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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31277 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.

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"

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

Isn’t this assuming the conclusion?

There is room for plausible deniability between common, practical definitions and academic ones. Politicians are capable of exploiting this for tactical advantage. I’m sure they do so...occasionally.

I scanned a few Democrat sites to see if I could find any examples.

  • Beto O’Rourke: no dice, even on the LGBTQ or voting rights or immigration pages.

  • Adam Schiff only uses “disadvantaged communities” or “people of color” when laying out his priorities.

  • Bennie Thompson doesn’t use “minority” either.

I don’t think this sort of word game is as popular as you suspect. If you have examples, I’d be happy to discuss whether or not they really meant the strong form.

"People of color" still includes Asians, who the left often wants to exclude.

As a further piece of evidence:

As a light-skinned East Asian man, I have never been randomly stopped by the police, and no doorman has ever assumed I was the delivery boy. None of the serious indignities and disadvantages of being a minority in America has been inflicted on me, yet I have accrued all the benefits of being a person of color, particularly when it comes to my career.

…

[the white people in my life don’t realize I am, if not white, then about as close to it as one can get.]

(It is telling that the author of that piece reveals to being of mixed East Asian/white heritage but is still handwringing about all this.)

The entire issue was ostensibly about “Asian-Americans”, but my East Asian girlfriend got was not very happy about the coverage (she said outright that she thinks it is discriminatory from the progressive writers, that if it were South Asians or black or any other race/ethnicity, they wouldn’t have done such a dreadful job and had such awful art). While I am agnostic to those particular claims, I am inclined to agree that it represents ; most of the pieces don’t deserve to be taken seriously. Nevertheless it is evidence of attempting to equate “Asian” (esp. East Asian) with being white-adjacent, whatever that means.

I recall at my job hearing a Sri Lankan colleague remark casually about how “we three ethnic people” (in a group) have culture and whatnot, while white people didn’t; I remarked that the rest of the group there were not white, but East Asian; she replied kind of dismissively that “you know what I mean, you know, brown people”. I think that is as clear a sort of equivocation of East Asian with white as I can find, and that it can be said casually to other people in a work environment tells me much.

Or take this piece of ridiculousness, such that it is.

Or take this piece of ridiculousness, such that it is.

Oh, my.

The Japanese derided the Chinese as "yellow". As Michael Keevak points out, Japan saw itself on par with Western powers. Its imperialism mirrored the imperialism of white colonisers. In the West, the Japanese were still seen as "coloured people", Keevak says, but "maybe not as yellow as the Chinese." For the past three centuries, power and whiteness have been synonymous. From the British Empire to the American century, white nations have exported violence, committed genocide, stolen land and made it all legal. China, like so many other non-white nations, has felt the sting of white imperialism.

Uh... is the claim here that the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was a white supremacist project?

the Chinese Communist Party itself mirrors whiteness. The irony is Xi has also become what he opposes. He is a Han nationalist — his idea of Chinese power is ethnic Han superiority — persecuting non-Han, non-white people in his own country. If whiteness is power, Xi Jinping is its champion. The continuation of white power, in darker skin.

And that the CCP and Xi are white supremacist? Like, is the idea that anyone who's not a helpless victim and who has agency in the world is white?

Uh... is the claim here that the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was a white supremacist project?

Not even just that, but:

For the past three centuries, power and whiteness have been synonymous.

So the Manchu domination of the Han, quite explicit in the Qing, is also white supremacy.

And that the CCP and Xi are white supremacist? Like, is the idea that anyone who's not a helpless victim and who has agency in the world is white?

I assume that is what they are getting at.

Is this some sort of AUKUS plan to poke the Chinese Tiger? Publish journalistic equivalents of this meme aimed at Xi?

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