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PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   24767 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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Columbia protests and the "right side of history"

A tremendously dumb argument, especially when made by woke people

[A tweet reading “Is [sic] is amazing how the protesters are always right 50 years ago and always wrong today.” @Will_Bunch]

In reaction to the ongoing pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University, a lot of people I respect have shared the above tweet. I don’t have especially strong opinions about the protests themselves, but I uncritically support the right of political activists to protest for any cause they choose to, and think that the Republicans (such as Greg Abbott) trying to prevent them from doing so are pathetic, cowardly and shamelessly hypocritical.

First things first: the tweet is just wrong on its face, unless you would have me believe that the people who protested against racially integrated schools in 1960s America were really in the right all along (hot take if so).

[By Will Bunch’s account, heroes unappreciated in their lifetimes.]

No: I’m sure that what Mr. Bunch meant is that all of the protestors from fifty years ago who are currently considered to have been on the right side of whichever political issue they protested were deeply unpopular at the time. This is probably true, but essentially useless when gauging the relative virtue of current political movements, because of survivorship bias. If there were only two sides to every political issue and the less popular one always came out on top in the judgement of the future, one could accurately predict which side of a current political issue would “win” purely based on which one had the lowest approval ratings. But, of course, there aren’t two sides to every political issue, many political activists protested for causes which were deeply unpopular at the time and remain so to this day, and so the category of “protesters who protest in favour of highly unpopular causes” is bound to include political causes which go on to be viewed in a generally positive light and political causes whose popularity never improves from a low baseline. (For a historical example, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists never fielded any successful election candidates and their peak membership was only 40,000 people. More recently, to the extent that the riot in the Capitol on January 6th was a “protest”, most Americans think it was a bad idea, and I hope it stays that way.) A more accurate rephrasing of Bunch’s tweet might read: “Of the people who protested for various political causes 50 years ago, it is amazing how most of them were generally considered wrong at the time and a small subset of them are now looked upon favourably in the popular imagination.” (Not as catchy, but it does fit into the 280-character limit!)

But the tweet isn’t really about historical protests: it was tweeted about the Columbia protests, the implication being that, fifty years from now, historians (and society more generally) will look upon the protests in a favourable light. The tweet is hence just the latest example of that tiresome argumentative trope that woke people trot out for essentially every political issue, the assertion that their support for this or that political movement places them on the “right side of history”.1

All the “right side of history” framing boils down to is a prediction that future popular consensus will judge Political Group X favourably. I think this argument would be profoundly weak and fallacious coming from any political faction: how arrogant of anyone to think they can accurately predict what the people two generations from now will believe, when they can’t even reliably predict where they’re going to go for lunch tomorrow. But I’ve always found it especially strange when woke people in particular make the “right side of history” argument. I’ve never been able to put my finger on quite why, until the tweet above got me thinking about it.

The reason being, historical revisionism is woke people’s favourite pastime. There’s nothing woke people enjoy more than taking a historical figure who enjoys a high level of approval in the popular imagination and demanding that we reappraise their moral character, even to the point of completely reversing it: not merely that such-and-such was a more complex and flawed person than is widely believed, but that he was actually a monster. The woke exist to take the wind out of people’s sails, never forgoing an opportunity to remind people around them that Their Fave is Problematic, actually. It’s such a quintessential part of the woke playbook that even The Onion poked fun at it; or think of that wonderful scene in Tár where the “BIPOC pangender person” says they can’t enjoy Bach’s music because of Bach’s unrepentant misogyny. Take just about any historical figure who is widely admired in one or more Anglophone countries, and I guarantee you I can find a woke article in a mainstream publication arguing that he or she actually sucks (usually for reasons relating to the woke faction’s monomaniacal fixation on race and/or sex), e.g.:

(If you really want a laugh, turn this technique back on them. Next time you see some twentysomething university student reeking of weed wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, point out to him that the man in question once asserted “The negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities”.)

I’m not even arguing that the woke revisionist accounts of the figures listed above are factually wrong or uncharitable (I certainly have no interest in defending Churchill from accusations of genocidal white supremacism, or Reagan from accusations of unabashed hatred of gay men). My point is that, once you recognise that morally atrocious people can go on to become near-unanimously revered both by scholars and in the popular imagination, it completely neuters the case for “the right side of history” being a useful guide to the moral virtues of present-day political figures or movements (or lack thereof), even assuming that one could accurately predict how these entities will be viewed in the popular imagination of the future.

