Was social media ever really anything but an echo chamber that sought to recreate the mob mentality of collective lynching for dissenting voices? I mean cancel culture and wokeness have made it clear that seems like the means and methods to create (coerced) consensus amongst an incredibly vocal minority.
I'm less troubled with conformity, many Societies throughout the World have made that a part of the Social Contract where the unity and harmony of the whole is greater than one individuals happiness.
At least the reputation economy in it's current state, is mainly limited to online so you can opt out, where I think you can see how pervasively terrifying this can escalate to just look at China's Social Credit System. The guilt of association in one's social circle ensures that not just conformity is re-enforced, but that actively marginalizing those who dissent are made into 2nd class citizens as it impacts everything from access to capital/loans, employment opportunities, and travel restrictions.
> You make it sound like this only happens on the democratic side. Republicans have similar echo chambers.
I'm not succumbing to the folly to believe that such a false paradigm (Left v Right) is anything but a dichotomy that people continue to think is separate; while wokeness may be often attributed to the Left, but I think it's clear that both sides seek the same goals which is to enforce self-censorship (University campus on Sex/Gender) or impose an archaic notion about self-ownership where the State determines what you can and cannot do to your own body (abortion).
So, to be clear: I don't think their is a discernible difference between those two entities enough to make such an argument.
I don't think conformity is a natural byproduct in a free and tolerant Society; what I do believe is natural and spontaneous in Nature is order, often by incentivized consensus.
Republicans do have similar echo chambers. My personal experience, as someone who has moved from left to right but still hangs out in a lot of left leaning circles, the right tends to be more tolerant of dissent.
It's getting harder to remember life before the internet, but it was largely similar. Different pockets of people had different beliefs and tended to choose an echo chamber.
As you said, the circles are bigger now.
The other difference is that media is so less centralized now, the circles are further apart. The centralized main stream media applied a certain amount of social pressure itself that sort of kept the circles from straying to far into "forbidden thoughts". This has largely been destroyed by the internet.
> It's getting harder to remember life before the internet, but it was largely similar. Different pockets of people had different beliefs and tended to choose an echo chamber.
Before the internet, in fact, it was difficult to seek out information from outside your echo chamber. Now it is a few clicks away, even if you might prefer not to do that.
> The other difference is that media is so less centralized now, the circles are further apart.
I think it is questionable to say that. The mainstream part of the internet today is very much centralized.
> the right tends to be more tolerant of dissent.
I agree with that. I remember when the "inclusiveness" buzzword started to gain traction and I naively thought that the meaning was being welcoming to all, regardless of political opinions. Boy, I was wrong.
...some restrictions may apply. Abortion, gay rights, immigrants, any non Christian religion; especially Muslims, policy brutality against people of color, healthcare to all, living wages the list goes on...oh and Biden actually winning the election.
However, I am not trying to attack you. To give you credit, media is more extreme and biased, except for specific news outlets and sites. Of course based on your beliefs we might not agree on which ones those are.
I simply meant that my experience is that those on the right don't deploy ridicule as much when dissent is expressed. I'm not speaking to the individual issues you listed at all, of course we disagree on some of those and likely agree on others.
This is obviously subjective, but I have spent some time in 12 step groups. Addiction cuts across the normal divisions we have in life. It affects the poor, the rich, every political affiliation, and so on. It does get a person out of their echo chamber somewhat, at least the typical echo chambers a person may have been in. 12 step groups can be their own echo chamber.
I personally transitioned from left to right politically while in 12 step groups. I transitioned from left to right while being a part of a mostly left-wing family. I've seen the condemnation and the ridicule deployed against conservatives. I've deployed it!
At some point, I began to look back at what my own personal experience was with conservatives, and I saw that my ideas of conservatives didn't match up with my experience. The conservatives I had known, didn't talk about tolerance, but they certainly practiced it when a dissenting opinion was expressed.
As a thought experiment: Imagine your views on a core left issue changed. Say you had some personal experience with abortion that pushed you into a more conservative position on this particular issue. Can you tell the people in your life with whom you discuss politics with? Can you talk about it on your social media with as much gusto as you used to talk about your more left-wing positions?
Also, if you look around HN, it's not hard to find comments that are pledging their allegiance to certain ideas before then offering criticism. These comments typically look like this: "Of course, I believe __x__, __y__, and __z__, but I do wonder about this aspect of x sometimes"
Why do they feel like they have to pledge their allegiance to __x__, __y__, and __z__ before offering any criticism?
>I simply meant that my experience is that those on the right don't deploy ridicule as much when dissent is expressed.
