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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32403 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Coordination

(2/2)

So what are they coordinating, and how? Nothing particularly surprising regardless of which side of the issue you're on. Even with the conspiracy interpretation, you might find yourself agreeing with some of these:

  • Using courts to create legal challenges against discrimination

  • Finding loopholes in the law, and getting judges to use them in order to help LGBT people (in countries like Lebanon)

  • Getting big corporations to support LGBT causes, and step up as institutions in cases where there is “public resistance”

  • Getting corporations to use quiet diplomacy to put pressure on the government, when said public resistance might be so strong, it could cause backlash.

  • Making LGBT people more visible in the media (be it through “working with” media companies or “infiltrating” them, the latter was said shortly after mentioning countries where homosexuality is punishable by death, I'll leave it to you if that means this strategy should be limited to them, and whether that makes it ok).

  • Get teachers to support trans children in schools

The point about quiet diplomacy is particularly interesting in regard to all the discussions about the Culture War we've been having all these years:

Now, as you mentioned we've been so politicized as LGBTQ people, that it's in the ether, it's in the culture. So where corporates used to speak out and speak up they're... I'm just speaking from what I'm hearing here during this conference which is - they're nervous about speaking out, so what I've been talking to them about is how can we use quiet diplomacy. There are so many things that you can do behind the scenes to advance safety for the LGBTQ community, that can be done without being out in the media, that is a really important part too. I don't want to diminish that and it's critical, especially because as it gets polarized, that's a way to fight back is to be public.

I do think that corporates behind the scenes have been using that in the United States a lot of times. Like you were saying, I think we're 18 days into the new year and we've seen over 100 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed already in the United States. Last year there was more than 300 anti-LGBTQ bills, most of them are targeting trans youth, which is a tactic. They have the smallest amount of share of voice, so we have to be speaking up, and out for them. We've worked with a lot of corporates behind the scenes to call in those states to say I'm going to pull business [if you pass those laws / make the place unsafe for my LGBTQ employees].

In a lot of the conversations we've been having, the question of why do corporations push so much progressive ideology came up. The mundane non-conspiracy explanation was always that they're corporations, they're just trying to chase profit. According to Sarah Kate Ellis, that's not the case. The corporations want to tap-out, because of the public's reaction, but they're being pressured into doing at least some behind-the-scenes activism. Now, this isn't my first rodeo, I know mundane explanations are easy to come up with, none of this conclusively proves there's a conspiracy or even coordination, although it does take the sting out of these mundane alternative explanation when the first question in the Q&A is:

I run a large Media company and I would just like for you to unpack [...] what media specifically can do

I suppose even that isn't “coordination” if you're using a strict definition, it's not like he's asking for orders from his officer. But my point is what you see during this panel meets all the necessary conditions for a conspiracy, in my opinion. You don't need anything more. A bunch of people meet, confirm they're on the same page ideologically, bounce around ideas on how best to help.

Appendix A: Is the WEF a boring neoliberal organization standing up only for status quo?

Ok, so maybe I am going to address @2rafa's thesis directly. Here's some quotes I would like you to consider:

I think the queer struggle, at least in the country that I come from, and the region that I come from, is also connected to the Palestinian struggle it's also connected to a lot of struggles the migrant workers, the women... so it's very important to take it as a whole and not only focus on just one.

(In the Q&A:) I'm based in San Francisco, as a black American CIS LGBTQ male, I could only imagine what my ancestors, and the people who came before me, my grandparents my great-grandparents, when they were going through the Civil Rights era, [had to go through].

To live through another period of needing, or wanting, or deserving civil rights just makes you want to just stamp your feet and yell and scream. I love how we've advanced, but why can't we just do it, you know? Why do we have to have this conversation and negotiate who we are, and what rights are, and what we'll take, and what will tolerate versus let's just stand up and do it?

And we're seeing that that extremism on both sides, right? They want it for different reasons, one wants to keep it for power, and one wants to dismantle it so that they can gain more access and power.

This, to me, does not look like boring neoliberalism, it looks like full Critical Theory.

I suppose to resolve the question you have to say what you mean by “neoliberal”, and “status quo”. Is wokeness neoliberal? /r/neoliberal proudly flies “Woke Capitalism” in it's banner, so an argument could be said that it is. It definitely seems to be the status quo at this point. So the statement could still be technically correct.

Appendix B: Class Issues

Unrelated to the main thesis, and hardly surprising given what the WEF is, I still couldn't leave some of these things without commenting on them.

