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May 29, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:20
Stefan Molyneux: An Open Letter to Corporate Reporters
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So this is a generic piece of feedback for the reporters who are looking for me to comment on this newest theory, I guess, or idea that reporters have in the mainstream media.
to deal with the influence of social media on upcoming political events and also to take down competition that frankly is kind of doing a lot better than they are.
So the theory goes something like this, that there are extremists out there on social media, and they put out arguments or tweets or videos or podcasts that cause a rise in extremism in society.
And of course, this is the argument against free speech, right?
That you put out arguments, and if other people misinterpret them or act badly, that somehow you are responsible.
Like, if you put out a diet book and people don't follow the diet, that somehow you're responsible for them not losing weight.
Now, it's kind of funny for the corporate media as a whole to be doing this, because the corporate media, of course, for years has been pushing the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory that caused a huge amount of anxiety and stress and depression and what's called Trump derangement syndrome and so on.
And so...
So this idea that social media personalities or figures are inciting extremism and so on, it's generally on the right wing and this is kind of what happens when I get these reporters floating around.
So I'm going to put out a series of statements about what it is that I believe.
This is useful to you if you're relatively new.
It's also useful if you haven't heard them kind of accordion crammed into one short package before.
But, okay, first of all, I'm not right-wing.
I'm not right-wing.
I am technically an anarcho-capitalist, which means that I believe in a stateless society.
I accept the value and virtue of a stateless society where property rights are respected.
That is different from an anarcho-communist who believes in a stateless society, but there is no such thing as Property rights, and it shouldn't be hard to figure this out.
I have books on the subject, Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy, available for free on my website.
Very, very good books.
I stand by them now, perhaps even more than ever.
So this idea that I'm some sort of right-wing extremist and so on, nonsense.
I take what is called the NAP, the non-aggression principle, which is you are not to initiate force against other human beings.
You can respond to the initiation of force with self-defense, and that's a moral thing to do, but you cannot and must not and should not morally initiate force against other human beings.
Now, I don't know what you'd call that other than a consistent moral principle that we kind of learn in kindergarten.
Whether you'd call that right-wing or left-wing doesn't really make any sense to me.
It's just a moral principle and that informs and is at the foundation of everything that I do.
From my analysis of politics, to the welfare state, to feminism, to peaceful parenting, to my anti-spanking positions.
It is all founded upon the non-aggression principle.
Now, with regards to this question of extremism, I don't really know what that means, other than if you narrow the Overton window to a very tiny echo chamber, then everything that comes from outside that echo chamber smacks of extremism.
I don't really know what the term means, other than it's just a way of slandering ideas without actually having to engage with the content of those ideas.
But in general, extremism, the way that I would work with the term, is extremism tends to occur when two or more parties have essential and opposing views that they have no way of reconciling.
So you can think of two religious groups that have absolutist and opposing ideas, how can they rationally reconcile those?
Now you can think of scientists who can have opposing foundational ideas, but they reconcile those according to the objectivity and rationality of the scientific So, how do we oppose extremism, when people feel that they have to fight in order to win, and that they can't be a win-win situation?
Well, the way that we do it, of course, is through the promotion of objective rationality.
That's how we reduce the escalation of extremism within our society.
So, if you promote reason, if you promote the universality of empiricism.
If you promote objectivity in the resolution of disputes then you are by definition opposing extremism.
If you can give people a common methodology with which to resolve their disputes Then you are doing everything that you can to oppose extremism.
Extremism is when people panic, they want their way, they escalate, they get hysterical and they will sometimes get violent.
But that's because there is no way to reconcile opposing viewpoints.
Now all those who promote reason are opposing extremism.
All of those who undermine reason are escalating extremism.
So if you look at postmodernism, relativism, subjectivism and so on, these all foundationally attack and undermine our capacity or belief in our capacity to reason objectively.
They attack reason, they attack reality, they attack the validity of the senses, they say that everything is a social construct and we all make up our own rules, there's no such thing as objectivity.
That is a domino fall towards the escalation of extremism because we all need to make decisions individually and in a society.
We are either going to bully or use violence or slander or abuse of some kind or we're going to reason with each other and so as somebody who from the very beginning of my career as a public intellectual I have
steadfastly promoted the objectivity and universality of reason and the validity of the senses, the objectivity of a rational epistemology, I am in very very good conscience with myself and with philosophy with regards to opposing extremism.
I very much I oppose it, and I stand by everything that I have said regarding how we resolve disputes in society.
We have reason, or we have force.
If you're promoting reason, you're diminishing force.
