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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31256 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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I was reflecting on how western politicians today use terms and words that have double meaning with the media and the electorate, with one meaning the one that people usually understand, while the other is academia-made and is often a true example of Motte-and-Bailey.

For example, terms like minority;

Minority for the common man (and the electorate!) means a group that is inferior in numbers in comparison to a majority. So, if you survey with a poll the opinion of the people, it appears that the majority (!) is in favour of helping minorities (because it is the right thing to do!).

Meanwhile, the de facto academic term for minority is "a group that is ontologically oppressed, and so it needs social justice in order to destroy the oppressive hierarchy of the majority"

This has as a consequence;

  • That politicians and their class of activists have the second definition in their minds, and do policies that follow it.

  • Meanwhile you (an individual in a debate, a party, a media organization) cannot dispute the effect and the reasoning of the former set of policies because, if you do, everyone and your mom assume that you are against the minorities as affirmed by the common sense definition, and so you are a political extremist!

This manipulation of language at a core level create a situation where extremists do policies that are extreme and unpopular while being elevated as sympathetic moderates, and the moderates that try to oppose them for whatever reasons are labeled as political extremists.

I have no idea if this kind of method to do politics was common in the pre- internet or pre-neoliberal era or whatever, but it creates an insurmountable situation where, unless the people "begin to notice", it is impossible to oppose the manipulators, starting from the point that the manipulators have probably the majority of media and capital behind them.

Isn't this just the dog whistle theory, but applied to leftists?

Dog-whistling is supposed to hide the true meaning from political opponents and the media, whereas (if I'm getting this right) what @Armin is discussing is meant to hide the true meaning from the electorate, including one's own voters.

You wrote better the conclusion I was trying to reach.

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