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Sam Harris’ response when told people call him an anti-Muslim bigot (audio)
- Thread starter OtherWorldly
- Start date
I've watched a couple of early oughts videos with him and Hitchens and he seemed... sorta normal? What happened? HItch got Iraqed - just flipped 180 almost overnight based on that war. But what's Harris' arc? I'm not going to watch the "evolution" because I never liked his smug style.
He claims to be an intellectual but has no problem using logical fallacies and bigoted ideas that far away from science and facts on the level of Alex Jones. This guy is douche bag, and who ever doubts it is a douche bag as well.
Flipped what? It's one example from a much more complex world view. People try to suggest Hitch just suddenly turned conservative heel overnight because of Iraq. Regardless if you agree with him on Iraq or not (I don't). It didn't signal at all a complete shift in his world view at all. It wasn't an endorsement of neo-conservatism, but more a belief that the end justifies the means when toppling a tyrannical, murderous despot. It's a rare occasion where I feel he let emotion take the wheel rather than reason, and he was criticised for it, some of it justifiably and eloquently, a lot of it, less so.
Just because large elements of the left felt like it was an unforgivable betrayal and wanted to cancel him doesn't mean that all his progressive past is moot.
I was just thinking the other day about what Hitchens would have to say about the current political climate. One one hand, he recognized fascism better than most and absolutely abhorred it and on the other hand his western chauvinism showed more and more in the lead up to his death. I have absolutely no doubt he would hate Trump, though.
Interesting to note — his last words were "Capitalism. Downfall."
I guess Peterson is more an agnostic who admires aspects of Christianity even if he doesn't practice it.
You're right that I shouldn't have included him in that list. He has awful anti-women, anti-LGBT, white/western supremacist, etc., views much like the others, but he's not a New Atheist.
(And yeah, I'm guilty of thinking guys like Dawkins and Hitchens were pretty smart/correct in my high school/early college years, too. Just as I thought Ayn Rand was onto something.)
Plenty of things hitch said are still factually correct or things I agree with. I'm not changing my worldview because I disagreed with him digging specific holes. But he started to defend the indefensible by moving some of his better goalposts because of what I suspect was a serious and well founded but consuming hatred of sadaam Hussein not a fondness for either Bush.. But Harris isn't someone I ever followed. His more recent positions don't seem as- ahem- nuanced as I remember.
I listened to his podcast because he was supposed to be smart, after listening to him I realized he was an idiot with dumb biases which he pretends not to have. Joe rogan is similar in the sense he's probably a dumb person idea of a smart guy because he's controversial and successful and quotes "facts" but not really, he's just another dumb ass pretending he isn't biased and subjugated by the comfort of white supremacy.
People generally don't have a problem taking liberal stances on things that are not particularly challenging for them. Underlying bigotry that a person has not been in an environment where they are forced to confront it can lay dormant and ignored. It is why cities are still often segregated though nobody would admit to it.
Underlying bigotry can often go one of two ways. Realizing it is a part of you that you need to actively work on and change, or listening to the well spoken individual telling you not only is the way you feel not wrong, it is the others who are the problem here. You can guess which is a lot more attractive for people.
why do people have this odd belief that Hitchens became conservative later in his life, he never did. He always considered himself a leftist and trotskyist. He just felt that many of his comrades on the left, especially post 9/11 were making excuses or justifying Islamic Jihadism and he wasn't having none of that. he hated tyrants and religious autocrats more than anything
Probably because 80% of his public output after 9/11 was clash of civilizations bullshit. Did he ever talk about socialism or anti-Imperialism from 2000 until his death? There was also the very cool time he said women can't be funny. It's not a stretch to posit that if he were alive today he'd be mostly railing about the Islamization of Europe and bitching about SJWs.
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Yup. They use atheism as an excuse for bigotry. Atheists in general should be aware of this trend and call them out on it.
They always resort to the excuse of "I hate all religions, so I'm can't be a bigot." It reminds me of when racists say, "I hate all people equally, so I'm not racist!"
He's very Christian. He just tries his hardest not to admit it on more mainstream platforms.
They all are. Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder. They're all the same. Bigots who use pseudointellectualism or "comedy" as a means of rationalizing their views. It's window dressing in any form.
Lol. Atheist are not a 'group' or organisation. I am atheist simply because of my lack of believe in a God. I have nothing to do with shit stains like Sam Harris. He is not the Atheist Pope and I am in no way responsible of what some bigot says simply because the fact that the one thing we have in common is not believeing in deities.
While I agree with all of this, I also think it's important for us (as in somewhat decent people who also happen to be atheist) to stay visible and call this shit out so as not to let bigots 'represent' atheism, or let religious apologists use them to illustrate how atheists are shit people because they don't believe, and so on. People who do think of atheists as a homogeneous group might not realize the nuances, and the optics might unfortunately have an actual impact on shit.
