Counting on the tolerance of the allegedly intolerant

How demonizing ones opponents can backfire

from JoeUser Forums

One of my pet peeves is when people try to demonize others for lacking any sort of restraint or tolerance even as they count on their opponent's restraint and tolerance to be able to say what they say.

For example, one of the cries I hear coming out of Europe these days, particularly from France, is that the "Bush's" United States is the greatest threat mankind has faced. There are many variations on this charge some equally melodramatic, others more specific. Another example is the charge that we're "losing all our freedoms" or the outright statement "We're practically living in a police state".

Such statements are absurd because the people making these assertions must be consciously aware that if their charges were real that they wouldn't be able to make them with impunity. After all, if John Ashcroft or some other boogeyman were out to "stifle dissent" they could realistically accomplish it.  Saddam Hussein, after all, received 100% of the vote in his last election. That is what stifling dissent is about.

The same thing regularly occurs on-line too in the mini-cosmos of net communities. I run a lot of net communities and I regularly get charged with being tyrannical and unwilling to tolerate any sort of dissent. One poster today, having called me "dumb", went on to tell me how fragile my ego must be and how childish I am. Yet at some level he is relying on the fact that my ego isn't fragile and that I'm not childish since someone with either trait would not put up with abuse if they had the power to prevent the abuse which any admin does. The admins on WinCustomize.com face that as well as they get abused by users accusing them of all kinds of problems all the while counting on the very tolerance that they claim the admins lack to be able to make their charges.

When I see people demonize Bush or Blair or some other figure who has the obvious ability to fully demonstrate to the protester the real meaning of loss of freedom or whatever, they weaken their case.  The same is true of US opponents who accuse the United States of waging a war of "genocide" in the middle east all the while knowing that if the US really wanted to, they could commit genocide with relative impunity. Opponents of the United States, including Al Qaeda, count on the United States having the very humanity and restraint that they accuse it of lacking.

Probably the most overt example of this is in Israel where people are regularly claiming how brutal Israel is to the Palestinians when in fact Israel would probably have an easier time of things if the simply rounded up all the Palestinians and ejected them into Lebanon and shot any who tried to re-enter. Who would stop them? Yet Israel's critics rely on the very restraint and tolerance that they claim Israel lacks.

When people make charges that literally require that the charge to be untrue in order for the charge to be made in the first place, they only damage their credibility. People recognize melodrama and tend to make a note of it - remembering that the person making such charges needs to have their statements taken with a grain of salt in the future.  At best,  the person making the charge sounds like a pampered provincial, inexperienced with the real world. At worst, they sound like a cynical manipulator of facts.

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Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
Isn't the point of making wild assertations to plant the seeds of uncertainty in the uninformed masses? In the public forum there is no concept of innocent until proven guilty as exists in a court of law (well, some parts of the court anyway). FUD is an effective tool for getting the uniformed to follow along. In politics John Kerry and the Democratic party are using FUD in place of fact because it is easy to do and doesn't cost as much time and money; take a look at the attacks on GWB's service record for example. An allegation here, innuendo there and an oft repeated lie begins to take on the appearance of truth. Getting caught lying doesn't seem to have any real cost either because the story can always be spun in another direction or the old rusesof "it was taken out of context" or "I was misquoted" can become the new mantra. Remember, it is the misinformed masses that are the target, not those that are informed or willing to do research before reaching a conclusion.

I see this a lot in the business world too. There are people that have made careers out of reporting rumors as fact, spinning tales and spreading fault to cover up innadequacy or inability to complete assignments. There is no escaping it.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
I think it obvious that people who say things like "we are practically living in a police state" are fully aware that they are exaggerating, just as people like Ashcroft are aware that under current conditions they could never attempt to fully stifle dissent or they would face mass outrage. The point is that their INTENT is to limit freedoms, and history teaches us that if one does not pay attention, civil rights can erode at a fierce rate. I am not saying that the Bush administration intends to turn us into Soviet era Russia or Nazi Germany, but it's important to pay attention to the direction policy is going in order to avoid problems further down the road.
I also find it obvious that this administration, more than any other in history, feels civil rights and freedoms are secondary to their own agenda.
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
Hmm Brad, what french paper are you reading? I do my daily homework and they are talking about local election, terror from AZF and the killing of Sheik Kissin.In general, Europeans don't like GW Bush policy not the americans, If you refer to the old survey about the opinion of european about US policy, I think there was a flaw in the way they asked the question in giving limited choice of question.

On another level
Why do you always need to do french bashing? May be it is popular in US but Ii discredite the content of your article. For your information and in my small experience, english people are as much anti american than french people.

Regarding the patriot act, you might know that France is in Vigipirat alert from 1995, after Paris subway had been attacked by GIA islam fundamentalists... the anti terrorist judges have since a lot of power, I couldn't compare both, but still against terrorists you need intelligence in order to catch them just before they act.