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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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What I wonder about is how hard it seems to be for American conservatives to believe that there exists a non-astroturf sentiment supporting American liberalism organically.

I think you've identified a genuine sentiment here, and it's related to the accusations of NPCism/groupthink that the right frequently levies against the left.

Other replies have brought up good points that I endorse. I'd like to add that there's a certain asymmetry to these accusations in general which could be taken as evidence of their veracity.

Both sides use plenty of generic insults that are little more than emotive expressions of sentiment. Rightists say that leftists will usher in an age of civilizational decline, that they're only doing what they're doing out of self interest, that they hide their true intentions until the right opportunity presents itself, etc. And vice versa. Precisely because these accusations are symmetrically employed by both sides, they don't reveal much interesting about the actual policy positions of the right/left or the psychology of rightists/leftists. There's little signal to separate from the noise.

The NPC meme, in contrast, is used far more often by the right than by the left. Why is that? If it was just a generic insult, if it was just a synonym for "stupid" or "uninformed", then we would expect leftists to use it too, given that it has proven itself to be a meme of rather potent virility. But they don't - not nearly as much, anyway. And I think that indicates that the left doesn't really believe it to be true about their opponents, whereas the right very much believes it to be true about their opponents. And the best explanation for a widespread asymmetrical belief of that sort is that belief having some actual correspondence to the facts of reality, however attenuated that correspondence may be.

Certainly there are versions of the NPC accusation that are employed by the left - it's common to hear rhetoric about Trump supporters being fascists who all march in lockstep, for example. But the tenor is different. There is a much greater focus on the morally deleterious content of the Trump supporters' beliefs rather than the form of their thought itself (the old "rightists think their opponents are stupid, leftists think their opponents are evil"). I think there's also the implication that the alleged fascist Trump supporter marches in lockstep because of some fundamental moral deficiency which draws them to fascism specifically, whereas the prototypical NPC could be made to follow virtually any ideology if the Cathedral declared it to be The Correct Belief.

All this is a very roundabout way of saying: I'm not going to evaluate the first-order claim that "support for Kamala/liberalism/etc is astroturfed", and at first glance I'd agree that that claim is not entirely fair. But the mere persistence of the claim indicates that there is some phenomenon here that is worth investigating. People don't just make shit up. If enough people are repeating something, there's usually some reason for it.

The only reason the left doesn't call the right NPCs is because the NPC meme is right coded and everyone knows it so left wingers find the idea of using it icky.

Instead every comment that goes against the left wing hive mind is a bot. Same idea, different terminology. Kind of like how Red Pilled and Woke mean exactly the same thing (awake to realities that normies don't or won't see) but everyone who uses one hates the other.

Instead every comment that goes against the left wing hive mind is a bot

More specifically, a "Russian bot."

Bot implies that the personality behind the account is faked and it's being directly used by a malicious agent to spread misinfo, unlike the NPC meme where it's actual people who get "programming updates".

Also, it's been a while since I've seen "woke" used by anyone other than right wingers (as an insult).

The NPC meme also seems low key to be about masculinity

Is it? That never occurred to me. I don't think that the type of person who is apt to criticize someone for not being traditionally masculine is also the type of person to care much about epistemic hygiene. But perhaps I'm off base here.

The NPC critique is that the other person outsources his thinking to another and just believes what the consensus says. Traditionally part of being a man is believing what you believe regardless of the popularity.

And yet, it appears that traditionally men believed what was popular and what men believed was popular. The Overton window within a given society was far more narrow. Men did act differently, according to their ability and social strata.

Only in as much as its about agency, which men are supposed to have at all times.

I think that the right-wingers do genuinely recognize an actual pattern - in left-wing circles opinion-forming happens through reorienting consensus, in right-wing circles there's more individualism but also room for strong leader types - but the category error made is thinking that the consensus shifts mainly through some actor above the grassroots, like the DNC, issuing marching orders, when it's really a more subtle and diffuse process among the activist class with at least some room for actual grassroots-level interaction.

Also, I'd guess it's easier for many conservatives to believe there was actual grassroots support for Sanders, especially in 2016, than, say, for Kamala now.

but the category error made is thinking that the consensus shifts mainly through some actor above the grassroots

A good example of this is the split between Trump and his base on the Covid vaccine's Operation Warp Speed. He could brag about that non-stop and it would convince none of them. But within an hour all loyal Democrats will replace their Twitter profile pics with Ukraine flags and make jokes about couches. It's an open question whether the centralized media/messaging on the left and the decentralized media/messaging on the right is reflective or formative of the respective groups and their information heirarchies.