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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32882 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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A new Jonathan Chait piece: How to Make a Semi-Fascist Party.

The piece details his experience at the National Conservatism Conference where a bunch of conservatives (politicians, intellectuals, etc.) get together and try to articulate a vision of conservatism's future.

Some parts are unsurprising. Ron DeSantis is hailed for supposedly bringing Disney in-line, and there's a unified theme as to what the real threat to America is. Three guesses and the first two don't count.

Almost every speaker repeated a version of the following: The “woke” revolution has captured the commanding heights of American education, culture, and even large businesses, from which positions it is spreading and enforcing a noxious left-wing ideology. This poses an existential threat to conservatism, culturally and politically. Conservatives must therefore fight back by using state power to crush their enemies on the left — a notable break for a movement that, in the pre-Trump days, had at least pretended to stand against “big government.”

Chait points to rhetoric which, on the surface, suggests the right may drop its support for economically conservative policies, but he argues that it's tailored for dealing with the specific things these conservatives don't like, as opposed to some general/coherent economic policy or policies.

The National Conservatives’ statement of principles is vague on economics, denouncing socialism while attacking “transnational corporations” for “showing little loyalty to any nation,” damaging “public life by censoring political speech, flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and pornography, and promoting obsessive, destructive personal habits.” This is a moral critique, confined to a trivial percentage of businesses — very few of which, after all, are engaged in content moderation or the sale of drugs or pornography — and implies very little change to the traditional Republican pro-business stance.

...

National Conservatives consider corporations to be “woke” enemies, or at least potential enemies, and see the power of the state as a lever to compel them to endorse conservative positions or at least refrain from endorsing liberal ones. They propose to pressure tech companies like Twitter and Google to drop content-moderation policies like bans on disinformation or hate speech. They wish to pressure corporations to not take positions in defense of voting rights or against forms of social discrimination. And they view investment funds using environmental, social-welfare, and good-governance criteria as a mortal threat. On all these issues, the National Conservative position is essentially identical to The Wall Street Journal’s editorial line.

Of note is the new fusing of an old talking point with a new one. Chait writes the following of the "Securing the Integrity of American Elections" panel.

The overarching theme of the panel was that Democrats routinely engage in widespread voter fraud and that Republicans have failed to gain power because they have shied away from the hard work of rooting out this allegedly endemic cheating. “You’re not gonna get anybody elected unless you’ve got an honest election system in which they’ve got the ability to get elected,” said Spakovsky. “There’s obviously going to be fraud; we know there will be fraud,” said Jessica Anderson, a former Trump budget staffer now working at Heritage.

None of the panelists are willing to affirm if they think Biden won the election fairly, which Chait takes as proof that their private views will not get in the way of them trying to use the energy the 2020 election provides.

Then there's what amounts to a very foolish, but understandable strategy.

Christina Pushaw, whose official title is director of rapid response for the governor but whose role could be more accurately described as minister of propaganda, held forth at a panel on marginalizing independent media. The challenge, she explained ruefully, is that many older Americans, such as her parents, still give some credence to old-line outfits like the New York Times. This reputation, she believes, comes from the perception that they have access to both parties, so the correct response by Republicans is to freeze out the mainstream media. “If they have no access to any Republican elected officials, they are seen for what they are,” she proposed. Pushaw stressed that Republicans should not even concede that reporters are journalists at all. She instructed the audience to call them “activists.”

Pushaw told the audience that Orbán’s government gave her inspiration for this tactic. “The New Yorker wrote to Orbán and asked for comment on their hit piece, and they received a response that was just perfect. It said, ‘We are not going to participate in the validation process for liberal propaganda,’ ” she recounted, “and I don’t think we need to participate in that validation process either.” Instead, she noted, DeSantis gives access to conservative sites, which then get quotes and scooplets they can use to build their audience.

While Chait argues that, as bad as left-wing news might be, right wing news doesn't even try to be objective, I'll make a different critique.

Suppose Pushaw's point are her earnest belief. She succeeds and we get conservative news sites that get exclusive access to conservatives. What happens?

Answer: Nothing changes.

All that will occur is that left-wing sites like the NYT or whoever else will report whatever those other sites say and add a note "Person X refused to comment."

Chait argues that Pushaw wants to eliminate the idea of a journalist altogether - there will instead be "left journalists" and "right journalists". This is idiotic, because there are going to be people who synthesize the materials and present themselves as objective journalists. Both sides would do it and nothing changes. CNN will tell you what DeSantis told his favored journalist and continue on without pause.

