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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   35509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Has anyone been checking out the reddit and hacker news reaction to TW's FAA scandal follow-up?

He's downvoted to -44 on /r/atc, which applauded his essay last year. Highlights from the comments:

Trace, the truth of the matter is you think you deserve a ton of credit for bringing this story to light. But this story has already been brought to light, been analyzed, and it’s nowhere close to the actual scandal of FAA hiring.

The choice you’ve made, is to cast your lot with the fascists currently ransacking our government. To pretend as though the Trump EO on DEI is in any way a reasonable response to a genuine policy concern, rather than the pure expression of bigotry that it actually is, is inexcusable.

There are only two sides right now. There are the neoconfederate fascists intent on dragging us back to the antebellum era, of which Trump, Vance, and Sailer are definitely a part. And there’s the rest of us.

You don’t have to be on their side if you don’t want to be. But if you choose to be, at least be honest with yourself about what you’re doing.

The top-voted comment on hackernews is accusing it of being a rehashed non-scandal laundered by authoritarian fascists. But the actual comments are mostly in favor, or pointing out that there's suddenly a lot of brand new accounts defending the FAA & claiming "this wasn't real DEI."

Grendel-khan describes the reaction:

The left outside the institution at fault swears up and down that something like this would never happen, and it's just right-wing disinformation, and you're probably a closet right-winger if you believe it.

The left inside the institution at fault swears up and down that this is a good thing and it's obvious that it's happening and why are you making such a big deal of it?

Taking it for granted for a moment that a lot of this stuff is totally astroturfed by blueanon orgs with AI-assisted spamming, it looks like doubling-down and tripling-down on full spectrum information manipulation is still the only strategy on the menu, even as it's increasingly failing and backfiring outside of totally controlled environments like reddit and bluesky.

So, what are the next four years going to look like? Is there going to be any evolution in strategy? Are they correct that just repeating a party line hard enough will bring people back into the fold?

I think that right now it's easy to point at this sort of frantic concern-trolling and laugh, but in a few years the average voter won't remember anything about some FAA hiring scandal except that "Trump used a tragedy for a culture war attack on minorities." Because while they'll only read a hackernews thread about TW's article once, they'll have heard the counter-narrative a million times, and will be sick of mustering the mental resources to reply critically with half-remembered anecdotes in the face of emotional blackmail. Eventually they'll forget they ever questioned the need for DEI programs, because only maga Nazis think that. The majority of people will never even see it once because reddit moderators deleted every mention of the article from the default subs, and banned the people who linked it.

So don't count on the familiar manipulation tactics failing forever just because it doesn't seem to be working right now. There is still an enormous propaganda engine manufacturing public opinion, and if I was in charge I'd make fighting it a high priority. But the current counter-elite supporting Trump dismiss that arm of the cathedral as opportunistic mercenaries, and fail to recognize the threat.
Moldbug and especially Thiel may absolutely despise the press, but they see the manipulation of public opinion as a quirk of "demotic" regimes, and have no time for it themselves. Moldbug in particular dismisses color revolutions with the over-simplistic "why does the dictator not simply shoot the revolutionaries with crypto-controlled weapons?" Thiel is quieter but clearly sees controlling the murder drones and spying rings as more important than propaganda. Musk is the only one of Trump's big backers who thinks control of social media is important, and I'm convinced that's because of his showman's instincts and desire for attention rather than some strategic policy.

People here have been talking as if the left will shift to violence and hard power in response to their usual methods failing last year (more assassinations of Musk & Trump, etc.). I'm a lot more worried about them doing the same thing they always do and getting away with it, because people don't have lasting immunity to propaganda.

Moldbug is smart enough that he understands that a truly demotic regime, whether it is left-coded or right-coded, would likely put him up against the wall and shoot him for some reason. Hence his constant harping on the idea that we should treat the defeated regime's soldiers with decency and that we should let elves rather than hobbits take care of things. I agree with him about all this. Some people here on TheMotte don't understand what would actually likely happen to them in a true authoritarian/populist revolution. They think that this site would still exist and they would still be allowed to write politically incorrect essays. They wouldn't. We are far from that now, but I see the danger of it on the horizon. Just because leftist authoritarianism has been given a huge punch on the nose does not mean that we are not in danger of rightist authoritarianism.

