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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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The left wins by shutting down the right. It is almost impossible to have right wing demonstrations without riots. People are afraid to attend debates. Doxing makes it far more difficult to recruit to political organisations.

If the left won by “shutting down” the right, 2016 would have looked pretty different, no?

Nor has the post-2020 period looked particularly good for the left. There’s a distinct lack of policy victories coming off the most radical parts of the coalition.

No shortage of significant changes in social conditions, though.

Eh, assuming you’re talking about gender identity politics, I trace the current trends back ten years at least. The contemporary radical left would have been, what, Occupy Wall Street? It makes more sense to point to Obergefell, or to the decades of social activism which laid its groundwork.

If you’re referring to racial DEI, I suppose it’s at least related to the post-2020 violence. There’s a plausible chain where softball coverage of riots informed the public that race-conscious policy was fashionable. Except that gives all the agency to the media narrative, not the violent radicals.

If so, radicalizing the right would be an even worse idea, because softball coverage is not going to materialize.

It's unclear that these translate into wins for the left. Actual policy victories after antifa wrecked shit seem to be few and far between.