This isn't even something like "we're going to create right-journalists who will directly contest every claim the left makes, thereby nominally preventing anyone from knowing truth", it's quite literally "go here to find our words". Scott Alexander doesn't stop existing just because the NYT can't directly interview DeSantis.

That previous idea, however, comes from Hungary and Victor Orban, who were positively featured at the convention. There was a lot of praise for Orban as someone who had used state power to fight fake news.

At one panel, The Federalist’s Sean Davis asked Balázs Orbán, an adviser (no relation) to Viktor Orbán, how his government is preventing the fake-news media from poisoning the minds of the youth. “Just as is done in Florida,” Orbán replied, explaining that the Hungarian regime used state power to prevent the left from indoctrinating the country in its ideology.

Chait concludes his piece by noting that as time went on, he was in an increasing hostile environment. People insulted him to his face and tweeted out that he looked like a goblin. Amber Athey certainly suggests so.

Aside

Okay, so Athey went beyond just an accusation of being a goblin and claimed the following was evidence.

The linked complaint is...hard to judge. DeSantis most definitely said what he did, so we're left to judge if Athey is referring to the actual words spoken or Chait's claim that the governor is courting anti-vaxxers.

Edit: it's not unclear, Athey is clear that she objects to Chait's view of what DeSantis is doing.

Certainly, there is a great deal of frustration on the vaccine-skeptic side (or whatever you wish to call people who distrusted the Covid vaccine(s) but not necessarily others for whatever reason) in how anti-vaxxer changed from "deny the science altogether" to "question any part of any vaccine". An important question is if Chait is intentionally using the new definition while trying to convince people DeSantis falls under the old one.

That said, there is a logic in pointing out that political groups often given a guide to the various enemies they have on who to collaborate with. Unless the skeptical-about-covid-vaccine-but-not-all crowd is virulently against the old definition anti-vaxxers, a strategic coalition can be formed and the more palatable rhetoric will probably draw in the ones who are more shunned. I cannot be the only one to have noticed this.

I'm willing to buy that DeSantis is more concerned about "woke elites" than he is about actually staking out a position on the covid vaccine, but I don't know enough about him to say whether it's deliberate or not.

Earlier today I reread Neutral vs. Conservative: The Eternal Struggle, which seems useful background. My question is, you say:

Then there's what amounts to a very foolish, but understandable strategy.

Why? There's really no hope for conservatives to get fair representation in ostensibly neutral institutions, and nearly all the relevant voices on the Right have abandoned them. By ideology and cultural background, the participants in those institutions are incapable of thinking of alternative viewpoints as anything except motivated by evil. And we've reached a point where in 2021 only 12% of adults had a lot of trust in national news organizations, which is a record low.

At some point in the recent past it was probably true that national news organizations were more accurate/fair in their reporting than the explicit partisanship of right-aligned media. I don't think that's the case anymore. Even if you disagree, it's likely that the Right can convince an outright majority of voters that institutions are just a mirror image of Breitbart. Discrediting and delegitimization seems like a winning move.

I am not sure why you think that poll refers to the "liberal media," given that Fox News has been the #1 cable news channel for 20 years and that in Q2 of 2022, Fox had the top 8 cable news shows, and 9 of the top 10.

Fox News has been the #1 cable news channel for 20 years

And yet none of the CBS, ABC, or NBC newsmagazines or Sunday morning talk shows have taken note and even pivoted to neutrality. They remain staffed with left of center ex-Clinton and ex-Obama staffers with panels that, at best can be expected to have one milktoast Republican as a whipping boy.

That's a fair point, as it just refers to national media organizations and not particular organizations.

Reading the tea leaves, though, the high trust ratings are mostly sustained by Democrats in the same poll. It's unlikely that the organization Democrats are expressing high trust in is Fox, and the decline over the past several years is driven heavily by Republican and Republican-leaning adults, who are the primary targets of this strategy.

I like pointing to this, not because I think the study or survey is especially accurate -- the low quality of the methodology doesn't encourage! -- but because it's the sort of question people are asking when they ask this, and it says something when examined in close detail what that is.

It would be nice to see the leaners analyzed separately. Those are people whom both sides should be trying to reach, so it is their attitudes which should determine whether the strategy is wise.

How does Fox compare to CNN+MSNBC+ABC+NBC+CBS?

