Twitter Tropes 1: Opinion

On Twitter, and elsewhere of course, you frequently see "I'm entitled to my opinion", as if that ends the matter. As if your "opinion" is analogous to your right to wear a hat or grow a moustache. You can't of course refute a hat. And "I'm entitled to my opinion" is a curious attempt to place an opinion beyond refutation. Something like this happened in an exchange about Roman history between an eminent professor of History and a notorious Brexit ruffian. 

It's a generalisation, but this 'opinion' move is very often used by people on the political right, as part of a "freedom of speech" spiel. Usually, it's linked to a related move: the idea that contesting someone's 'opinion' is contesting their so-called right to hold that opinion. This is of course false. Contesting an opinion, calling out it flaws and biases, is precisely  to treat it as an opinion that makes some sort of claim about the world, not as some personal foible that should be merely "tolerated".

The pretence is always that someone is not objecting to the content of your opinion but to the mere fact that it's a different opinion. This of course is in turn a ruse to portray your opponent as intolerant. The nonsensical idea that objecting to an opinion is a failure to tolerate it. 

Of course, nothing quite riles this 'opinion' brigade as the claim that they are racist. Again, there is a kind of pretence that the claim of racism is a form of intolerance. "they call me racist because they disagree with my opinion" etc, whereas, as even the slowest of minds can grasp, they disagree with your opinion because it is racist. The implicit assumption behind these claims is that the charge of racism can never have any real content but is a kind of name-calling activity. 

Anyway, rather than talking about being "entitled to my opinion" it might be better to say people are entitled to make statements. Statements are open to argumentation and refutation.