'What the hell is going on over there'? WaPo publishes 'legitimately dangerous' hit job on conservatives

We’ve seen plenty of garbage takes from the Washington Post, but holy hell, this one’s got to be one of the most asinine, intellectually lazy, and intellectually dishonest takes we’ve seen yet:

Conservatives say we’ve abandoned reason and civility. The Old South said that, too: https://t.co/DMeEKOCiW9 pic.twitter.com/rxW1D7JM7H

— Post Outlook (@PostOutlook) August 29, 2019

The entire thing is such an exercise in insane logical leaps, we’d be hard-pressed to pick out just one terrible portion. But this ought to give you the gist of Eve Fairbanks’ argument:

These are figures who typically dislike President Trump but often say they’re being pushed rightward — sometimes away from what they claim is their natural leftward bent — by intolerance and extremism on the left. The reasonable right includes people like Shapiro and the radio commentator Dave Rubin; legal scholar Amy Wax and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian academic who warns about identity politics; the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt; the New York Times columnist Bari Weiss and the American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, self-described feminists who decry excesses in the feminist movement; the novelist Bret Easton Ellis and the podcaster Sam Harris, who believe that important subjects have needlessly been excluded from political discussions. They present their concerns as, principally, freedom of speech and diversity of thought. Weiss has called them “renegade” ideological explorers who venture into “dangerous” territory despite the “outrage and derision” directed their way by haughty social gatekeepers.

So it felt frustrating: When I read Weiss, when I listened to Shapiro, when I watched Peterson or read the supposedly heterodox online magazine Quillette, what was I reminded of?

…

Thinking back on those debates, I finally figured it out. The reasonable right’s rhetoric is exactly the same as the antebellum rhetoric I’d read so much of. The same exact words. The same exact arguments. Rhetoric, to be precise, in support of the slave-owning South.

Ah-mazing. Bret Easton Ellis says leftists are often angry, and so did "the proslavery US Telegraph."

Am going to assume Ben Shapiro is thrown in here too b/c there's a WaPo quota to be filled each month complaining about him. pic.twitter.com/eBLWu48e12

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 29, 2019

This level of argumentation is "Hitler was a vegetarian!" It's either rank bad faith or astonishing stupidity, and frankly I don't really care which one.

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 29, 2019

I've really enjoyed the work of @evefairbanks in the past, but this piece is not just outrageous but legitimately dangerous. https://t.co/nF5U5pYwul

— Jeremy Senderowicz (@jsende) August 29, 2019

Outrageous because the quotes she uses to damn contemporary conservatives are so anodyne to make a mockery of the very concept of a limiting principle (seriously, any scientist can now be compared to Josiah Nott under this standard),

— Jeremy Senderowicz (@jsende) August 29, 2019

and dangerous because it completely undercuts the possibility of good-faith discussion or debate. If the most anodyne of terms used by conservatives are off-limits because slaveholders used them too, then there is no vocabulary left for conservatives to use.

— Jeremy Senderowicz (@jsende) August 29, 2019

Which, a cynic might suggest, is the point.

— Jeremy Senderowicz (@jsende) August 29, 2019

Under Fairbanks' standard, we really are elevating "Hitler breathed oxygen" to a supposed rule. Its very unworkability renders it either ill-thought out, or breathtakingly cynical in its selective application. Neither is flattering.

— Jeremy Senderowicz (@jsende) August 29, 2019

(And this is aside from the selective rendition of the ramifications of contemporary cancel culture and the way private figures can be destroyed for expressing the wrong opinions, as well as the casual assumption that conservatives don't face hate. Minor flaws by comparison.)

— Jeremy Senderowicz (@jsende) August 29, 2019

We’d tell the Washington Post to do better, but it’s pretty clear we’d be wasting our breath.

The WaPo writer here is resorting to a fallacy.

So did Hitler.

— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) August 29, 2019

***

Update:

Here @evefairbanks says "The people I talk to most frequently…are conservative. I’m not inclined to paint conservatives as thoughtless bigots."

But 7 days ago:"Sometimes it seems liberals hold themselves to such angelic standards while conservatives are free to be human/evil." https://t.co/WL9lSbfRA1 pic.twitter.com/R5x1VMyxlx

— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) August 29, 2019