Thread by @jholbo1

There ought to be a word for the fallacy that all Sam's critics are committing. Hmmmm, how about the 'every true Scotsman is a black hole that eats all other Scotsmen' fallacy (ETSIBHTEAOS - 'ets-ib-teos'). 1/

https://twitter.com/deonteleologist/status/1395005581442703369

It goes like this.
1) behold, some half-baked argument for CRT (or dumb thing DiAngelo or Kendi said.) Just the dumbest version of Woke anyone could dredge up. Seriously.
2) Everything that seemingly isn't this thing, but is on the same 'side', has to be it, by association. 2/

In other words, if someone on the left has made a misstep, there is no way for anyone else on the left not to take that self-same misstep. The worse, the more necessary. Since in the actual world it works differently - the dumber the mistake, the easier to avoid, as a rule - 3/

one might wonder: why would this be? Well, it ain't. The actually right answer is the common sense one: it makes sense if some CRT scholars have said dumb stuff, yet Sam says he considers himself a CRT'er, yet he doesn't want to say the dumb thing. 4/

This is how it's supposed to go in the bright realm of ideas. Try to keep the good and shed the bad. It is not unusual for there to be bad ideas, even very bad ones. If someone says 'you just HAVE to believe this obviously dumb thing' you are allowed to say 'I prefer not'. 5/

Let's be concrete about it. One of the big bugaboos is race essentialism. Allegedly CRT is (ironically) racist since committed to rigid race essentialism. Well let it be so. That is, let it be that some have inadvisably said oversimple or ill-thought things that might be this. 6/

But if so, that only makes it the easier not to do the same. Since you don't want to be racist (duh!), and since it's incredibly easy (seemingly!) to imagine reconstituting (if need be) something CRT-like on a non-dumb, non-bad-essentialist basis, you just do that. 7/

'But that's not fair! You can't go and fix it! That's a No True Scotsman!'
But why would trying to fix a position, to avoid problems with it, be a sort of fallacy?
OK now we need a new one. Underpinning ETSIBHTEAOS is another fallacy. 8/

I call this the 'petitio principii of presumed pandemonic teleology' fallacy (PPPPT). [To pronounce it, just make a raspberry.] Most anti-CRT'ers let it rip with PPPPT three times before breakfast, farting into that same cushion over and over. Man! 9/

Like so. The reason why it seems to them No True Scotsman to fix problems is that they think it's the telos of CRT to go essentially wrong. CRT is supposed to be, by rights, omni-evil and bad and dumb. (Lindsay and Rufo say so!) 10/

So, by trying NOT to go wrong, Sam is betraying the higher essence of CRT, which is to go wrong in the worst way. CRT that's not the worst can't be IT.

But this is question-begging. The left doesn't grant that its ideas are supposed to be wrong, by nature. 11/

But wait there's more!
In all seriousness, the reason why ETSIBHTEAOS doesn't seem like a fallacy to anti-Wokesters is that, under it, they commit the still further, equally classic fallacy I call: 12/

the 'maybe the reason why it looks to you like the left is descending into Orwellian irrationalist groupthink is YOU are the asshole, ever think of that?' fallacy (MRWLTYLLDOIGIYATAETOT). This is pronounced 'Ph'nglui mglw'nafh James Lindsay R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.' 13/

Anti-CRT'ers - anti-Wokesters - are struck that here is (O let's say) this thing Kendi wrote, or DiAngelo, and it seems dumb yet the left is not reacting like the sky is falling. Why aren't they more bothered by this stuff?!

Eh? Maybe we have ... a sense of moral proportion? 14/

A big element of anti-CRT, anti-Woke rhetoric is the allegedly alarming, uncritical tendency on the left to overlook nonsense peddled from the left. But there is a largely exculpatory explanation: namely the left is more bothered by (by its lights) worse stuff from the right. 15/

That is, the only reason that the right can give why the left should be more worried is this very fact that it isn't more worried yet - which is allegedly worrying. But that's not worrying! There's a perfectly innocent explanation. Namely, James Lindsay is an asshole! 16/

Now this seemingly humorous point may be misunderstood. Just because Lindsay is - let's say a troll - is no reason not to police our own side for intellectual rigor. We shouldn't refuse to grant something true just because a troll trolls it.
True! 17/

But the deeper point is still this: somehow the unreceptive reaction of the left to anti-Woke, anti-CRT critique is supposed to be 'telling' as to leftist Groupthink. O, if we were more open-minded and critical we would admit our faults! Since we won't, the West is doomed! 18/

But this is just dumb. All we have learned, if the lesson needed teaching, is right-wing grifters and trolls, out to 'own' the left, make few friends to the left. This quite psychologically unsurprising circumstance does not indicate the left is destroying Western Civ. 19/

We're left with a stack of literature - Kendi, DiAngelo, old CRT articles. Some of it's for sure bad, but probably some is OK. And even if ALL of it were the worst, as the anti-CRT'ers allege, that would just make it the easier to fix. Because fixing the worst looks not hard. 20/

There isn't any 'no, you got it wrong, you can't fix it, you missed your chance - maybe in the next life, sucker!' rule governing intellectual discourse. And there isn't any reason to think the stuff is dangerous, even at its worst. 21/

Anyway, I know anti-CRT'ers love to fling around the names of fallacies, in half-educated fashion. So I hope this thread helps. 22/