Even in a state where surveillance is almost total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society. [...] If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. [...] Here is a difficult truth: A part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk, but an active participant in creating and spreading them. Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying. The MAGA movement¡¯s leaders also have an interest in pumping nihilism and cynicism into the brains of their fellow citizens, and in convincing them that nothing they see is true. Their goals are so similar that it is hard to distinguish between the online American alt-right and its foreign amplifiers, who have multiplied since the days when this was solely a Russian project. Tucker Carlson has even promoted the fear of a color revolution in America, lifting the phrase directly from Russian propaganda.The New Propaganda War: Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world. [SLAtlantic]
certain topics (usually political, environmental, social) bring out a sense of fatalism and hopelessness from commenters, and while their feelings may be genuine, the comments begin to accumulate a message of:posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:39 PM on May 9, 2024 [32 favorites]
It's hopeless, this country is turning fascist, there's nothing you can do
The temperature will rise 5 degrees, massive environmental catastrophe, there's nothing you can do
U.S. and Russia will start a global war leading to nuclear exchange, there's nothing you can do
and so on
And what I want to tell these people is that EVEN IF YOU ARE BEING HONEST and genuine and not just trolling and EVEN IF YOU ARE CORRECT (for whatever value "correct" has when making armchair prognostications about immensely complex topics), I don't think you understand the effect those comments have on other people. It makes me check out of threads, it makes me hesitant to read other posts because I worry about how that sort of negativity and hopelessness spreads, it makes me engage less with this site. Especially when it becomes a debate battle between people who believe that things can be salvaged and improved vs. people who don't.
[...]
Then the second-order effect is those dozens and dozens of people using further comments as a way to communicate and share their fear/anger. Then the third-order effect is the reaction from anyone who's trying to comment in the thread on analysis, or strategy, or anything that isn't the raw exposure of (completely justified) anxiety. See all the comments above about how different people interact with the news in threads.
And thus we have the problem: Even though none of these people had intended to take over the thread, even though all of them are processing their real emotions in an entirely human way, the thread has become (a) dangerous for people whose anxieties trigger more easily when they read catastrophizing predictions, (b) useless for people who are trying to discuss the topic, rather than their feelings about the topic, and (c) combative between the disparate users of the site as described above.
The problem with the word "liberal" is that it means many different thingsYes but no, I think. There's a core of liberal thought that's common to all the political traditions you've described, and a few others too (including many strains of socialism, and especially 'democratic' socialism, though they deny their parentage in a 'you're not my real Dad' way). They're to do with an individual's relationship with the State and with who constitutes a society, and basically they all agree that decisions should be shared as widely as possible, though they disagree about what those decisions should be, and of course who constitutes society. The US Declaration of Independence is one of liberalism's great documents, and has a world heritage, not just a national one.
I bet if you're to do a screening of Office Space it'll go over like gang bustersI think that's absolutely right and revealing about what's going on in China. Office Space was a story about the pointlessness and arbitrary power of a corporation, and the absurdity of rules in a culture where nobody has access to power, and there's no point to any of it. I suspect a Chinese Office Space would go over so well it would be banned.
Such radical acts of self-sacrifice have often take place where the mobilisation of a social movement is already underway. This dynamic is known as the radical flank effect. When the efforts of the movement are frustrated, radical segments emerge and deploy more disruptive tactics. These serve to render the demands of their mainstream counterparts more palatable in the eyes of governments and the public, effectively advancing the entire movement¡¯s agenda.posted by audi alteram partem at 5:58 AM on May 10, 2024 [5 favorites]
"Fascism is on the rise! Quick, circle the firing squad!"
"There's a constant manipulation of the strong emotions around gay rights and feminism."
"Interesting to read, but whackadoodle also."
"the causes they performatively claim to embrace."
""No, I definitely came to all my opinions entirely by myself, I've never been influenced, no sirree, I am opposed to everything I define as 'not progressive enough' to the point that I can't distinguish between that and actual stated enemies of my interest... but I'm certainly free from propaganda!""
"the old-school leftists' contemptuous definition of "liberal" -- once confined mostly to fringe magazines with tiny circulation numbers -- has gone viral among extremely online people of a progressive-ish bent -- especially, but not exclusively, younger people."
"I regularly hear "the system is broken, it cannot be reformed, only abolished" from all sides, and that's more worrying to me. Nihilistic actions from otherwise well-meaning people"
"I have no idea what social media accounts you subscribe to, but if they're anything like the dozens of accounts my former friends repost, with ongoing genocide content dialed up to 11 leading to the US is an evil empire leading to NATO and Ukraine and the EU are terrorist entities leading to Putin/Xi are doing nothing wrong, then yes."
"People on the left typically can't be bothered to actually do anything more significant than gripe"
"My "very online" leftist friends, defined jokingly as "people who still fap about on X", are almost scarily overlapped with the sorts of disinformation described in the article, and increasingly with the MAGA crowd, right-wing extremists."Strong straw feminists vibes here. Not entirely sure it's the devious leftists who are "taking over" this thread.
In the early 2010's, in the wake of the Egyptian "Twitter protests" which inspired the EU's No Disconnect strategy, me and some friends got involved in EU and US State Department funded projects aimed at protecting political expression in the digital space, which brought together activists, hackers, and policy makers from all over the world, in a traveling circus of conferences, workshops, and generous expense accounts.I remember this, social media at the time was hailed as some great liberating force that would unleash democracy by allowing people to express themselves. Fascinating to see how it's swung in the opposite direction so quickly. I've seen a lot of bellyaching about China's suggestion that COVID was a US plot out of Fort Detrick but almost zero acknowledgement that it was Tom Cotton, a sitting senator, who first suggested it was a Chinese bioweapon.
I am going to use the term "liberal" loosely in the classic sense, not American left-of-center. My hot take is "liberal" norms evolved in a very different milieu, namely between tightly networked landed nobles and other elitesWell taken historically, 'liberalism' was formed almost exactly in opposition to these people, and posited nations composed of peoples, with universal rights, and laws, and certain freedoms like speech and religious worship, so the landed nobles and really privileged classes almost everywhere (in Europe, in South America and the North where they were present) tended towards reaction. European elites tended to look at early liberals, especially when they came from the same classes and schools and educated backgrounds, as dangerous idiots out to wreck things for everyone, and they were right.
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posted by simmering octagon at 3:47 PM on May 9, 2024 [16 favorites]