Well, based on the total data on the scribd document in the link to the Q2 2022 data, it looks like these are the audience totals (based on the third column, which appears to be how they are ranked):

CNBC 2132

CNN 6874

FBN 2446

FOXN 32390

HLN 288

MSNB 16002

NMX 2334

TOTAL 62466

But the point is not the exact percentages. The point is that, given that Fox is a very popular news organization, it is impossible to infer anything about the public views of "liberal media" from a poll that asks merely about "national news organizations." Perhaps those numbers are driven by declining trust in the "liberal media," or perhaps they are driven by a decline in trust in Fox News, or perhaps there has a decline in trust in all of the above. It is impossible to tell from that source.

My impression is that opinion in Fox had become extremely polarized by the mid Bush II years. Opinions on the other networks didn't really crater until the last 5-10 years. But at this point, almost no one has a generally favorable view of "the media". We might see a more nuanced picture if there were another question like "Is there any national televised news you think is trustworthy?"

At some point in the recent past it was probably true that national news organizations were more accurate/fair in their reporting than the explicit partisanship of right-aligned media.

ABC morning news in 2022 reminds me of clips John Stewart would play of Glenn Beck in 2004. Even the pretense of objectivity feels like gaslighting. They don't care at all that you learn any facts about what happened, the only important thing is that you feel who are the bad guys (the Republicans) and who are the good guys (the Democrats).

Did you see the “Stewart -> Tucker pipeline” article linked on ACX? It’s a closely related theory that Stewart’s Daily Show sold networks on exactly such a tribal news-adjacent program. Obama-era Fox pundits just figured out how to target it for their group, and by today it’s what all the major programs are trying to tap.

I found it pretty convincing.

Yeah, I saw that. Pretty close to my existing opinion on the influence of The Daily Show, except I think TDS had a much more destructive influence on the lefter shows than Fox, because Fox was already pretty low-brow culture war. I think TDS taught an entire generation of progressives that political debate consisted of sneering at maliciously edited caricatures of the outgroup, and we are still deaing with the repercussions of that.

Even if you disagree, it's likely that the Right can convince an outright majority of voters that institutions are just a mirror image of Breitbart. Discrediting and delegitimazation seems like a winning move.

Pushaw's specific strategy is to advocate for the right to stop speaking with journalists deemed "on the left". The problem is that she's just shifting where they'll get their info from the conservative reporter/site as opposed to the person themself. This is fine if your goal is to build up an army of right-friendly reporters (in the literal sense), not if your goal is to delegitimize your enemies. And now, they won't even have to ask that person to speak for themself, since everyone will know that "the right doesn't talk to the NYT". You'll just see "person X did not reply to requests for comment".

In my opinion, Pushaw's view on why people who say they are on the left or right might believe that the NYT is a fair journal is wrong. At the very least, it is not because they think the NYT has access to the comments from both sides, and even in her own hypothetical, they'd still have that access. Compare the following.

"Governor DeSantis told the NYT that he doesn't think he's anti-LGBT."

"Governor DeSantis told Pushaw's Trust Journalists that he doesn't think he's anti-LGBT."

If you saw the same article with only this distinction, would you tell anyone they were meaningfully different? I wouldn't. It's just another chain in the "where did this come from" game we all have to play.

If Pushaw wants to delegitimize the NYT, I don't think any plan is going to revolve significantly around the idea of not talking directly, even if that's something you'd do anyways.

This is fine if your goal is to build up an army of right-friendly reporters (in the literal sense), not if your goal is to delegitimize your enemies.

The right does not have the power to delegitimize its enemies in anyone's eyes but its own, and right now even that task is incomplete.

If you saw the same article with only this distinction, would you tell anyone they were meaningfully different? I wouldn't.

The problem is you would never see that article in the first place, at least framed that way. The interview would be chopped and pasted and recontextualized as something like "DeSantis angrily disputes homophobic concerns from civil rights groups". I watch network news in the morning because my parents do, and they want to talk to me about it, and the problem is exactly what Pushaw is talking about. They see 40 seconds of clips featuring three different question/responses from an interview with Hershel Walker, and they have no idea how long that interview was, what was left out, what context is being omitted, etc. They just get the impression that "Walker was interviewed by the news and this is what he had to say". They don't even notice until I point it out that that 40 seconds features more intense grilling than all Democrats combined have gotten on that channel in the last two years.

Compared to living with that crap, a full court press delegitimating effort is at least an actionable strategy. Actually treat them like the partisan SuperPAC they essentially are.

Gotcha. I agree that this will only marginally push the needle on delegitimization, albeit positively. Perhaps someone will go check out Pushaw Trust Journalists; perhaps the monoculture of who interacts with those institutions will make a couple more people skeptical of what they say or print.

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