They probably have the benefit of keeping their thoughts to themselves more often. These conservatives tend to live in rural areas where there is more likely to be people like themselves. It makes it easier to not have to express their views. Of course people like Trump have make the extremists of the right more comfortable in coming out and expressing their views.
This is just a guess.
>The conservatives I had known, didn't talk about tolerance, but they certainly practiced it when a dissenting opinion was expressed.
We have to consider the circumstances that have led up to the cancel culture in the US. The left has no real power, they haven't had it for decades and at the very least not in my lifetime (1988). The best representation the left has is corporatists (Democrats) who protect the owner class at all costs and "try" to throw meaningless crumbs at their base in terms of social progress to pretend like we aren't slipping backwards(ie. electing a black woman as VP despite her abysmal polling, kneeling in Kente cloth, painting "Black Lives Matter" in giant letters on the street in front of the White House, etc.)
Well the left lost out during the Bush years. Progress seemed to be made in the direction of what the Right wanted and the left lost ground or didn't move forward depending on the issue.
Fair enough, then Obama comes around and what does the Left get? More crumbs in the form of "social progress" while meaningful reform is left out both socially and economically. We had a win in terms of Gay rights but that was decades of fighting and only after it was politically expedient for him towards the end of his presidency (he was against gay marriage going into his presidency). All of this culminates in Trump getting elected and immediately pulling the country even further Right and undoing most of the crumbs from the Obama years.
When the Left has been powerless for decades and with no other avenue to turn to do you really have any surprise that once they discovered the power of "Cancel culture" that they would use it? What else do they have to push back against the Right and at least "try" to enact meaningful reform?
In addition to this, I am always annoyed at attitudes like what you express. I have seen this behavior from all the right wing personalities (Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro etc.). They always give the benefit of the doubt to when something controversial happens on the right but the left is scrutinized to unbelievable levels and under a microscope in every direction. The most recent stunt is them promoting a tiktok channel called "libs of tiktok" where they collect the most extreme ramblings of random people they don't like and parrot it as representative of the whole Left.
It is complete Revisionist history. Conservatives invented identity politics. It is called Slavery. Its not like Africans decided to come to the US so that 100+ years later they knew they could cancel people. These people were murdered, raped, forced into slavery and now when the left tries to push back in whatever powerless way they can, right wingers are all "I can't believe you are playing identity politics".
Thank you for the post. I can hear the frustration in your writing. Or perhaps, it's my own frustration that I'm projecting on to you.
More and more, I'm wondering about the proposition that the "left vs right" battle we (broadly) tend to engage in is just a bunch of bullshit that we get caught up in. If there are puppet masters in the world, they surely are happy when we fight amongst ourselves.
>If there are puppet masters in the world, they surely are happy when we fight amongst ourselves.
History has shown this to be true.
I think the biggest problem is that a generation of both left and right wingers have not been taught proper civics and history of how this country has and continues to operate.
Some of the left is rediscovering this history now and is fighting the right who either already know the history and seem to want to keep remnants of it (probably not a majority) and the other half that has not experienced how others live in this country.
I wish you would have actually addressed any of my points. It seems like it is a waste of time to spend the time to type these things out.
I don't have a lot of time to think about this right now, but generally I do agree that the right is learning how to ridicule and using it more.
I'm curious about your association of slavery with conservatism. It's doubly strange since the Republican party is the one that fought the Civil war and supported desegration while many Democrats fought against it. The Democrat party had a former KKK member not that long ago.
I'm not saying that this should be used to invalidate Democrats or dismiss them out of hand or anything like that. I just think it is strange that modern day people aligned with the Democratic Party speak with a great deal of certainty that conservatives are racist.
I've heard and read the arguments for the party switch and I find them to be a bit tortured personally. But, civilized people can disagree about all of this, and I don't want to drag us into a partisan battle either.
Also, my sense of your post is that you are using left and right more along the lines of European usage of left and right. I'm using them more along the lines of American politics. While Europeans might say, "you Americans hardly have any true left at all". I'm more likely to say, "Where are the true conservatives in Europe"
The republican party of today is not the same as the Republican party of Lincoln. Completely different ideology. Do you know the history of the parties? I refuse to believe that any actual informed American does not know this important history. This is a disingenuous argument and you should know better.
>I've heard and read the arguments for the party switch and I find them to be a bit tortured personally. But, civilized people can disagree about all of this, and I don't want to drag us into a partisan battle either.
What does this even mean? The history is pretty cut and dry and explains their current day actions. The ideology of the party was completely different in the Lincoln era.