To put it more plainly, woke people would have us believe both that:

1)Many historical figures who by popular and academic consensus are currently considered moral heroes, were in reality atrocious people.

and

2)In the future, popular and academic consensus will hold that the woke movement of the early 21st century was morally heroic.

The first premise is unassailably true, the second remains to be seen. But even if both premises are true, this doesn’t even come close to demonstrating that the woke movement actually is morally heroic. So in the future, historians and society more generally will look upon the Columbia protesters in a favourable light. So what? By the moral and epistemological standards espoused by woke people themselves, a popular consensus that Alice was a good person does not remotely imply that Alice actually was a good person. If Winston Churchill was an irredeemable monster who went on to be considered the greatest Briton who ever lived, why couldn’t this also be true of (to pick the first two woke Britons who popped into my head) Humza Yousaf or Diane Abbott? Not to say that either of these people are irredeemably awful, but there’s literally nothing in the woke framework which contradicts the notion that they could be and subsequently go on to be generally considered paragons of virtue.

This is the problem with employing postmodernism as a rhetorical device. Once you’ve done your best to redpill your listener by telling them that a widely admired figure was actually a crypto-fascist pederast Nazi sympathiser and the establishment don’t want you to know about it - following that up with “the establishment will look upon our movement in a favourable light” doesn’t seem like much of an accolade, even if it’s an accurate prediction. “So let me get this straight: you’re saying that history books have always been written by biased historians beholden to special interests, who systematically lionize awful, wretched people and ignore or gloss over their most atrocious moral failings, provided the person in question helped to advance the historians’ own political agenda. But the historians of the future (who by inclination and temperament will be no different from the historians of the present or the past) will look upon your political faction in a favourable light? Wow, what a ringing endorsement of your political faction! Sign me up!”

And this brings me to my final point. Although “the right side of history” sounds like it’s appealing to the listener’s moral sensibility, it’s really little more than a veiled promise and threat. History is written by the winners, so an assertion that supporting this or that movement puts you on the “right side of history” is really just a prediction that your team will win. That’s all it is: “my team is going to win”. Try rephrasing it in your head: “I support gender-affirming care for minors because I predict that my team will win” doesn’t sound half as noble as “I support gender-affirming care for minors because I want to be on the right side of history”, now does it? What the “right side of history” promises is that, if you join our team, historians will write hagiographies about us and forgive all of our worst sins. And if you don’t join our team? We’ll have no choice but to smear your team as depraved monsters with no redeeming features to speak of. Nice reputation among future generations you’ve got there - it’d be a shame if something happened to it.

1I had a feeling that the specific wording of “right side of history” had fallen out of popularity in recent years, and Google Trends seems to bear that out. That massive spike in 2019 appears to be the release of Ben Shapiro’s book of the same name (lol).

That's interesting, I was thinking of this slightly differently. Everyone talks about the hippie protests of the 60s as this big purposeful, meaningful thing that changed American culture for the better and were protesting a meaningless war, etc. This whole Columbia thing has gotten me to reconsider how much the hippie protests actually had a point from the get-go. Did they also start out, and maybe even stay, as a bunch of petulant teens complaining without having much of an agenda, or list of demands, or purpose? Did we ascribe the meaning and purpose to these protests after the fact, at least in some cases?

Seems to me like a lot of the current protests are taking the masks off and are just pro-intifada, pro-10/7, more voicefull in knowing he meaning “of the river from the sea”

I wrote off a lot of the initial protests and just dumb teens and college kids that did not understand the meaning of the words they used. They are increasingly now just suddenly like terrorists anti-semites to me.

Partly I like it. Seems like they f’d around and found out with the ideologies so many in their community promoted. But it does seem bad.

I wonder if it might be worth nuancing 'pro-Intifada', 'pro-Hamas', and so on?

