Richard Dawkins Stripped Of Award - UPDATED

Tribalism.

Dawkins is a good example that one doesn't need to be religious to be a right-wing shitweasel.

He is not right wing. 

Well, left wing and right wing are admittedly vague terms. For me, being left wing means being socially progressive, pro-working class and highly critical of capitalism and imperialism. Dawkins' record on these things is mixed at best.

He is certainly socially progressive most of the time, but that hasn't stopped him coming off with things that are:
- transphobic
- ableist
- Islamophobic
- sexist

He also supported the invasion of Afghanistan and has previously stated his support of the Lib Dems - a socially liberal but very pro-free market party. He has also supported a technocratic approach to government and called for anti-Corbyn Labour MPs to join with pro-European Tories to form a new party (which eventually did happen - Change UK which Dawkins offered to stand for).

Even his atheism is a kinda sneering, bourgeois view of religious extremism that downplays the geopolitical reasons as to why violent religious views emerge (albeit Hitchens and Harris were/are worse in this regard).

There are plenty of left wingers that accept capitalism so I'd argue that criticism of capitalism is not the defining feature of left wing policies. Taking into account that you can be on the left and criticize other left wingers for being more or less left wing than you. Both Dawkins and Corbyn are on the left regardless of them disagreeing on policies. Plenty of people from both sides of the spectrum supported the invasion of Afghanistan. I mean he also criticized the Iraq invasion for example which was also supported by left and right wingers.

Criticism of Islam is not Islamophobic anymore than criticism of Christianity is Christophobia. Most of his criticism of Islam have been pretty vanilla and he has dedicated himself to criticize all types of religion.  What exactly makes him transphobic? Does he support active discrimination or supports law against trans people? Because as far as I know.

Even this latest tweet is actually factual. People are vilified if they deny that trans women or trans men are literally women or men. But then again he was vilified for this even though there is nothing wrong with what he said here:

Like I said they're vague terms. You and I define them differently - by my definition he's at least centre-right. Part of this of course is that the only left wing-ism that appears in mainstream discourse is social liberalism. Critics of capitalism (even mild reformers like Sanders and Corbyn) are portrayed as the lunatic fringe and critics of imperialism as traitors.


"It's tempting to say all religions are bad, and I do say all religions are bad, but it's a worse temptation to say all religions are equally bad because they're not. If you look at the actual impact that different religions have on the world it's quite apparent that at present the most evil religion in the world has to be Islam."
He takes the stance that there is something especially evil about the tenets of Islam, ignoring that much of its violence is a reaction to imperialism, exploitation and prejudice.

Because he's suggesting those that invalidate transgendrism should not be vilified.

Didn't say I did. Like I said, these are vague terms and I'm happy to accept that others have equally valid definitions of these terms. All I'm doing is clarifying what I mean when I call Dawkins right-wing. I don't really care if others would call that 'soft left' or what have you.

And in doing so takes a swipe at trans identity by suggesting it's no different to the Dolezal case.

I suppose my issue with taking social liberalism alone to be enough to make someone left wing is that social liberalism is often combined with economic and political stances more associated with the right wing. For example, Theresa May is a self proclaimed feminist but her economic policies as UK Prime Minister were shown to more adversely impact women. So to my mind she's right wing despite her social liberalism. She would probably agree.

Dawkins is less clear-cut because he has spoken up for an egalitarian society, but when the chance of making the UK more egalitarian came about, he threw his lot in with a party made up of Tories and the right wing of the Labour Party. Throw in some of his at least questionable comments on social issues and to me he seems somewhat right of centre.


Sure, but there is a centre line somewhere. To me Dawkins is over that line. Sanders for instance is left wing but there are, as you say, people to the left of him, some considerably so. If we consider Dawkins (who I'm guessing you would agree is to the right of Sanders) also left-wing it becomes a very broad definition indeed.

But if you like, just take my initial comment as Dawkins having politics I don't care for.


I think that's just the wrong way of looking at it. I think the question should be why some are gravitating towards more radical interpretations of Islam in a way that we aren't seeing with other religions. Saying it's because Islam is more evil is to have it backwards. Even if Dawkins got his wish and all Muslims abandoned the religion, we'd see these unpleasant attitudes arise in a different guise.

These things aren't uniform across Islam though - you don't hear of Bosnians stoning women for instance. They seem to manifest most strongly in countries where authoritarian governments are kept in power by the US military (eg Saudi Arabia) or where people have thrown their lot in with groups that offer an identity at odds with that of Western powers who attack them (eg Iran or ISIS). Even in these instances there are devout Muslims who oppose this behaviour of course. Having said that, it would be a mistake to say the tenets of Islam don't have some impact. And there are other factors at play beyond Islam or imperialism. But the idea that you can just educate people out of Islam and then all their violence will stop is naive at best and disingenuous at worst.

If it's just semantics, why make the point at all? Even if Dawkins wasn't being transphobic, he must have been aware what he was saying would be used as ammunition by genuine transphobes (which it was).