Everyone but far-left feels intimidated into silence, new survey finds

[Michie]

Even moderate liberals and Democrats are wary of expressing their opinions, according to respondents.

July 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Conservatives, centrists, and moderate liberals all feel afraid of speaking their minds for fear of reprisals, according to a disturbing new survey released this week by YouGov and the Cato Institute.


Sixty-two percent of respondents find that the current “political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive,” with almost a third fearful that expressing disfavored opinions could get them fired, according to the survey.

Conservatives and Republicans felt self-censorship most intensely at 77 percent, though majorities of Democrats, Independents, centrist liberals, and moderates also answered that they felt the same way. “Strong liberals” were the only category in which a majority (58 percent) said they felt safe openly expressing themselves.

Every group feels less safe in speaking out than they did when the question was asked in 2017, with the most pronounced shifts occurring left-of-center. Only “strong conservatives” remained relatively constant, shifting just one percentage point.

The survey also found differences in how the two ends of the ideological spectrum would pressure others for contrary politics. Half of “strong liberals” endorsed the prospect of firing business executives for personally contributing to President Donald Trump’s re-election, whereas 36 percent of “strong conservatives” would do the same to executives who donated to former Vice President Joe Biden.

Continued below.
Everyone but far-left feels intimidated into silence, new survey finds

 

[royal priest]

Even moderate liberals and Democrats are wary of expressing their opinions, according to respondents.

July 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Conservatives, centrists, and moderate liberals all feel afraid of speaking their minds for fear of reprisals, according to a disturbing new survey released this week by YouGov and the Cato Institute.


Sixty-two percent of respondents find that the current “political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive,” with almost a third fearful that expressing disfavored opinions could get them fired, according to the survey.

Conservatives and Republicans felt self-censorship most intensely at 77 percent, though majorities of Democrats, Independents, centrist liberals, and moderates also answered that they felt the same way. “Strong liberals” were the only category in which a majority (58 percent) said they felt safe openly expressing themselves.

Every group feels less safe in speaking out than they did when the question was asked in 2017, with the most pronounced shifts occurring left-of-center. Only “strong conservatives” remained relatively constant, shifting just one percentage point.

The survey also found differences in how the two ends of the ideological spectrum would pressure others for contrary politics. Half of “strong liberals” endorsed the prospect of firing business executives for personally contributing to President Donald Trump’s re-election, whereas 36 percent of “strong conservatives” would do the same to executives who donated to former Vice President Joe Biden.

Continued below.
Everyone but far-left feels intimidated into silence, new survey finds

This is because they are intimidating us into silence. Agree with them or be cancelled.

 

[Endeavourer]

The left has done its best to dehumanize the other side. The trickle of slander.....from the "tolerant" left.

Speaking up now has consequences. If you don't lose your job you may lose your life.

Prominent Black Trump Supporter Murdered in Milwaukee | News/Talk 1130 WISN | Dan O'Donnell

 

[Silmarien]

Note that the survey says that 42% of the left also feels intimidated into silence.

Which sounds about right.

 

[archer75]

Not surprising.

 

[RushMAN]

This is because they are intimidating us into silence. Agree with them or be cancelled.

Agree. At my job I have to clam up with everyone seeming liberal and I hate it.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Even moderate liberals and Democrats are wary of expressing their opinions, according to respondents.

July 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Conservatives, centrists, and moderate liberals all feel afraid of speaking their minds for fear of reprisals, according to a disturbing new survey released this week by YouGov and the Cato Institute.

I feel less safe. I have long been opinionated but I am much more cautious about it now. I don't want the jack-booted modern SA thugs fire-bombing my house. And if they knew my address they just might.

 

[LizaMarie]

I feel less safe. I have long been opinionated but I am much more cautious about it now. I don't want the jack-booted modern SA thugs fire-bombing my house. And if they knew my address they just might.

This. ^^

 

[Gnarwhal]

Even moderate liberals and Democrats are wary of expressing their opinions, according to respondents.

July 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Conservatives, centrists, and moderate liberals all feel afraid of speaking their minds for fear of reprisals, according to a disturbing new survey released this week by YouGov and the Cato Institute.


Sixty-two percent of respondents find that the current “political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive,” with almost a third fearful that expressing disfavored opinions could get them fired, according to the survey.

Conservatives and Republicans felt self-censorship most intensely at 77 percent, though majorities of Democrats, Independents, centrist liberals, and moderates also answered that they felt the same way. “Strong liberals” were the only category in which a majority (58 percent) said they felt safe openly expressing themselves.

