You are missing their point. They are saying they start with relatively benign views, and the intense overreaction to those views drives them to support much more extreme views, like what you are describing, that they otherwise might not have.

I can't speak for Blow, but that definitely seems to accurately describe the arc Rowling has taken over the last 7-8 years.

> but that definitely seems to accurately describe the arc Rowling has taken over the last 7-8 years.

What a bizarre time we are living in when "men aren't women" and "women should have single-sex spaces and rape crisis centres" are considered extreme views.

Women who insist that they specifically get to decide who is or isn't a woman and what women believe aren't new. Phyllis Schlafly managed to ensure the Equal Rights Amendment didn't pass on this same basis. Phyllis would fly from city to city, addressing crowds of women to tell them that women should be at home looking after their kids, not um, flying from city to city making political addresses like she did...

Beware anyone who claims to represent "all" of some large diverse group, such as "Women" or "Floridians".

"Women should have single sex spaces" turns out to be used to justify, "It's OK to be hateful and even violent against women in these spaces so long as your excuse is that you believe they're not actually women" which is bullshit.

Years ago, when I wasn't too tired to spend all day and half the night dancing, I went to Bang Face Weekender - basically imagine a huge multi-room club night except for days and days. I keep the socials for it available because hey, it's a nice memory. This sort of "Single sex spaces" bullshit caused a problem for the last-but-one Bang Face because a new-to-this Security outfit somehow decided it's their job to go remove people who in their view weren't women from a toilet for women. These women weren't causing any problems for anybody else, but because they presumably had the wrong genitals or for some other reason were "suspect" to that Security team, Security dragged them out of a toilet cubicle and threw them out of the site. Other clubbers were of course horrified, and the event runners had to apologise to everybody - because regardless of how many X chromosomes you have, or whether you do or don't have a womb, dragging people out of the toilets because you've got weird ideas about what is or isn't a woman is batshit.

I am not missing their point at all, you are missing mine.

>drives them to support much more extreme views, like what you are describing, that they otherwise might not have.

The view I mentioned was the one that got Notch (one of the public figures mentioned by GP) the reaction from the internet in the first place. A bit disingenuous to say this was a moderate conservative talking point before he got sent spiraling into a far right abyss by an angry progressive mob.

I am not an expert on Notch's slide into craziness, but I'd argue that the episode you mention it might not be the start. His start was as a "anti-SJW" game developer which got him hated and vilified by his former fans.

I'm not saying these people were rays of sunshine before, I'm saying they could be talked to without them foaming at the mouth and you face palming at how unhinged they were. I was using the meaning of benign attached to tumors.

>an expert on Notch's slide into craziness

I am not an expert either, if that episode occurred later than I remember, it could have been as you say.

>that they otherwise might not have.

I think this is letting people off the hook. We're talking about adults in their 40s and 50s here. When people like that 'suddenly' endorse extreme views it's because they had held them back and feel enabled to say them now, an adult isn't going to become an extremist because someone was mean to them online.

I'm 20 years younger than Blow and even at my age I can tell I'm settled enough psychologically that adopting radically different views would require a lot of internal effort. Views don't exist in a vacuum, to believe radical things you have to radically alter all the other things you belief. I really don't think we should people like this like children without agency.

Thank you for saying this. In particular people are often already on a journey of self radicalisation so blaming people reacting to their views for radicalising them further is seeking to soft soap that. On top of which the people reacting are often framed as “going too far” and thus becoming more radical is the only natural reaction. It removes all agency and generally I think is mostly deployed by people that agree already with the radical views but are too scared to say so.

What are we going to do about those hate mobs in our societies in Western high culture who are so intolerant, intransigent and violent that they radicalise the moderates? I fear for the future. Any good ideas?