United States Politics Thread 46

[zompist]

I feel strawmanned. no I don't think I said anything to the effect of poor lambs: instead, I said "they're bad and want to hurt women" is not an adequate explanation. like, okay, plenty of them did in fact want to hurt women, and we know this because they did in fact hurt women and it's pretty silly to think they did so by accident,

In other words, what I actually said (they wanted to harm women) is correct and you can't find a way to deny it, but that is not convenient for you and you'd rather respond to a fantasy figure who said "they're bad and evil and I don't care why."

In the case contrary, you really think pop sociology [not in the sense of guys with phds in sociology, but in the sense of the results of the general purpose of systematically, scientifically, trying to formulate explanations about society: the sociological project, as it were, the social sciences] is always either wrong or useless? big pessimism.

I love explanations about society; I'm also pretty skeptical about them. Maybe I've read too much Marvin Harris, but it's very easy to get explanations of social behavior wrong. You have to look pretty deep, the sociological data is often sparse, and you have to beware the easy explanations of people who are paid by the word to spit out an explanation yesterday. (In one of these threads Thomas Friedman came up... if you don't know him, you're not missing anything.)

As I said, a lot of these pop explanations strike me as backwards. E.g. the ennemi du jour for the US right is trans women. (They are against trans men too, but it's pretty obvious that their real visceral ire is against trans women.) Now, you can ask, "why do right-wingers hate trans women so much?" And you can write a column or a dissertation on that, but it misses the point that these things are highly arbitrary; also highly orchestrated. It wasn't trans women in 2018, it was antifa. It wasn't antifa in 2016, it was Muslims. In 1992 it was gay men and single mothers. In 1986 it was communists, in 1966 it was hippies, in 1856 it was Catholics. (And at all times, Blacks and Jews.)

Was it concern over leftist terminology that set off all of these pogroms? I mean, can't you see that the very question is a bit absurd? Hierarchies gonna hierarch. And most importantly, hierarchies gonna rile up people to come to their aid against whatever bogeymen they can paint. And that core of rile-able people always exists and doesn't really care much who the current target is. (And that shouldn't surprise you if you've read Bob Altemeyer on authoritarians.)

[masako]

Zomp, you left out a few groups, but I think the main one that needs to be recognized is anyone born south of the Rio Grande.

They're an old stand-by for propaganda and fear mongering by those that only seek to gain power, not actually govern. In fact, I'd wager that one could do a search by year, every year since ~1970 and find some version of "OmG thE MiGrAnTS!!1".

What's really interesting, is that they always do have a boogeyman. It's like a security blanket that they simply can't run a campaign without.

[bradrn]

I don’t think it’s about ‘explaining’ social behaviours, per se. A better way of phrasing Torco’s argument might be to say: harming women is rarely a terminal goal of theirs. Sure, you get the occasional virulent misogynist who’s actually honest about what they’re doing, but I doubt that e.g. the average Republican is really thinking, ‘today, let me figure out another way of harming those bad, bad women’. It’s true that by their actions they do harm women; ‘evil’ might even be an adequate (though nasty) descriptor; but ‘they want to harm women’ is for me a step too far, since I doubt they think about their goals that way. And this is important, because if we want to change their minds, we need to do it in terms of how they think, not how we think.

Another thing to consider is the number of women who have these opinions too. (And always have; consider the anti-suffragette movements.) I very much doubt that this is because they want to harm themselves. It seems rather more probable that they have them because they think those policies are good ideas. Wrongly, of course, and they may well be harming themselves in the process, but saying it’s because they want to harm women lacks a certain coherency as an argument.

(In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the average Republican said they love women! Why, they want to let women be independent and stop evil men from pretending to join them! And they want to stop the murder of unborn women too! Of course both those policies are deeply misguided, but saying it’s because their proponents secretly want to harm women is not going to convince anyone of that.)

