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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34459 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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We should establish a norm that as a blanket rule advocacy groups should not be seen as actually representing the groups they claim to be doing advocacy for, but instead, their own personal interests first and foremost.

That's always been my take at least. And speaking as a liberal, I really do believe that doing this would dramatically reduce the amount of active bigotry that exists in the world. The activists and advocacy groups are creating their own boogiemen out of thin air, more or less.

They're the ones dreaming up the Stay-Puff Marshmellow Man in a Klan hat, and manifesting it into reality.

That’s a weirdly specific example. Please tell me it’s not an actual thing.

What, the Stay Puff Marshmellow Man in a Klan hat thing? No no no. I'm just riffing directly off of Ghostbusters, where I really do think people get to choose "the form of the destroyer" based upon what things they actually bother to react to. It's the best analogy to how I think these things work. At the very least, they get to amplify whatever they want to amplify into the big threat. Then Toxoplasma of Rage comes into play, and everything just gets ugly.

I don't know about the Stay-Puft Man, but Terminal Lance did have a Michelin Man in a Klan hood (I couldn't find the strip, though).

We should establish a norm that as a blanket rule advocacy groups should not be seen as actually representing the groups they claim to be doing advocacy for, but instead, their own personal interests first and foremost.

I'm not really sure that could work in practice or maybe I'm misunderstanding the suggestion. It seems not to fit the majority of advocacy groups, illustrative but exaggerated example: "Advocates for ending child sex trafficking should seen as advocating for their own personal self interests first and foremost" seems somewhat incoherent. I can see how it'd be true in some "It makes me feel good about myself to help others" way, but just the mechanics of advocacy require these groups to try and make their target population's needs feel salient and important.

But perhaps you mean that the group doing advocacy should be required to prove they have buy in to the credibility of the groups they're advocating on behalf of. Such that the ADL could only advocate for Jews in general if they collected vote or polling from the Jewish population and therefore criticism of the ADL would genuinely and legitimately be criticism of the Jewish people and thus the Jewish people would police the actions of the ADL because it would weigh on their own reputation?

I feel bubbling up from my gut sometimes an instinctual flinch away from "advocacy" like a boo word. As soon as I clock someone as an advocate, and it rarely takes more than a sentence, my defenses against bullshit go into overdrive. I prepare for bad faith arguments and to be buffeted by misleading quotes and word games. But advocates aren't only out there for issues that set my jaded culture war heart ablaze, and awarness sometimes should be raised on worthy problems. I don't think it's a good thing that my reflex when I hear that someone wants to make the world a better place is distrust. I hope I can go back to that credulity if we can build a world worthy of it, I hope my kids will live in that world.

I mean, even look at something like child sex trafficking that so often flies off into other things. (And also misses very critical vectors at times). But this isn't to say completely discredit their work and what they're doing...although I share the same instinctual flinch. My guard is certainly up as well. But it's not something we should shift on a larger group, is my point. Their arguments should stand and fail on their own, without being reflective of people outside of those making those arguments. Maybe that's pollyannaish, as usual. But I do think it's a very real problem.

Maybe a better way of putting it is that the power that advocacy groups wield can be dangerous in their own right, and while it shouldn't discredit their argument, certainly it's a reason that we should be careful and wary about it.

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