ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
There Is Always Hope
User ID: 812
I don't fully understand the Israel conundrum.
The ideological stake over the issue hasn't been divided merely between the left and right, but within each aisle too. In recent years, it seems as though liberals have fallen out of love with them and many of them believe that (on principle) Israel shouldn't exist. While others believe in the two state solution. The mainstream media has been louder about the IDF's excesses in occupied territories (like this one, a cursory search). Tankies over at GrayZone and related websites are convinced that western mainstream media is still defending Israel. I don't get this position, are they arguing that western media isn't criticising Israel enough or that the media is silent altogether? The right seems to be divided too, many of them enthusiastically support them while others don't like that billions of dollars of taxpayer money is sent to Israel every year and they're convinced that their lobby in the US is most supportive of liberalism and progressivism and the war machine.
My questions are what drove the evolution of these views into what they are, exactly how influential is the Israel lobby in the US, why do tankies believe that Israel doesn't get criticised in the media, are the liberals starting to decouple from Israel, are there any other reasons besides the treatment of Palestinians that the Israel question takes up so much oxygen in the foreign policy room?
Yeah I do have suspicions many of these spaces are being astroturfed, the fanbase for these IPs are big and passionate enough to usually allow a bad entry to succeed, only slightly less. As for gatekeeping, we've long since accepted that it needs to return. We threw open the gates for those who wish to subvert the IP and mold it into what they like it to be because they never liked what it is about it that made the whole thing popular in the first place. Then they kicked us out and now gatekeep us. "Make your own Star Wars" "Cishet white male tears are so sweet"... you know how it goes. I think this also applies to the recent Assassin's Creed games, that have just divided the fanbase altogether. In trying to chase the ghost of Witcher 3 and Geralt of Rivia, they've chucked out what made AC Brotherhood and Ezio Auditore so beloved to the brand and I daresay even gaming in general.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Your points are convincing, alas, it doesn't matter if they are. Rowling is a TERF, and as per intersectionality worldview, she has to be every other reprehensible thing you can think of: a Nazi anti-Semitic bigot, a pro-slavery racist, yada yada. I think it was the Dr Drew episode with Ben Shapiro, Segun Oduolowu and Zoey Tur, apparently Ben would've been against the civil rights movement if he was alive at the time and the evidence of this was his supposed hatred for transgender people. BLM has to be pro-LGBT too in order to "fight intolerance". Feminism has to be pro both for the same. All rally against the evil white man and the white adjacent man to fight oppression. The success of Hogwarts Legacy might rile up many, but it is a "you lose even when you win" situation. That so many people like this horrendous, bigoted IP whose main series revolved around a Wizarding War against Wizard Nazis and this game that allows you to play as a transgender hero and whose lead designer was pressured to quit for what he'd said on his personal YouTube channel, would be cited as evidence that we have a long way to go in our noble fight against intolerance and hatred. They're all compromised, including infamously politically incorrect IPs like GTA and Saints Row, but the woke crowd shall continue to pretend that they're still bigoted and sexist and racist as the companies let them have mile after mile.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
I'm curious what folks here think about tankies.
I remember seeing a twitter thread during the onset of the Ukraine war explaining why Russia and China growing powerful even to the point of imperialism is vital to combat western imperialism, "someone has to do it". Whether one agrees that Russia has been constantly provoked by NATO or not, its difficult to spin Russian actions as "anti-imperialist". Similarly, China's land and water disputes with its neighbours. It appears both these countries have become a sort of canvas to project their ideologies. They often call western conservatives "far right" and often attack their criticisms of feminism. But how do they explain China's own censorship of feminist activism, the fact that independent labour unions are illegal, the push for pro-natalism, the push for masculinity training, etc.? I've seen many articles countering the stories about Uyghurs, but not much on the above. What really makes the "tankie ideology" attractive? I can fully understand and even sympathise with their gripes over western imperialism and even Israel to an extent, but I don't get the narratives that its all the neoliberals and the "far right" against China, essentially projecting the whole issue as a new cold war of ideologies between neoliberalism and communism.
The split became very visible around 2019, when Labour brought up the issue of Kashmir following the removal of its partial autonomy and the lockdownds. I know a few anti-BJP Brit Indians who also got pissed off and voted Tory after that.
This spectator article presents an analysis similar to yours.