Let me contrast this with antisemitism: quite a lot of people are very explicit that they hate Jews, and that their fondest desire would be to murder us all. That’s what ‘wanting to harm a group’ looks like.

[zompist]

I don’t think it’s about ‘explaining’ social behaviours, per se. A better way of phrasing Torco’s argument might be to say: harming women is rarely a terminal goal of theirs. Sure, you get the occasional virulent misogynist who’s actually honest about what they’re doing, but I doubt that e.g. the average Republican is really thinking, ‘today, let me figure out another way of harming those bad, bad women’.

As I said above:

Yes, I said about five times that not everyone is evil.

Please, please, please, read what I say and don't make shit up. Did I say something about "average Republicans"? No, I was talking about gamergaters, because Torco did.

[bradrn]

OK, fair enough, although I think the fact that it was specifically about GamerGaters got lost somewhere in the discussion (as so often happens here).

[Raphael]

Another thing to consider is the number of women who have these opinions too. (And always have; consider the anti-suffragette movements.) I very much doubt that this is because they want to harm themselves. It seems rather more probable that they have them because they think those policies are good ideas. Wrongly, of course, and they may well be harming themselves in the process, but saying it’s because they want to harm women lacks a certain coherency as an argument.

I kind of have opinions about this, based on my observations of decidedly anti-feminist women on the internet. My impression is that common motivations among them include, but are not limited to:

1) seeing feminism as being about helping women, while they themselves take pride in the illusion that they never need anybody's help,

2) believing that feminists want to speak for them, when they never authorized feminists to do that, and

3) believing that they're kind of "expected" to be feminists, and resenting that expectation.

Note that I write all this in an "explain, not justify" way.

(In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the average Republican said they love women! Why, they want to let women be independent and stop evil men from pretending to join them! And they want to stop the murder of unborn women too! Of course both those policies are deeply misguided, but saying it’s because their proponents secretly want to harm women is not going to convince anyone of that.)

Let me contrast this with antisemitism: quite a lot of people are very explicit that they hate Jews, and that their fondest desire would be to murder us all. That’s what ‘wanting to harm a group’ looks like.

Then again, there seem to be some antisemites who are at least temporarily ok with individual Jews who behave the way they want Jews to behave, too. Think of, for instance, Evangelical pseudo-philosemites who claim to love Jews until the one or other individual Jew points out antisemitism among religious conservatives.

[Travis B.]

I was reading about the "Dilbert being canceled" matter, which led directly to reading about the "it's okay to be white" matter, and could not help but think that the left has horribly miscalculated in its response to the "it's okay to be white" messages put out by far-right trolls in that their outrage about it serves the specific goal of such trolling in the first place, which was to put out a message that would make the left get outraged about something that, in literal terms, is innocuous. Furthermore, in this case, it allows the right to accuse the left of essentially saying that "it's not okay to be white", even if that was not liberals' and leftists' intention, thus further serving as propaganda for the right. The correct response would be to simply ignore the whole matter and not feed into the trolls' hands, but liberals and leftists to be completely honest have a tendency to get outraged about things even when doing so does not serve their strategic interests.

[Torco]

In other words, what I actually said (they wanted to harm women) is correct and you can't find a way to deny it, but that is not convenient for you and you'd rather respond to a fantasy figure who said "they're bad and evil and I don't care why."

Try something less intense, man... like "what you said (they wanted to harm women) is correct, it comes without saying, but I don't think it's a satisfactory enough for us to just go okay, we figured it out then":this is for many reasons, some bradrn mentioned, but others are that they, for example didn't want to effect any hurt on any women, but rather, there were particular women they wanted to hurt in particular ways: a lot of GGrs, including woman ggrs which weirdly exist, believe that they're protecting (good) women from (bad) women or something.also that they probably had other reasons for wanting to hurt the women they wanted to hurt (and did). Basically what bradrn said, that it wasn't a terminal goal, and also, while true, it's not precise enough: any hurt effected over any woman would not have been a victory for them, for example-. Plus, at most, misoginy itself could explain the behavior of some of the hardocre ggrs, but it certainly doesn't explain why that particular shitshow spread in the virulent manner that it did.

