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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29310 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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I strongly dislike this article because it's simply not true

https://compactmag.com/article/woke-ism-is-winding-down

Data on media outputs and “cancel-culture” incidents also suggest that a corner may have been turned. Across a range of datasets, we see apparent declines in “grassroots” attempts to censor uncomfortable speech on campus (even as there are growing attempts to suppress political scholarship from external stakeholders). Media discussion of various forms of prejudice and discrimination also seem to have declined significantly over the last year.

Within the Democratic Party, following anemic 2020 results and recalls of progressive politicians in blue states, there have been efforts to “course correct,” to avoid further alienating normie voters. The Democratic base has moved in a similar direction, broadly rejecting progressive candidates during the 2022 primaries. These countermeasures likely helped the party stave off the anticipated “red wave,” preventing extreme Republican candidates from facing Democratic challengers who were also perceived to be far out of step with mainstream America. Running moderate Democratic candidates against GOP extremists proved to be a winning move throughout the country in 2022.

Even if one can cite evidence of people turning against woke-ism, this does not change the fact that the woke still hold considerable power for a large number of institutions, at work, and various digital intellectual properties. The woke, the DEI people, BLM, etc. do not need to see the huge number of downvotes on their content (such as youtube videos , before downvotes were removed) to know that their ideology is not that popular, but this does not dissuade them: they still persevere. It has never been about popularity but about power.

When workers at Netflix attempted to cancel Dave Chappelle in late 2021, the company didn’t respond by issuing apologies and promising more programming on LGBTQ topics, as it had in the past. Instead, executives issued a memo informing protesting employees that if they weren’t open to publishing content they disagree with, they should quit. When an insufficient number of activist employees took them up on this invitation, the company proceeded with aggressive cuts apparently targeting these employees and the programming they worked on.

Too bad not all of us have the backing of a multi-billion dollar corp like Spotify or Netflix. It's not like Netflix can easily find another Chapelle or Spotify can find another Rogan. Regular people who get banned or suspended from twitter, reddit, etc or fired have far fewer recourse. It's all in the background: no one even notices or cares but the person who is affected. The marginal cost incurred by Facebook deleting an inconvenient account is zero. It has 2 billion users. No skin off its back.

I too find the vibe shift where supposedly the Social Justice Advocates are in retreat a little too good to be true. I think we should wait until a few months past the 2024 election cycle and see how we feel then. The DEI march continues in my giant financial institution, but being behind the times is pretty on brand for giant financial institutions. More than anything I'm certain trying to read the direction things are going on a month to month scale using a handful of discrete events seems foolish to me. A lul before we ramp into Trump 2.0/Desantis rise looks pretty identical to a woke disintegration.

Just a quick thought - it seems to me that the fortunes of the woke movement could change very quickly, as with a classic preference cascade, despite the impressive institutional clout that Social Justice advocates have accumulated.

The issue is that SJ is built on the foundations of liberalism, including freedom of religion and ideological pluralism. Wokeness has gotten as far as it has by successfully avoiding being labeled a religion or otherwise as a totalizing ideology, despite being explicitly normative, by framing their values as 'just common decency'. The second that changes, the system's own antibodies turn against it and the edifice crumbles under a tidal wave of lawsuits. (Unless we're at the point where the 1st amendment has been overturned or is no longer enforced, but that still seems a ways off)

I don't know, I think we are reaching a point where the demands have gone too far and gotten too crazy. The mood of ordinary people is starting to shift from "we love and support, wave those Pride flags" to "what the hell are you teaching my kids?"

This doesn't mean all the DEI stuff is going to go "poof!" in a cloud of smoke in the morning, there's inertia and too much of the grift in place. But I do think people are getting tired of being constantly bombarded with lecturing and hectoring, and that means a turning point. It'll take another few years before the changes become visible, but I think it's happening very, very slowly. The presidential election campaign will be a good indicator for this - are the debates between the various candidates looking for endorsements going to be full of diversity'n'inclusiveness, or will the emphasis be on things like the economy etc.?

I don't know, I think we are reaching a point where the demands have gone too far and gotten too crazy.

I've heard this exact sentiment expressed verbatim for the past 10 years.

Big social change movements like this are slow to get going and slow to turn. "Gradually, then all at once" - it seems like it's only a few crazy kids on campus, then it's your workplace, and then - ?

The difference is that the "wokes" who took over the workplace had multiple legal and institutional advantages:

  1. Colleges lean left anyway, specific college departments tied to wokeness (e.g. social science, women's studies) lean veeeery left.

  2. Civil rights law created an incentive to hire a group of workers to manage racism/sexism/anyisms, and those people are overwhelmingly likely to be educated in the aforementioned "woke" spaces.

  3. Those people, once hired, have institutional power to enforce their will. The fact that the company risks being sued if they appear less "woke" than the law gives an incentive to go along with these HR reps and consultants.

Compare this to: "people are getting tired of it", where none of these concrete factors apply.

You might be right that popular will is against it but I don't think it matters, for a variety of reasons:

  1. Polarization. This is the simplest explanation for the adoption of bizarre phenomenon like supporting drag queen performances for children - just to own the cons. As one side sets themselves against something the other side digs in. This prevents bipartisan consensus and coordination, so you can't actually make broad changes easily. It also renders a lot of internal criticism inert - either because they self-censor or are seen as disloyal and expelled.

  2. Anti-democratic institutions: US discrimination law is often enforced by the courts, who are more resistant to public opinion. You can of course fight to pick judges but, not only has wokeness continued while the GOP has had significant control in the Senate, it's not clear that the GOP is looking at this strategically like with the abortion fight. And there's the issue of who is going to enforce your anti-woke dictates. Where did they study? (This is a problem right now with woke teachers wanting to resist government edicts)

  3. The Woke are essentially attempting to secure the original base of their power - the Academy - via requiring faith statements DEI statements for various functions that would weed out both people utterly opposed to wokeness and even those unable to ape the language well.

The fact that it takes the literal mutilation and potential sterilization of kids and the attempt to totally usurp parental authority to get half of the political spectrum to finally react against a wholesale redefinition of basic social norms and ideas is not a sign of hope to me. It is a sign that society's immune system against woke crazes has been so depleted that only the most egregious cases cause a response.

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