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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Are The Global Elites Coordinating to Push LGBT Acceptance And Gender Theory?

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Last week @2rafa posted her comment about WEF conspiracy theories, concluding that the WEF is a mundane organization, pushing mostly boring neoliberal status quo stuff, to the extent they push anything at all. This post isn't necessarily a direct response to that thesis, but might be an interesting contrast to it.

I am a proud Deranged Conspiracy Theorist. It's a relatively new state of affairs for me, but some time ago I've tried the tinfoil hat on, and it seems to fit. This means when the WEF is in session, I browse their livestreams and videos, and if something catches my eye, I watch the whole thing. So when I saw the video titled Beyond the Rainbow: Advancing LGBTQI+ Rights, I knew I had to watch it.

It's a discussion panel featuring a diverse cast of LGBT (well, L and G as far as I can tell) speakers from around the world. We have

Ben Fajzullin, an Australian journalist currently working for the German Deutsche Welle

• Fahd Jamaleddine, a “global shaper” from Lebanon

Sarah Kate Ellis from GLAAD

Tirana Hassan from Human Rights Watch

Sharon Marcil from the Boston Consulting Group

This is in no particular order, to the extent there are themes in this discussion, they're rotated through the conversation, so going over it chronologically doesn't make a lot of sense.

The goal of the panel is to discuss success stories of the LGBT(QI+) community, and best practices on how to implement “this type of thinking”. They start off by bringing up how last year there were still 80 countries with sodomy laws on the books, and now we're down to 70. A reasonable point to start, if there's a steelman case for the global elites coordinating to push LGBT acceptance and gender theory, that would be it.

Would I have no objection if this was where the whole thing ended? I'm not sure, maybe @DaseIndustriesLtd made singletons sound too scary for me, maybe I watched too much Star Trek as a kid, and the idea of the Prime Directive ended up influencing me a bit too much, or maybe I just have an irrational fear of my elites betraying me for membership in a global club? Hard to say. During the Q&A someone in the audience brings up an example and example from the other side:

we can trace directly the sources the resourcing for homophobia in Ghana straight line to the U.S churches

I don't want to be Americanized by Evangelicals any more than I want to be Americanized by Progressives, so I find it just as wrong as Davos-aligned orgs going around the world and spreading their ideas. The only way I could hold my nose, and tolerate it, is if one side was clearly winning, and this was the only way of preserving some viewpoint diversity.

Either way, while the goal ending sodomy laws is something I agree with, Davos panels on how to accomplish that make me uncomfortable.

Singapore is one of the most recent examples that [has] decriminalized [being gay]. It's taking the legislation off the books but at the same time Singapore fortified the rules around same-sex marriage and so you know it's not always a win; and they did that because they were playing to the more conservative base which was agreeing to decriminalization.

This is still on the mundane side, because I also agree with gay marriage, but it raises red flags when you compare it to the western culture war. Many people already had their suspicions, but the pretty explicit “we'll get you next time” that the Singaporeans get to hear if they're paying attention, raises some interesting questions about the seamless transition from gay marriage to trans issues in the west, and about taking any future assurances about social reforms in good faith. Other then that, coming back to the point about singletons, even though I'm personally for gay marriage, different definitions of marriage are one of the central examples of what I think different cultures should be allowed to experiment with.

Later they make a point that this isn't something limited to the non-developed countries:

Marriage equality laws, all of these issues, are actually becoming signs of modernity. They are becoming signs of democracies and countries which respect rights for everyone, but we're seeing also that this has become a new battleground, and in particular this isn't something that happens in certain parts of the world and not others. Even in Europe we see Hungary and Poland who have really been using LGBT rights as a battleground, essentially to try and harness the support of the conservative elements of society, and the government using it to put themselves up as some sort of hero of protector of family values.

Originally they name drop Poland and Hungary, so it might sound like they are focusing on marriage laws, but “using LGBT rights as a battleground to try and harness the support of the conservative elements of society” is a fully generalized argument. Later on they describe the US in similar terms:

May I just say one thing on that, because that is a Battleground that we're facing in the United States right now. It's really tough, I'll be honest with you, they're putting it under parental rights. I'm a parent I'm married to a woman and I have two kids, so they're talking about some parental rights, and they're excluding us, and they're targeting us, and they're banning books at a rate that we've never seen before. They're conflating these conversations about bodily autonomy and trans youth, and it's a really tough moment right now in education in the United States. I'm absolutely sure it's being exported globally this kind of framework that they've come up with, that's been really effective over the past year. They're legislating against it as well.

This is Sarah Kate Ellis describing the state of the controversy in the US. Everything you've heard about trans women in sports, placement in prison based on self-ID, concerns about the standards for diagnosing dysphoria in kids, the reversibility of puberty blockers, and their side effects, minimal ages for surgeries, eunuch fetishists promoting their fetish via WPATH, schools hiding children transitioning from their parents, Drag Queen Story Hour, and putting Queer Theory in school material have been reduced to the above paragraph, and it's made clear these stances are being deliberately pushed back on.