And yes, it's likely true that authoritarians gonna authoritize, Altmeyer, and may I mention here Adorno, weren't wrong: indeed that's one of the candidate explanations, in my mind, about what left and right are: not ideological movements but rather just political orientations, as Adorno's work suggests: there's some evidence of this, differences in mean intensity of the experience of disgust, in the trait oppenness to experience, blablabla, but I'm not yet convinced because... wouldn't we have seen proto-leftos and proto-rightos before the french revolution, then? Maybe we did and I don't know it.

What's really interesting, is that they always do have a boogeyman. It's like a security blanket that they simply can't run a campaign without.

Yeah, I think it's known that having a common enemy increases both conformity and social cohesion, which are things conservas and the fash seem to genuinely want (the bases, at least). The ennemi du jour also suggest some systematic thing underlies the observations: though they are contingent, arbitrary and probably the result of literally somebody's plan (like, some dude said 'okay we're going against trans people now' is possibly a thing that happened in some hall of power) it's not something that one could model as just random: trans people, antifa, muslims, gays, single mothers, commies, hippies, they all share a number of traits that not all groups share: like, if we were 1995 progressives and someone had suggested to us the following options:

the republicans in 2023 will be going after trans people
the republicans in 2023 will be going after furries
the republicans in 2023 will be going after sikhs
the republicans in 2023 will be going after carpenters
the republicans in 2023 will be going after recreational marihuana users
the republicans in 2023 will be going after people who engage in group sex
the republicans in 2023 will be going after atheists

We wouldn't be able to guess 1, but I think we would have had little problem identifying 4 as the least likely, no?

1) seeing feminism as being about helping women, while they themselves take pride in the illusion that they never need anybody's help,
2) believing that feminists want to speak for them, when they never authorized feminists to do that, and
3) believing that they're kind of "expected" to be feminists, and resenting that expectation.

I've seen antifemi women say all of these thigns. if one looks at terfs one finds similar feelings to 2 and 3, and 1 is often found in anti-BLM blacks and libertarian pro-US third worlders. There's a fair bit of pickme-ism in there.

[zompist]

Try something less intense, man... like "what you said (they wanted to harm women) is correct, it comes without saying, but I don't think it's a satisfactory enough for us to just go okay, we figured it out then":this is for many reasons, some bradrn mentioned, but others are that they, for example didn't want to effect any hurt on any women, but rather, there were particular women they wanted to hurt in particular ways: a lot of GGrs, including woman ggrs which weirdly exist, believe that they're protecting (good) women from (bad) women or something.also that they probably had other reasons for wanting to hurt the women they wanted to hurt (and did). Basically what bradrn said, that it wasn't a terminal goal, and also, while true, it's not precise enough: any hurt effected over any woman would not have been a victory for them, for example-. Plus, at most, misoginy itself could explain the behavior of some of the hardocre ggrs, but it certainly doesn't explain why that particular shitshow spread in the virulent manner that it did.

I don't get the lawyering here? I mean, yes, I grant you the gotcha that they did not explicitly, overtly wish to kill every woman in the world, just a few of them. How nice!

Do you understand that they hung out on a forum all day long plotting physical, real-world harassment on women and hoping they would be killed? Look, just being on a forum where that is the main activity is being complicit. Maybe some of those dudes were not as bad as the ringleaders. Who cares? Just being there normalized, encouraged, and enabled the ringleaders, and caused real harm. "Not a terminal goal" makes no sense here. They knew what they were doing.

I'd also remind you that one of the things they were doing was workshopping fascism: coming up with slogans to mislead and confuse outsiders. Yes, of course they found ways to portray themselves as victims, so that outsiders would coo over them. Maybe don't swallow their propaganda whole.