We were able to keep this site going under leftist authoritarianism; who is to say we wouldn't under rightist authoritarianism?

A lot of neoreactionary though is about how authoritarianism is the default state of mankind, and liberalism is an unstable equilibrium that can only ever exist as an ephemeral waystation on the road to the next tyranny. That being the case, all we can decide is whether we would rather live under leftist authoritarianism or rightist authoritarianism. I know what I pick.

Christianity may have silenced Galileo, expelled Percy Shelley, fought against evolution, condemned heavy metal, and ostracized Dungeons and Dragons, but it also created a thriving civilization that stood for almost two thousand years and conquered most of the planet. Communism gave us the Holodomor and the Great Leap Forward. Wokeness gave us South Africa and the Great Replacement.

Catholicism demands that you believe nonsense about the Eucharist and the Trinity, while Mormonism demands that you believe nonsense about golden plates and a planet called Kolob i.e. things that have absolutely no relevance to the rest of your life. Conversely, Progressivism demands that you believe nonsense about gender and race, while Communism demands that you believe nonsense about economics and human nature i.e. things you have to deal with every day. Given those choices, you are much better off taking your chances with the Christians than with the nominal Atheists.

The Dreaded Jim famously said:

The fundamental realization of the Dark Enlightenment is that all men are not created equal, not individual men, nor the various groups and categories of men, nor are women equal to men, that these beliefs and others like them are religious beliefs, that society is just as religious as ever it was, with an official state religion of progressivism, but this is a new religion, an evil religion, and, if you are a Christian, a demonic religion.

The Dark Enlightenment does not propose that leftism went wrong four years ago, or ten years ago, but that it was fundamentally and terribly wrong a couple of centuries ago, and we have been heading to hell in a handbasket ever since at a rapidly increasing rate – that the enlightenment was dangerously optimistic about humans, human nature, and the state, that it is another good news religion, telling us what we wish to hear, but about this world instead of the next.

If authority required me to believe in Leprechauns, and to get along with people that it was important to get along with required me to believe in Leprechauns, I would probably believe in leprechauns, though not in the way that I believe in rabbits, but I can see people not being equal, whereas I cannot see leprechauns not existing.

And:

If we only count religions that officially admit to being supernatural, pretty obviously religion is declining. If, however, we define religion more broadly, then religion is increasing by leaps and bounds.

If authority assures you that leprechauns exist and that authority can see them, it does not take much faith to believe, since you cannot see leprechauns not existing. If, however, authority assures you that all humans are equal, or that all groups and categories of human are equal, it takes outstanding and extraordinary faith, since every day you see individuals, groups, and categories being strikingly and obviously unequal, for reasons cultural, genetic, and hormonal.

Further, belief in the flying spaghetti monster not only does no harm, but is apt to inculcate the accumulated wisdom of the ages, inculcating prudent and virtuous behavior, whereas belief in equality tends to inculcate bad behavior, as illustrated by the inability of “Occupy” to operate an urban campsite.

The United States has not experienced "leftist authoritarianism." Not if you're talking about real, government-boots-kicking-in-doors, authoritarianism. Woke HR and university struggle sessions and online cancellations are annoying, even career-damaging, but they are not even in the same category as actual Maoist struggle sessions or gulags.

Not that I think this is likely to happen under Trump either, but when @Goodguy says "a true authoritarian/populist revolution," he's not talking about Biden or Trump being elected, he's talking about Ceaușescu or Pinochet coming to power. He has a valid point; people on both sides (most especially including you, here) tend to get histrionic about the tyranny of their political opponents, with no perspective on what actual tyranny looks like.

The United States has not experienced "leftist authoritarianism." Not if you're talking about real, government-boots-kicking-in-doors, authoritarianism.

Targeting whites, no. But if one considers all races inhabiting the US, FDR's camps for Japanese-Americans fit the bill. He was a leftist, with his thugs did kick in to doirs to kidnap their victims.

This site did not keep going during leftist authoritarianism. It kept going during a political situation in which the left was more powerful than the right, but not by that much, and the left's powers were still significantly constrained. During a true authoritarian populist regime of either a left or a right flavor, that would not necessarily be the case. American-style free speech is very rare. As far as I know there is no other country in history that had/has such strong free speech norms. Any major deviation from the American liberal (in the old sense of the word "liberal") model would be more likely to do away with our free speech norms than to retain them.

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