It seems to me that many of these protests are, yes, genuinely opposed to the existence of the state of Israel, and supportive of 'decolonisation' interpreted to mean 'Israel should not exist and all Israeli Jews should leave and find homes in other countries, and if they refuse, they are legitimately the targets of lethal violence'. But the rhetoric and justification given for this is so radically different to the rhetoric and justification of either Hamas or any on-the-ground Palestinian resistance movements that I think the gulf is worthy of recognition. For the American campus protester, what Hamas or Palestinians actually want is close to irrelevant - their politics are not so much pro-Intifada or pro-Hamas they are anti-coloniser. Israel is a 'coloniser', which makes them the bad guys, which makes the opposite of Israel the good guys.

If nothing else, the campus protest ideology is not the ideology of the Hamas charter, or even the revised one. I don't think the protesters are reading that charter and unironically agreeing with it. (Though I grant that the revised, 2017 version seems calculated to appeal more to liberal Westerners.) Almost none of them are Muslims, for a start. It's something different, and must have its own origins and influences.

Presumably the far-left groups that have (along with diaspora groups) generally been mainly responsible for keeping the organized militant pro-Palestine movement going would feel most affinity towards groups like PFLP.

I think there should be consequences for everyone who tried to say "nobody supports Hamas!"

They were wrong or they were lying. They shouldn't get to pretend they never said it.

What the “right side of history” promises is that, if you join our team, historians will write hagiographies about us and forgive all of our worst sins. And if you don’t join our team? We’ll have no choice but to smear your team as depraved monsters with no redeeming features to speak of.

Props to @NelsonRushton for demonstrating why this is, as the kids say, non-unique. If you don’t join the right team, future generations will insist you’re “the new KKK”. But put the right letter in front of your name and they’ll whitewash you.

Yeah, it’s good rhetorical strategy. Pushes the right tribal buttons. A pure expression of ingroup power. That also makes it truth-agnostic, which is why it’s against our rules. I don’t think it’s surprising that actual politics doesn’t care.

Props to @NelsonRushton for demonstrating why this is, as the kids say, non-unique.

Where?

Nelson has the right link.

Is that not an example of smearing the enemy team for their side of history?

Ah, of course. I should have just scrolled down.

I honestly am not sure myself, but I guess he is referring to this post.

My theory is that the "right side of history" narrative (and its close cousins, casting being progressive as just being a "decent human being" and denigrating opposition as "retrograde" or "reactionary") is so ubiquitous because the progressive left is deeply confused about whether it believes in moral realism, and so adopts an inconsistent (but very effective) posture on moral questions.

On these big social questions, there are, at root, three reasons for acting:

  1. You are a moral realist and believe that X is right/wrong as a fundamental fact about reality. (How do you know? Maybe you believe God -- who knows such things -- said so; maybe you believe you have a direct apprehension of the truth; maybe it is a logical consequence of other things that are in the first two categories.) You act because you think it is right, period.
  2. You have a preference that you want to fulfill, and think that you and those who share it have the power -- or can obtain the power -- to enforce it. You act out of pure preference and power.
  3. You just want to go along to get along. You don't have an independent reason to act, so you don't act independently -- maybe you stay out of it, or maybe you join a cause you think will imminently win (or is most of your social circle) so that people will like you.

"The right side of history" tries to have it all three ways while not committing enough to any of them to expose weakness there.

Straightforward moral realism is a problem for the progressive left (at least in its modern incarnation; past movements vary) for two reasons. First, because most of its thought leaders are not moral realists, and many of the rest would reject moral realism if the question were put to them (though they may implicitly act as if they believed in it). Second, because the natural response to "It is a moral law of the universe that [insert progressive cause here] is good" is to say: "And how do you know? I'm pretty sure I've always heard that God said the opposite, my intuitions disagree, and anyway you just got done telling me that you don't believe in hearing from God, so why should I believe you?"

Straightforward appeals to power or preference are not persuasive -- at least not unless you already have the power and just want to compel, not "win hearts and minds".

And finally, appealing to people's "go along to get along" instincts is tough unless you can offer social proof that either your cause already dominates, or soon will. (It works wonders when you can, though -- see what happened to gay marriage.)

Enter "the right side of history". It appeals to moral realist intuitions and persuasive force, while not actually committing anyone to staking out an actual claim about ground truth morality. It can be a threat based on present or claimed future power without being explicit about it. It appeals to "go along to get along" without having to actually produce the goods in terms of current social influence.