Someone seeing the WEF as boring and benign should also meditate on how despite gathering people from all over the world, they somehow seem confident no one in the audience is going to give them any push-back. They're not worried an American might say “you've misrepresented everything that's been happening in our country”, let alone that someone from a more conservative part of the world might proudly assert their values.

And of course, the part where she says ***they*** are exporting their framework globally, as she's sitting at Davos, talking to an international audience of some of the most powerful people in the world, is just... *Chef's Kiss* (there will be more of those).

Anyways, times like this I'm saddened ESR's prospiracy didn't get more popular

I know the concept, but I insist what I brought up here is bona fide, get-out-the-tinfoil-and-make-a-hat conspiracy. A prospiracy would be something like hopping on a cancel train when it trending on twitter, not hiring someone because they don't have a public real name social media profile, or hiring them because they have one, and it has pronouns in the bio. But when you head over to a conference, where you get to talk to some of the most richest and influential people on the planet, and go on a panel where you discuss how you can best help each other out to advance a cause - that's a conspiracy.

Isn't one of the important parts of a conspiracy that it be secret?

If i say : There is a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Church, to push their ideas to people in other communities and nations, to seed believers among them, to found new churches and have their influence grow..then i am not describing a conspiracy, i am describing missionary work which they are quite open about.

These people you list have likewise stated their ideas and goals quite openly, so that you can access them. Doesn't that shift it from conspiracy to just a plan? If you don't like the goals or methods it can still be a plan you oppose of course but its difficult to say its an effort to:

"to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or an act which becomes unlawful as a result of the secret agreement."

because its not a secret agreement. They are saying i believe x is good, I want x to happen in places where it doesn't. Lets work together to make x happen. Isn't that just activism? As above that doesn't mean its good, there might be lots of reasons to oppose x. But it doesn't seem to be a conspiracy as such.

Otherwise Republicans working together to get Republicans elected and to advance the Republican agenda, is a conspiracy which seems a bit too broad to be useful. If a conspiracy simply means people working together to advance an agenda then almost every political and activism based organization is a conspiracy from the Tea Party to Greenpeace to the NRA, to Super Pacs, to the DSA.

I think for it to be a conspiracy there has to be something hidden. Like if the NRA was secretly working to advance gun control measures by making itself the face of 2A rights but then behaving ineptly on purpose, that could be a conspiracy.

Isn't one of the important parts of a conspiracy that it be secret?

If that's the case, people who are discussing the WEFs documented activities, and being called conspiracy theorists, are being slandered, no? I might stop yes_chadding as a tinfoil hatter, if we get that to stop.

Also that would still leave a whole bunch of other groups where the elites convene, as bona fide conspiracies. The Bilderberg Group, the Rockefeller Foundation, Club of Rome, etc. They all hold secret meetings.

A useful exercise is to mentally replace "conspiracy theory" with "beliefs the writer wishes to characterize as low status and dismiss without consideration".

Well if they as you did call it a conspiracy then they are correctly being critiqued no? If instead they say this is what was discussed and i think its bad and people say that it is not being discussed at all, then they are being critiqued incorrectly i would agree.

Mostly where i see conspiracy theorists going wrong is that the conclusions they draw from x evidence are generally far too strong.

As for the other meetings, then sure talk about those. But if you're only talking about the WEF then thats all we can critique.

Well if they as you did call it a conspiracy then they are correctly being critiqued no?

First of all, I'm doing that, most people called conspiracy theorists don't.

Secondly, even if they did, the correct critique would be your original one "actually, that's not a conspiracy!", not " that's just a conspiracy theory ". The latter makes no sense as a critique, when someone endorses the label, which is part of the reason why I'm doing the whole Tinfoil Gigachad thing to begin with.

Mostly where i see conspiracy theorists going wrong is that the conclusions they draw from x evidence are generally far too strong.

Would you say that answering the question from my headline in the affirmative would be far too strong? If no, do you think it wouldn't be called a conspiracy theory if I posted it at a mainstream place.

Change Are the elites to Are SOME elites and the answer is yes most likely. Keep it as THE elites (assuming they are all working in step) and I would say no. WEF doesn't include all elites everywhere and there are splits within elites even from the same nations. I've rubbed shoulders with the elite (albeit as a functionary not one of them) and they are absolutely a) not that in step and b) not that well coordinated even when they are. The WEF is a jolly for most of them, not a shadowy place to change the world.

Nuance is important and that is why I think many conspiracy theories can be easily denied as they overclaim. But nuanced theories are probably less fun/attractive I suppose.

Eg: Are some subset of the worlds western elite coordinating to try and push for gay rights in various nations around the world?

I would say the answer is pretty clearly yes. But its not particularly exciting or secret.

Are some subset of the worlds religous elites coordinating to try and push against "degenerency" in various nations around the world?

I would also say this is pretty clearly correct and also not that exciting or secret.