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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29311 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Sometimes simple comments say broad things for trends. In a group chat for a mixed group someone posted the Biden energy guy who likes stealing bags. I said if the Dems ran on their current platform in 2008 they would get 10% of the vote. I got a reply “truth”.

I can go back in time and pull up Joe Biden being very anti-gay marriage. Would it be fair to say if Joe Biden went in a coma in 2008 and woke up in 2022 he would be one of the most ardent Maga extremists? And a bunch of Republicans just voted for gay marriage.

The question I’m asking is it fair to say the left made a giant leap in roughly 15 years and the extremists today are just normal people not that long ago. I know this is meme. But is this factual?

Would it be fair to say if Joe Biden went in a coma in 2008 and woke up in 2022 he would be one of the most ardent Maga extremists?

2008 Joe Biden would be a touch conservative for a 2022 Democrat, but he wouldn't even be a liberal Republican, never mind a hardcore one.

Because of economics? There are literal communists out there being smeared as far-right reactionaries because they're not on board with the progressive agenda.

If you know anything about internecine conflict among Communists, you know that was true in 2008 as well. And in 1998, 1988, 1978, 1968, 1958, 1948 ... stop me when we get to the day after the Communist Manifesto was published.

You are probably talking about infighting between the far left. I am talking about liberals attacking communists for being reactionary, because they don't think Marx' class analysis is applicable to race.

That sounds to me like "infighting on the far left", since I don't think it's the center-left doing the attacking, and "actual communist" is further left than it's possible to go without someone saying that Actually They Are Not True Leftists, We Are True Leftists And They Are Heathens.

since I don't think it's the center-left doing the attacking

From my experience the center-left is not any more reasonable than the far left. There are no mainstream center-left spaces that would have let you criticize BLM, the narrative on trans issues, Critical Race Theory, etc. They're just as quick to call you a far-right/nazi/reactionary as the far left is.

literal communists out there being smeared as far-right reactionaries

These are either:

  1. Smeared by other communists, who probably aren't exactly what one thinks about when considering arbiters of what is left and what is right

  2. Are like Jackson Hinkle, ie. genuinely aren't really different from any other MAGA online personage expect for retaining some affectation of portraying themselves as a communist.

Didn't you raise an eyebrow at me for a comment implying Meghan Murphy was right wing?

I don't know if you deleted your comment and this is why my links don't work, or it's some website gremlins (definitely most likely gremlins, I swear I saw the comment a moment ago.), but this is my comment where I said:

Give me a break. They banned James Lindsay for saying "ok, groomer" too much, Meghan Murphy for "misgendering" the "wax my feminine balls" guy before there even was a rule against misgendering, gimmick accounts like Journo's Posting L's. They absolutely go out of their way to censor anyone who is making an impact, or looks like they might. The people they let stay are there for plausible deniabiity.

And this was my response to a reponse to the above comment:

She had an event in a library in Austin a few months ago, and from the people protesting it, you'd get the impression she's basically Hitler.

But my actual point is that the Twitter censorship regime is so strict you don't even have be right wing to get booted, any mild transgression against wokeness can get you banned, especially if they see you having an impact.

And I'm pretty sure directly between the two there was you saying something to the effect of "Meghan Murphy is right wing now?". And now you're saying all commies who are against double mastectomies for 13 year olds are actually MAGA?

Huh? No, I'm not saying that, but there are people identifying as communist - like the aforementioned Hinkle - who, judging by their current feed, really don't much differ from MAGA apart from their support for some official American enemy states like PRC and North Korea (the latter which, of course, Trump made overtures towards during his reign).

Ok, but people like Hinkle also existing doesn't address the point I was raising.

Sounds like several things are being conflated here:

  • Populist vs elitist

  • Activist vs status quo

  • Down-to-earth vs refined and cultured

  • Freedom vs regulation

  • Traditions of folk vs commerce-legible lifestyles

  • Living from history’s example vs putting history in the rear view mirror

  • Individualism vs collectivism

  • Genders according to a reproduction instinct vs a sexual pleasure instinct

These have each been red-coded/blue-coded at some times and politically coded at others.

Of these, the Democrats’ switch to elitism (for example) was as sudden as the Black vote switching after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

I think they were referring to people like Freddie DeBoer, who is calls himself and is quite clearly a socialist/Marxist, but ruffles a lot of progressive (woke) feathers by criticizing by criticising identity politics. Pretty much anyone that's liked by the subreddit stupidpol.

DeBoer ruffles feathers, but I don't remember him being called a far-right reactionary.

Pretty much anyone who ruffles their feathers gets called a reactionary, or some similar term. Including DeBoer.

Pretty much anyone who wades into politics and culture-war issues, and has some level of name recognition, gets called various names online. But by whom? Randos on Twitter? D-list freelancers on Ghost? Daily Beast-level progressive pundits? The NYT?

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