I could stand to be more educated, so please give me something to educate me instead of calling me disingenuous.
I am willing to listen to arguments that explain how it is that the Democratic party has been able to shed it's incredibly racist history and instead push all of the accusations of racism onto Republicans. I've read these arguments a few times over the years, and I found them to be very tortured and to raise lots of questions.
Even though, you didn't offer any information to further your arguments, I will try to add one to further mine.
If the parties did switch somehow, how do you explain that Social Security act was passed in 1935 by a Democratic President, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.
Should I attribute the Social Security Act to conservatives?
>I am willing to listen to arguments that explain how it is that the Democratic party has been able to shed it's incredibly racist history and instead push all of the accusations of racism onto Republicans. I've read these arguments a few times over the years, and I found them to be very tortured and to raise lots of questions.
So the following two videos provide a very brief cursory glance at the transition the two parties went through and how they got to the circumstanced that led to that transition. I recommend watching both because they are each covering one side of the story.
>If the parties did switch somehow, how do you explain that Social Security act was passed in 1935 by a Democratic President, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House.
Unfortunately one thing that the videos do not cover more is the underlying trust in government programs that were well received by the Southern Democratic base. You had techniques like redlining that began around 1934 that would block Black Americans from government programs that were designed to build up a new middle class. These programs were embraced by the majority white portion because in essence it was a generational transfer of wealth. Most families wealth is in their homes and by making it as easy as possible to obtain a home and build equity, White America was set on a path of generational wealth while the Black people at the time were systematically barred and those trickle down to this very day. The videos discuss in minor detail the idea of government starting to become more neutral in regards to things like mandating prayer in school. This began a growing mistrust in government. As the push led to Engel v. Vitale in 62, it along with other related social issues caused a massive change in mentality for social programs. Why? Because they started to view government meddling in social issues as a way for blacks to raise their status.
All of this exploded into a massive end for the relationship between southerners and the democratic party after the Civil Rights act. The idea of a good old boy southerner betraying his own people appears to have been the last straw. (Note: I am not certain if it was the final straw or if the movement was already underway but not openly.)
The video touches upon Reagan. He did what the southern racists wanted. He reduced the size of the government while also working to keep minorities behind. One example is that he introduced the idea of "welfare queens" which turned out to be a continuation of the racist policies to further hold back Black people.
At the same time the Democratic party was being decimated in election after election. Unions were being watered down and workers rights were slipping away. Democrats losing finally ended when they joined forces with the corporate overlords running the Republican party and finally they got someone in the White House (Bill Clinton). And what did he do? Be socially liberal while continuing the Republican destruction of the middle class. As a midwesterner you must know all about the consequences of NAFTA. Going back to my original comment, it does not cost the Democrats anything to be socially liberal. But when it comes to harming their corporate donors, they will be in line with the Republicans.
So hopefully that gives some simple answer to your questions. However a lot of this history requires a deep dive. Its a shame that this history has not been taught in schools or been whitewashed. Recently we had the stupid fight over "Critical Race Theory". Its just another attempt to downplay these systemic racist issues that have been in place for decades. AOC and the squad have utterly failed at pulling the Democratic party Left in a meaningful way. In hindsight, it was a fools errand. The Democratic party is fundamentally a corporatist party and until that goes away the real Left (that the rest of the civilized world would consider left) does not exist in the US, they have been completely destroyed for at least a generation now. One thing AOC gets massive credit for is creating a discussion where people are finally going back into the history books and looking at what really happened. She has started so many discussions discussion systems of oppression that have probably caused many people to finally get curious and do their own research.
Thank you for taking the time to write this detailed response. I've been very busy, I don't want to just skim it and fire of a response after you took the time to write all that out. You are a good writer. Give me some time to respond.
I am a non-American who is right of centre, and I can see "my" people adapting cancel culture tactics as well, and I resent it. IMHO such victories are rotten to the core.
"Shall there be two cities of Minas Morgul, grinning at each other across a dead land filled with rottenness?"
The only thing I can do about it is to interact civilly with like-minded people of totally different political persuasions and hope that others will be inspired not to enter the cesspool.
I live in the States but wasn't raised here. One of the things you might not know is that unless you live in a middle east or China, right of center is left in the States.
Plenty of people say that, but I think this is too simple to be true.
You have a lot less conservative Christians in Europe (perhaps with the exception of Poland), but a lot more blatant ethnocentrist nationalists - a legacy of former decades and centuries where everyone was threatened by everyone else. (Exceptions apply.)