Also another anecdote, I've known a few pro-BJP Indians in the UK and US becoming sympathetic to white nationalists. I think this reflects on your earlier point that community relations are only good between Indians and whites, Indians and Muslim South Asian groups at times would rather not interact. The point about the wealth imbalance is on point, what's also interesting though is that Indian refugees from Uganda also seemed to have moved up the ladder since Amin's purge.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Well, the Grayzone folk are still very sympathetic to Russia. Right wing culture warriors supporting Putin doesn't surprise me. As you said, they see the cultural establishment in the west as stridently opposed to them and their values, which they see closer to the vogue of Russian society, so they seek any disturbance to the status quo at home even if it may come from abroad. This isn't to say that I agree with them, just that I can at least rationalise their attitudes. As someone else had stated below, its not that I dislike left wing tankies, I'm just trying to understand their worldviews in their own ideological domain. China is hardly communist anymore, and sure we can go by the CCP's rhetoric that only "compassionate reeducation" is happening in Xinjiang for the sake of argument, but things like the crackdown on progressivism and "feminisation" of men are policies that the Chinese government (and western right wingers) openly and unapologetically espouses. What would a left wing tankie that laughs off Jordan Peterson's lectures (that is, the ideas of one pundit) on the crisis of masculinity say about China's own state guided programs to promote masculinity?
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
A lie repeated over and over becomes truth, that adage is self evident too, given that there is no evidence that Goebbels actually said anything of the sort. This my favourite rebuttal of this myth. An excerpt to add on to what you've described in the 2nd paragraph:
Furthermore, if rape or sexual harassment were indeed motivated by the desire to feel powerful, then one would expect them to be less common among those who already feel powerful, and that they would more often go against the power gradient rather than along it; that is to say, raping or sexually harassing someone more powerful would have greater appeal than sexually abusing someone less powerful.
There's something similar on stalking as well, its often not due to any consciously learnt behaviour as it is an act of impulse and primal instinct.
I think that while most(?) people do take this as fact, despite the efforts to "unlearn" the supposed entitlement have yielded no tangible results, a part of the effort is to regurgitate this trope that "men in power" is always a bad thing, even dangerous and predatory towards women.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
What I meant is, for the men who do want to participate in the rat race, it creates an unrealistic perception of the experience that can be difficult to decouple from. Combined with concerns over performance anxiety, not a good outcome.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
On the pseudo-theological note, and apparently to jive with the Neely debate, this twitter thread about George Stinney Jr's execution popped up in my TL. Now whether one believes teenagers should be tried as adults for violent crimes is a moral quandary I won't get into for the moment. But it's very telling how it's become accepted fact that Stinney was an innocent black boy wrongfully arrested and convicted of rape and murder of two young white girls by a racist court, even though the South Carolina Judge who vacated his conviction 7 decades later made it a point that her judgement pertained to the procedure, not his guilt (or lack thereof).
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
I don't think much is going to change besides some aesthetics. I do suspect Tory Indians will end up deporting the grooming gangs to signal to the more right coded voters that they're the 'right kind' of minority. Stoking the immigration debate and other culture war issues is a neat way for the party to distract the public from the mess the country's found itself in in the last 10-15 years. Then going on to sanction Russian oil just two years after formally withdrawing from the EU. And it turns out, importing subcontinental issues like Kashmir was not wise. It snowballed into everything from the Modi-Boris leaflets in Batley and Spen to Leicester to Khalistanis vandalising the Indian High Commission a few weeks ago apparently to protest the Indian government's crackdown on insurgents in Punjab, prompting Jaishankar to make more abrasive statements about western hypocrisy just months after he took a shot at the west for 'preferring Pakistan's military dictatorship over India while Russia stood by them' (obviously in reference to the 1971 war and genocide). You can't expect multiculturalism to succeed whilst also signaling strong stances as the 'correct stance' on divisive issues that have historically escalated into conflict.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
The fact that they kept Arwen white made the blowback a lot worse in some wignat circles on twitter. Although the reverse wouldn't have calmed the backlash to a significant extent either, I think.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
The "non-mainstream" explanation is that despite the obvious woke overtones and casting, the writing is pretty solid. They're also making a Jon Snow sequel, have to see how that goes.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6mo ago
On the topic of Zionism and Jewish influence in American media, I came across a twitter long post that scrutinises the notion that Zionists effectively decide American foreign policy. There are three main highlights of this post.
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The State Department and the Pentagon are far more powerful lobbies, and their support for Israel is given only begrudgingly.
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The increasingly high volume public statements that Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and therefore deserves American support actually signal the weakness of the Israeli lobby.
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Israel receives atrociously large aid packages because it allows Congress more latitude to manipulate through the budget process, and much of the aid actually ends up in the pockets of defence contractors or are credits to purchase American arms.
I can't verify all of these statements since I'm writing this before heading to bed, but I think this is the first time I've heard someone who isn't implicitly pro-Israel take the issue of lobbying and scrutinise the claims of actual Israeli heft in the American elite. One of the replies to the post brings up an article about Pentagon backed groups in Syria fighting CIA armed militias. It's very interesting to me how intra-American rivalry between various lobbies spill over in warzones, particularly the Middle East.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Extremist politics online is mostly just virtue signal to seek any kind of validation. I remember seeing a map on twitter which geolocated most racists online. I can't speak for its veracity nor do I remember the exact source, but it produced some interesting results. Apparently, upwards of 70% of online wignats live in India, Brazil, Mexico and Philippines. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised after the twitter race war between Blacks and Indians.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
In the world of social media, it feels like literal eons have passed in a single day ever since the acquisition. Now they're all gone, this feels like the first time right wing culture warriors finally scored a point. Whether this is a Hail Mary Pass as blackpillers like me believe or a sign of actual tilt away from the status quo remains to be seen.
