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While there is a correlation between conservative views and a lack of education, I think it's unreasonable to suggest that racism is a consequence of low levels of education. Going to university doesn't stop you being racist. There have always been academics  willing to put science and philosophy to work in the service of racist ideologies.

The president is clearly a very stupid man, but he's a stupid man with a very expensive education. His appeal to racists is obvious. But while ~69% of his support in 2016 came from people without a college education, ~70% of the US population doesn't have a college degree. He was no more or less popular among "uneducated" people. Incidentally. "Equality of outcomes" is a goal you will almost never hear a left-wing person discussing, it's a conservative/alt-right fantasy that Marxist academics are determined to achieve equality by disadvantaging truly talented, high-IQ people (who, by sheer coincidence, tend to be wealthy white men) in favour of less able candidates (who by sheer coincidence, tend not to be).

What "Equality of Opportunity not Equality of Outcome" means is "Against racism. Against doing literally anything to tackle racism." This is, unfortunately, fairly a standard right-wing belief. Not something that makes you a Nazi apologist. See: I can tell the difference.

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Well, "the end of racial discrimination in the legal system" acknowledges there currently is racial discrimination, which is more than many right-wingers or libertarians would grant you. And those, however I personally disagree with them, still have very little to do with actual Nazis. The fact that some Nazis pose as moderates and hijack their ideas to gain legitimacy is a different issue - it would be relevant only if you don't take what WHAM is saying at face value.

If I can give you an example of what I mean - the South African government provides financial support for black-owned businesses. Clearly, in a literal sense, this is racially discriminatory. On the other hand, white people (a small minority) still hold the vast majority of South Africa's land and wealth. So, depending on your interpretation, ending this 'discriminatory' law would reinforce the existing racial inequality.

I'm not saying this is WHAM's view, of course. I'm just explaining why most of the right-wingers and libertarians I can think of claim to be in favour of fairness and equality, and against racial discrimination.

It's all right, Ali. We can keep up the status quo, where one side act like children angrily calling people names, while the other side keep a cool head and act like adults.
Keep calm and carry on.

I remain unimpressed by the fact that you can adopt a lofty, disinterested tone. Being calm and polite isn't the same thing as being rational.

We ought to have an emotional reaction towards racism, inequality, mass murder. It's not irrational to feel passionately about politics. If you can look at the holocaust and keep a "cool head" - I deeply mistrust you.

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But then you must think that WHAM is being dishonest in the statement I quoted. Is that what you're implying? Because I don't see how anyone who sincerely supports "equal opportunity regardless of race, and the end of racial discrimination in the legal system" can also be a Nazi sympathizer. The two seem mutually exclusive to me.

I'm sure WHAM believes in equality and fairness - everyone will tell you they do. For some people "ending racial discrimination" means not fighting the economic inequalities that exist between white and black people.

I don't think WHAM is a card-carrying Nazi, if that's what you mean. He has simply diminished and made excuses for Nazis, while also advancing authoritarian views and misrepresenting left-wing groups. Technically, there's a difference between Nazis and Nazi apologists - but I don't want to spend time around either of them. I'm also not keen on treating WHAM civilly. Because he'll insist that his youthful dalliance with Nazi apologia is a thing of the past, and a moment later say "I don't believe I have done anything wrong."

It will shock you to learn that I have also aged over the same period of time. I've even changed some of my views.

But if I had ever diminished the significance of the holocaust, I would apologise for it. If I had just changed my avatar to an SS uniform as a 'joke' I would apologise for it. If I had earlier today defended myself against criticism by sharing a comic strip from a far-right cartoonist - I would be excruciatingly embarrassed and sincerely ashamed.

You can't expect acceptance and forgiveness when all you've done is express the same views in politer and more nuanced terms.

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Difference between people like you and people like me is that I expect there to be inviolable evidence of wrongdoing before a punishment should be laid out, rather than just deciding that someone should be labelled as evil and thus all they say is also automatically evil.

I'm also a critic of the British Empire, US Imperialism and the Soviet Union. I don't think having opposed Nazism makes you a saint. But there's a difference between a morally nuanced reading history and what you said (many years ago) - which is that if the Nazis had won, the Axis forces would be just as demonised now. Nazism represents a distinct and unique evil. There have been many other atrocities in human history, but *weighing* the horrors of the holocaust against others achieves nothing apart from far-right PR.

That cartoonist is not automatically wrong about everything, just because he's a holocaust denier and a so-called 'race realist'. I'm sure he can tell his arse from his elbow. But he is extremely likely to be wrong about everything pertaining to Nazism - because he shares Nazi beliefs.

I don't think I've called for anyone to be punished without evidence of wrongdoing. Perhaps the nub of our disagreement is that I think endorsing Nazi ideas is wrongdoing?

People actually fighting for freedom and equality, such as the more stable parts of the BLM movement, are in my opinion on the more righteous path than someone like Antifa or Qanon. My short view on the BLM movement is that it has a very good underlying cause and idea (equal opportunity regardless of race, and the end of racial discrimination in the legal system among others).

Alright! Now can we please all agree that nobody who sincerely believes the above is anywhere near a Nazi sympathizer?

