• fdrake
    5.8k
    Much of political discussion on the internet now is framed around easily shareable buzzwords and talking points. In the short time I've been alive, this has always been the case to some extent, but social media promotes easily transmissible and attention grabbing content explicitly.

    In the aggregate, this reduces the importance of thorough analysis of political issues to the public perception of those issues. This is because long form analyses are less likely to be shared, cannot function very well as clickbait, and many nuances are likely to be filtered out if they are shared. As before, it's true that longer pieces of journalism and analysis have had less sway for some time, we now discuss politics using media that softly constrains discourse to the tantalising, the shocking and the hilarious.

    One consequence of those soft constraints is that a strategy for influencing public discourse can become self sustaining once it has obtained sufficient attention. More attention generated means even more attention generated. This can be forced by the actions of isolated individuals with enough internet savvy to create bots and fake accounts, or emerge from the concerted repetition of a talking point by a special interest group.

    Even though it is difficult to transmit nuanced political analysis through the attention economy of social media, it is far less difficult to transmit a faceted perspective through the same. This is achieved by creating memetic content that contains framing devices.

    Some recent ones are 'cuck', 'snowflake', 'social justice warrior', 'post modern neo marxism', 'cultural marxism', 'leftism = relativism' and 'identity politics' in its popular disparaging sense.

    Make no mistake here, these terms and their surrounding lore were created to be highly infectious vectors of alt-right political opinion. Through that lens, the perspectives created by the alt-right are transmitted with alarming speed and veracity through the relationship networks of social media, thus they come to have disproportionate influence on the public perception of the issues they touch on.

    The unfortunate origin of many of these distortions in perspective is Gamergate, a movement that was coopted and then strategised by the alt-right from very near its beginning.

    The term 'cuck' was not invented by the alt-right, but it was repurposed by them around this time. You can look up the original meaning of the term yourself, what it means now is a man who gets off through his partner having sex with another man. How it is used is as a disparagement of feminism. The story goes for the alt-right that feminism increases the autonomy of women, which gives them more sexual autonomy, which means that a woman's male partner no longer has exclusive control over their woman's genitals, which is designed to evoke the fear of cheating and the emotions of sexual jealousy. It repurposes those feelings to cast a shadow on feminists. How could any man want to be a feminist when it means they have to enjoy their wife cheating on them?

    The term 'snowflake' is similar, it allegedly refers to someone who believes themselves exceptional. How it is used is to attack people of minorities for speaking out or protesting the effects of their identity. The story goes that any person who highlights social disparities due to identity is just a whiner pleading for them to be treated better than other people. Of course, this isn't actually true, as such 'snowflakes' care far more about being treated the same as others and avoiding violence (structural or personal) unfairly done to them due to their identity.

    The term 'social justice warrior' was coined during Gamergate to refer to anyone who passionately defends or agrees with anything that can be termed 'social justice'. This originally was used to delegitimise criticism of the portrayal of women in games, now it refers to anyone who provides an impassioned defense of any identity, or works to mitigate any social injustice. Note that only someone who is prejudiced in every way or does not care for equality of different social groups cannot be called the phrase.

    'post modern neomarxism' was popularised recently by Jordan Peterson, it refers to the idea that the left dominates academic discourse and most social institutions. It also references postmodernism, unfairly characterised as relativism, and Marxism, unfairly characterised as Stalinism. It should be noted that post-modern political philosophy has a real internal tension with Marxist political philosophy, and the idea as such is incoherent. This is agreed with by people using the term, who assert that many social institutions believe both and are thus acting from an inconsistent and dangerous ideology. This idea is very close to the literal Nazi propaganda of 'cultural Bolshevism', which has its modern form in...

    'cultural marxism' is a rebranding of the term 'cultural Bolshevism' for a post Soviet-Bloc age. It refers to the conspiracy that leftists run and own most social institutions, including the media. In the original formulation of 'cultural Bolshevism', the Jews were implicated as the agents of leftist conspiracy. The Jews' interests were also equated with the interests of international finance capital. You will not find a savvy alt-right person nowadays who will talk about 'international Jewry' outside of their fascist safe spaces. They are far more likely to leave it as a left conspiracy which works through control of finance capital. Please note at this point, if the left really did control finance capital, it would have either been destroyed or transformed as leftist ideals are typically opposed to the power of finance capital.

