I promise you this is not bait. I just feel like valid ideas prevail over shit ideas in an open an honest debate. Maybe I'm being naive, and I'll stop posting for now, but that's just my opinion.
I know you've been piled on, but I wanted to address this specific line of thinking. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt of being naive, I've thought the same things before I knew better.
The idea of "valid ideas prevail over shit ideas" in this sort of "marketplace of ideas" is the same faulty thinking that "let the market decide" comes from. It assumes that the "marketplace" is an even playing field and that all ideas are equal and should be treated as equally valid until another idea comes along to "disprove" it like a science. In reality, the playingfield is
not level; ideas are not equal in merit, and can, infact, be extremely dangerous in the wrong minds. The trick is that people will sneak in illegitimate ideas for consideration inside a trojan horse of "legitimacy".
This quote from Lee Atwater is the perfect example of obfuscation under the guise of "ideas". People who try to push these trojan horses through do so by making people believe that they just have to "hear them out", how "you should expose yourself to new ideas!". They hide their ideas under layers of other seemingly innocuous ideas, rather than make their ideas an
extension of previous ones. All they've done is repackaged their shit in something more palatable so you won't notice. It's "black people are uncontrollable animals" transformed to "it's just something about their culture, you know?" It's "trans people are abominations" morphed into "What a weirdo, amirite? Nobody would fuck her."
People like Milo, and so many of the "alt-right" (basically neo-nazis) hide behind the guise of "discussion", claiming their spreading ideas like "don't coddle students", or "political correctness, ew, say it like it is", which are all legitimate ideas in some form or another that could absolutely use discussion.
But rarely are they interested in anything but spreading their toxic ideas trojan'd inside their claims of "discussion".
Now, taking all this into account, I want you to take the time to think about what you've been arguing here, and realize that you've been justifying a man coming onto a stage to harass and abuse an individual. There is certainly a discussion to be had about how Universities should handle giving platforms to controversial figures/ideas. But that is clearly not the case. There are plenty of more legitimate conservative figures out there that can give an idea worthy of discussion and can do so without being a terrible person. This is not one of those cases.
I'm not even talking about just GAF. I'm talking in general. College campuses, churches, workplaces, forums, comment sections, anywhere people gather, there are insidious assholes who use our tactic of encouraging inclusiveness to secure a spot for themselves at the table, ensuring that we don't use their tactics of exclusion against them. They cling to some imaginary moral highground wherein they can continue finger wagging at anybody who dares to call out the sheer stupidity and hypocrisy of asking for tolerance of intolerance.
These people are virulent, poisonous, infectious, and they need to be excised immediately. A man like Milo is a parasite who only exists to spread disease, and anyone playing host to him is a fucking idiot and should be treated as a leper.
I remember reading an article from a sociologist, I can't remember his name, but he basically talked about how a tactic of the right is to co-opt the tactics of the left and use it in the way they
think the left uses it for. For example, when it became less acceptable to be openly racist, all of a sudden "What, I'm a racist? Well, if that's the case, then
you're being racist against me!" because the argument. The left's ideal of "people should have equal speech" with its nuance of hate speech, platforms, and bigotry, becomes "well, now you're suppressing
my free speech!"