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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33226 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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A new Jonathan Chait piece: How to Make a Semi-Fascist Party.

The piece details his experience at the National Conservatism Conference where a bunch of conservatives (politicians, intellectuals, etc.) get together and try to articulate a vision of conservatism's future.

Some parts are unsurprising. Ron DeSantis is hailed for supposedly bringing Disney in-line, and there's a unified theme as to what the real threat to America is. Three guesses and the first two don't count.

Almost every speaker repeated a version of the following: The “woke” revolution has captured the commanding heights of American education, culture, and even large businesses, from which positions it is spreading and enforcing a noxious left-wing ideology. This poses an existential threat to conservatism, culturally and politically. Conservatives must therefore fight back by using state power to crush their enemies on the left — a notable break for a movement that, in the pre-Trump days, had at least pretended to stand against “big government.”

Chait points to rhetoric which, on the surface, suggests the right may drop its support for economically conservative policies, but he argues that it's tailored for dealing with the specific things these conservatives don't like, as opposed to some general/coherent economic policy or policies.

The National Conservatives’ statement of principles is vague on economics, denouncing socialism while attacking “transnational corporations” for “showing little loyalty to any nation,” damaging “public life by censoring political speech, flooding the country with dangerous and addictive substances and pornography, and promoting obsessive, destructive personal habits.” This is a moral critique, confined to a trivial percentage of businesses — very few of which, after all, are engaged in content moderation or the sale of drugs or pornography — and implies very little change to the traditional Republican pro-business stance.

...

National Conservatives consider corporations to be “woke” enemies, or at least potential enemies, and see the power of the state as a lever to compel them to endorse conservative positions or at least refrain from endorsing liberal ones. They propose to pressure tech companies like Twitter and Google to drop content-moderation policies like bans on disinformation or hate speech. They wish to pressure corporations to not take positions in defense of voting rights or against forms of social discrimination. And they view investment funds using environmental, social-welfare, and good-governance criteria as a mortal threat. On all these issues, the National Conservative position is essentially identical to The Wall Street Journal’s editorial line.

Of note is the new fusing of an old talking point with a new one. Chait writes the following of the "Securing the Integrity of American Elections" panel.

The overarching theme of the panel was that Democrats routinely engage in widespread voter fraud and that Republicans have failed to gain power because they have shied away from the hard work of rooting out this allegedly endemic cheating. “You’re not gonna get anybody elected unless you’ve got an honest election system in which they’ve got the ability to get elected,” said Spakovsky. “There’s obviously going to be fraud; we know there will be fraud,” said Jessica Anderson, a former Trump budget staffer now working at Heritage.

None of the panelists are willing to affirm if they think Biden won the election fairly, which Chait takes as proof that their private views will not get in the way of them trying to use the energy the 2020 election provides.

Then there's what amounts to a very foolish, but understandable strategy.

Christina Pushaw, whose official title is director of rapid response for the governor but whose role could be more accurately described as minister of propaganda, held forth at a panel on marginalizing independent media. The challenge, she explained ruefully, is that many older Americans, such as her parents, still give some credence to old-line outfits like the New York Times. This reputation, she believes, comes from the perception that they have access to both parties, so the correct response by Republicans is to freeze out the mainstream media. “If they have no access to any Republican elected officials, they are seen for what they are,” she proposed. Pushaw stressed that Republicans should not even concede that reporters are journalists at all. She instructed the audience to call them “activists.”

Pushaw told the audience that Orbán’s government gave her inspiration for this tactic. “The New Yorker wrote to Orbán and asked for comment on their hit piece, and they received a response that was just perfect. It said, ‘We are not going to participate in the validation process for liberal propaganda,’ ” she recounted, “and I don’t think we need to participate in that validation process either.” Instead, she noted, DeSantis gives access to conservative sites, which then get quotes and scooplets they can use to build their audience.

While Chait argues that, as bad as left-wing news might be, right wing news doesn't even try to be objective, I'll make a different critique.

Suppose Pushaw's point are her earnest belief. She succeeds and we get conservative news sites that get exclusive access to conservatives. What happens?

Answer: Nothing changes.

All that will occur is that left-wing sites like the NYT or whoever else will report whatever those other sites say and add a note "Person X refused to comment."