Time will tell (ha) about whether the rhetorical strategy will continue to be effective, but I expect that, absent major ideological realignment, it will continue to be used in one form or another.

This is an extremely accurate description of the phenomenon, and it's prevalent here as well, contributing to Hlynka's observation that a surprising number of the commenters here have built their positions on the same fundamental ground as the progressive left, though they want to vehemently deny it, as well as my observation that this turn to stealth moral relativism packaged in confusion came, in large part, due to New Internet Atheism convincing a lot of folks to at least claim a jettison of moral realism, but not knowing how to handle it philosophically, and leading pretty directly into the dominant frame being one of pure power politics along the lines of cancel/deplatform/shame woke-style culture.

So far, when I've prodded, I've seen one commenter embrace the conclusion in a clear-eyed manner, but more often, folks just lean in to the mire of completely confused meta-ethics. After seeing your excellent trilemma, it makes sense that it seems common to appeal to game theory, even if it's still a confused appeal, because I'm starting to think that the appeal to game theory is basically a variant of "the right side of history". One doesn't need to do any of the hard work of showing why an iterative game theoretic process will actually converge to the "right" solution (because one cannot commit to positing a "right" solution), but you can see in those threads that they are utterly allergic to embracing a straightforward appeal to power or preference. So we get weaksauce meta-ethics that make it obvious to any real, existing agents who actually understand game theory and can think through the process of unilateral defection (perhaps at the level of a movement/group of 'insiders') and realize that no one is able to present a meaningful argument against pure exertion of cultural power, so the obvious game theoretic response is to do precisely that. It's like they sort of realize that they're playing something akin to prisoner's dilemma, but weirdly think that invoking "the right side of history" or vague "game theoretic concerns" will certainly result in cooperate-cooperate, but simultaneously not understanding game theory enough to know that it actually leads to "the wrong side of history", defection, and pure power.

Ironically, I first understood his take the other way around [erroneously]. That protests today are wrong with regard to the modern state of the world, but are right if we imagine them happening half a century ago with the same slogans. BLM was atrocious and unjustified, but in the 1970, there was a kind of solid argument about remnants of institutional racism. Likewise for feminism and other fashionable causes. Were there protests against Israel in 1973-74? Maybe some organized by the PLO, I'm not sure. But Hamas had not even been founded yet.

Were there protests against Israel in 1973-74?

Oh yeah. The backstory had a similar "fuck around and find out" pattern, right down to a sneak attack on the same Jewish holiday, though a priori you'd have thought the Egypt / Syria / Saudi / Algerian / Jordanian / Iraqi / Libyan / Kuwaiti / Tunisian / Moroccan (plus a handful of Cuban troops and North Korean pilots!) coalition had a much better chance than Hamas did of accomplishing something more than just psychological warfare. The protest actions afterward were also much more directly impactful.

(If you really want a laugh, turn this technique back on them. Next time you see some twentysomething university student reeking of weed wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, point out to him that the man in question once asserted “The negro is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities”.)

It's not only that. It's much more telling that, in fact, every single political endeavor Guevara engaged in on his own initiative was an utter failure with idiotic planning: 1. his ministerial role in Cuba 2. the war in the Congo 3. the war in Bolivia. It's almost comical when you really think about it. Among all the prominent political figures of the 20th Century, he was the biggest loser. Mussolini and Hitler don't even compare.

I don't think the average woke person or leftist would be that put off learning that Che Guevara was an incompetent loser. But learning that he said something (GASP!) racist...

I think at the core it's surprisingly a variation of "might makes right", but updated for a modern audience. It vaguely sounds moralistic at first glance, but it can also be used as a simple "your objections don't matter, you will die and we will prevail". It's also an important part of the progressive message as a counter to the natalist objection: Progressive ideologies generally have terrible TFR, and as such are liable to simply be replaced. So they adopted a self-conception as a vanguard that lives on in the ideals of the future society, even if they may not have biological offspring.

"We will bury you", indeed...