In their more honest moments, they admitted that they wanted to keep women out of video games. That is a harm to women as a group.

wouldn't we have seen proto-leftos and proto-rightos before the french revolution, then? Maybe we did and I don't know it.

Didn't we? There have been hierarchies back to the Sumerian city-states. (Earlier, according to Graeber & Wengrow, with caveats.) There are certainly examples of political witch hunts in medieval times, such as the actual witch hunts.

We wouldn't be able to guess 1, but I think we would have had little problem identifying [carpenters] as the least likely, no?

I don't think this is a mystery-- it's always some sort of out-group.

FWIW modern times adds a complication: almost everyone has some egalitarian notions, so you get the odd spectacle of right-wing parties, dedicated to propping up the social order, but railing against "elites". But this always turns out to be code for some relatively powerless group, like teachers, or Jews again.

[Torco]

it's not that complicated. yes they are bad. bad bad. very bad. BAD. also, why people do the things they do is interesting, and "they do bad because they are bad" is not a good why. you seem to think i'm seeking to justifying them, or minimize the bad, or whatever: I'm not, I'm just asking further questions: why are they bad, why bad in this specific way, why at that time, why that particular species of bad, what made them do that bad, etc etc. to want to cease the inquiry at "they were bad" is valid, but, to some, not particularly interesting.

Didn't we? There have been hierarchies back to the Sumerian city-states. (Earlier, according to Graeber & Wengrow, with caveats.) There are certainly examples of political witch hunts in medieval times, such as the actual witch hunts.

Ya, this is probably right: the enthusiasm in the greek classical philosophers for the justification of slavery, for example, sort of suggests that there were anti-slavery voices too, etc.

I don't think this is a mystery-- it's always some sort of out-group.

Yes! but also, they're particular outgroups: those that are within the ingroup in some way (i.e. not italian feminellos, but american trans, for example) and whose existence in some way challenges the narrative of One People One Lifestyle One Nation Whatever, probably because they use the fear and loathing people have for those different from themselves, a common trait of the authoritarian personality.

[Travis B.]

One thing I must personally emphasize is that explaining evil is not justifying evil, in and of itself. Take Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning, for instance - it is all about explaining evil, in that case the participation of ordinary middle-aged men in the Holocaust and seeing the perpetrators as human beings with human motivations, but by no means does it ever justify evil. By what I see argued here, one could argue that Ordinary Men helps justify the Holocaust simply by not seeing its perpetrators as singularly evil, as not committing evil simply for evil's sake and nothing more. Of course, I would disagree completely with this. Similarly, I strongly disagree with the idea that the Gamergaters must be seen are singularly evil and cannot be treated as having human motivations that can be analyzed and explained as they most certainly in reality do; their evil can be explained, and explaining their evil does not mean justifying it.

[Linguoboy]

Similarly, I strongly disagree with the idea that the Gamergaters must be seen are singularly evil and cannot be treated as having human motivations that can be analyzed and explained as they most certainly in reality do; their evil can be explained, and explaining their evil does not mean justifying it.

We may just have to rename this "the Strawman Thread".

I was reading about the "Dilbert being canceled" matter, which led directly to reading about the "it's okay to be white" matter, and could not help but think that the left has horribly miscalculated in its response to the "it's okay to be white" messages put out by far-right trolls in that their outrage about it serves the specific goal of such trolling in the first place, which was to put out a message that would make the left get outraged about something that, in literal terms, is innocuous. Furthermore, in this case, it allows the right to accuse the left of essentially saying that "it's not okay to be white", even if that was not liberals' and leftists' intention, thus further serving as propaganda for the right. The correct response would be to simply ignore the whole matter and not feed into the trolls' hands, but liberals and leftists to be completely honest have a tendency to get outraged about things even when doing so does not serve their strategic interests.

