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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Trump is back on Facebook, Instagram too

Meta to restore Trump's Facebook, Instagram accounts

So this means he's back on all major platforms. I think this shows that maybe, alluding to the below about JK Rowling, that cancel culture does not work as well as on famous, rich targets: they get more chances, and also because they are such big draws and have so many fans, that it's shooting oneself in the foot to cancel them. I have observed the same on YouTube, with Rogan ,Jordan Peterson , and Fox News views being heavily promoted. I tested this by opening YouTube on an EC2 instance US IP, no browsing history. Big tech companies, like all companies, are motivated by profits in the end, more so than ideology. The big question is, will trump post? I think so eventually, come election season . At this point, I think the left has sustained a major defeat in the culture wars.

Alternatively wokeness is waning a bit, the market turned and suddenly the people who objected to trump coming back stopped looking like valuable lawsuit insurance and started looking like deadweight while you're desperately trying to surface for air. That doesn't mean it's dead in other areas but the tech platforms are definitely slowing their roll a bit.

Basically this. I get that it's practically an article of faith amongst mottezens that wokeness will prevail, and that PMC gatekeeping is inviolable, but FOX News is supposedly drawing something like 2 - 3 times the nightly viewership of MSNBC and CNN. CNN is rumored to be suffering serious financial issues, and staff are reportedly pissed that the new CEO is looking to eliminate a lot of the "opinion journalism". Likewise, at an alleged 10 million viewer a show and growing Rogan seems to be on track to attain the sort of reach that Limbaugh held at his peak where he as an individual was regularly outperforming major outlets.

Sure the woke SV types might be trying to put their fingers on the algorithmic scales to promote their favored sources but at the end orf the day the advertisers (and their money) are going to go where the eyeballs are, and if google doesn't deliver that they're dead.

History demonstrates over and over and over again that a well-placed, motivated, disciplined, and effective minority can completely dominate and quell a disorganized, lazy, and indisciplined majority. British india - a nation of scores of millions - was run by a couple thousand clerks. The Bolsheviks were a tiny splinter faction of one minority party. The Nazis never got above 33% of the vote in an open election. And on and on.

But the open question is whether that minority is well-placed, disciplined or effective. They have some things going for them, but the jury is out.

The East India Company and the Bolsheviks both played the game of violence more effectively than their rivals within the context of empires that were already falling apart. Wokies are playing low-violence politics within the context of a liberal republic with venerable institutions. Wokies are trying to white-ant those institutions, but can they succeed in the face of opposition? Time will tell.