I’ve always found the “history” argument weak. The reason people protest is at least ostensibly because there’s a moral wrong being committed. Yet, the “right side of history” argument doesn’t even engage with the moral arguments. If the cause is morally right, then it is right, whether or not history goes along with it. Second, history isn’t even a line, it’s a graph it can and has changed direction multiple times. The Romans were okay with being gay, until they became Catholic. Several countries have gone from being communist to being market liberals at the same time other states have gone the other way.

The reason being, historical revisionism is woke people’s favourite pastime.

Should be noted this isn't just a woke pasttime. Every culture warrior enjoys attacking the other side's guys. Sometimes (many times) same figures will get flack from the both sides. I've read countless right-wing articles and posts about how FDR was a commie symphatizer or JFK and LBJ and MLK were cheaters or (getting into Christian conservatives) how Darwin and Margaret Sanger were racists or (getting to more commie side of things) how Marx was personally filthy or Lenin continously said and did psycho things. I mean, I had thought of using the almost obsessive focus on Che Guevara, a figure more for the past generations (I have seen many more "revisions" of Che's history online than actual Che shirts) as an example, but you did it yourself! And during the War on Terror, of course, talking about it online, one couldn't avoid hearing about Mohammed and Aisha. One gets the idea.

Of course the conservatives would not think in the terms of progress and a "right side of history" as much, the point here is tearing down the other side's totemic figures with a gusto is a fairly natural part of the culture war.

how Darwin and Margaret Sanger were racists

I'd look at those separately as they're just lame-ass attempts at the DR3 narrative.

What is "the DR3 narrative"? All I find on a quick Google is references to an anime I'm not familiar with.

EDIT: I think I've figured it out... "Democrats 'R' the Real Racists"?

Yes.

I don't think they were, in the context of the great 90s/00s creationism/evolution online wars. The race/ethnicity culture war was at a low ebb and a lot of creationist types talking about this subject probably genuinely conceived themselves as, at least, non-racists if not anti-racists.

Agreed - the story here is that Christian right has, consistently with the broader "pro-life" memeplex, always been sincere in their opposition to eugenics, and the links between Darwin and Margaret Sanger (and the early C20 Progressive memeplex more broadly) and support for eugenics are absolutely real - in the modern world where "eugenics bad" is near-universally accepted, this creates an open goal for the religious right which they are happy to kick the ball through at every opportunity.

There are not many cases where the religious right was on the right side of history by the woke left's own standards in living memory, but this is legitimately one of them.

It's worth pointing out though that I can imagine many mainstream Republicans (not those heavily involved in the Christian Right) would also be more or less sympathetic to Sanger's ideas if they actually checked out what those were.

I can also imagine they genuinely believed they finally found a message that resonates with black churchgoers.

Everyone tears down the other team's idols. What sets wokeness apart from other ideologies is that they apply this approach to everyone. Freddie deBoer said one of the defining aspects of social justice politics is the belief that "almost everyone you encounter in contemporary society is a bad person". Credit where credit is due, that blog "your fave is problematic" is relentless: in no way do celebrities get a pass from them merely by having the appropriate skin tone or mouthing the right shibboleths. When hardcore woke people say "everything is problematic", they mean it.

It’s an old idea at this point that “woke” is a new religion, but my pet expansion of this is that “the weight of history” has replaced the concepts of judgment day and the afterlife.

I was just discussing this the other day with someone actually. I wished at the time that we had a better education of unsuccessful progressive movements as well as successful. The operative question ought to be “how could you tell at the time” but to even countenance that it could have been confusing is unacceptable.

That’s what we face though, living through history. It’s been stunning to see how many are willing to abdicate thinking it through in favor of listening to prophets claiming to know how they’ll be judged long after they’re dead.

My question for people is how they would have known to be for civil rights but against lobotomies.

I think sometimes the learned behavior of trying to make arguments that make outgroup look dumb overrides your attempts to actually understand the world around you. This is one of those cases. Historically religious people actually believe in their religions, as physical facts about reality, as much as they do anything else. People have mental breakdowns about heaven and hell! Whereas being on the 'right side of history' is, in its entirety, a rhetorical device to refer to social pressures or empathy for oppressed people who exist today. Nobody who says that is actually imagining dozens of people looking back on them from a century after and being disappointed. They are not at all comparable.