If you're diminishing reason, you are promoting force, whether you know it or not, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Now, one of the ways that the term extremism is used is with regards to anyone who is critical of mass government-sponsored welfare state-attracting immigration.
And if you are critical of mass immigration into Western countries, then you are considered to be an extremist.
Now, factually, this is simply not true.
It cannot be an extremist position to side with the majority.
You may not be right if you side with the majority, but you're certainly not an extremist.
So, as of relatively recently, there are polls that show very clearly that the majority of American voters want less than half the current levels of immigration.
There was a recent poll of 27 countries and in not one of them was there a majority of citizens that supported increased immigration.
And fewer than 15% of the median total of the 27 nation's citizens supported plans, any plans at all, to increase And those countries that have been subjected to the most mass immigration were the ones most hostile to and wishing to reduce immigration levels even further.
So it is a mainstream majority position to wish for or desire a reduction in immigration.
And again, you have to be in a very narrow, tiny echo chamber bubble for this to appear radical to you.
And this is not just on the right, but on the left as well.
There's a significant proportion of people on the left who desperately wish for reduced immigration.
And so the fact that I've been critical of mass immigration does not make me an extremist, again, unless you're willing to go that hysterical route and say that the majority of people in the West are just extremists, which...
I guess you could say, but you've just destroyed the concept.
Extremism.
Extremism is somewhere that's rare, that is on the very outlier of some sort of bell curve, but skepticism towards immigration and a desire for a reduction of mass immigration is not at all an extremist position.
It is right in the center of the bell curve.
It's a little bit more on the right than on the left, but it exists in both spheres.
So this idea is really, really important to understand.
To be critical of immigration, mass immigration, that is generally a lot of people coming for the benefits of the welfare state, a majority of Immigrants in a lot of the countries they come to end up on welfare, and they tend to generally vote for larger and larger governments.
So if you want smaller government, a reduction in the size and power of the state, then immigrants at the moment are kind of a barrier to that because they're going to vote on average.
Again, you can't judge individuals, but on average they're going to vote.
for larger and larger governments.
So that's why those who want larger government want more mass immigration and that's why those who want smaller government want less mass immigration.
So that is not an extremist position but it is portrayed that way so that a narrative of extremism and hostility and negativity and all of that can be portrayed.
Somebody can be portrayed as some sort of extremist for siding with a significant majority of people in the West.
It's the same thing with something that reporters never talk about with regards to me, which is my focus on peaceful parenting.
One of the best things that I do and something that, based upon my inbox, has had the most positive influence on people's lives, people who are parents.
Who have either never started hitting their children, yelling at their children, or they've stopped and apologized to the children, thus building much, much better relationships in the process.
So I have focused very much on peaceful parenting, on negotiation.
I've had parenting experts on the show to talk about all of this.
I've recommended books.
I have written articles on how spanking itself is a violation of the non-aggression I have brought in anti-circumcision arguments and experts to make that case.
Parenting is very, very important.
If we want to build a free world, we have to have children who are negotiated with, who are reasoned with, rather than who are bullied, and have the full sort of crushing historical weight of parenthood poured over them to snuff out their choice and free will.
If you grew up afraid of authority, then you will most likely gravitate towards authority as an adult, because you don't really know what life is like when you reason with people.
So the promotion of peaceful parenting, of negotiating with your children, of avoiding yelling and spanking is something I'm enormously proud of and would do nothing to change.
And I might have even done more of it going back in time.
Now, of course, another issue that comes up is this, again, the term is never defined, it's like extremism.
I think it's purposefully not defined, which is this white supremacist or or white nationalist issue.
Now, I've done, gosh, I think 18 interviews with world-renowned experts in the field of human intelligence.
And in general, and I'll link to it below, but you can visit it anytime you like, it's FDRURL.com forward slash IQ.
FDRURL.com forward slash IQ.
And yes, in that, they talk about differences between various ethnicities in terms of average intelligence.
You never judge any individual, but when you zoom out to groups, there are differences in average IQ.
It's more specific than intelligence, which is G. There are average differences in IQ between ethnicities.
And this is just a fact that we have to accept and deal with if we're going to be rational in the world.
And whites are not at the top of that hierarchy at all, right?
Whites are not at the top of the IQ hierarchy.
So how that makes me a white supremacist when dealing with basic facts that have been about as well established in the social sciences and particularly in the field of psychology As any other metric, IQ has been around for more than a hundred years.
It has been tested almost everywhere in the world.
There is massive amounts of data for it.
It is about the most validated metric in the entire field of the social sciences.
So, and you know, people have talked about it widely on their shows.
There has just been a wide variety of conversations, both from Sam Harris's show when he had Charles Murray on.