    'identity politics' as a disparaging term used by the alt-right and some of the radical Marxist left to delegitimise the organisation of people of any social group, or for the radical Marxists any social group except class. It should be noted that politics itself is a negotiation of power differentials between social groups, and formally politics itself just is identity politics. This does not mean that all political practices associated with the use of the term 'identity politics', such as the sufficiency of consciousness raising for political change (not that anyone ever believes this either), are the extent of political concepts and actions. All it means is that politics largely consists in the negotiation or application of power differentials between social groups.*

    Each of these terms carries with it a context of discussion, on social media this translates to people who talk about or use the terms. Because of the framing and the concerted efforts of the alt-right fringe to prefigure public discourse, those who use these terms are far more likely to be introduced to people on the alt-right, perspectives from the alt right, and the false science that the alt-right relies upon. They are a gateway into a dark mirror of reality, filled with hatred and entitlement, which requires vigilance of thought and kindness of deed to counteract. They are parasites on the noble enlightenment ideals of free expression and freedom of association, and their vitriol should not parroted. They see themselves as great warriors in a culture war, they are not, they are bigoted troglodytes insecure around any difference. They are opportunists preying on the disaffection and disappointments in our lives. They are the bitter creep at the seedy bar who fails to flirt then absolves their failures with misogyny, they are the factory worker who hates immigrants for the livelihood automation stole from them.

    They deserve compassion, but their ideas and actions do not.

    *edit: While some radical Marxists use identity politics in this disparaging sense, they don't mean to completely delegitimise the voices of minorities subject to systemic injustice, they instead believe that all such injustices would go away with the abolishment of class, and so de-emphasise anything outside of the proletarian identity.
  • Coldlight
    57
    Good, any examples of actual social media posts that utilise this?

    Each of these terms carries with it a context of discussion, on social media this translates to people who talk about or use the terms. Because of the framing and the concerted efforts of the alt-right fringe to prefigure public discourse, those who use these terms are far more likely to be introduced to people on the alt-right, perspectives from the alt right, and the false science that the alt-right relies upon. They are a gateway into a dark mirror of reality, filled with hatred and entitlement, which requires vigilance of thought and kindness of deed to counteract. They are parasites on the noble enlightenment ideals of free expression and freedom of association, and their vitriol should not parroted. They see themselves as great warriors in a culture war, they are not, they are bigoted troglodytes insecure around any difference. They are opportunists preying on the disaffection and disappointments in our lives. They are the bitter creep at the seedy bar who fails to flirt then absolves their failures with misogyny, they are the factory worker who hates immigrants for the livelihood automation stole from them.fdrake

    Okay, this is now the norm on the Philosophy forum, I guess. I actually enjoyed lurking around and reading your posts, too, fdrake. This, however, is an utter display of idiocy and arrogance. Somehow after Trump's elections it has become okay to just bash ad hominem after ad hominem on anything you don't like and even supposed thinkers are trying to gain credit (while saying they aren't) because they support a mainstream opinion (albeit wrapped in different vocabulary; we didn't read all these books for nothing, did we?).
  • fdrake
    5.8k


    Let me Google this for you.

    Cuck. In which cuck is used in much the way I describe. Interestingly there are a lot of women profiles posting in accordance with the stereotype. I wonder if this is a parody or if it's entryism. I'm sure some of them are sincere. If you want an actual far right person using 'cuck' in a similar way look at this use of cuckservative. Sorry for linking to a far right blog.

    Snowflake. In which snowflake is used in much the way I describe.
    Eg:
    Replying to @ThomasNovth @realDonaldTrump
    @ThomasNovth needs to re-think what it means to be an American. STOP DEMONIZING REPUBLICANS AND START SUPPORTING AMERICAN VALUES- #snowflake

    Also 'quit being a victim, #snowflake'.

    For discussion of SJWs, look at this bollocks. Contains choice picks like:
    Most people who get offended are somewhat retarded, and the only remedy is offending them. #SJW #PoliticalCorrectness
    . You can see it's pretty similar to snowflake. The equivocation between 'snowflake' and 'SJW' is something I didn't write about in my OP, but it's pretty easy to notice.

    For cultural Marxism, look at this , has things like:

    If you're fed a steady diet of #CulturalMarxism, which is what "African-Americanism" essentially is, it takes nothing short of divine intervention to avoid this PERPETUAL VICTIM mindset. That's why @UnhyphenAmerica stands against the cancer of Leftism.

    and 'let's see what we can call racist today, healthy food!'. It's such a broadly appplied trope even Wikipedia documents it.

