Cambridge students cancel theme party over 'cultural appropriation' fears

Ridicule is an absolutely awful way of making someone change their perspective. It's much more likely to make them even more confident in their own beliefs and it's a very petty strategy that requires no intelligence or maturity to pull off. If you think ridicule is an effective debating strategy then I think you need a bit of a lesson in persuasion...

I'm going to check out king's college London safe spaces and see what they're like. I'm glad my uni has safe spaces for vunerable students who have been affected by cultural appropriation

How dare anybody wear clothing from outside their own culture. People must ONLY dress according to their ethnicity. Fun, sharing, and wearing anything 'foreign' is prohibited. Every time a white Brit wears a sombrero, a Mexican cries. Even if a Mexican sold it to you on vacation, you must not wear it. Got it?

Ridicule isn't about winning hearts and minds. It is about calling out ****wits for being ****wits.

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Ridicule is a perfect way to highlight the stupidity of these people

It's a tried and tested method (which is why some are so against it)

Yet the student body has elected these wowsers to represent it. How can this be if nobody agrees with what they do and say? Are there no sane candidates to vote for?

I'm going to check out king's college London safe spaces and see what they're like. I'm glad my uni has safe spaces for vunerable students who have been affected by cultural appropriation

Good for you, my uni never needed safe spaces for the permanently offended.

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I'm not sure. These people are serious and dangerous, and closer to power than their opponents.

Ridicule is a good weapon for the powerful to use against the powerless. Here I think it might miss the point. If it is OK for an Anglo to wear a sombrero why isn't it OK for an Anglo to wear blackface? If you think it is OK, you are making a serious point and can't just make fun of the other side. If you think those cases are entirely different, why? The jokes are an attempt to dodge this point - banning sombreros seems "obviously" silly, unlike banning blackface, but it's not explained why.

If you are powerful, you don't have to explain why you are squashing someone, but since these far left movements tend to get their way at the moment, if you want to start beating them in the future then you have to persuade people who aren't persuaded now, so you have to explain why they are wrong.


Two problems.

First, decisions are made by those who show up. These people may be a small faction but they're bigger than any other faction. The doesn't care/non-voter population may be much bigger but wins no representation.

Second, they are just taking accepted principles and extending them to the logical conclusion. The Western student left isn't dissident radical, it's ultra-orthodox, i.e. it believes in the state ideology more than the state does.

If you believe that it should be illegal to read The River War out loud you have no grounds for thinking it should be legal for an Anglo to wear a foreign hat. Both things are illegal on grounds that they upset others, after all. If on the other hand you think it shouldn't be illegal to read The River War out loud then you are not opposing a group of dissident "wowsers", you are opposing the law of the land supported by a national consensus.

If on the other hand you think it shouldn't be illegal to read The River War out loud then you are not opposing a group of dissident "wowsers", you are opposing the law of the land supported by a national consensus.

I'd argue it's the other way round it's a good tool for the powerless to use against the powerful (here I'm thinking of the long and proud history of political cartoons for example) but I do understand where you are coming form

But yes the biggest issue is the first one you mentioned decisions are made by those who turn up (for example the UCL BDS being decided by just 18 students(
http://david-collier.com/?p=1863)) and it seem those who 'care' are allowed to be the most vocal

Ridicule is what you subject an already-defeated enemy to, the point not being to persuade anyone of anything, or even to weaken them further, but just to make them unattractive to people on your side, to reduce defections.

Can you give an example of a famous political cartoon in which the truth is spoken to power?

Generally powerful groups simply outlaw ridicule of themselves, as it is almost illegal to ridicule muslims in the UK, and to a lesser extent to ridicule the left.

Even if they don't, weak groups need to be persuasive and ridicule preaches to the choir. People don't laugh at political humour when they don't agree with the politics. Listen to the comedy on Radio 4. It is either non-political, or orthodox social democrat. Why? Because Radio 4 has few right wing listeners.

Ridicule is what you subject an already-defeated enemy to, the point not being to persuade anyone of anything, or even to weaken them further, but just to make them unattractive to people on your side, to reduce defections.

Do you really think that what Churchill wrote is an incitement to hatred? I don't. Reading it is not, therefore, illegal and he will not be charged. If he is charged he should pursue an aggressive defence that ridicules the police for arresting him on those grounds without any real thought and will be found not guilty.

We're talking about being mocked not about 'truth'

But I suggest you look at the old Punch cartoons for examples of how the 'people' deal and ridicule people in power

I cannot agree. People who ban fancy dress parties deserve ridicule, and they certainly are not defeated.

Or Gilray's work. He constantly attacked those in power, as do modern political cartoonists.

If you think that is a problem, as I do, it isn't sufficient to laugh at people who want to ban whites wearing dreadlocks or English-speakers wearing sombreros. Someone who suggested in 1950 that you could be arrested for reading Churchill's books in public would have been considered risible too.

My point is that you will not find ridicule to be an effective tactic.

If society's response is ridicule then in 50 years there will be laws against white English speakers wearing ethnically incongruous clothing.