If you want to disagree that’s fine, but I’ve spent considerable time as a religious person and surrounded by the type of people I’m describing, and I think the weight of judgment day is comparable to the weight of “right side of history.” It’s not a boo outgroup statement by any stretch; I think it ties into the thesis that we tore down religion with little to replace it, so people are cribbing together ways to meet their needs.

Hmmm I spend time around both, more around wokes / progressives and I really don't see it.

When I think about the thoughts that motivate someone who leans progressive, I think things like George Floyd, the idea of someone not being able to pay off medical debt and foregoing care as a result, black kids who can't get good jobs because of racism, imagining a kid who died in a school shooting because we don't have gun control, someone who's mocked for being gay, etc. And also the strong social taboos, and internally confusing the social taboo with justifiably taking offense at words that harm people. I'm having trouble of thinking of an interaction where it felt like people were really, genuinely, afraid that history would judge them. They feel much more afraid that their current social group will judge them.

I was just discussing this the other day with someone actually. I wished at the time that we had a better education of unsuccessful progressive movements as well as successful. The operative question ought to be “how could you tell at the time” but to even countenance that it could have been confusing is unacceptable.

In all truth, I don't think anyone can. I think we (collectively) try lots of different things and eventually the truth falls out of it.

First things first: the tweet is just wrong on its face, unless you would have me believe that the people who protested against racially integrated schools in 1960s America were really in the right all along (hot take if so).

Good point. Not to mention the pro slavery mobs who used to riot and destroy the buildings and printing presses of anti-slavery newspapers. There were over 100 documented cases of this in the pre-Civil-War era in the United States [source].

By the way, the pro-slavery rioters were Democrats, and Democrat politicians and police often looked the other way as it happened. That pattern continued on straight from Andrew Jackson in the 1830's to Bull Connor in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960's. Fast forward to today: some things have changed, and some have stayed the same. Black is the new white; BLM is the new KKK, and Democrats are the new... Democrats!

I don’t believe you can draw a line from Jim Crow defenders and lynch mobs to whatever’s popular today. Even your caricature of it.

My claim of fact is that the Democratic party has, since its inception with Andrew Jackson, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, through the civil rights era, and up to this very day, tended to be the party of (1) racial caste systems, (2) illegal mob violence, (3) censorship, and (4) you-work-I-eat, from slavery to welfare.

Pity Hlynka isn't here, he'd have liked you.

We can only fight on in his name, because he was in fact right.

He was right about Democrats aRe the Real Racists; the problem with DR3 isn't that it's wrong but that it's useless. He was wrong about everyone on the right whose tactics or beliefs he disliked actually being a progressive leftist, even if he got a few right merely by coincidence.

If you want I can make up an arbitrary position, ascribe it to you, give you hell for not defending it, and then conspicuously stop responding when you point out that you've literally never said such a thing.

By itself, "the right side of history" is clearly fatuous, yes. It assumes firstly what the people of the future will believe, which we obviously cannot know (and is likely to be diverse and contested regardless), and secondly that the beliefs of these hypothetical people of the future will be correct, which obviously may not be the case.

I think you have to factor in double standards on the "your fave is problematic" argument, though. There are, I think pretty clearly, major figures in the history of left-wing politics who seem just as cancellable. Marx wrote awful things about Jews. Beauvoir and Sartre were sexual predators. Che Guevara was, well, Che. The left has many heroes whose feet are just as clay as those on the right. So I think at least something about the argument has to do with what we envision the people of the future caring about - Marx is good because his politics were (supposedly) liberatory; Churchill was bad because his politics were about preserving Britain's imperial power. The judgement isn't made just on the basis of a past figure's actions or beliefs considered impartially, but rather whether the person's overall agenda is seen as contributing to or opposing an overall agenda, which is projected backwards into the past.

Thus with examples like Lincoln - yes, there are people who point out that by modern standards Lincoln was terribly racist, but widespread left-wing approval of Lincoln is acceptable because Lincoln can easily be fitted into an overall narrative of progress. Lincoln had his flaws, but he tried to point the motor in the right direction. Churchill doesn't get that sympathy because he was trying to point the motor in the wrong direction, i.e. towards the preservation of the British Empire.