    For the perception of identity politics, this is reasonably representative.
  • ArguingWAristotleTiff
    5k
    I appreciate the perspective you are expressing in your OP.
  • Hanover
    12k
    They see themselves as great warriors in a culture war, they are not, they are bigoted troglodytes insecure around any difference. They are opportunists preying on the disaffection and disappointments in our lives. They are the bitter creep at the seedy bar who fails to flirt then absolves their failures with misogyny, they are the factory worker who hates immigrants for the livelihood automation stole from them.fdrake

    These oversimplifiers should just be called racists so we'll know what they are. Irony is intended here.

    While perhaps you can prove there are those who can effectively demonize their opponents with demeaning buzzwords, you can't prove that they are more prevalent on the right. That's just your bias speaking.
  • fdrake
    5.8k
    @Coldlight

    There is an idea, a noble and generous idea, that how good a political idea is should always be negotiated in the court of reason. As an impulse, this is beyond critique, and is a vital part of our intellectual heritage. We need to be able to talk about things honestly and openly, to call out bullshit for what it is, and to demand evidence for any position.

    What remains unsaid in such a perspective is the assumption that the evaluation of political ideas does and can only occur in such an abstract context. Unfortunately, the evaluation of political ideas is not confined to the court of reason. People are born into identities and ideas, people grow into them not of their own choosing, people are branded with them as an objective feature of our shared social reality.

    All of this is very personal - it concerns each as much as it concerns all, so it should not come as a surprise that those who would devalue the contributions of others to this court of reason seek to subvert and control the acceptable boundaries of discourse. This can be done very insidiously, the call for free expression applies equally to those who would raise 'the Jewish question' and those who cry out to stop the systematic abuses afforded to non-whites and transgenders.

    However, those bigots who claim that whether there is an international conspiracy of Jews should be debated in the court of reason apply this noble impulse very selectively, they seek to silence and delegitimise perspectives alien to their own. These operations in discourse are not done in the court of reason, they are done in terms of framing devices like insults, outright harassment, or in terms of violence in the street like at Charlottesville and Ferguson. It's all well and good in the court of reason until someone memes their car into a crowd or beats an unarmed black teenager to death.

    We need to remember that those who support universal fraternity, and those who support sharing our over-abundance of prosperity more equitably, have this generous spirit sometimes in excess. We often forget that those who raise things like the Jewish question, or believe that the disenfranchisement and disempowering of non-whites are the just sufferings of degenerates do not seek to vindicate their ideas solely in the court of reason. They propagandise, they go to the pulpit, and use lies in service to what they believe.

    This means they know how to play the game, and we should not allow them to set the terms of expression in their favour. Just as they mock and delegitimise we have a responsibility to do the same to any bigoted ideology. They know the game is played by these rules, and a powerful move in such a game is to selectively appeal to our generosity of intellectual spirit.

    We shouldn't let them get away with the move, this means reframing and poeticising as much as it means evaluating the evidence behind positions. Political discourse isn't a level playing field, and we can't treat it as such without giving voice to bigots. They are people who would destroy their enemies - uproot families and condemn others, on the basis of things their enemies cannot change. Like their gender or race.

    While perhaps you can prove there are those who can effectively demonize their opponents with demeaning buzzwords, you can't prove that they are more prevalent on the right. That's just your bias speaking.Hanover

    Can you give me some examples of very popular terms in internet debate that come along with a socialist, marxist or anarchist framing? I can't think of any recent ones. The only one I remembered I put a reference to in the post 'identity politics', which is the locus of contradiction between orthodox Marxists' central emphasis on class over all other vectors of injustice.
  • BC
    13.1k
    I don't like lists of words that are verboten.

    It's good to know where words come from, but just because their source isn't kosher, doesn't mean they aren't handy terms. I've been a "social justice warrior" much longer than the phrase has been around. I like the term, both in its ameliorative and denigrating sense. I like "snowflake" too, and the type exists, left-right-and center. Pains in the ass, all of them. POMO is a favorite term too. Cuck? Cuckold has been around for a long time--Old French into Old English.

    Today's campus 'marxism" is pretty much exsanguinated; poor Karl.

    In 1964 the conservative Republican candidate for POTUS said in his nomination acceptance speech, "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" Dangerous Speech! some said. Too extreme.

