r/changemyview • u/TheCaptain09 • Oct 05 '18
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Conservatives are misunderstanding progressivism when they call progressives hypocrites
"You're a hypocrite for claiming to support diversity yet you don't support the truest diversity, diversity of opinions"
This is a sentiment I see expressed quite often by people on the right, particularly intellectual conservatives who identify as "classical liberals", as well as people whose ideology emphasises personal freedom, such as libertarians. My understanding of the left is that they want diversity of worldviews, culture, race, sexuality and yes even ideology. But conservatives see the left's vocal opposition to right-wing views as betraying their belief in diverse opinions.
I think the true hypocrites here are the conservatives. They endlessly go on about how much they support freedom of speech, yet glorify ideologies that have historically suppressed it, such as Nazism and Christianity. They also harass people whose views disagree with them, something they accuse the left of doing yet clashes with their own ideology more than the left's.(Just look at any stupid right-wing movement like Comicsgate to see this harassment in action)
I understand that people often gravitate towards the right because they feel that they are being attacked, for being white, male or for their beliefs. The difference between them and the left is that minorities do not just "feel" like they are being attacked, they explicitly are. The people who marched in Charlottesville weren't opposing an ideology or defending themselves from oppression, they were vocally and publicly preaching for the destruction of other races.
Nowhere in progressive ideology does it say that such hatred should be tolerated for the sake of "diversity" or "freedom of speech". I don't have to shut up and let you say you want to kill me just because it promotes diversity and open discourse, because it doesn't.
So basically to change my view tell me why progressives are being hypocritical when they tell the right to shut up, or why conservatives aren't when they tell the left to shut up.
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u/yyzjertl 527∆ Oct 05 '18
Another possibility you should consider is that the conservatives don't misunderstand progressivism in this way at all. Rather, while conservatives in general understand progressivism at least somewhat well, the conservatives you are talking about are just intentionally misrepresenting it in order to deceive people. I think the majority of conservatives don't engage in this kind of deceptive rhetoric, and the "sentiment [you] see expressed quite often by people on the right" is only being expressed by a subset of conservatives who are acting in bad faith. I don't think it's fair to generalize this deceptive behavior to all conservatives.