I did a show recently about how NBC had talked about country differences in IQ.
This is well accepted in certainly the professional literature.
It is well accepted by anybody who understands these issues and has done any kind of research on it.
And how the fact that whites are kind of in the middle of the distribution when it comes to ethnic differences in IQ, how that makes me a white supremacist or a white nationalist.
Is beyond me, but again, it's not supposed to be anything rational.
It's just supposed to make you think of me badly and therefore reject any exploration of my arguments.
To be clear, you cannot want a stateless society and be a white nationalist.
I mean, that's a contradictory position.
And having other ethnicities in a geographical region is not a violation of the non-aggression principle.
And so the idea that I would support massive government violence to create some sort of purified ethno-state would go against everything that I have stood for in terms of the non-aggression principle and a stateless society.
So it makes no sense.
It's not something that I stand behind.
And What else could I say?
I've never said it.
Now, I guess one thing that people did pick up on is when I did a documentary last year in Poland, I said at the end that Poland is an overwhelmingly white country and I was able to meet up with people without fear of violence.
We just posted on social media, we met, we had great debates all night about philosophy and so on.
And I said, when I go to countries that are more... or try to give speeches in areas that are more, sort of, quote, diverse, well, I face a lot of problems.
I face violence and deplatforming and people attack my audience members and so on.
So, I mean, that's just an empirical fact that I'm processing and working with, but...
Simply stating a fact does not state a prescription.
It is something that I've noted, but the causality is complex.
So people are really grasping at straws when they think that means something that it doesn't.
It's just a fact that I always want to be honest with my audience and that is something that I very much experienced and was kind of important to me.
Here's the thing.
So, I promote philosophy.
I have put out a book recently called Essential Philosophy, dealing with the issues of are we living in a simulation?
What are the rational arguments against determinism and for free will?
What is a great way to prove secular ethics without reference to government edicts or religious commandments and so on?
And one of the earliest books I wrote was called Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
And I wrote that book because I am dead set on... I'm very much committed to fighting against extremism.
And I know that extremism escalates When people have absolute mantras that they cannot reconcile with others.
And so coming up with philosophical proofs of ethics, philosophical proofs of the objectivity of irrational metaphysics and epistemology and so on.
This is all something that I have stood for from the very beginning of my public career and for many decades before that to focus on promoting reason, negotiation, philosophy and debate as opposed to violence and slander and verbal abuse and so on.
So by promoting philosophy I'm fighting extremism at every conceivable turn.
By promoting science, you fight superstition.
By promoting negotiation, you fight against violence.
Because philosophy is a discipline, if you follow it, that causes you to bow every single one of your opinions before the altar of reason and evidence.
And we can only meet and reconcile and negotiate with each other in reality, right?
In objective, universal reality.
Philosophy is a discipline that humbles you.
It is the discipline which allows you to have a conciliatory approach to other people who follow reason.
It is a discipline which brings wisdom and certainty and virtue into people's lives.
So by promoting philosophy, I'm promoting our capacity to reason with and negotiate with each other.
I wrote a book called The Art of the Argument.
Which helps people to understand how best to make arguments in the world and the differences between various different kinds of logic and how to use a syllogism and all of this kind of wonderful stuff because I want us to reason with each other.
There are some crazy beliefs out there.
Beliefs that I would consider extremist.
Like a belief that says all differences in group outcomes result from massive systemic bigotry in society.
That's an extremist position because it's not supported by science and data at all.
Or you could say, I think it's fine to support communism.
That seems to me kind of an extremist position because communism was responsible for the deaths of a hundred million people plus in the 20th century alone.
That seems kind of like an extremist position.
I do push back against what is traditionally characterized as right-wing extremism and I have lots of examples of this where I have discussed with a professor how National Socialism or Nazism was totalitarian, how it was violations of the non-aggression principle, it was violations of private property and free markets and so on and so yes I have pushed back against this considerably and and widely pushed back against anti-semitism considerably and widely
So I don't really know what to say to the people who are trying to lump me in with some sort of right-wing extremist thing, other than if they have anti-rational positions, they don't like my promotion of rationality and critical thinking because it may expose weaknesses.
in their positions.
So I stand by what I have said publicly, and where I have made corrections, I'm happy to have done so, but there are very few and far between.
I stand by what I have said publicly, I stand by what I have said in this particular show, and I stand by philosophy.
Philosophy, reason, evidence, empiricism, universality.
That is our only chance to meet and negotiate with each other in reality.
That is our only chance to meet under the big tent of philosophy and negotiate with each other.
The alternative to that is genuinely violent extremism, and that's what I have always opposed.
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