    I was just 17 that summer, and found the Goldwater rhetoric pretty arousing. I had been inoculated with the virus of John Birch Society anti-communism, which Goldwater echoed. I still think his quote is is good, even if it comes from a man whom the liberal democrats portrayed as a nuclear trigger. (Goldwater was actually fairly reasonable, especially later on.)

  • fdrake
    5.8k
    It's good to know where words come from, but just because their source isn't kosher, doesn't mean they aren't handy terms. I've been a "social justice warrior" much longer than the phrase has been around. I like the term, both in its ameliorative and denigrating sense. I like "snowflake" too, and the type exists, left-right-and center. Pains in the ass, all of them. POMO is a favorite term too. Cuck? Cuckold has been around for a long time--Old French into Old English.Bitter Crank

    I think similarly to this. This is why I added the vitriol at the end of my OP, and why I wanted to make a post highlighting the inauspicious origins and original intentions behind the terms. Words are powerful influencers of political opinion, the more memorable the better. Words also carry their history with them as a component of their meaning.

    The right knows the power of words in internet debate, this is why you end up with bigots sticking to left liberals and centrists on Youtube - like Sargon of Akkad and Thunderfoot. Bigots find their antipathy to 'social justice' and feminism empowering, just like they find the idea that the left has cultural hegemony empowering.

    Perhaps I'm also a bitter crank, the idea of calling an antifeminist an incel cuck definitely appeals to me. However, the prevailing use of those terms now has the unfortunate consequence of dominating the exposure to their contexts of expression (see the bits in the OP about attention economy on social media), which is why parroting such things uncritically is dangerous.
  • BC
    13.1k
    People should definitely spend less time on social media, whatever their ideological leaning. Have I ever met an "incel" in real life? I don't know. If I did, I'd refer them on for psychiatric assistance.
  • fdrake
    5.8k


    Y'know, I used to spend a lot of time on social media. The unfortunate thing about quitting social media is that it destroyed most of my friendships in real life. The friends I kept I see and email, the rest... I was just managed out of their personal attention economy by stopping using these sites. Whenever we talk it's great, but they need to make time for it, rather than having spontaneous chit chat occurring passively as they look out on their interface to the world.
  • ssu
    8k
    Somehow after Trump's elections it has become okay to just bash ad hominem after ad hominem on anything you don't like and even supposed thinkers are trying to gain credit (while saying they aren't) because they support a mainstream opinion (albeit wrapped in different vocabulary; we didn't read all these books for nothing, did we?).Coldlight
    +1

    There doesn't exist a political discourse in the US that would try to seek any consensus on anything or try to solve things. It is just about bashing the other side with the most ludicrous examples. The sides don't basically interact anymore. And of course the current US president, a champion in this rhetoric, has done his share to poison the discourse, but this has been a thing long time coming.

    For someone the OP can informative, yet the vitriolic hatred tells very well just how much the sides hate each other in the American discourse. Hence likely the few genuine alt-right people would just love fdrake's outburst which remind me of Captain Haddock's famous curses.

    I remember the time when the extreme right were simply laughed at. It was simply whimsical and pathetic. Now this hatred and fear just makes them happy.
  • fdrake
    5.8k


    For someone the OP can informative, yet the vitriolic hatred tells very well just how much the sides hate each other in the American discourse. Hence likely the few genuine alt-right people would just love fdrake's outburst which remind me of Captain Haddock's famous curses.ssu

    In my experience talking with people on this right, they really don't like having their rallying memes highlighted. It strikes me as very strange that you would believe my OP is just fuel for the alt-right. In no way have I expressed that bigoted ideologies are to be taken seriously intellectually, and in fact I advocate treating them as worthy more of structured contempt than debate.

    The vitriolic hatred is intended to be a mirror of the hatred applied to those who come under the use of these terms. As always, when bigoted opinions are treated objectively they are found to be baseless speculation grounded in a feeling of disenfranchisement.

    Also, this isn't specific to American political debate. It's about internet discourse on politics. It's largely irrelevant to the topic that Trump supporters are often ideologically quite close to the perspectives framed by the words I analysed.

    The correct response to such bigots isn't to bemoan that their opinions are never held to light in the count of reason, the correct response is to realise that their opinions have already been judged in that court and found wanting, then to frustrate the procedures which propagate their horrible ideologies.
  • ssu
    8k
    It strikes me as very strange that you would believe my OP is just fuel for the alt-right. In no way have I expressed that bigoted ideologies are to be taken seriously intellectually, and in fact I advocate treating them as worthy more of structured contempt than debate.fdrake
    Oh, it's fuel. Not perhaps the highest octane, but still.

