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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   28266 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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Perhaps people are just on substack and twitter now, idk.

I suspect this is part of it. The Motte is just not as rare of a forum as it was a few years ago, before the rise of Substack and Musk buying Twitter. The big woke push to deplatform those who disagreed with them ended up forcing people to actually create their own forums, and they did so successfully.

That is part of the reason why I am significantly less worried by wokism than many of the other people here. From where I sit, it seems to me that wokism has substantially receded from its peak of a few years ago, and there is little danger of it achieving a hegemonic position of dominance in the West's politics.

I think there probably is reason to worry about it capturing institutions, still, because there are many woke people, and things like diversity statements serve to filter out dissenters.

But I agree that he left has lost some of the cultural dominance it once had, and resistance to it is significantly less fringe.

I do worry a little about whether generational change will make things worse.

What makes The Motte special isn’t its ideological leaning; if you want to discuss HBD, reactionary politics and so on there are (and long have been) many other forums and communities for it. I think what makes it special is the focus on discursive long form writing, which is different in kind both from blogposts on Substack and from microblogging on Twitter/X.

The Motte is just not as rare of a forum as it was a few years ago, before the rise of Substack and Musk buying Twitter

Yeah, but I think this might be only temporary. I don't think Musk will be able to hold on to Twitter in the long term, and even though it's a lot better now than it was before, Musk's Twitter still seems to favor the woke. The guys running Substack seem to have their heart in the right place, but let's just say I learned not to put my trust in California based companies that profess free speech. Even if they remain devoted to the principle, I don't think centralizing one of the last remaining forms of independent internet media is completely benign.

That is part of the reason why I am significantly less worried by wokism than many of the other people here. From where I sit, it seems to me that wokism has substantially receded from its peak of a few years ago,

So what? The receeded level is still miles above the baseline of when people started warning against wokism. If you want to tell yourself to talk yourself down from doomerism, fair enough, but "there is little danger of it achieving a hegemonic position of dominance in the West's politics" sounds more like an excuse to not do anything about it, in which case I have some pretty harsh words for you.

It is a problem, but really, if y'all want more people here, you have to go recruit them. We (and especially Zorba) can only do so much.

Let’s ask kulak to put a recruitment pitch on his sub stack…

That would be counterproductive

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