I'm not saying atheists are a group or responsible. What I'm saying is that people should be aware of the games these kind of people play. They hide behind their lack of belief as an excuse to spout xenophobia. I can see other atheists buying into their reasoning and give them a free pass. It's the reason why I think people like Sam Harris are allowed to get away with it so often.
This guys all encompassing obsession with Muslims is insane.
For those who haven't read it, a long piece abiut how Harris essentially bought his PhD.
https://rhizzone.net/articles/sam-harris-fraud/
https://rhizzone.net/articles/sam-harris-fraud/
If they have to resort to a semantic argument to claim that they're not jerks, they're already behind.
Anyone who defends Sam Harris even in the slightest should watch this. Perfect summary of what kind of a person he really is.
There's a reason the internet atheist movement fed directly into the red-pill bullshit movement, with only the few actually decent, talented folks (contra, hbomberguy, Oliver Thorne) renouncing it and becoming leftist YouTubers instead: most of these folks aren't that smart, and aren't good people.
Thanks for showing your ass, Sam. Hope this turns more people away from this "intellectual." Fuck off, phony.
Ah, never understood why Sam Harris is so popular among certain atheist circles. Granted, I'm not an atheist myself, so the nuance of the situation might escape me, but I imagine there're more interesting and knowledgeable people who don't associate themselves with all kinds of bigots in order to get their ideas across. In any case, we knew for a long time who Harris really is and what people are the majority of his audience.
Man, he fully went down the alt-right sinkhole, didn't he? I liked him about a decade ago, when you used to see him with Hitchens and Dawkins.
I remember reading this a while back and being stunned that some people still consider Harris to be an "intellectual". He hasn't contributed to his field of study since getting his PhD, instead choosing to write bad Pop-Philosophy books (which are heavily criticized by actual philosophers) and books scaremongering about Islam.
As a Black man who grew up in a somewhat affluent, predominantly white area for most of my teenage life, that's pretty much the standard form of bullying. I remember going to a video game tourney night at my high school as like, a freshman or sophmore, and getting goaded constantly by this white kid I vaugely knew without end for hours, doing my best not to show any reaction to his somewhat racist, all around rude comments. Finally when his shit caused me to lose my match in a Melee tourney(the reason I had come to the night aside from spending time with friends - something I had practiced for weeks for) and I, enraged and tired of it grabbed his collar and yelled to explain why the fuck he was even bothering me when I didn't know him, he had the audacity to say "Wow, way to play into stereotypes about angry Black men. Try not to be such a savage monkey, taking everything so seriously all the time. It's all just a joke, bruh."
In a debate with Matt Dillahunty, Jordan Peterson gave him that bullshit that atheists secretly believe in a god and that's how they can be moral. He said a "real" atheist would be like Raskolnikov, the murderer from Crime and Punishment.
Sam Harris has always been a full blown prick.
His defenders were either blind or agreed with him.
His defenders were either blind or agreed with him.
That's all they can do. I grew up in the most racist city in England and I'm all too familiar with those pricks. Take them away from their numbers and their priviledge and you're left with limp-dick cowards.
"Just jokes bro" is their last line of defense before they shit themselves. The only reason they get away with it is cause other white folks look away :/
It's the same for Ben Shapiro or Peterson.
You can talk a lot of shit, but hide it behind an air of sophistication and all of a sudden you've got a bunch of fuckbois claiming you're an intellectual.
I'm just surprised people didn't catch up to Harris' bullshit earlier, despite many people telling them that he is, in-fact a racist, bullshit peddling wanker.
Oh wow, thanks for this share. I'm subbed to Steve Shives (though I mostly watch his Star Trek stuff), but I hadn't even seen this come up in my feed. I guess it conflicted with when I went on vacation. Great video!
I remember when Gaf used to champion this guy loool. These people live for creating meaningless conflict and targets for everything that's "wrong" with the world and modern society. Yesterday it's christians, today it's muslims, tomorrow it's LGBTQ, day after that it's liberals. A lot of preachers are the same way.
Meanwhile all they're doing is talking out of their ass, similar occupation; professional shit talkers
Meanwhile all they're doing is talking out of their ass, similar occupation; professional shit talkers
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It's super fun being an atheist who has to constantly do the whole "But I want nothing to do with those fucking guys" thing. I honestly don't see the point in reading a bunch of opinions/thoughts by someone simply by virtue of the fact that they come to the same conclusion I do about religious claims.
I read interesting and knowledgeable people based on them writing interesting things, rather than their affiliation with things I otherwise believe.
No...
Sam Harris politics have never been progressive. He's an atheist, that's about it.
His books on secular morality are interesting and he became popular because of that. His problematic political/bigoted views didn't become clear till later.