    Seems you missed or forgot just how Hillary Clinton's famous line about the part of Trump's followers being the "basket of deplorables" got the whole Trump train excited. Such comments just play to the hand of the populists.

    That you advocate structured contempt rather than debate could be easily used to promote all the things they talk of. Populist movements utilize extremely well condescending attitudes and contempt from the side they are against. That just gives beef to their whole line of the "elites" being against them with the clear intention of snuffing out the populist movement without any respect to democracy.

    Key factor here is just what do you think should be answered by "structured contempt" that is not worthy of a debate? Everything the right stands for or just the clearest examples of racism and bigotry? Is there any reason for a debate?

    The vitriolic hatred is intended to be a mirror of the hatred applied to those who come under the use of these terms.fdrake
    Perhaps I don't get you correctly here, but it sounds like if the other side would spread disinformation, the reply would be then "Quick! Let's counter this and create our own disinformation!"

    Also, this isn't specific to American political debate. It's about internet discourse on politics.fdrake
    Well, when talking to total strangers that we will never meet, the cordial manners of a political discussion have been forgotten. And now that unfriendly tone is coming to the discourse even if we know each other as good manners seems to be "political correctness" or hypocrisy to others.

    With tweeting and Facebook etc. the discourse has become a parade of short witty replies and gotchas. Longer responses that intend to seek some kind of consensus or solution to an issue are rare and... dull, difficult. In fact, what I find lacking are the kind of discussion openings that don't follow the dichotomy of being for or against some issue promoting clearly the agenda of one side or the other, but find good and bad things in the issue and hence aren't clearly for or against it. These kind of answers just confuse the partisan crowd as the answers aren't simply the reurgitated talking points.
  • andrewk
    2.1k
    At least most of the terms in the OP are criticisms that by definition can only apply to the left - eg Social Justice Warrior. I dislike the use of such terms, but at least they are honest. It says 'I don't like people that prioritise social justice over individual freedom (and I doubt their sincerity)'. I don't share that sentiment, but I can understand that some people hold it.

    The term that I find more silly is 'Virtue Signalling', which can apply to either side, but seems to be accepted as exclusively applying to the left, criticising statements of wishing for tolerance, equality and helping the downtrodden. It suggests that people are saying things to make them look virtuous, rather than taking on the more difficult task of acting virtuously. No doubt there are plenty of people on the left that do that, but there are at least as many on the right.

    My favourite 'virtue signalling' expressions from the right are:

    'I pray for the victims'
    [of a gun massacre for which I am partly responsible by opposing any form of gun restriction]

    'We must support the military'
    [Who are only in personal danger because me and my colleagues sent them there, from our comfortable, heavily guarded, Wachington offices]

    'We must never give up our support for freedom'
    [Even though my government, with its massive ramping up of the police state and winding back on privacy laws and personal legal protections such as habeas corpus or the presumption of innocence, has done more to reduce freedom that any government since WW2]

    Yet somehow theses are not regarded as virtue signalling.

    But then, public political debate is 95% rhetoric, and I see no point in complaining if the forces of darkness, while having very poorly crafted and logically inconsistent policies, have well-crafted rhetoric.
  • Hanover
    12k
    Can you give me some examples of very popular terms in internet debate that come along with a socialist, marxist or anarchist framing?fdrake

    The buzzwords of the left used against the right are "racist," "biggot," "paranoid," "priviledged," "anti-intellectual," to name a few. All of this is aimed at deligitimizing the right.

    I think it's widely accepted by the left that Trump ought not have the right to free speech and that the press ought be immune from attack and that the contrary view is "dangerous" and "undemocratic." All additional buzzwords.

    If your response is simply that the left's buzzwords are true, then your response isn't a disdain for buzzwords, but simply disdain of the right.
  • fdrake
    5.8k
    The buzzwords of the left used against the right are "racist," "biggot," "paranoid," "priviledged," "anti-intellectual," to name a few. All of this is aimed at deligitimizing the right.Hanover

    There are sensible ways to hold non-left opinions, just as there are sensible non-left opinions. Not all conservatives are racist, not all conservatives are paranoid, or anti-intellectual etc. I can sympathise with people who look at the banker bailouts in 2008 and draw the conclusion that government intervention in the market is a bad idea, just as much as I can sympathise with those people in poor neighbourhoods in the UK who feel immigration is alienating them from their own sense of community.