Chait argues that Pushaw wants to eliminate the idea of a journalist altogether - there will instead be "left journalists" and "right journalists". This is idiotic, because there are going to be people who synthesize the materials and present themselves as objective journalists. Both sides would do it and nothing changes. CNN will tell you what DeSantis told his favored journalist and continue on without pause.

This isn't even something like "we're going to create right-journalists who will directly contest every claim the left makes, thereby nominally preventing anyone from knowing truth", it's quite literally "go here to find our words". Scott Alexander doesn't stop existing just because the NYT can't directly interview DeSantis.

That previous idea, however, comes from Hungary and Victor Orban, who were positively featured at the convention. There was a lot of praise for Orban as someone who had used state power to fight fake news.

At one panel, The Federalist’s Sean Davis asked Balázs Orbán, an adviser (no relation) to Viktor Orbán, how his government is preventing the fake-news media from poisoning the minds of the youth. “Just as is done in Florida,” Orbán replied, explaining that the Hungarian regime used state power to prevent the left from indoctrinating the country in its ideology.

Chait concludes his piece by noting that as time went on, he was in an increasing hostile environment. People insulted him to his face and tweeted out that he looked like a goblin. Amber Athey certainly suggests so.

Aside

Okay, so Athey went beyond just an accusation of being a goblin and claimed the following was evidence.

The linked complaint is...hard to judge. DeSantis most definitely said what he did, so we're left to judge if Athey is referring to the actual words spoken or Chait's claim that the governor is courting anti-vaxxers.

Edit: it's not unclear, Athey is clear that she objects to Chait's view of what DeSantis is doing.

Certainly, there is a great deal of frustration on the vaccine-skeptic side (or whatever you wish to call people who distrusted the Covid vaccine(s) but not necessarily others for whatever reason) in how anti-vaxxer changed from "deny the science altogether" to "question any part of any vaccine". An important question is if Chait is intentionally using the new definition while trying to convince people DeSantis falls under the old one.

That said, there is a logic in pointing out that political groups often given a guide to the various enemies they have on who to collaborate with. Unless the skeptical-about-covid-vaccine-but-not-all crowd is virulently against the old definition anti-vaxxers, a strategic coalition can be formed and the more palatable rhetoric will probably draw in the ones who are more shunned. I cannot be the only one to have noticed this.

I'm willing to buy that DeSantis is more concerned about "woke elites" than he is about actually staking out a position on the covid vaccine, but I don't know enough about him to say whether it's deliberate or not.

Chait points to rhetoric which, on the surface, suggests the right may drop its support for economically conservative policies, but he argues that it's tailored for dealing with the specific things these conservatives don't like, as opposed to some general/coherent economic policy or policies.

Yes. Politics is inherently tribal now, in the general case. Tribes have enemies. Social and political power exists to be wielded against those enemies. Moderates claimed otherwise, and lost everywhere that mattered. So this is how it goes from here.

None of the panelists are willing to affirm if they think Biden won the election fairly, which Chait takes as proof that their private views will not get in the way of them trying to use the energy the 2020 election provides.

My general impression is that you think that as long as the ballot boxes weren't stuffed, it was a fair election. I disagree, given the evidence discussed in this forum previously. Still, people generally know when they're being screwed, whether they can prove it or not, whether they can even articulate it or not. Reds know they were screwed, and so they're in the process of rejecting the legitimacy of our existing political and social institutions. They are right to do so, in my view, and right in the general estimation at how they arrived in this state. Given the givens, cooperation across the political divide does not make sense. Blues, collectively speaking, are not trustworthy partners. Conflict will continue to spiral inexorably.

What happens?

We take the first step toward systemic organization against the Journalist class. We mainstream the idea, among Reds, that Blue journalism is not an institution worthy of respect, status, or special accommodation within our political, legal and social systems. Hopefully we can find a way to dissolve their power and influence before they do more harm than they already have. Making their status a tribal battleground, and then forcing moderates to defend their utterly indefensible behavior, day after day, indefinitely, seems like a way to start. Reject the pretense that they are anything approaching a shared institution, bring down the cordon sanitaire, and force those who ignore it to take responsibility for the woeful results.

CNN will tell you what DeSantis told his favored journalist and continue on without pause.