No. I don't agree when the person in question has expressly said that the Nazis were no worse than the opposition in WW2, that criminals are sub-human and that only weak-minded people are horrified by Nazi symbolism. When the person in question JUST shared a political comic strip from a cartoonist who endorses holocaust denial. No, obviously not.

To be "horrified" of an old symbol of a dead ideology is, to me, a sign of weakness of the mind and spirit. It's a fear of ghosts.

It's an insult to the victims of Nazi genocide to suggest that people who are horrified by the SS logo are weak in mind and spirit. Unlike the swastika, it has no meaning beyond Nazism. "Weak and mind and spirit" is authoritarian bullshit - I see no reason that weakness should be despised.

Anyone who draws a parallel between BLM protesters and the far-right extremists who just stormed the Capitol is either a fascist sympathiser or an idiot. Out of respect for Snarky's request, I'm being as civil as I can towards WHAM: I don't think he's an idiot.

Oh, you're going to call me a Nazi? Well maybe I'll change my avatar to a Nazi-avatar and continue expressing authoritarian views and far-right apologia? CHECKMATE!

That's a crude and tendentious misrepresentation of what BLM demonstrators and similar groups are saying.

Geez, you just can't say that racists and anti-racists are the same without people jumping down your throat. Whither civility?

It looks like Trump's Twitter account has now been permanently suspended.

I'm glad the committee for shutting stable doors finally decided to take action.

It's as ridiculous to draw an equivalence between BLM protesters and MAGA nutbars as it is to imply that Trump's populism meant that he had the support of the majority of Americans. He never did.

I think it's correct to regard an effort to change the curriculum as a politically motivated act, but it's huge mistake to regard efforts to keep the curriculum the same as politically neutral. They're both political, and neither of them shows greater respect towards abstract notions of literary or cultural value. Regarding the curriculum as if it were a monolithic and unchanging syllabus of Great Texts is an appealing conservative fantasy, but it's also clearly nonsense.

I agree, we shouldn't necessarily hide books which are deemed 'dangerous'. But which books does society deem dangerous? Is anyone afraid of Homer or Shakespeare? Or are the readers of the Wall Street Journal terrified that anti-racist (or pro-gay or pro-trans) literature will appear on the syllabus?

As an adult, I read the Odyssey in Chapman's 17th C. English translation, which I suspect is not particularly faithful. It maintained the verse, but Romanized the gods. I get the impression the translator made an effort to Christianize the representation of Jove/Zeus, casting the other gods as facets of him. At school we might have heard the story of the Cyclops, but we certainly didn't engage with Homer's writing at any point.

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Seriously, though, as the above poster also said, you can't be a teacher of literature and say nonsense like "I'd rather die before teaching Homer again" & "hahahaha, I finally managed to take Homer out!" - you clearly lack the skills for the job. If kids don't get it, your job is to teach them what of value is there; if you don't see anything of value, it'd be fine if you weren't teaching literature but not fine as things are.

Yes, but the important thing is that no one is saying that. What they're saying (even if you disagree with it) is entirely different in context. It's not a direct or representative quote, and I would expect a literature enthusiast to take more care about what they read. You're tilting at windmills (see, I've read books).

I don't see how posting on a forum is any different to tweeting from an account with relatively few followers to very little engagement. Even if the teachers had behaved irresponsibly (they haven't), digging up the tweets of people with no profile and publishing them in a national newspaper can be ethically troubling even when the content of the tweets is genuinely disturbing.

To be clear, the Odyssey could have a place in any literature class, but it definitely does not have a place on lots of curriculums. This is an absurd and calculated overreaction from anti-intellectual conservatives.

I disagree. I think that it is a vital part of a curriculum in the west. However, using the internet outrage phenomenon as a weapon simply because I disagree with you or someone else on this matter would be beastly, that is a certainty. That I do agree with you; that it is quite simply not good tone to mark out civilians as targets on the internet â€" not now, not at this time, not now that the internet has become what it is.

I disagree with you, Reiter, but I respect the fact that you're taking a consistent stance against online abuse.

However, it's simply a matter of fact that the Odyssey is not on every western curriculum. Many people (including me) went through school without studying it, and society has not collapsed so far.

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I don't see how posting on a forum is any different to tweeting from an account with relatively few followers to very little engagement. Even if the teachers had behaved irresponsibly (they haven't), digging up the tweets of people with no profile and publishing them in a national newspaper can be ethically troubling even when the content of the tweets is genuinely disturbing.

To be clear, the Odyssey could have a place in any literature class, but it definitely does not have a place on lots of curriculums. This is an absurd and calculated overreaction from anti-intellectual conservatives.

I'm not aware of anyone flatly refusing to teach Shakespeare or Homer because they're too stupid or too bored, or because they want to replace it with something 'lame'. It's insulting for you to insist on that, and it's bizarre that you keep repeating the article's false assertion that classics are being banned. You seem to be deliberately ignoring what the people you disagree with have actually written.

We can all get nice and cross about imaginary scenarios that upset us, but whipping up anger against real people over utter flim-flam is dangerous.

Okay, so are we saying that "cancel culture" is acceptable when educators are abused for de-contectualised tweets that got 3 likes, but unacceptable when educators try to influence the curriculum they teach?

The Odyssey wasn't on the curriculum when I went to school (but I have read it because it wasn't banned). I don't see why removing it should scandalise anyone.