    Someone who is not racist should not be called racist, nevertheless a society can be called racist if it has systemic injustices against some ethnicities. Similarly for sexism and women. I think there are two types of privilege, privilege whereby someone benefits by injustice inflicted on another due to the relationship of their identities; and privilege where a person is spared an injustice by virtue of their identity. Someone's opinion is not false just because they have a privilege of either sort. The times where it is appropriate to highlight the role privilege plays is when a person's opinion appears to be justified more from their societal circumstances framing what representative and relevant evidence they have easy access to, and less from a sustained effort of thinking.

    Everyone's speech should be free, we should just be very careful in how we use that to legitimate the expression of peoples' opinions. Free speech can be used rhetorically to defend an idea irrelevant of its content. Just because everyone has a right to free speech does not mean that every view should be given a large platform. This applies to leftist tankies as much as it does to white nationalists.

    The implication of your post is that the left buzzwords are more often used inappropriately than used appropriately. Of course I believe that they should not be used inappropriately. When someone is bigoted or when there are systemic injustices, it should be called like it is. Same for either when they are not. There is no appropriate way to use the terms above without simultaneously trying to subvert their meaning. The symmetry you're alluding to just isn't there.

    Another major difference between left buzzwords and the right buzzwords I highlighted is that they are specifically tailored to legitimise bigotry, or function to promote bigotry by proxy (like 'post modern neo marxism' being the 'leftist elite' narrative mixed with the 'cultural marxism' narrative).

    It's kind of ridiculous to me that you can react to an exegesis of how certain popular terms in internet debate were literally pieces of memetic social engineering coopted or created by fringe groups for the purposes of normalising bigotry by saying 'the left does this too!'. Usually however the left does not try to legitimise bigotry.

    Though, maybe we mean different things by left. If you think of the American democratic party as the left I can see why you would believe leftists often try to legitimise bigotry. I use left to refer to at minimum Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn or the Norwegian Workers' Party left, rather than 'left liberals' which don't differ substantively from conservatives.
  • BC
    13.1k
    Does anyone happen to know how discussion proceeds in non-North American settings? Do discussions of politics on the Internet deteriorate into verbal dung throwing in South America? China? India? Africa? the Arab world? Europe? Is everybody always civil and thoughtful in Europe--especially northern Europe?
  • ssu
    8k
    ↪ssu ↪Hanover ↪fdrake ↪andrewk Does anyone happen to know how discussion proceeds in non-North American settings? Do discussions of politics on the Internet deteriorate into verbal dung throwing in South America? China? India? Africa? the Arab world? Europe? Is everybody always civil and thoughtful in Europe--especially northern Europe?Bitter Crank
    At least the politicians here (in Finland) have to be more civil as the administrations have to be coalition governments and hence the opposition parties can be your future team members in the next administration. This has a profound effect on the political discourse of toning it down and the politicians then have an effect on the discourse by ordinary people. Internet discussions? Well, they usually part to their own echo chambers as elsewhere.

    There's also a little bit more social cohesion and things like the wellfare state and that the economy is in the end a capitalistic free market one are basically de facto universally accepted. Above all, there aren't inherent structural problems that would be truly dividing the countries setting the people totally apart. Even after all the negative reporting about Sweden, it's problem are in the end quite minor. Apart from the (extreme?) right wing rhetoric which has an agenda to describe the Nordic countries (especially Sweden) as all failures thanks to their open immigration policies and wellfare state programs, the countries are still quite homogenous with rather small ethnic minorities and the social programs haven't bankrupted them yet, at least. (And less noticed is that for example Sweden has changed it's immigration policy to a far tighter one. But that doesn't fit the agenda.)

