably what enabled the recent right shift in politics. As to Blow specifically, I've watched his streams quite a bit. I've always had sympathy for him and have been able to relate to his opinions a lot (about software in particular). But I can see how some other people could take offense from the way he's presented his stances.

I say that as someone who once made him angry myself when I live-commented in one of his streams because I had a rare disagreement. I was maybe not in shock but at least startled by his reaction. I had presented my disagreement relatively casually.

Now, my impression is that he's tuned down his considerably and developed a more well meaning stance on things over the years. Recently I've found him more on the side of "here's how most people are doing this, I don't like this, maybe I don't think it's sustainable or how you get good results, but anyway here's what I like to do instead, make of it what you want".

I'm not talking about his words on technical stuff, I'm talking about him being so pleased with the state of US today. Somehow in Blow's mind what Trump and his handlers do to the country is the best thing ever.

I'm not a US citizen, but being enthusiastic about other people losing their freedom and freedoms is obscene.

There's also just a lot of "No, no, no, I kill the bus driver". A sort of "Greater Fool theory" but for genocide, everybody else is a useful idiot who, having supported your rise, is then next in line to be sacrificed, never for a moment remembering that even if you are the only person to have thought of this - which is unlikely - everybody who understands how this actually works will have been together against you from the outset.

Misogyny is a subset of supporting trump. If you've seen him go off the deep end on supporting trump then you are witnessing his misogyny, even if you ignore his other comments.

> Isn't he pretty far on the autistic spectrum?

I don't know, but I doubt it. He's too well adjusted at being social (his hobbies have him interact with people on the regular, and he's streaming on twitch, and doing public speaking at conferences) for me to think that.

>a relatively benign conservative

Can it really be considered “relatively benign” when an extremely famous public figure is calling for people who disagree with them to be shot?

You 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.

> 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.

I don’t think those are the extreme views, those are the views being overreacted to.

Which views of hers do you consider to be extreme?

Women who insist that they specifically get to decide who is or isn't a woman and what women believe aren't new. Phyllis Schlafly managed to ensure the Equal Rights Amendment didn't pass on this same basis. Phyllis would fly from city to city, addressing crowds of women to tell them that women should be at home looking after their kids, not um, flying from city to city making political addresses like she did...

Beware anyone who claims to represent "all" of some large diverse group, such as "Women" or "Floridians".

"Women should have single sex spaces" turns out to be used to justify, "It's OK to be hateful and even violent against women in these spaces so long as your excuse is that you believe they're not actually women" which is bullshit.

Years ago, when I wasn't too tired to spend all day and half the night dancing, I went to Bang Face Weekender - basically imagine a huge multi-room club night except for days and days. I keep the socials for it available because hey, it's a nice memory. This sort of "Single sex spaces" bullshit caused a problem for the last-but-one Bang Face because a new-to-this Security outfit somehow decided it's their job to go remove people who in their view weren't women from a toilet for women. These women weren't causing any problems for anybody else, but because they presumably had the wrong genitals or for some other reason were "suspect" to that Security team, Security dragged them out of a toilet cubicle and threw them out of the site. Other clubbers were of course horrified, and the event runners had to apologise to everybody - because regardless of how many X chromosomes you have, or whether you do or don't have a womb, dragging people out of the toilets because you've got weird ideas about what is or isn't a woman is batshit.

Phyllis Schlafly is an odd comparison to make. She argued that women should stay in traditional roles and out of public life (while as you mention, not following her own advice), whereas JKR and other feminists take the exact opposite view. Not sure I see the relevance of your analogy here.

As for Bang Face last year, what happened is that security staff kicked a group of males out from the women's toilets. I agree that this isn't an ideal outcome, much better would have been if these men had respected that women's spaces are not for them, and stayed out in the first place. The fact that their removal was treated as some sort of scandal shows how far we've lost sight of the rights of women and girls to have single-sex provisions.

So, you absolutely agree with Phyllis, that one woman somehow gets to decide who is or isn't a woman and what all women believe.

And yet this fact about your belief makes you so uncomfortable that you find yourself trying to pretend that somehow it's the opposite of what you believe.

No, you're getting confused between two separate concepts.

>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.

Thank you for saying this. In particular people are often already on a journey of self radicalisation so blaming people reacting to their views for radicalising them further is seeking to soft soap that. On top of which the people reacting are often framed as “going too far” and thus becoming more radical is the only natural reaction. It removes all agency and generally I think is mostly deployed by people that agree already with the radical views but are too scared to say so.

Not recognizing societal causal effects on radicalization is letting even more people off the hook.

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.

I am not an expert on Notch's slide into craziness, but I'd argue that the episode you mention it might not be the start. His start was as a "anti-SJW" game developer which got him hated and vilified by his former fans.

I'm not saying these people were rays of sunshine before, I'm saying they could be talked to without them foaming at the mouth and you face palming at how unhinged they were. I was using the meaning of benign attached to tumors.

>an expert on Notch's slide into craziness

I am not an expert either, if that episode occurred later than I remember, it could have been as you say.

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?

I think you identify the cycle of radicalization correctly but only on a specific side.

There are people in this thread comparing Trump to Hitler. I don't think Trump is the US finest president but those of my family who weren't slaves for the Germans were slaughtered.

The fact that people throw comparisons that are false on some massive scale around and it's completely normalized is an example why losing touch with reality is not only a problem of the right

I'm not sure what you're claiming in here. Is it that deporting immigrants, and taking rights from women is as bad as trying to get billionaires to pay more taxes and reducing systemic societal biases?

That's an extremely biased presentation of things on both sides.

I tried to summarise what I understand from the two ideologies. Would you share in what way that's biased?

It's _obviously_ reductionist and biased, not losing any more words on that.

My apologies, not trying to fight here, and I acknowledge you've been more balanced and nuanced in other comments.