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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26759 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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A big one is the CIA and State Department. They've traditionally viewed right wing parties in Europe as the enemy, and made efforts to keep them from winning.

how long is this tradition? Are you counting communists as right wing?

Note that the right wing party in Poland just lost.

With no trace of CIA/State Department meddling, unless you assume that EU is CIA plant.

unless you assume that EU is CIA plant.

I mean... isn't it a bit weird how European political junkies have been swearing up and down, for years on end, that the Culture War spats we discuss here are strictly an American thing, and anyone serious finds them absurd here, only for European town halls to start raising the trans flag for the #TransDayOfRemembrance?

To be fair, it doesn't mean the CIA is behind it. My bets are on the UN and WEF.

UN

UN actually succeeding at something would be the most surprising part here.

I would rather blame Facebook and Twitter and Tik Tok.

UN actually succeeding at something would be the most surprising part here.

Again, it's a place where the elites mingle, and the power of these places is grossly underappreciated.

I would rather blame Facebook and Twitter and Tik Tok.

I invite you to check out my responses to SouthKraut. There's several things about how these issues developed that just do not fit into a bottom-up spread via social media.

I wouldn't let intelligence agencies take credit for that.

It's simply the internet, social media, smartphones, the globalization of the English language and the prevalence of American memes. People soak up all kinds of stupidity so long as it's in the water for them, and now that many people have a permanent window upon woke rot open in their palms, they'll naturally absorb it.

It's simply the internet, social media, smartphones, the globalization of the English language and the prevalence of American memes.

The problem I have with this explanation is that I'm yet to see any of this stuff get implemented bottom-up. Compare what's happening to how long it took mainstream parties to kind-of-sort-of start doing something about immigration for fear of giving more votes to populists. I stopped paying attention to electoral politics, but I don't remember any political upset, where some woke youth-oriented party got way more votes than expected, and forced the mainstream to adapt to the new zeitgeist. In fact, this is the very reason why I can understand European normies pooh-poohing concerns about the Culture War, this stuff basically came out of nowhere if you're following a bottom-up model.

That said, I wouldn't put (too much of) it on intelligence agencies either. I agree it's through soaking up culture, but it's not through Tumblr and memes, it's through elite universities, and various get-togethers where the elites mingle.

IMO it doesn't take much bottom-up for these things to happen. It's not just the youth, after all. Everyone has a smartphone, most people and almost all women are consuming social media, and this includes older people well into working age and also those who have great influence over or are decision-makers in organizations that now openly display the symbols of some woke agenda. The youth may be faster to get on board, but not by much - most want to be on the right side of history, and even middle-aged administrators will pick up on which is the right side in CURRENT_YEAR.

administrators will pick up on which is the right side in CURRENT_YEAR.

In my opinion this would, again, indicate this stuff is not bottom up at all. The bottom has no power to dictate which side is the right one, without overwhelming numbers.

I'd say the Bottom is in agreement with what middle management is doing here. My point is that everyone is more-or-less equally swayed, and that it's not a handful of key players pushing their agenda. There's simply no need for a conspiracy - when many push and nobody openly resists and the masses cheer because all groups consume the same media and absorb the same memes and know what the right thing to do is, then of course town halls are going to fly rainbow flags and whatever else, entirely without a shadowy organization needing to manipulate anyone.

I'd say the Bottom is in agreement with what middle management is doing here. My point is that everyone is more-or-less equally swayed, and that it's not a handful of key players pushing their agenda. There's simply no need for a conspiracy

I guess I have a fundamentally different view of how this works. I think "conspiracy", or "a handful of key players pushing their agenda" is the default of how power works under any political system, court intrigue is hardly a novel concept. But since democracy derives it's legitimacy from the consent of the government, we're stuck pretending this is not the case.

when many push and nobody openly resists and the masses cheer because all groups consume the same media and absorb the same memes and know what the right thing to do is, then of course town halls are going to fly rainbow flags and whatever else, entirely without a shadowy organization needing to manipulate anyone.

There's two problems here, one is that these memes are pretty damn obscure. Grab a random Zoomer and ask them what "Trans Day Of Remembrance" is, my bets are the majority won't have a clue. The second issue is around the phrase "what the right thing to do is", this is precisely the thing decided by key players pushing their agenda, otherwise you'd expect different countries going in different directions on these issues, just through the mechanics of Brownian motion.

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