This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yeah but looking at one random 1955 edition of the Current Digest of Soviet Press, which collated the top stories in newspapers such as Pravda the bias is way more obvious and prevalent than you suggest. The top story is on 'The profound treatment of Leninist philosophical heritage', then we have an article on Jazz, but this is used to attack Western racism, then one on 'gross provocation by French police authorities', another praising Soviet foreign policy, one criticising the reception of a Soviet delegation in the US, a discussion of Marx on religion and countless others. Almost the only one without an overt Marxist, anti-Western or pro-Soviet angle is one article on sheep farming. The bias is obvious and everywhere.
That's because you're looking at it from the outside. You weren't raised in an environment where articles on with those themes and topics were considered "normal" and "non-controversial." That's the whole point of my post. If you had been born in 1915 and grown up reading nothing but that stuff in newspapers it might not seem very ideological at all.
I will concede that Cathedral propaganda is much more subtle, but that doesn't make it any less effective. Quite the opposite, in fact -- the Soviet framework was less totalizing, less all encompassing than the liberal framework (see Legutko's Demon in Democracy).
I feel like we're running fairly close to an unfalsifiable argument, where if there doesn't appear to be any propaganda or bias in MSM that must simply be because the observer is inoculated to it or because it's so subtle.
The comment near the top of this chain said everything they heard would invariably have an angle about a marginalised group; while I can't speak for American radio, this just doesn't seem to be the case in prominent MSM outlets.
I think this is self-evident. The question is not whether there is bias, only how much, because there is no such thing as a neutral viewpoint. To get a bit pedantic, the most mundane dog-bites-man story will have some sort of philosophical framework baked in consisting of basic assumptions about reality, such as what a dog is ("a mammal often kept as a domestic housepet," "a ritually unclean animal," "a harbinger of evil," "a symbol of wiley cleverness," etc. etc.) and what a man is (well, in $CURRENT_YEAR maybe this is a bad example). Articles about mundane topics written by ancient Greeks are far enough removed from us culturally that they are laden with bizarre assumptions that make no sense to us unless we read up on ancient Greek culture and society beforehand to understand their framework.
We can easily see the unique assumptions (the bias) of the ancient Greeks because there is so much cultural distance between us and them. American leftists and rightists are not yet so far removed from each other, so we can find "unbiased" stories that both would probably agree are "neutral." But as we move to topics where the left and right have diverged more, the distance between the two frameworks reveals (usually leftist) assumptions which, yes, are often very subtle. As I have stated elsewhere, I am a "reactionary" Catholic so my framework is much more distant from the leftist framework than the average American conservative (who I believe is rightly described as "last decade's Democrat") and so I can see the left/liberal/Enlightenment fnords more clearly.
Edit: To get off my soapbox and back to the claim under discussion, I don't think that literally every article or radio segment has a claim about a minority group, but a whole lot of them certainly do, and even a mundane piece about an opera singer has a subtext that might be invisible if you're thoroughly immersed in a 21st century American context.
This sentiment is one of the biggest reasons we ended up in this mess in the first place. "The personal is political. There is no such thing as being apolitical" -> Therefore you better pick the correct politics or else you're complicit in moral wrong-doing, comrade.
Of course there is no such thing as complete political neutrality. Doesn't mean the concept can't still serve as an aspirational ideal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link