This is, regrettably, true. What's your proposed alternative? Like, do you even recognize the general scope of the problem, the stakes that are being addressed? We're a bit past elderly relatives talking about the "dadgum liberal media" here. The Press, as a class, chose a side, and they have been prosecuting the culture war to the hilt for at least a decade, and arguably much longer. Lies they tell directly shape our nation. People die based on what they say. People go to war based on what they say. They are, inarguably, an activist political class, operating with vast resources and zero accountability, who have abused their position in too many ways to count and for far, far too long.

Do you understand that the people Chait is condemning, are the people trying to work alternatives within the system? That they're the closest thing to a friend that exists across that divide? They're the ones riding the wave, not the ones generating it. They're the ones attempting to direct it down the existing social and political channels. When they lose, and I think we can both agree that their loss is likely, the tribal warfare doesn't magically poof out of existence.

That said, there is a logic in pointing out that political groups often given a guide to the various enemies they have on who to collaborate with.

It is difficult to overstate my agreement. If you wouldn't mind elaborating, let's suppose they're actually courting the traditional anti-vaxxers. How bad a thing is that, and how seriously should we take it, in your view?

My general impression is that you think that as long as the ballot boxes weren't stuffed, it was a fair election.

I have no idea why you'd think this, given that I'm been fairly silent on the question of whether the 2020 election was fair or not. I'm summarizing Chait's views here.

This is, regrettably, true. What's your proposed alternative? Like, do you even recognize the general scope of the problem, the stakes that are being addressed?

Again with the hostility. My point is that Pushaw's plan is simply too limited to do what she wants. I think this won't even be the chip you're trying to paint it as. It could be if used in tandem with stronger and broader measures.

It is difficult to overstate my agreement. If you wouldn't mind elaborating, let's suppose they're actually courting the traditional anti-vaxxers. How bad a thing is that, and how seriously should we take it, in your view?

I have no real thoughts on that right now.

CTRL-F

"Antidiscrimination law" 0 results

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"Payment processors" 0 results

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Woke is driven by exactly 2 things:

  1. Federal Antidiscrimination law making it a crime, subject to forfeit of hundreds of millions, for any corporation, educational institute, government department, digital platform, or small business to be anti-woke.

  2. Payment processors and financial institutions being legally allowed and encouraged to withdraw services to the politically disfavored despite not being private free-market companies but effective monopolies and oligopolies created by the regulatory state.

.

We know what a true free market produces: It produces the 19th century and the full spectrum of partisan outlets, and robber barons free to not only speak but enact their social vision within their businesses.

Woke is entirely a fucntion of the regulatory state claiming the power to control individual interactions, ideological statements, and financial transactions by private enterpirses.

Unless you are actually willing to say "NO the state should not get to control companies speech even if it is racist" or "No banking monopolies should not be able to refuse any customer until they have been convicted of a crime"... then you fully support the organs of woke power, you just think it should confine itself to eating people ever so far to the right of you.

a true free market

the 19th century

laughs continually until asphyxiation This is why I have grown to dislike sweeping conclusions about the present drawn from superficial readings of history; the history being used to justify the conclusion is usually incredibly wrong. The 19th century business environment was anything but free - the market was massively distorted by, e.g., massively corrupt government dealings in land, right-of-ways, and transportation contracting. Further, there was cartelization and collusive rate-setting in the various transportation sectors, as well as a vast range of financial shenanigans including insider- and self-dealing, organized manipulation of prices and market-cornering, etc. And don't forget the massive debates over monetary policy, free silver/bimetallism, etc.

Further, it strikes me as unusual that you would be on the side of Mark Hanna et. al. against the Grangers and prairie populists. I would have thought that those beleaguered yeomen would have been your historical forebears, given some of the other positions I've seen you take.

Insider trading is part of a free market, as is market cornering, price manipulation etc. It is only state intervention that can make these schemes stable. If the milk cartels in Canada had been only private unenforceable agreements they would have collapsed decades ago.

As for corrupt government land dealings, etc. ... why yes the 5-10 areas of economics the state already touched back then were entirely corrupt... who would have thought. Thank god now the state infects every aspect of the economy and none of it is... oh wait.

.

In the 19th century people like Edison and the Wright brothers could invent in their garages and call their workers racial or sexual slurs if they wanted... now all research is regulated, all corporate speech, and all private speech by anyone employed is strictly regulated by the state with 100 million dollar settlements if an employer is insufficiently hawkish about firing employees for speech infractions, and there is not a single sector of the economy that is remotely free and we are slaves.

