I was wandering around the Meta-verse, wondering what the hell I was doing there, and bumped into a video by Isabel Brown, a prolific right-leaning maker of video content. The video on which I stopped was called “Golf is Fascist,” and the link is also in the image. This prompted the thought people really need to learn to listen up to each other when they engage, whether they are on the left or right of the political spectrum, and present the whole truth, no matter what. There is no room for bias or cherry-picking in social and cultural debate.
In the above video, Brown is responding to a left-leaning lass who makes the idiotic claim that playing golf is “fascist behaviour,” which Brown roundly dismisses with some colour, as she takes jab at lefties in general. On Brown’s point that saying golf is “fascist” is a moronic position to take, I am in complete agreement. The poster child for fascism, the one who ruined Charlie Chaplin’s moustache for everyone, never played golf, as far as I am aware. Neither did the Fantasy Fetishist Himmler. The term “fascist” has become another beige, watered-down, useless filler through its overuse by the Left. It is actually rather meaningless, as far as I can tell, except to point out those with whom we disagree. Brown is totally correct when she says such claims are stupid.
However, Brown responds by making the claim the Golf Leftie does not explain why she thinks golf is fascist. And this where I have an issue. If we are going to engage other people in disagreements, we need more than selective hearing and need to respond to the whole message, not just the bits which serve our agenda. The fact is Golf Leftie did explain why golf is fascist in fairly clear terms. She states that golf uses a lot of land for the courses and uses a shed tonne of water for the pools in and the maintenance of said courses. Golf Leftie, wrongfully as it turned out, assumed all her listeners would have the brains to make some connections with experience and prior knowledge. Apparently, Brown does not know much about golf and shows this when she makes the claim Golf Leftie does not explain her reasons for her claim. Golf Leftie also adds a third reason: every golf player she’s met is basically a wanker. This third argument is her weakest, but she does make it. It should be reasonably clear that Brown has selected the bits which serve her agenda to show the Left in a negative light.
The selective hearing also seems to be manifesting as selective presentation of evidence and information. The Christian Institute (CI), a UK-based conservative group, recently reported on the assisted suicide of Noelia Castillo in Spain. CI informs readers about Castillo’s experience in a gang rape, and the fact that she was in a wheelchair. They also mention that Castillo’s father tried to block the assisted suicide by taking legal action. The important information CI leaves out is that Castillo herself wanted the assistance to end her own life. She had been in and out of care homes since she was a child, she had been sexually assaulted twice, and the reason she was in a wheelchair was she had attempted suicide by jumping from the 5th floor of a building in 2022. Her condition left her in constant pain. CI also left out Castillo’s question about her father’s motives in taking legal action when she asked why he cared what happened to her when he had had nothing to do with her up to that point. The legal representatives of Castillo’s father are another fact CI fails to mention. This was a conservative group called Abogados Cristianos (Christian Lawyers). Castillo said her whole family was against her decision, but I have to ask how much was the father manipulated by Abogados Cristianos? I am not saying he was, but by leaving the name of the lawyers’ organisation out, CI have raised the question through implication.
Brendan O’Neill, writing for The Spectator, hits the nail right on the head in his article There’s nothing merciful about Noelia Castillo’s death. In one point, CI is right: assisted suicide is a travesty of morality, but they treat Castillo like a pawn in the debate. Nothing more than a bargaining chip, if you will. O’Neill makes the statement “The government’s solution to [Castillo’s] suffering was not to wrap its arms of care around her but to give her lethal drugs so that she would die.” In this, O’Neill gets right to the guts of the issue. Castillo was not offered the compassion she needed by anyone, either conservative or liberal. The only one who stood by her, despite disagreeing with Castillo’s decision, was her mother. CI presented a very slanted view of the case and failed to supply a lot of the context, thus aiming for a much more intense emotional reaction from its readers. With the wider context, and the information CI did not provide in their article, a calmer response is possible, even if we utterly disagree with the Spanish court’s decision. With a better understanding of the complete situation, we are positioned to have compassion for the poor woman who felt the only option open to her was death.
The left have long done this very thing in order to push a certain agenda across, selecting the details which suit their purposes, rather than giving the truth per se. The right also has the same tendency. Both sides need to open their eyes and their ears and consider the whole argument, not just that which supports their predetermined political or social agenda. When the mainstream news services have sold themselves out to the aims of billionaires like Musk, the Pritzkers, Stryker, Trump, and others, it is the alternative sources thinking people turn to. When those sources prove equally selective in their presentation of the facts, serious concerns are raised. Bill Clinton got lambasted when he claimed he was being “economical with the truth,” rather than lying. We need to call out media sources as well for doing exactly the same thing.
Regardless of the issues we may debate, the people we engage with are real human beings. Noelia Castillo was a real human being with real feelings. Golf Girl is a real human being with real opinions. Isabel Brown is a real person with real thoughts and opinions. When we do not engage with each other in good faith, which means dealing with the whole message and situation, we dismiss each other as a nameless cog in an issue or cause. We diminish the humanity of the other person. When we diminish the humanity of others, we are not too far from using labels like Untermensch. We then risk becoming much worse than the emptied concept of "fascist” and entering the reality of real fascism.