What has happened in western countries but most dramatically in North America is that "left" vs "right" has been transformed from a strong disagreement about management of the economy to a strong disagreement about how to manage the culture.
This is because in the US especially the "left" in the traditional socialist sense -- and its allies in the union movement and among students and academia -- have lost the class war. Since Clinton and Blair, there is no political space left for serious redistributive politics and the parties claiming the mantle of "left" or "social democratic" in the west have mostly given up. I'd say anti-capitalism remains strong among their base, but for all intents and purposes there is no path towards actually enacting policy... Which is why "Medicare for All" can be insanely popular in the United States across the population and voters of parties but still neverever become successful legislation.
And it's also why I find it so hilarious to see right wingers talk about the "MSM" and calling things like CNN "left wing"; all the bitching about "wokeness" and griping about culture wars and so on and complaining that somehow the "left" dominates society... It's amazing because in the context of what "left" meant for most of the 20th century... the left lost. It's gone. And I say this as a strong proponent of its classic positions.
Content of expressions shifts over time, especially in politics.
Contemporary Pope would probably be horrified if someone suggested to him to initiate a crusade against the unbelievers. The combination of Christianity and politics has shifted over time, there is much less hard force and much more sentimentality involved.
But that does not mean that Crusaders weren't true Christians while Francis I. is, or vice versa.
The traditional left is gone because its proponents died out, but before they died, they introduced the young wokesters into their parties. The shift from blue collar workers to academia took decades to complete and there is a clear continuity in the process. So I think the label still fits, only the relevant institutions changed their priorities.
Nah, I think it's deeper than that. If the Catholic Church stopped believing in God and Jesus completely, would you still call them Christians/Catholics? At what point do we just throw our hands up in the air on a term?
Likewise with socialist/social democratic parties -- if they abandon all the tenets of socialism: worker control of capital, anti-capitalism, etc. but still keep the name... is it just that the content of the expression has changed? That seems a stretch.
However, I guess there's an argument to be made that "left wing" is so non-specific that it could do what you're saying. The phrase itself has its origins in the French Revolution with the Jacobins, etc. who were certainly not socialist. So I guess there's that.
But here's the thing. Many of the politicians called "left" in the United States don't even call themselves that. The right wing in the US calls almost everything "left wing". I stare in amazement at people who call Clinton or Biden "left wing"; they don't describe themselves that way, and actual socialists and left wingers don't support them (except grudgingly with their noises plugged when they have to vote).
But to the Tea Party and Trump types, they are "left wing." By which they just mean something pejorative
Societies with reputation economics (aka face) as the main factor, are incredibly wasteful on human resources, bad at crisis management and generally worser at innovating. Let the initial management of the Covid crisis here be a example.
Its one of the established bonus points, that cultures whos mythology in indoctrination praises martyrs (e.g. Jews, Shiites, Christians) prepares its members to stand out even against resistance and thus overcome the various obstacles when it comes to leaving local minima.
Reputation economics historically was a recipe for stagnant societies which succumbed sooner or later to disaster. Every year unchanged is a lucky coin toss.
But every year changed may be as well. For example the November-revolution in Russia. There are numerous examples that change was for the worse, especially for the masses.
And the Chinese or Roman empires outperformed any other quickly changing empire by far.
As far as i remember, the chinese empire was toppled by a small fast changing merchant nation on a island half way around the world. Beginning a hundred years were it was trampled by repeatedly including by another island nation nearby.
The roman empire died the strangest death of all, it created such a tremendous underclass stagnant in misery (slaves, woman, all non-citizens) that a religion could basically overwrite its whole culture, erasing it from existence, without leaving behind even the technological advances.
China is spiraling back down the well. They are currently closing off, like north korea.
Theire age pyramid is coming down hard on them. They have not yet a fully working info-economy, so they are running out of cheap manual labour.
So many before them, were to take the throne for all eternity, the japanese, the koreans and then they all became just another part of a connected world and on the throne remained, he who could in-cooperate change the fastest and most efficient.
I'm less troubled with conformity, many Societies throughout the World have made that a part of the Social Contract where the unity and harmony of the whole is greater than one individuals happiness.
At least the reputation economy in it's current state, is mainly limited to online so you can opt out, where I think you can see how pervasively terrifying this can escalate to just look at China's Social Credit System. The guilt of association in one's social circle ensures that not just conformity is re-enforced, but that actively marginalizing those who dissent are made into 2nd class citizens as it impacts everything from access to capital/loans, employment opportunities, and travel restrictions.