As such I think a driving concept here is that of progress. It's MLK's "moral arc of the universe". The natural course of things is for society, customs, norms etc., to improve, those who hasten that improvement on are goodies, and those who oppose it are baddies.

Now, I think it's only possible to believe in this moral arc if you are extraordinarily selective about the movements and social causes you consider. Everything else must be dismissed as aberrant, a temporary setback, even just a blip, in an overall course of ascent. But it nonetheless seems to be the case that people are that selective. We take the movements of which we retroactively approve and declare them to be history on the march; and we ignore those movements of which we do not approve.

Take an issue where the course of history over the last few decades seems to skew conservative - gun rights in the United States, for instance. Over the last fifty years, gun rights have expanded, as has gun ownership, to my knowledge. Imagine you jumped in and said that this is progress, the moral arc of the universe, and that those who support expanding individual rights to own and use weapons are on the right side of history. How far do you think you'd get?

Valid point, although this theory has a lot of degrees of freedom. One might argue that it would predict that Churchill would get a pass from the anti-fascist collective, given that the thing he's most famous for is helping to defeat the most prominent example of fascism in human history.

One might argue that it would predict that Churchill would get a pass from the anti-fascist collective, given that the thing he's most famous for is helping to defeat the most prominent example of fascism in human history.

Not if the argument is that Churchill was in charge of an only-slightly-less-fascist state, whose conflict with the greater was merely about Who Should Dominate.

Among quasi-Marxist (this is misleading because contemporary leftists almost uniformly haven't read Marx) people in the present they have already decided that the Soviet Union, near-alone, defeated Nazi Germany.

The judgement isn't made just on the basis of a past figure's actions or beliefs considered impartially, but rather whether the person's overall agenda is seen as contributing to or opposing an overall agenda, which is projected backwards into the past.

"We have Roko's Basilisk at home"

Quote of the week, hands down, no contest.

Congratulations - that earned a real laugh from me.

This one's actually scary though, especially if your contributions have been reevaluated within your lifetime.

And, of course, there's the question of, what if the world becomes Amish?

When the correctness of an idea is measured by what the final opinion of it is, well, that's rather hard to evaluate when there's still time to go. It seems entirely possible that history might not be moving always in one direction, Yarvin notwithstanding.

And indeed there are historical examples of backlash moving society against liberalizing trends; that's what the famously strict Victorian norms came from. Both the 50s baby boom and the 90s mini-baby boom might also be arguable examples, but I think economic factors dominated there.

All the “right side of history” framing boils down to is a prediction that future popular consensus will judge Political Group X favourably. I think this argument would be profoundly weak and fallacious coming from any political faction: how arrogant of anyone to think they can accurately predict what the people two generations from now will believe, when they can’t even reliably predict where they’re going to go for lunch tomorrow.

It's not an absolutely terrible argument when used to warn others to really attend to the possible risks they're taking. Patrick Henry had an absolutely powerful speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention against the ratification of the Constitution:

In his final speech at the ratifying convention, Henry extended the stakes beyond America to the world; indeed, the heavens: He [Madison] tells you of important blessings which he imagines will result to us and mankind in general, from the adoption of this system—I see the awful immensity of the dangers with which it is pregnant.—I see it—I feel it.—I see beings of a higher order, anxious concerning our decision. When I see beyond the horizon that binds human eyes, and look at the final consummation of all human things, and see those intelligent beings which inhabit the ethereal mansions, reviewing the political decisions and revolutions which in the progress of time will happen in America, and the consequent happiness or misery of mankind—I am led to believe that much of the account on one side or the other will depend on what we now decide.

At about this point, the stenographer noted, "a violent storm arose, which put the house in such disorder, that Mr. Henry was obliged to conclude." Archibald Stuart, a delegate to the ratifying convention, described Henry as "rising on the wings of the tempest, to seize upon the artillery of heaven, and direct its fiercest thunders against the heads of his adversaries."

Of course, maybe you are right, because:

The artillery of heaven was not enough. The next day, June 25, the convention voted 89-79 to ratify the Constitution.

In some ways, the tweet is not wrong. Protesters at elite universities will be tomorrow's leaders. They will be on the "right" side of the history not because they are morally right, but because they will be able to shape history to their whims.

The Ivy League protests are not a street movement, they are an elite rebellion.