Ignoring rightwingers while they are--in Zompist's words--"workshopping fascism" by floating slogans which are innocuous on the surface but which exist to normalise and promote fash ideology is arguably how we ended up in the current mess. You don't stop radicalisation on the Internet by just hoping it will go away on its own.

[Travis B.]

I was reading about the "Dilbert being canceled" matter, which led directly to reading about the "it's okay to be white" matter, and could not help but think that the left has horribly miscalculated in its response to the "it's okay to be white" messages put out by far-right trolls in that their outrage about it serves the specific goal of such trolling in the first place, which was to put out a message that would make the left get outraged about something that, in literal terms, is innocuous. Furthermore, in this case, it allows the right to accuse the left of essentially saying that "it's not okay to be white", even if that was not liberals' and leftists' intention, thus further serving as propaganda for the right. The correct response would be to simply ignore the whole matter and not feed into the trolls' hands, but liberals and leftists to be completely honest have a tendency to get outraged about things even when doing so does not serve their strategic interests.

Ignoring rightwingers while they are--in Zompist's words--"workshopping fascism" by floating slogans which are innocuous on the surface but which exist to normalise and promote fash ideology is arguably how we ended up in the current mess. You don't stop radicalisation on the Internet by just hoping it will go away on its own.

The key thing is that trolls' modus operandi is precisely to get a rise out of people, and then to exploit that. As they used to always say, "don't feed the trolls". The example of "it's okay to be white" is trollery at its finest, and reflexively reacting to it, as is the fascists' goal in the first place, in the end only aids, not fights, the fascists. If it were simply ignored few would have heard about it, and we wouldn't hear Tucker Carlson spewing crap about how the libs "don't think it's okay to be white".

[Vardelm]

The key thing is that trolls' modus operandi is precisely to get a rise out of people, and then to exploit that. As they used to always say, "don't feed the trolls".

Doxing, rape threats, & death threats are not simple trolling.

[Travis B.]

The key thing is that trolls' modus operandi is precisely to get a rise out of people, and then to exploit that. As they used to always say, "don't feed the trolls".

Doxing, rape threats, & death threats are not simple trolling.

I was referring to the "it's okay to be white" trolling. The "Gamergate" people are a whole nother story.

[Linguoboy]

The key thing is that trolls' modus operandi is precisely to get a rise out of people, and then to exploit that. As they used to always say, "don't feed the trolls". The example of "it's okay to be white" is trollery at its finest, and reflexively reacting to it, as is the fascists' goal in the first place, in the end only aids, not fights, the fascists. If it were simply ignored few would have heard about it, and we wouldn't hear Tucker Carlson spewing crap about how the libs "don't think it's okay to be white".

I think it's begging an important question to assume that liberals et al. were reacting "reflexively" to the slogan. To quote the ADL:

Whether the original trollers were white supremacist or not, actual white supremacists quickly began to promote the campaign—often adding Internet links to white supremacist websites to the fliers or combining the phrase with white supremacist language or imagery. This was not a surprise, as white supremacists had themselves used the phrase in the past—including on fliers—long before the 4chan campaign originated.

So trolls deliberately chose a phrase that actual white supremacists had already been using and continued to use during their trolling campaign. Maybe you're entirely correct, maybe ignoring the campaign would have simply caused it to fizzle out. (It might be useful in this context for you to provide evidence of other similarly orchestrated campaigns where this is approach was followed and this is, in fact, what happened.) But, you know, as one of those annoying leftists that thinks if you don't stamp out fascism each and every damn time it rears up somewhere, you are only giving a chance to grow and spread, I'm just not willing to take that chance. Call this is a "reflexive" reaction if you like, but I really think it's the only sensible one.

[Torco]

I don't know, man. if "don't feed the trolls" is true then we better not think of fascists as trolls: if those guys are left -as indeed they too often are- to just build up their base of support, mobilize, campaign, and convince through their various histerics, lies and pipelines to recruit and recruit and organize and... I shudder to think what happens, but we all know it. even conceptually, "trolls", which to my mind prototypically mean something like "isolated people who enjoy being mean on the internet" I don't think includes "global movements for genocide".