The topic of Muslim conservatism has been talked about to death for years now, and I keep posing the same query: am I to be elated that this intersectionality grift keeps collapsing like a house of sand? Should I care if, amidst a home invasion, one burglar beats down another? Both men wish to fleece me of my belongings, any "shared interests" I might have with the former is a fleeting one, if anything. Not a 1:1 comparison, of course, (and no, I'm not calling migrants "robbers") but this "gotcha" stuff is only good enough as a meme generator for "cringe lib gets owned compilation #314". Reactionary politics cannot tilt the vogue in my favour.
take a page out of America's right-wing playbook
Again, what is the American right's playbook? I see this brouhaha about how "The Right is now the counterculture" but virtually all hardcore leftists believe they're still the counterculture and do all the countercultural work in the media, entertainment, etc. Sadly, I think rightists are taking the wrong conclusion, that like some law of historical thermodynamics, these views and policies will change.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
This would just render the previous law meaningless if they're just going to take the kid's word for it when they claim to be trans. It's disheartening how we came about to completely dismantle the family, a basic foundations of society, through a literal culture war.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Then the vast majority of the people on the planet for the vast majority of human history would be "mentally deranged", so what is mentally healthy? I think the query you're trying to pose here is whether intelligent and well educated people (that is, neither mentally disabled nor ignorant) can hold irrational beliefs, to which I would say yes.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
I think you've posted it in reply to me the last time I talked about the show, I remember this!
There was a very similar article on this months ago.
Bundling is precisely what is happening with woke politics, and why it is so insidious: It is regularly bundled with things that have particular value and are not easily replaced, in order to force it upon unwilling buyers. If you offered people the choice to buy a visit to Disney World with or without the company’s woke politics, most people would choose “without.” The same would be true if you offered them a Harvard education, a pair of Nike sneakers, a job at J. P. Morgan, a can of Coca-Cola, a coffee at Starbucks, or a ticket to the NBA playoffs.
In almost none of these cases did wokeness build the valuable product.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
A black pilled take, and sadly I cannot disagree.
Isn't this still limited to one industry though? I don't think we'll see such waning anytime soon in entertainment media until at least we see the tentpole IPs recede in popularity. I was hoping that pressures arising from competition to Russia and China would've helped accelerate the reversal, but I'm far less optimistic now.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Forgive me if I'm misreading you, but I take it you mean black pill beliefs don't necessarily stem from reality? If so, I don't really disagree. My point is that the response itself need not be reasonable and there could be more to the data than the OKCupid stats for example might reflect. But if some asocial Asian fellow in an Ivy League school sincerely believes that even if he shoots for a Lanny Joon physique, he'll never match the SMV of an average white athlete in his class, and ends up deciding that it's all too much effort for too little gain that isn't even guaranteed (in his mind), is it really just a coping mechanism or has he prematurely given up on life altogether? There's still a section of woke who'd sympathise with fat activists, but a maladjusted young male who effectively exists as a ghost in society, who can literally disappear today and no one will notice and let alone miss him, is fair game for shaming regardless of his ethnicity.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Dating apps have a severely skewed gender ratio, so the competition is indeed stiff no matter how much work men put on their profiles. Throughout university and even after graduating, I've always found my dates through shared hobbies and mutual friends. Never installed a dating app on my phone and don't plan to.
The most frustrated young men seek companionship in online echo chambers filled with depression, anxiety and body dysmorphic disorder. None of them have learned to talk about their problems. It feels easier to take what they call "the black pill", the belief that you are genetically predisposed to be ignored by women.
Well I partially agree, though I'm not sure it's easier to take the black pill that you're inescapably fucked genetically instead of just deferring your happiness to the future. "I'll get there but I'm finding myself right now" is an easier coping mechanism than "It doesn't matter how much I lift, how much I read and how much I spend on clothes, I didn't win the lottery at birth and all that awaits me is a lifetime of desolation and solitude". Guys who take the black pill genuinely do believe what they say, they aren't merely making excuses to avoid overhauling their lifestyle and routines. And the only medium of human interaction they're exposed to confirms every negative bias they have about themselves, be it through what randoms say online about them or through "experiences" of men like them. You see this kind of behaviour the most among Asian-centric spaces, particularly South, East and South East Asians. So they give up, because they do believe it is futile to try.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
1yr ago
Nope, Minnesota.
What's also noteworthy is that a huge section of the "far right" actually idolises Russia and China for the reasons I'd described above: they see the west as a decadent civilisation spreading wokeism worldwide, while those two are "strong, confident societies" resisting it and that their hegemony would end progressivism altogether.
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