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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   28462 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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Firstly, do you agree with the claim?

I'm more or less where you're at. There's not enough to point to anything substantial, but too much to ignore.

As an extra datapoint, I'll add Brianna Wu, of all people, trying to pull off the "this time, the woke have gone too far!" schtick. People try to claim she's grifting, but I kind of think it's the opposite. In her case I haven't seen any indication of an honest change of opinion, unlike in similar left-wing figures like Ana Kasparian, she still seems to be the same cancel-culture women progressive she's always been. Some might see that as indication of a grift, but my interpretation is that she's seeing the change in the winds, and is trying yo minimize damage to the progressive movement.

And more importantly, how much of this is driven by Elon’s takeover of twitter?

Lots. This is one of the reasons I hope I'm wrong about my Elon Doomerism, because if his companies start failing, Twitter might end up being swiped from under our feet, and all the Dissidents who ended up leaving their respective shelters will end up more exposed than they were before. I hope that in the worst case scenario he will implode it, so no one can have it, leaving us with the relatively friendly Substack as an alternative.

If I remember correctly, Brianna Wu has a long history of on-and-off feuding with people to the left of her.

Well, now she seems to be feuding with progressivism writ-large, mostly off the back of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but she's also trying to play the moderate regarding trans issues - criticizing WPATH, or the fetish wing (for lack of a better term) of the trans movement. It doesn't look particularly sincere to me, because she's digging her heels on some very positions like "JK Rowling is a Holocaust denier".

Yes, I meant more like that it's a part of a longer development and not (at least completely) a U-turn.

Your worst case scenario matches my certain prediction, so I'm glad we're technically in agreement.

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