Every group feels less safe in speaking out than they did when the question was asked in 2017, with the most pronounced shifts occurring left-of-center. Only “strong conservatives” remained relatively constant, shifting just one percentage point.

The survey also found differences in how the two ends of the ideological spectrum would pressure others for contrary politics. Half of “strong liberals” endorsed the prospect of firing business executives for personally contributing to President Donald Trump’s re-election, whereas 36 percent of “strong conservatives” would do the same to executives who donated to former Vice President Joe Biden.

Continued below.
Everyone but far-left feels intimidated into silence, new survey finds

The biggest problem I see with silence on this scale, is that it makes it easier for the left to commit voter fraud in November because nobody will know how anyone else is voting.

All or most of us conservatives are just hoping there really is a silent majority and that Trump wins in November, but it would seem the Dems could tamper with the elections all they want and we'd never know whether the results were honest or not because we have no way of knowing how many of us are really out there.

I feel less safe. I have long been opinionated but I am much more cautious about it now. I don't want the jack-booted modern SA thugs fire-bombing my house. And if they knew my address they just might.

I'm absolutely with you. I've never been one to offer information about myself unsolicited, even to close friends, but now I'm seeing that it's no longer just a preference but a necessity to keep private. I'll never lie about my beliefs, so if a coworker asks me about my politics, or my faith, I'll answer them honestly. But I would almost guarantee my job would be at stake if it was known that I am conservative, let alone a Catholic (and therefore social) conservative. Especially with some of the characters I work with.

 

[Endeavourer]

Note that the survey says that 42% of the left also feels intimidated into silence.

Which sounds about right.

Yet the conservatives are not the ones rioting and burning down the cities. Nor do they control big tech.

 

[archer75]

Yet the conservatives are not the ones rioting and burning down the cities. Nor do they control big tech.

There's a new split coming.

Used to be conservative / liberal.

Now it's going to be thise groups split up and reorganized into crazy/sane.

 

[JeffreyLloyd]

I know I would 100% face negative feedback if I put ANY kind of Trump gear at my office desk. But we have a 6' cut out of Obama on our main floor.

 

[archer75]

I remember working in an office a long time ago. People had all kinds of stuff on their desks. Little religious cards...Buddha statue...flag...flag of the country their ancestors came from and American flag...now, I'd be afraid to have anything.

 

[Silmarien]

Yet the conservatives are not the ones rioting and burning down the cities. Nor do they control big tech.

You'll notice that I didn't say that 42% of leftists felt intimidated into silence by conservatives. Doesn't matter how far left you are; step out of line, and the woke cult will declare you an evil fascist.

 

[Endeavourer]

You'll notice that I didn't say that 42% of leftists felt intimidated into silence by conservatives. Doesn't matter how far left you are; step out of line, and the woke cult will declare you an evil fascist.

When conservatives start burning down cities and censoring speech through the tech giants, and getting people fired for not being their version of "woke", those leftists might have something to worry about.

 

[Silmarien]

When conservatives start burning down cities and censoring speech through the tech giants, and getting people fired for not being their version of "woke", those leftists might have something to worry about.

Er... I am a leftist who thinks that transgender ideology is a totalitarian cult founded on misogynistic narcissism and internalized transphobia.

Leftists with such views generally aren't concerned about getting censored by conservatives.

 

[chevyontheriver]

When conservatives start burning down cities and censoring speech through the tech giants, and getting people fired for not being their version of "woke", those leftists might have something to worry about.

Not saying this could never happen, but the thing is that NOW it's leftists who might not be leftists in exactly the proper way of the moment who are concerned. Once upon a time not that long ago in America it was heard that "I might not agree with you, but I will defend your right to say it". That is no longer true in America. Speech crime and thought crime are real in America.

 

[Endeavourer]

Er... I am a leftist who thinks that transgender ideology is a totalitarian cult founded on misogynistic narcissism and internalized transphobia.

Could you please explain what you mean? I understand there is some turmoil within the movement for LGBT rights with the T's, and I would like to understanding that situation better.

Leftists with such views generally aren't concerned about getting censored by conservatives.

As a percentage, how many leftists do you think hold similar views on transgender ideology as you? What percent of leftists would distinguish the rights the Ts are demanding are different than the LGB rights? I've been seeing "LGBT" in all of the discussions, which creates the impression to people who are not following the distinctions closely they are all allied together.

It's a very interesting dynamic that you raise here.

 

[Silmarien]

Could you please explain what you mean? I understand there is some turmoil within the movement for LGBT rights with the T's, and I would like to understanding that situation better.