    Yet I think you can find in any Nordic country the same kind of phenomena as in the US as the World is so connected these days. You can call it the power of globalization.
  • ssu
    8k
    more straight forward insults like "kant",Πετροκότσυφας
    What's wrong with Immanuel?
  • Number2018
    550
    a strategy for influencing public discourse can become self sustaining once it has obtained sufficient attention. More attention generated means even more attention generated.fdrake
    it is difficult to transmit nuanced political analysis through the attention economy of social media, it is far less difficult to transmit a faceted perspective through the same. This is achieved by creating memetic content that contains framing devices.fdrake
    It is possible to assume that the rational and ideological modii of public discourses function just as a supportive disguise - the real goal is to mobilize a maximum public attention at this particular instant,
    forming, expressing and satisfying mass desires.
  • fdrake
    5.8k
    With tweeting and Facebook etc. the discourse has become a parade of short witty replies and gotchas. Longer responses that intend to seek some kind of consensus or solution to an issue are rare and... dull, difficult. In fact, what I find lacking are the kind of discussion openings that don't follow the dichotomy of being for or against some issue promoting clearly the agenda of one side or the other, but find good and bad things in the issue and hence aren't clearly for or against it. These kind of answers just confuse the partisan crowd as the answers aren't simply the reurgitated talking points.ssu

    I share this lamentation. It's a damn shame that any attempt at objective analysis of social issues can be deemed propaganda from the liberal elite and hence rejected if it does not conform to the expectations of people who hold that prejudice or worldview. The successes of various civil rights movements; from the suffragettes to MLK and Malcom X, or the LGBT activists who got homosexuality and transgenderism depathologized, invites suspicion on any person who positions themselves as indifferent or hostile to the progress achieved by these movements. We live in a less prejudiced world because of the hard work of activists and journalists in resisting discriminatory practices.

    Where I differ from you, I think, is that I see that rejection of the kind of analysis I advanced in the OP as propaganda from the liberal elite as an illegitimate rhetorical strategy which serves those who would hold their prejudices against history that has marched on without them.

    Unfortunately, this means that everyone advancing a political position has to care a lot more about optics than they would if things truly were decided in the court of reason, and not through networks organised to promote maximal exposure to exaggerated opinion. Ideas have to be crafted as viral content in order to gain wider audience and start convincing people.

    The alt-right realised this a long time ago. One of the most popular ways of defending bigoted opinion is not just to defend those opinions, it is to raise the possibility of defending those opinions as endowed by the rights of free speech. You can see exactly the same pattern in some of the debate on whether creationism can be taught in schools; the possibility of debate between the two invites an equal platform between them which never should have been given in the first place. luckily the courts in the US removed any legal support for teaching creationism in schools. I don't think reasonable people bat an eyelid at that shit because it's established fact, and hurrah for the state supporting the truth with law. The discriminatory practices against the systematically marginalised are just as established in the court of reason, all room left for debate is a question of extent and quality.

    There is a room for people who show 'structured contempt' at the same time as explaining why and how systemic injustices work and exist, but it has to be given sufficient rhetorical flourish to gain exposure.

    forming, expressing and satisfying mass desires.Number2018

    I think analysing the rhetoric of the right and how it's penetrated political discourse is a different topic from discussing the intersection of political and consumer identities. The idea that all politics is done from the sole motivation of satisfying consumer identity (like virtue signalling! in/out group signalling as referenced by @andrewk) is anathema to those who really do have skin in the game on those issues, and those who support such stakeholders.
  • Number2018
    550
    I think analysing the rhetoric of the right and how it's penetrated political discourse is a different topic from discussing the intersection of political and consumer identities.fdrake
    In principle, the rhetoric of the right is inseparable
    from the rhetoric of the left. And, if so, the topic of this thread should be considered in a broader context.
    [quote="fdrake;209833"
    The idea that all politics is done from the sole motivation of satisfying consumer identity is anathema[/quote]
    It is much more complicated. Nevertheless, politics today is the politics of affect,
    with numerous mimetic implications.
  • fdrake
    5.8k
    Don't you think that the rhetoric of the right is in principle inseparable
    from the rhetoric of the left?
    Number2018

    No, they're a lot different. EG: there's no way to see how 'cuck' is used as anything but an attempt to undermine the autonomy of women or to mark the impossibility of women being friends with men. There's no criterion of whether it's right to call someone a cuck or not in its common use except using it for in group/out group signalling.

    Contrast that to @Hanover's supposed list of leftist buzzwords. All of them are based around highlighting injustices, and where they go wrong is cashed out in terms of inaccurate or oversimplifying use.

    No non-prejudiced person would use these alt-right buzzwords with their original intention. Some sensible people can use the left buzzwords accurately with their original intention.

    If it really is the case that highlighting racism, misogyny, transphobia and other systematic injustices are nothing more than left rhetorical tools political discourse is in a bad place. And we should look to see where this equivocation is coming from.
  • ssu
    8k
    Where I differ from you, I think, is that I see that rejection of the kind of analysis I advanced in the OP as propaganda from the liberal elite as an illegitimate rhetorical strategy which serves those who would hold their prejudices against history that has marched on without them.fdrake
    Sorry fdrake, but I have to admit that this part I didn't understand clearly.

