https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1hpqsor/whats_going_on_with_stephen_fry_going_altright/

Most Based Comments

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Question:Any evidence or source to the claims? Because without context it doesn't sound like he went "alt right", it sounds like he just woke up and realized the damage that has been caused by the years of what he used to believe in.You're making me like Fry more if anything now that he's based and isn't playing imaginary anymore.Edit: The amount of cope on reddit is hilarious. Y'all need to get some lives in the New Year. The same potato brains bitching about Musk and Trump and attacking people for common sense issues. There's reasons the rest of the world doesn't believe your nonsense. And it's because you echochamber bots are insane. (-92)

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Answer: he hasn't.Where is your evidence that he's "going alt-right"? Going on a shitty podcast doesn't mean he's "gone alt-right." It means he's willing to talk to people he doesn't necessarily agree with on a lot of issues. He's always been an ardent supporter of talking to all kinds of people.I haven't listened to the episode of Triggernometry that he was on, but I would caution against some knee jerk response to carefully curated responses to decontextualized quotes pulled out of a larger conversation. Stephen Fry is a vocal free speech proponent, and they were having a conversation about some of the challenges for free speech in the world today. Regardless of what's said - that's an area that is ripe for twisting and misrepresentation. On the podcast, he was asked a question by a gay activist who opposes the organization Stonewall, of which he is a former employee. Levi Pay asked Fry how he could support Stonewall, to which Fry responded, "Do I? I am not sure I do support them"... (316)

He's a Zionist mate, you can't get more right wing than supporting Nazis. (-74)

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I don't think his opinions have changed that drastically.Fry is gay and grew up during a time when that was very much not ok, indeed he described it "a secret horror swelling inside him", plus he's seen many people die during the AIDS crisis. Not to mention his bipolar disorder, struggles with suicidality, etc etc. Fry strikes me as an incredibly empathetic individual for whom a lot of his kindness is born out of the ability to personally relate to struggles. (If you haven't read/listened to his autobiography, it's an incredibly moving tale, but definitely not light reading).I may be biased but I just absolutely don't see someone like that flipping his worldview around in terms of support for minorities or leftie causes or whatever else.It's important to remember that culture has moved incredibly quickly on stuff like trans rights compared to gay and black rights in the previous century. (Yes, I know it may not feel like it, and I agree it can feel painfully slow, but it's true just... (97)

Steven Fry has never been left wing in any way lmao, what are you on about? (-37)

Angriest Comments

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It would appear Fry is taking the free speech position, that every opinion is valid and open discussions should be able to be had about all positions. I would guess this is how he got tossed in with the far right "free speech absolutists" like Musk and other fascists who don't like it when people call them out for being fascist. Blaming the left also has serious paradox of tolerance vibes.In the end, free speech is a very tricky subject. While I would tend to agree with Fry that open and honest discussion is important, the practical/utilitarian side of me realizes that some opinions and positions are so vile and dangerous that no civilized society should entertain them. The open and honest discussion should begin and end with, "Frick that opinion and frick you if you actually hold that opinion."That's the rub, though. While it is a dangerous and slippery slope to allow governments to decide what speech falls into this category and therefore shouldn't be allowed, it is very much the re... (0)

This is true, but it seems to me that one key problem is that this idea has been weaponized. Activists spent decades making the case for equal rights for LGBT, women or black people, and eventually they'd convinced everybody so thoroughly that even to be called sexist, racist or homophobic was devastating. Opposition to them had been pushed into the 'vile and dangerous' territory.But a whole generation only experienced the tail end of that, and took away the wrong lesson: the way to win an argument wasn't to engage in good faith and make your case, it was just to declare your opponent to be vile and dangerous and yell that they had to be cast out of society. They never actually attempted persuasion.And it worked...for a while. They called people racist or sexist or homophobic for questioning fairly generic public policy or positions, with increasingly tenuous connections to any kind of real 'oppression'. They harassed people and chased them right off the internet for jokes in poor t... (16)

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Small, but not 0. Just like surgical intervention for trans-identifying minors, violence by undocumented migrants, and so many other issues. Each side needs to police the most extreme opinions on that side. As long as the left is unwilling to do so, the fringe cases will be pushed into the mainstream as examples of the slippery slope of leftist ideology. (2)

You have to kind of immerse yourself in the trans mindset in order to understand the "trans people in sports" issue. The moment I came out as trans, my parents struck my name from the will and made sure I would inherit nothing. My entire family instantly cut contact and never invited me to anything ever again. I've got 4 year old cousins running around out there who I've never met and I don't even know their names. When my elderly grandma had the nerve to talk to me over the phone they canceled her landline (!!!!!) so I would have no way to defend or explain myself, so I would remain isolated.My dad punched me last time I saw him. Horrible stuff. Only my mom had a change of heart because she was diagnosed with cancer and has only a few years left to live. I have been sexually assaulted on buses, a train and in a bar by men who noticed I was trans and DEMANDED that they be allowed to check if I was a real woman, by groping me in the crotch. There was nothing I could do to physically ... (4)

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There's definitely a sort of unrecoverable tailspin these guys get into.I think it's analogous to what can happen when a dual engine plane loses an engine. One wing suddenly gets a bunch of new drag, and untrained pilots will instinctually increase thrust to the other engine, but the thrust asymmetry can cause the plane to enter a rapid spin/dive into the ground.When these public commentators make an out-of-lane comment on trans rights or Israel, they suddenly get huge resistance from the progressive side and a bunch of new boosters on the conservative side.In a plane you feather the prop on the dead engine, and maybe even reduce thrust in the remaining one to balance things out.But instead of taking a second to think, maybe apologize, and give things a second to settle, these guys lean hard into the "free speech champion" role and suddenly find themselves popping out of the clouds upside-down heading at top speed into the "YOU CAN'T CANCEL ME" mountains. (1896)

I was 100% with you on the analogy until:This isn't about thinking. Online mobs do not think, they attack people en masse, without any care in the world about the matters at hand.There's a reason why online mobbing has been also named online lynching: it's the same dynamic of outrage snowballing into a complete avalanche, where everyone is trying to one up one another.That's how we go from mild criticism to death threats and bomb threats in 24h, it is completely out of any control.You think when it involves a person you can talk to in real life. Online, it is counter-productive to think, it will never work in your favor to engage in a debate or discussion with a mob.This only works in the pre-social media era. There isn't a single instance where someone apologizing worked out for them, they're simply crossed out permanently whenever they've been judged as persona non-grata by the social media crowd.Apologizing only marks them as easy targets for more social media abuses directed at ... (2)