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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   30267 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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"My ingroup is relentlessly oppressed by the supposedly neutral authorities, who are actually in the pockets of my enemies. The outgroup is highly organized and relentlessly hateful of people like me. If my side loses a battle, that's just further proof that I'm right and the whole thing is rigged. If my side wins a battle, it's also evidence of how right I am because the only way we'd win against such odds is by being twice as correct as the enemies. My side is the victim. It's all a conspiracy rigged against us."

Freddie De Boer recently posted an article on "The Political Era of Paranoid Delusion". It details how both sides have converged on mirroring ideas of victimization and oppression. The names each side uses might be different, but the conclusions are largely similar. It's only 4 paragraphs long, so I'll post the entire thing here:

President Joe Biden was interviewed last night, his first since his much-discussed debate performance. If you check around online, you will find two simultaneous narratives about this interview, passionately held: that the interviewer George Stephanopoulos and his employer ABC News were bent on embarrassing and attacking Biden, and that the interviewer George Stephanopoulos and his employer ABC News were bent on lionizing Biden and papering over his flaws. It was a hit job; it was a puff piece. The questions were unduly harsh; the questions were softballs. They avoided the hardest topics for Biden to discuss, unless they steered directly towards those questions over and over again. Stephanopoulos was too combative, or was he not combative enough? They taped the piece so that they could surreptitiously edit out Biden’s gaffes and stumbles; they designed the lighting so that it would make Biden look sickly and old. And now The Media™ is reacting to the interview by fixating on Biden’s weaknesses, or maybe they’re treating those weaknesses with kid gloves. What both sides are sure of is that, however the fallout from the interview breaks, it breaks because of dirty tricks, because of chicanery, because of a conspiracy against their side. There is no other option, no alternative. If my side loses, ever, the game was rigged. It’s a conspiracy, and they’re all in on it.

If I had to choose between these two tendencies I would obviously have to choose the blue MAGA over the red. Doing so would protect abortion and environmental regulations and the NLRB, among many other things. It’s not a contest, for me. But of course I’d prefer to choose neither. Blue MAGA is very, very real; the paranoid style has spread like a coronavirus from Republicans to Democrats. Put “The New York Times” into the Twitter search bar on any given day and you’ll find relentless, enraged invective coming from Democratic loyalists who insist that the paper of record is on a mission to reelect Donald Trump. They used to laugh at Republicans when they groused about “skewed polls,” but now they do the exact same thing - any poll that emerges that suggests Biden is losing is a conservative op, run by a firm with a well-known Republican bias. Hacks! That Nate Silver, you know, he’s on the Trump payroll. And while this phenomenon is most pronounced on the streets, Democratic elites have embraced it too. Look at Bruce Bartlett, look at Joy Ann Reid, look at Aaron Rupar, look at Josh Marshall, look at Rachel Maddow. They’re all sure: the narrative that we shouldn’t give another four and a half years to Joe Biden, an octogenarian who looks and acts like the 81-year-old he is, can only be the product of corruption. No sincere heart could look at that man on the debate stage with anything but awe and admiration.

Of course, conservatism is now built on a foundation not of Christianity or free markets but on the belief that elites are screwing you, that it’s all a conspiracy against you and your way of life. That is the bedrock. That is the new covenant - paranoia, obsession, revenge. “They’re all out to get you,” says Trumpism, “and I will destroy your enemies.” You don’t even need me to tell you that.

This, it seems, is where we are: two warring political tribes who share the foundational principle that anything that goes wrong for them is the product of a rigged system. Two angry players, too busy working the refs to concentrate on the game, looking for some higher authority to declare that the other side broke the rules. This isn’t fair. They’re breaking the rules. I’m telling the teacher. They’re denying us what we’re owed. Today the parties are united only in their belief that, on a neutral field and playing a clean game, they cannot lose. If a single voter endorses the opposition, their opponents must be cheating. How could it be otherwise? Surely only conspiracy could defeat us. Surely only The Man could pull the wool over the eyes of millions. This was much more of a Republican thing, and I know that people hate any argument that sounds like “both sides.” But both sides, in fact, are now operating this way. The notion that Democrats cannot fail in a clean election, cannot stumble but through illegitimate outside force, is now fully enculturated into the party. They hate Trump so much they’ve adopted his signature contribution to American politics. And I don’t know how you get out of this without violence, at this point. I really don’t.

