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Anecdotally, I feel that there's subjective plausibility to the idea that heretics are more hated than heathens, or that traitors are more hated than enemies. If I ask myself how I feel about Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, and then how I feel about Muslims or Hindus, I realise that on a visceral, intuitive level, I dislike the former much more than I dislike the latter. Mormons and Muslims may both be wrong, and in fact the Muslims may be objectively more incorrect than the Mormons - but the Mormons try to pass themselves off as Christians, and the Muslims don't. The Mormons form a kind of threat to Christian identity or Christian unity in a way that the Muslims don't.
This may just be the barberpole model of fashion again. I'm a Christian, nobody is ever going to confuse me with a Muslim, but people might confuse me with a Mormon, and so I need to more militantly ostracise Mormons in order to make the distinction clear.
Or it might just be that I experience Mormons (or Jehovah's Witnesses or Baptists or whoever) as in a sense making a 'direct' attack on who I am, whereas outsiders are not doing that.
If we jump from explicit religion to pseudo-religion (I don't really consider liberalism or LGBT or progressivism to be religions, but many here do), it would not surprise me if the same dynamic is at work. A Bluesky progressive doesn't need to worry about actual conservatives because everybody on Bluesky already has very strong anti-conservative antibodies. Jesse Singal, however, like J. K. Rowling, is already a liberal and present in liberal spaces - and unless you make sure to ostracise him clearly to send a message, less aware liberals might listen to him.
Of course, this argument can only do so much, because if you look at the handful of conservatives on Bluesky, they don't do much better. Here's David French on Bluesky defending the Tennessee trans case. Look at the comments - nobody is sparing him, or going, "Oh, well, he's a conservative, he's outside the tribe, whatever." He is being predictably and brutally attacked. (Particularly amusing considering how more right-wing people on Twitter brigade him now, but I guess you can't win.)
I think this is the essence of it, Jesse Singal offers a plausible alternative vision for Democrats' future. Especially given the UK recently banning puberty blockers for minors, AOC removing pronouns from her twitter bio, Trump's tremendously successful 'they/them' ad and the general handwringing about the direction and electoral viability of the Democratic party, I think there is a real sense that hardline ideological transgenderism is very much "on the table" for debate and may no longer have the aura of untouchability it once did.
Unlike Matt Walsh, Jesse Singal speaks to moderate Democrats in their language with their etiquette and with solid Blue Tribe Elite bonafides. He went to Princeton, he's jewish, he lives in Brooklyn, he's written for The Atlantic, he cites scientific studies, he uses the preferred pronouns of transgender individuals and is unfailingly polite. He is threatening because he (or rather his position) could theoretically win over the Democratic party. Even if Republicans win an election and pass some hypothetical anti-trans law, in the minds of trannies at least they would still have one of the two major teams fighting for them, and it would only be so long before the Democrats eventually win one. However if the Democrats abandon them then all hope is truly lost, no major player will be on their side and childhood transgenderism risks being consigned to the dustbin of memoryholed progressive ideas like eugenics or lobotomies.
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sounds like https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
Well, yes, and I take the whole "heretics are more hated than infidels" observation to be the same distinction.
I wouldn't say so.
Infidels in this case are the far group but when the infidels actually are right beside you they don't become more palitable than the heretic, in fact it's the opposite. When a group of infidels become available as an outgroup rather than a fargroup it frequently forces the nearby outgroups to band together against the new outgroup. This happens on the national levels in the case of regular wars as well.
That's not quite what I'm talking about in the specific example of myself - I meet a lot more Muslims in person than I do Mormons. It's the identity claim that gets under my skin.
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