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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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... it would make sense to include attacks on wikipedia as a source in a context where: wikipedia was being used to support incorrect claims - wikipedia was making incorrect claims - or wikipedia was a key pillar of my argument. But in no cases is that true here - what was being debated was vaguely "did a significant group of people call themselves alt-right, or was it a media term to label conservatives". And I was using it to show how easily accessible that information is, and also supported it with direct links, so I don't see why it's worth questioning wikipedia here. And the wikipedia article very effectively answers that question -

The alt-right, an abbreviation of alternative right, is a loosely connected white supremacist and white nationalist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s and the early 2010s, before increasing in popularity during the mid-2010s and establishing a presence in other countries, and has declined since 2017. The term is ill-defined, having been used in different ways by alt-right members, media commentators, journalists, and academics. A far-right movement, it rejects mainstream political ideologies such as conservatism and liberalism.

I think the connection between the alt-right and white supremacy is more 'very close' than 'entirely', but that's very complicated, and this is a decent introduction to the topic.

In 2010, the American white nationalist Richard B. Spencer launched The Alternative Right webzine. His "alternative right" was influenced by earlier forms of American white nationalism, as well as paleoconservatism, the Dark Enlightenment, and the Nouvelle Droite. His term was shortened to "alt-right", and popularised by far-right participants of /pol/, the politics board of web forum 4chan. It came to be associated with other white nationalist websites and groups, including Andrew Anglin's Daily Stormer, Brad Griffin's Occidental Dissent, and Matthew Heimbach's Traditionalist Worker Party. Following the 2014 Gamergate controversy, the alt-right made increasing use of trolling and online harassment to raise its profile. In 2015, it attracted broader attention—particularly through coverage on Steve Bannon's Breitbart News—due to alt-right support for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Upon being elected, Trump disavowed the movement. Attempting to move from a web-based to a street-based movement, Spencer and other alt-rightists organized the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which led to violent clashes with counter-demonstrators. The fallout from the rally resulted in a decline of the alt-right.

This is also a decent introduction to the topic, and would've been very useful for the people who claimed 'nobody called themselves alt-right" to read. The mention of dailystormer, occidental dissent, paleoconservatism, dark enlightenment, etc - those are definitely relevant!

So, given that many people in this thread would have been informed by reading just the first two paragraphs of the wikipedia article, the claim that "[wikipedia is not a better source than a random blog / not a great way to get broader context] on topics related to American contemporary culture war" is, imo, false. The rest of the article is certainly morally against the alt-right ... but that's to be expected, everyone is against the alt-right, they're "nazis"! Outgroup, the hated enemy, etc, it's really not worth expecting anything else. The rest of the article is also worth reading - much of it is misleading, of course, and wikipedia's article about priming is also misleading, writing things that are entirely accurate is ... quite hard, but it's still worth reading.

If you think that Wikipedia is a decent introduction to culture war issues, then the only words I have to describe are unflattering. Gullible comes to mind. Naive, willfully naive, and stridently naive are some others

Wikipedia is controlled by admins and editors and their bias permeates anything remotely controversial, and is prevalent across the entire English language site. The kind of things are and are not relevant, noteworthy, acceptable curtains, be and so on, provide a hundred thousand absurd for the common PMC bias to sleep through.

But none of this is new. I learning it in 2014 and 2015 regarding the gamergate article, which cannot be described as useful by anyone operating in good faith.

Did you even check the talk page to get a sense of the changes that have occurred, why, and when?

... I'm very far-right, and very clearly stated that wikipedia is biased against the right in the original post. (what is "PMC" bias? Does the new york times like chief financial officers, or corporate lawyers, in their rhetoric? Why aren't CEOs PMC, and hence wikipedia biased towards CEOs?)

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