Sure. The problem is that rather than being a standard civil rights movement, the transgender movement has very controversial ideology concerning the relationship between sex and gender, whereby a person has a subjective "gender identity" that may or may not match their biological sex, and it is this subjective impression rather than one's body which determines whether one is a man or woman. The conflict is most severe with second wave feminists, many of whom take issue with the idea that a man can "know" what it means to feel like a woman, much less turn around and redefine womanhood in a way that makes it all about himself and his validation instead of being about the sex-based rights of actual women. It's viewed as a new form of male entitlement. Unfortunately, according to transgender ideology, if one does not accept the claim that trans-women are women, one is denying their existence, which is a hate crime and literal violence. So we are not allowed to have a conversation on the ways in which the ideology is affecting women's rights, since it's bigotry to believe that women even exist as a discrete political class.

The conflict with gay rights is two-fold. Firstly, because assent to the claim that trans-women are women and trans-men are men is enforced, it has become controversial in some circles for a straight man or a lesbian woman to say that they are not interested in dating trans-women (even those who are pre-op, because male genitalia become female genitalia if the person it's attached to identifies as a woman). The fall-out has been most severe within the lesbian community, where women are being told that they are bigots for not accepting people they perceive as male as sexual partners. I don't know if this is common outside of SJW spaces, but I have heard of people being kicked off lesbian dating sites for specifying that they are only interested in natal women.

The other issue with gay rights involves the way that gender dysphoria (the condition genuine transsexuals suffer from) in children is being treated today. Before the transgender issue became so politicized that research was effectively shut down, it was observed that the majority of people who were dysphoric in early childhood eventually ceased identifying as the opposite sex and turned out to be homosexual instead. These days, instead of trying to push children who have gender dysphoria back to identifying as their biological sex, and having them transition as adults if the condition persists, the preference is to affirm them in their "gender identity" from a very young age, despite the evidence that this is probably not the best way to treat dysphoria in young childhood. Some people see this as a new form of gay conversion therapy, since a number of people who would have grown up to be gay are now being pushed towards transitioning to live as the opposite sex.

Children's rights is an issue as well, since there are serious questions about whether a teenager can meaningfully consent to things like hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery. For girls, it's particularly problematic, since the number of adolescent girls who are identifying as male has skyrocketed, which is frightening in part because women's healthcare, especially when it comes to mental health, is not very well researched, so a lot of these girls are probably suffering from depression and other issues with self-identity instead of gender dysphoria. Some will actually do things like get double mastectomies as teenagers and then change their minds after the fact--there's an interesting lawsuit in Britain right now involving a case like that.

But any criticism is automatically transphobia, which ignores the fact that many of the left wing critics were trans allies who eventually noticed all of the underlying issues with the ideology. It's simply taken for granted that all criticism is motivated primarily by bigotry. It's a strange situation where something that I think is very good about the left--concern for marginalized people--has been combined with kneejerk emotionalism and the drive to deplatform any voice that has been deemed unacceptable, leading to an unwillingness to even address the complexity of the question and the absurdity of how things are playing out.

As a percentage, how many leftists do you think hold similar views on transgender ideology as you? What percent of leftists would distinguish the rights the Ts are demanding are different than the LGB rights? I've been seeing "LGBT" in all of the discussions, which creates the impression to people who are not following the distinctions closely they are all allied together.

It's a very interesting dynamic that you raise here.

This would be impossible to answer, since a lot of people who hold similar views are not going to say so publicly. I don't think it's that common, though, since most people don't really know what's going on and just assume that the most oppressed group has the most moral authority. (The normal left wing hierarchy of oppression actually collapses under this issue, since the loudest transgender voices are often white male heterosexuals who transitioned later in life, but aside from the feminists, most leftists don't notice this or understand the ramifications.)

Within the LGBT+ community, it's doubly difficult for people to say anything, since they will effectively get kicked out of the movement. There are LGB groups that want to kick out the T, and also lesbian separatist groups that want to kick out everyone, so it has never really been the monolithic movement it's made out to be. Nor is the transgender community itself, where those who reject the ideology and publicly criticize the agenda are treated horrifically. I've been following a handful of them, and they say that they get a number of transgender people who secretly agree with them but would not dare to say so publicly, since they would be vilified. This is kind of like the "black conservative" phenomenon, since you will find both conservative LGBT folk and left-wing LGBT folk who disagree with the agenda, but the "woke" left tends to police who does and doesn't qualify as an authentic minority voice.