I think the legal standards matter to some extent, but I'd caution against seeing it as the whole or the core of the problem. There are countless other legal standards, sometimes with stricter theoretical penalties, which nonetheless might as well be phantoms with how poorly they're obeyed (affirmative action bans, anti-political-discrimination laws, , all for specifically Californian rules that stop counting when the target is right).

THe thing is as soon as you have real protections of free speech woke is outcompeted.

What's the law of the internet: Every unmoderated forum inevitably become right wing?

Genuinely free communication norms without backdoor payment processors removal or state pressured "inclusion" inevitably becomes the 2000s era internet.

The institutional punishments are what drives woke... its not an ideology that can exist without institutional punishment... the current brand of it started on campus in the 2010s because the federal government preassured universities to change their enforcement of sexual harassment codes.

I have a weird political orientation. I’m a semi-fascists neoliberal.

Empire requires neoliberalism. The Roman’s did their form of neoliberalism. They viewed themselves as better but protected a broad geography that encouraged trade. And you need that for empire. I don’t want to give up American hegemony which I think is a force of good.

But that doesn’t mean I’m anti-nationalist. I like Meloni in Italy. I believe in encouraging a strong America which is anti-woke. I think some of Melonis ideas like aid to families makes sense and in America we had child tax credit which Romney supported. Nationalist tend to be somewhat socialist in support of the family.

On the media it’s all propaganda now. Hunter Bidens laptop suppression illustrates that. Joe has still avoided having to answer questions on who the “big man” was.

On corporations it’s obviously they’ve been woke captured. Some of that is fear of lawsuits. Etf hasn’t helped because the left can capture the etf providers and pressure corporations even if the majority ownership stake isn’t woke, the right is correct in trying to find solutions to fight back.

Empire requires neoliberalism. The Roman’s did their form of neoliberalism. They viewed themselves as better but protected a broad geography that encouraged trade. And you need that for empire. I don’t want to give up American hegemony which I think is a force of good.

Neoliberalism and nationalism are opposing forces. Neoliberalism strengthens the private sector and weakens state power. It strengthens the lobby groups that demand migration, as much migration as possible. Cheap labour and skilled labour, it wants people moving to where they're most economically efficient. It transfers wealth from less efficient parts of the nation to more efficient parts of the global economy. You had a shipbuilding industry in Glasgow? Now it's in Tianjin.

For example, take the US and EU trying to get Estonia to embrace multiculturalism. They are neoliberal entities, through and through. https://archive.ph/ZnU7w

  • Estonian authorities ought to add the teaching of the benefits of diversity and living in a multicultural society in school programs.
  • Estonian authorities need to provide support for the Press Council of Estonia and the Estonian Newspaper Association for training journalists on issues related to racism and racial discrimination.

Empire requires neoliberalism.

Quite the opposite: many empires had not just limited trade between their possessions and outside nations, colonial ones even protected their own local industry from the colonies.

Empire requires exploitation of resources. If by neoliberalism you mean the limits on government intervention in the market and barriers to trade...no.

The importance of creating your own news is stark, because news isn’t to inform but to emotionally manipulate. News is not filled with measured statistics and the latest meta studies, it is hardly filled with facts at all or any useful information. It is filled with to emotionally potent stories. (Consider: a story that traffic accidents have decreased gets little coverage; particularly bad accidents get more coverage, for no other reason than emotional potency).

Potent storytelling is the way to manipulate people, and both sides know this. The news might show you the corpse of a toddler that washed up on the shores of Europe, to generate sympathy for migrants. This same company might neglect to show you that Pakistani migrants raped thousands of white British children in Rotherham England. The news will get you worked up about Rahaf Mohammed, the Saudi who got refugee status in Canada. This same news corporation will neglect to tell you that she took the spot of a Christian who faced death in Pakistan, and will neglect to inform you that Rahaf is now a single mother with implants who was knocked up by a rapper and you can subscribe to her OnlyFans for only $39 monthly.

I do not believe it is hyperbole to call all news propaganda, because the news propagates for viewership, not for informing. As such, if rightoids like myself want to win, it’s a good idea to produce really really good propaganda shamelessly.

Extreme selection effect.