And in that way, it's really no different than the Vietnam protesters who shared the same elite characteristics. As early as 1966 Normal Mailer noted how the protestors were upper class while the policemen they fought were working class.

Sadly, these benighted and often mentally ill children are our future leaders. They will no doubt treasure the memories of their "rebellion" in 30 years as they sit comfortably inside the halls of power.

Protesters at elite universities will be tomorrow's leaders. They will be on the "right" side of the history not because they are morally right, but because they will be able to shape history to their whims.

I'm not sure protestors at Harvard, MIT or Columbia will be tomorrow's leaders. Yale's got better chances.

Huh... that was not my first thought upon seeing your username, but I suppose it does check out...

TBQH, the username refers to my interest in fantasy novels and (at the time, nearly 20 years ago) fungi.

In some ways, the tweet is not wrong.

I think the tweet is dead wrong. It makes a claim of fact, that is a universal generalization, that is not true, and that is not usefully close to being true.

And in that way, it's really no different than the Vietnam protesters who shared the same elite characteristics. As early as 1966 Normal Mailer noted how the protestors were upper class while the policemen they fought were working class.

Indeed, actual working class protestors around the Vietnam war were sometimes allowed by the police to rough up the hippies far worse than the cops ever would.

Woah, what happened to the formatting there?

All the “right side of history” framing boils down to is a prediction that future popular consensus will judge Political Group X favourably. I think this argument would be profoundly weak and fallacious coming from any political faction: how arrogant of anyone to think they can accurately predict what the people two generations from now will believe, when they can’t even reliably predict where they’re going to go for lunch tomorrow.

I had a similar insight in an old, now deleted, comment. Allow me to repeat it for posterity:

Lacking (or refusing to use) the rhetorical condemnation of hellfire and the violence of the noose, the language that comes out when modern progressives hate their interlocutor or feel prone to self-justification involves, in some way, the hatred or approval of the future: "the right side of history," "your children will hate you," "the future is female," "let the elderly bigots die, then we win."

Now, I think their take is bogus, even if one agrees with their view: as I've argued before, history is a fickle mistress, and I think it is much more likely that "history" or social consensus will condemn all of us for some bizarre thing none of us realize than to affirm the entirety of any one of our belief systems.

And if your views are defined by social consensus, or what we anticipate the social consensus to be, then are we truly philosophers? Are we not the same as any witch-burner or troglodyte convinced that the world will not change from what we anticipate? In this sense I fear the progressives who follow this chain of thought have become the very thing they swore to destroy: hegemonic oppressors.

No one in the America of 1900 would ever imagine that two men and two women would ever be permitted to have sexual relations with each other, let alone that they would be not only permitted but encouraged to couple up and call it marriage. Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying that's a good argument against it! But it certainly demonstrates that what is imagined about the future by the past doesn't always work out. Things change, now more than ever, and the progressives pushing for radical social change while believing they are entirely on the "right" or "winning" side of it are acting, in my view, incredibly foolishly.

Robespierre didn't think the French Revolution would conclude with his head on the chopping block, or with the establishment of a dictatorial empire. But it did. Neither did Lenin believe his great people's revolution would end with a personality cult and a dictatorship -- not of the proletariat, but of his general secretary, the guy who took notes at meetings. But it did. You push for a revolution for the people, and sometimes what you get is a new regime just as wicked as the old. Different words, but the same melody.

Ian Hacking's Rewriting the Soul discusses how modernity reconceived people as their memories, instead of e.g. an immortal soul unimpacted by general experiences. Thus trauma, history etc. come into play. This "right side of history" blends well here. He also uses a concept "acting under description" for the reason something's done (demonic possession, trauma, because of bipolarity etc.) Very clearly, these people's worldview sees them embodying the wheel of history inexorably plodding....

Perhaps this relates to the "axial revolution," where people began to conceive of history as something that progresses instead of repeating in cycles? Maybe also ideas of reincarnation and the afterlife, from Ancient Greece to Ancient India.

Woah, what happened to the formatting there?

I wanted to put in a horizontal line to separate the body of the post from the footnotes. If you neglect to put a paragraph break between the preceding paragraph and the four hyphens, it treats the entire paragraph as a header.

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