    Yet notice that history has marched on in other ways too, notably that the left has changed from trying to overthrow capitalism to trying to mold it in quite a cooperative way. (Bernie Sanders is a perfect example). And civil rights naturally have not been something only promoted by the left in the broader historical context.

    Unfortunately, this means that everyone advancing a political position has to care a lot more about optics than they would if things truly were decided in the court of reason, and not through networks organised to promote maximal exposure to exaggerated opinion. Ideas have to be crafted as viral content in order to gain wider audience and start convincing people.fdrake
    Perhaps in this forum reason has more to do with logic and truth than politics. I'm not in the camp of thinking that we can just logically deduce the correct choice of policy or like Leibniz thought, use math and compute the best option. We can agree on a problem, yet we have a difficult time to agree on the solution. Optics and ideas crafted as viral content have been the norm for a long time. Politics touches too many moral questions which are subjective and hence we cannot find an objective solution. And our society is extremely complex. That doesn't mean that reason isn't important.
  • fdrake
    5.8k
    Yet notice that history has marched on in other ways too, notably that the left has changed from trying to overthrow capitalism to trying to mold it in quite a cooperative way. (Bernie Sanders is a perfect example). And civil rights naturally have not been something only promoted by the left in the broader historical context.ssu

    I was trying to highlight that the 'liberal elite' trope you find in political discourse has two functions. First it can be used to automatically gainsay anything, secondly its most common use is to delegitimise anyone highlighting a systemic injustice.

    Some of the left dislike people like Sanders and Corbyn because they believe an incremental approach to political change is misguided. I don't agree with that approach, it dichotomises political activity into useful = revolution and useless = anything else.

    I see it as more important to pay attention to how groups respond to systemic injustice and discourse around it than to retroject categorisations of various civil rights movements by belonging to a contemporary part of the political spectrum. The only unambiguous way to see those shared ideas from past civil rights movements to contemporary ones is to categorise based on topic of interest; which marginalised groups' interests are being highlighted.

    I don't think that the right or the liberal left has a particularly strong alliance with contemporary issues of systemic injustice. I use 'leftists' as a name for those people who have political concerns with systemic injustice and its attendant inequalities. MLK wasn't part of the communist movement of his time, but that didn't stop the state from demonising him as a commie. Similarly with Malcolm X, he was demonised as an anarchist. The suffragettes were allied with the workers' movement at the time. It's more important to see people with common topics of political concern as allies than to categorise past movements in accordance with the metaphor of the political spectrum. Though, if we're ever in a position to say MLK would have been concerned with ethics in video games journalism... we're in a bad shape. Much like those white nationalists who appropriate Malcom X and Garvey.

    So if you're for equality for non-whites, women and other minorities, that's great. The right envisioned in the OP does whatever it can to frustrate those progressive ideals.
  • fdrake
    5.8k
    Some of you probably thought I was paranoid writing this, but I found this which is a much better example of the things I was talking about, it's an explicit style guide/mission statement from a popular white supremacist website.

    'Packing our message inside of already existing cultural memes and humour can be viewed as a delivery method. Something like adding cherry flavour to children's medicine'.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    I suggest we all immerse ourselves in serious (I mean SERIOUS!) metaphysical issues to avoid the disease of the idle mind.
  • S
    11.7k
    Share under: "fdrake DESTROYS popular rightwing internet discourse!".
  • fdrake
    5.8k


    They're more relaxing, yeah.



    Scientists hate him, see this one trick that makes reactionaries apologise!
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    12.3k
    They're more relaxing, yeah.fdrake

    Right, if we're going to take a look at how people deceive us, we ought to do it in a way that doesn't stress us out.
  • DingoJones
    2.8k
    The hysterics of the right and left, the buzzword culture on the right and left, the blatent agenda over truth of the right/left and the mindless demonization of the right/left are not discernable, at least in the US. From the outside looking in, it seems that anyone chastising one side over the other is delusional. Trump blatantly lies, and the left blatantly lies about him in turn. Its mud slinging all around, the bias and lack of good reasoning has infected media and been acerbated on social media by foreign powers.
    In general the western world is experiencing a surge of insanity in the left, they have lost any highground they may have once had and the far left looks just as ugly as the far right.
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