Here's Fahd Jamaleddine commenting on the situation on the ground in Lebanon:

I mean speaking from Lebanon the challenging thing is really the culture. I think this is the first thing that we need to think of rather than policy, because we've seen a lot within Lebanon. We have, I think, one of the highest inflation rates across the world, in 2022 [an] economic crisis, the Beirut blast - 200 people died, we have no justice until now... So when you talk about this to the people, they would say “What are you talking about? There [are] more [important] areas”, and I think this is this is a huge challenge, how to shift this narrative.

Now, on one hand I understand that if you're gay in a country with sodomy laws, it might seem like a more pressing issue, but similarly maybe someone who's being flown to Davos to mingle with the world's richest, should think twice about the optics complaining that people put a higher priority on an annual inflation rate of 121% (it's an improvement compared to past years!), or an economic crisis?

Here's Sarah Kate Ellis, again:

We're working within a system that was built to exclude us, right? It was created to empower and build wealth for certain people, and leave everybody else to do that at no cost actually.

Miss! You're in Davos! If the system was built to exclude you, what am I supposed to say? And I'm not even doing that poorly!

Then as a cherry on top, if you pay close attention, you will find precisely _one_ person in the entire room, who is still wearing a mask. It is, of course:

The person bringing microphones to the audience during the Q&A.

My boring model of all this is just that there is such thing as "elites" and they have their own "elite culture". It sounds vague, but so are the effects we're trying to explain. There is no central authority at the top coordinating anything. The WEF is the non-profit think-tank version of any large progressive company. Internal signaling games are responsible for most of the sillier policy proposals (e.g. extreme covid measures, boycotting Dr. Seuss). The WEF may be more explicit in its intentions of changing policies, but it's not at all obvious that their influence is all that central in influencing elite culture. I'd be surprised if most elites had even heard of the WEF.

It isn't an "elite culture" - it is an international business culture. It is what Scott Alexander calls "universal culture" and what the alt-right calls "globohomo". It isn't just an elite (although it skews whiter and wealthier than the indigenous cultures who host it) - it stretches all the way down the SES hierarchy to the masked microphone girl and the baristas at your local indie coffee house. Its capital is distributed between the business class cabins of the airliners flying between New York and London, and the people who fly in them call the North Atlantic the "Pond" and treat it as narrower than the Hudson or the M25 median barrier. When my work situation improves, I am planning an effortpost on this point.

Elite culture and universal culture have a lot of overlap, perhaps they're even the same thing, but it's certainly more concentrated and adopted within elite circles. In a typical company, employees express this culture proportionally to their rank. The elite culture gives you status, and you have to signal you're part of the in-group.

My model of Scott's universal culture is a natural common-denominator. Elite culture is more forced and over-the-top, due to the status it gives its members. Perhaps elite culture is downstream from universal culture.

Baristas and mic-girls might express the same attitudes on some social issues like gender and the environment, but different views on economic issues.

My boring model of all this is just that there is such thing as "elites" and they have their own "elite culture".

I'll buy that, though I personally I go beyond that, and some of the more Deranged things I believe cannot be explained just with elite culture, I think. But for the most part, it'll do as a theory, the issue you'll run into is that we seem to be living in times of elite-denialism, and talking about "the elites" automatically gets you pigeon holed as a conspiracy theorist anyway, so in for a penny, in for a pound, I say!

I'd be surprised if most elites had even heard of the WEF.

I think that's a swing and a miss. You'll be hard pressed to find a high-profile person that wasn't in some way involved with the WEF. It might be a fun drinking game, try it!

I think of corporate activism as a principal - agent problem. Let’s say a corporation is generating a robust market return. There isn’t going to be a lot of pressure by shareholders to change management.

Management within that framework can spend some of the shareholders money on causes management cares about with basically zero fear of shareholder revolt. They will cite BJR if there were any law suits.

To make matters even worse, you have places like fidelity and BlackRock that hold and vote many of these shares as intermediaries.

Then as a cherry on top, if you pay close attention, you will find precisely one person in the entire room, who is still wearing a mask.

I just happened yesterday to see a zero-covidist blog claiming that the Davos Covid security is top-notch with all the measures zero-covidists tend to support (masks, vaccine certification, air purification etc.) and using this to claim that WEF is indeed engaged in a conspiracy... a conspiracy to run down workable Coid measures to get us all killed with airborne HIV/AIDS, aka Covid (seriously, the rest of the substack pretty much literally claims Covid is the worst disease ever, comparable to airborne HIV/AIDS), just so that the WEF capitalists can get people to consuming and flying and making money. Can't confirm the claims about WEF Covid security, though.

I believe conspiracy theories work best with the Yes, and... principle known from comedy. Yes, the WEF security measures against COVID are top-notch, which is why they don't need the masks - everybody's vaccinated, and air purification handles the rest. And the lone worker forced to still wear a mask? Pure Class Warfare for the amusement of the elites. Ze cruelty is ze point!

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