I do find it interesting that whenever I venture into left-wing spaces, they have a very similar mindset to the right-wing ones re:

  • the uniparty is neutering politics, pretending to hold our ideology whilst throwing us under the bus at every opportunity (citing e.g. the lack of long-lasting legal change despite the Floyd riots)
  • even when our guys are popular the moderates in our party close ranks to keep them out (Bernie Sanders, attempted with Jeremy Corbyn)
  • mainstream media lies to build complacency and takes every opportunity to identify us with the worst of our movement (e.g. the /r/antiwork interview, the UK media's treatment of Corbyn)
  • the opposition wants us gone permanently, and any election risks them finally getting enough power to manage it

I think that conservatives have a much stronger leg to stand on here: the illiberal centre is left-wing and actively persecutes right-wingers; the fact that it's not quite left-wing enough for the radicals doesn't fill me with sympathy.

But I think that the paranoia on both sides is basically driven by structural problems:

  1. An oligarchic form of government that is unaffected by election results (the Deep State, the Civil Service)
  2. The professionalisation of politics (almost all politicians come from a very similar and unusual background and are beholden to the Overton window amongst people of that background).
  3. An increasingly weighty cruft of legal systems and regulations that have got ever more tangled and impenetrable over time and prevents movement. This (and the production of 'clients') produces a 'ratchet' model of politics where losses like Brexit are often permanent.
  4. Genuine ethnic and moral tribalism vastly reducing the space of beliefs that are shared by a supermajority of people.

The result is that

"My ingroup is relentlessly oppressed by the supposedly neutral authorities, who are actually in the pockets of my enemies. The outgroup is highly organized and relentlessly hateful of people like me. If my side loses a battle, that's just further proof that I'm right and the whole thing is rigged. If my side wins a battle, it's also evidence of how right I am because the only way we'd win against such odds is by being twice as correct as the enemies. My side is the victim. It's all a conspiracy rigged against us."

is essentially true for anyone except the most anodyne of the centre-Left. It hasn't escaped my notice that much of recent right-wing thought (conflict theory, the long march through the institutions, the Cathedral, who/whom) is very much from a left-wing critical tradition, because they are used to being political outcasts and have more mental tools for dealing with that. Often it literally comes from (former) communists - people like Brendan O'Neill, Peter Hitchens, Freddie de Boer.

I think horseshoe theory is overrated, but dissident/complacent is often a useful axis to go alongside left/right and authoritarian/liberal when you want to model how groups will behave.

But I think that the paranoia on both sides is basically driven by structural problems:

It's not driven by structural problems, it's driven by the fact that radical wings are ... radical wings. They are weirdos and of course, to them, everything looks like "the uniparty is keeping us down".

Bernie bros were genuinely the worst about this.

I'm saying that the uniparty is keeping them down. Combine that with the fact that radical wings are growing rapidly in America and Europe for the structural reasons I give and it's no surprise that the amount of paranoia is also growing.

If someone is agitating for fringe views, and the country is even roughly representational, then keeping them down is the expected behavior.

You're right that they are growing though, but even a growing fringe can still be anathema to ~2/3 of the population -- that was more or less what the French election just showed.

If the country is roughly representational, and someone is requesting unpopular actions, then not necessarily giving them what they want is natural and appropriate. The charge - increasingly true, I think - is that active methods are being taken to discredit and weaken those broadcasting non-majority views along the lines I described in reply to OP.

Which I can understand but it's somewhat distasteful at best and causing the very problem it's meant to prevent at worst.

I'm not sure I get the distinction between you're drawing here about "active methods".

Sticking with left wing examples for now, let's say there's a movement advocating for a wealth tax.

Saying, "no, only 10% of people want that," is appropriate.

Saying, "no, only 10% of people want that," and then going through that movement to find the one member who said something stupid ten years ago and bringing it up incessantly whenever people talk about wealth taxes is what I would call "active methods". An active attempt to damage and (further) discredit movements that are not popular in order to prevent that movement from ever becoming more popular.

That kind of seems like regular politics. Possibly unpleasant, but not some kind of illegitimate thing. Parties do it to each other all the times -- the left wing broadcasts MTG in their fundraisers all the time. Right wing blasts the squad.

What's more relevant to me is the question: if a movement never becomes popular, how do we distinguish between "we were discredited" from "our ideas were never palatable to more than 10% of voters"? Because I feel that many losing movements declare that, and it can't be universally the case.

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