 

[Endeavourer]

Sure. The problem is that rather than being a standard civil rights movement, the transgender movement has very controversial ideology concerning the relationship between sex and gender, whereby a person has a subjective "gender identity" that may or may not match their biological sex, and it is this subjective impression rather than one's body which determines whether one is a man or woman. The conflict is most severe with second wave feminists, many of whom take issue with the idea that a man can "know" what it means to feel like a woman, much less turn around and redefine womanhood in a way that makes it all about himself and his validation instead of being about the sex-based rights of actual women. It's viewed as a new form of male entitlement. Unfortunately, according to transgender ideology, if one does not accept the claim that trans-women are women, one is denying their existence, which is a hate crime and literal violence. So we are not allowed to have a conversation on the ways in which the ideology is affecting women's rights, since it's bigotry to believe that women even exist as a discrete political class.

The conflict with gay rights is two-fold. Firstly, because assent to the claim that trans-women are women and trans-men are men is enforced, it has become controversial in some circles for a straight man or a lesbian woman to say that they are not interested in dating trans-women (even those who are pre-op, because male genitalia become female genitalia if the person it's attached to identifies as a woman). The fall-out has been most severe within the lesbian community, where women are being told that they are bigots for not accepting people they perceive as male as sexual partners. I don't know if this is common outside of SJW spaces, but I have heard of people being kicked off lesbian dating sites for specifying that they are only interested in natal women.

The other issue with gay rights involves the way that gender dysphoria (the condition genuine transsexuals suffer from) in children is being treated today. Before the transgender issue became so politicized that research was effectively shut down, it was observed that the majority of people who were dysphoric in early childhood eventually ceased identifying as the opposite sex and turned out to be homosexual instead. These days, instead of trying to push children who have gender dysphoria back to identifying as their biological sex, and having them transition as adults if the condition persists, the preference is to affirm them in their "gender identity" from a very young age, despite the evidence that this is probably not the best way to treat dysphoria in young childhood. Some people see this as a new form of gay conversion therapy, since a number of people who would have grown up to be gay are now being pushed towards transitioning to live as the opposite sex.

Children's rights is an issue as well, since there are serious questions about whether a teenager can meaningfully consent to things like hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery. For girls, it's particularly problematic, since the number of adolescent girls who are identifying as male has skyrocketed, which is frightening in part because women's healthcare, especially when it comes to mental health, is not very well researched, so a lot of these girls are probably suffering from depression and other issues with self-identity instead of gender dysphoria. Some will actually do things like get double mastectomies as teenagers and then change their minds after the fact--there's an interesting lawsuit in Britain right now involving a case like that.

But any criticism is automatically transphobia, which ignores the fact that many of the left wing critics were trans allies who eventually noticed all of the underlying issues with the ideology. It's simply taken for granted that all criticism is motivated primarily by bigotry. It's a strange situation where something that I think is very good about the left--concern for marginalized people--has been combined with kneejerk emotionalism and the drive to deplatform any voice that has been deemed unacceptable, leading to an unwillingness to even address the complexity of the question and the absurdity of how things are playing out.



This would be impossible to answer, since a lot of people who hold similar views are not going to say so publicly. I don't think it's that common, though, since most people don't really know what's going on and just assume that the most oppressed group has the most moral authority. (The normal left wing hierarchy of oppression actually collapses under this issue, since the loudest transgender voices are often white male heterosexuals who transitioned later in life, but aside from the feminists, most leftists don't notice this or understand the ramifications.)

Within the LGBT+ community, it's doubly difficult for people to say anything, since they will effectively get kicked out of the movement. There are LGB groups that want to kick out the T, and also lesbian separatist groups that want to kick out everyone, so it has never really been the monolithic movement it's made out to be. Nor is the transgender community itself, where those who reject the ideology and publicly criticize the agenda are treated horrifically. I've been following a handful of them, and they say that they get a number of transgender people who secretly agree with them but would not dare to say so publicly, since they would be vilified. This is kind of like the "black conservative" phenomenon, since you will find both conservative LGBT folk and left-wing LGBT folk who disagree with the agenda, but the "woke" left tends to police who does and doesn't qualify as an authentic minority voice.

Thank you for this informative reply.

One area I've been interested in is how the left is allowing men who "identify as women" to compete in women's sports and take the trophies and scholarships. This seems bonkers to me that the left would disenfranchise the highly deserving, incredible female athletes who have invested much of their childhood in attaining nearly super-human athleticism.

Your reply sheds some light on that.