Like, I'm all for suspending value judgements in order to dispassionately analyze and understand: but afterwards we mustn't forget to suspend the suspension and man the ramparts.

[Travis B.]

Maybe you're entirely correct, maybe ignoring the campaign would have simply caused it to fizzle out. (It might be useful in this context for you to provide evidence of other similarly orchestrated campaigns where this is approach was followed and this is, in fact, what happened.)

A good example of reflexively reacting to something that only served to make it stronger, in the opposite direction, is the Tennessee House GOP's reaction to the anti-gun violence protest that happened recently. If they had sat and done nothing, none of us would have heard about it, and the protest would have been entirely for naught. But by reflexively going hard authoritarian in response by ejecting two of the protesting House members, they simultaneously both greatly amplified the impact of said protest, making martyrs out of those ejected, and made themselves look to the world like the anti-democratic, authoritarian types that they are, in a completely pointless fashion because both ejected members have been unanimously returned to the House by their local councils and will almost certainly win their special elections, likely by a greater degree than they won their original ones.

[Travis B.]

I don't know, man. if "don't feed the trolls" is true then we better not think of fascists as trolls: if those guys are left -as indeed they too often are- to just build up their base of support, mobilize, campaign, and convince through their various histerics, lies and pipelines to recruit and recruit and organize and... I shudder to think what happens, but we all know it. even conceptually, "trolls", which to my mind prototypically mean something like "isolated people who enjoy being mean on the internet" I don't think includes "global movements for genocide".

Like, I'm all for suspending value judgements in order to dispassionately analyze and understand: but afterwards we mustn't forget to suspend the suspension and man the ramparts.

In the case of "it's okay to be white", it's trollery by fascists. Fascists need not be trolls, and trolls need not be fascists, but in this case it was trollery being used as a tactic by fascists. I am not saying that we should simply ignore fascists per se at all, but when fascists resort to trolling as a tactic, it may be a good idea to tactically ignore said trolling, rather than give the fascists the attention they want and react in the way they want us to react.

[Linguoboy]

Maybe you're entirely correct, maybe ignoring the campaign would have simply caused it to fizzle out. (It might be useful in this context for you to provide evidence of other similarly orchestrated campaigns where this is approach was followed and this is, in fact, what happened.)

A good example of reflexively reacting to something that only served to make it stronger, in the opposite direction, is the Tennessee House GOP's reaction to the anti-gun violence protest that happened recently.

Sorry if my original question wasn't clear enough. I'd like examples of orchestrated trolling campaigns with a hidden political agenda where "just ignoring them" turned out to be the most effective solution at silencing the fascists behind them.

In the case of "it's okay to be white", it's trollery by fascists. Fascists need not be trolls, and trolls need not be fascists, but in this case it was trollery being used as a tactic by fascists. I am not saying that we should simply ignore fascists per se at all, but when fascists resort to trolling as a tactic, it may be a good idea to tactically ignore said trolling, rather than give the fascists the attention they want and react in the way they want us to react.

It may. I'm still waiting for evidence that this is, in fact, the case.

Let's take another similar slogan: "All Lives Matter". I don't think this was necessarily created by trolls, but definitely trolls took it and ran with it. Leftists "took the bait" (according to your analysis) by opposing this slogan[*]. And what, ultimately, has been the result? Did they come out worse for it?

I don't think they did. I rarely hear this slogan any more. I guess trolls have tired of it. But also a lot of those using it ignorantly because they didn't understand how it was problematic have had that explained to them and have stop using it as a result. This would never have happened if leftists had "just ignored it".

[*] Those I would argue that the ones who really took the bait were the centrists who ended up adopting it--something which also happened with "It's okay to be white".