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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37126 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Which is exactly what you’d expect partisans to do in a political campaign

This is just watering down the meaning of “1984” and “communist state” the same way the other side does with “Nazis”

You know, this kind of blatant rewriting of very recent history was not the norm 10, 20 years ago.

Back then people could convincingly lie. But now we're pretty squarely at "they know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, and yet they're lying".

My take is that we passed through a threshold with Covid and tore something that was already scratched in the 10s. Now people change dictionary definitions as a matter of course instead of making decade long efforts to build academic corpora to do it. It's not the same.

I think you’re right, but I do wonder how much we saw this sort of thing in other deeply polarized times.

Or if it’s unique to the particulars of our current media ecosystem.

Rewriting the past is a pretty central part of the media propaganda in 1984. This isn't some big stretch like calling Mitt Romney a Nazi is. I don't think one needs to wait for people to have rat cages appended to their faces to start making 1984 references.

“Some of the news organizations in our media ecosystem are partisan and have shitty practices”

….

“I don’t see the difference between the US and a communist state”

I mean come on.

Well I didn't write that part. But establishment media is getting far too close for comfort.

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