Rahaf wasn't wearing the Hijab the first time she appeared in the news. I can't understate how out of norm that is for a Saudi girl. So of course the girl who almost risks a life in a basement to escape Saudi Arabia's culture REALLY REALLY doesn't fit with SA's culture. She is just doing what she wanted to do. The only piece of commentary here is that the West allows her to express her true self. The West didn't turn her into a hoe, she always was one... Because not wearing a Hijab as a Saudi is equivalent to having an OnlyFans as a Canadian, I shit you not.

Shame on Canada thought.. They let in a well to do (almost all Saudis are well to do) girl over someone who "deserves" asylum all that much more, all for the Optics. Canada is really leading the charge in becoming country of ✨vibes✨.

Escaping SA isn't that hard. Escaping a village in Pakistan with a Islamist mob after you is.

and will neglect to inform you that Rahaf is now a single mother with implants who was knocked up by a rapper and you can subscribe to her OnlyFans for only $39 monthly.

The American Canadian dream.

I liked this post but I think this part needs little bit of expanding.

the news propagates for viewership

I think it is a mistake to imply that it is the average viewers interests are controlling what the news is creating propaganda to appease as opposed to the media companies, and their institutional owners, imposing their views on the populace with propaganda.

Pushaw stressed that Republicans should not even concede that reporters are journalists at all. She instructed the audience to call them “activists.”

Where’s the lie? Journalists today are indeed almost all activists. They should be treated as such until their profession wakes up

Chait is treated with hostility because he’s one of the activists. He’s there to argue against conservatives doing anything at all to try to win back cultural power. I see this so often with centre-right figures, who just want conservatives to be a liberalism going the speed limit. It’s how we got into the current predicament.

I'd like to see proof that he's one of these "activists".

Chait argues that Pushaw wants to eliminate the idea of a journalist altogether - there will instead be "left journalists" and "right journalists". This is idiotic, because there are going to be people who synthesize the materials and present themselves as objective journalists. Both sides would do it and nothing changes. CNN will tell you what DeSantis told his favored journalist and continue on without pause.

Republicans spend significant energy engaging with CNN and other corporate news outlets. If they aren't getting any benefit then it's just wasted effort.

I'm sorry for making this personal.

But reading your some of your comments I get the impression you are an elitist with an obsession for markers of status (Not your first post about how bereft of taste the underclasses are). At the same time your posts "smell" of someone who spends far too much time in online political forums (zoomer memes/phrases sprinkled in). I'm sure you see the (ironic?) juxtaposition there.

Do you embody the "spirit" of the aesthetic ?

The poor will always be with us. You will never be able to clean the world of them. For status is zero-sum.

I personally want to rid the world of rent-seekers, of those that try carve out their slice instead of growing the pie, those that worship status. I think a case can be made that if ideology was the enemy of the 20th century, status worship is the enemy of the 21st century.

Beauty is the sideproduct of those that worship a higher ideal than themselves, its not born of lamentations of its lacking . It's born of blood, sweat, and tears; not pretty dresses and tea parties.

It triggers the libs. More to the point, if you create a movement that almost has a Pavlovian reaction of assuming that anything that gets the other side - ie. liberal cultural elites, such as they are - sneering is good and a Thing of the People, and the liberal cultural elites find chintzy 80s car dealer style aesthetics repellent, that's what your movement is going to get.

Well that's kind of what you get if you spend years trying to code everything high-culturey as something that only liberal elites enjoy. Indeed, the 'liberal' side of the culture wars are often accused of having no regard for history or culture, but in Britian, for instance, I am almost certain that those who fill the halls of the nation's museums, theatres, opera houses and especially historic universities are disproportionately Remainers, and probably future Starmer voters.

Indeed, the 'liberal' side of the culture wars are often accused of having no regard for history or culture, but in Britian, for instance, I am almost certain that those who fill the halls of the nation's museums, theatres, opera houses and especially historic universities are disproportionately Remainers, and probably future Starmer voters.

The two are not unrelated because it's exactly those sort of people who nestle into historic organizations go around trying to "decolonize Shakespeare". Just as it'll be some Democrat bureaucrat at a major university that'll turn around and support the removal of a statue of their school's founder cause he Did Some Bad Things.

They can be said to have possession but not regard.

While Chait argues that, as bad as left-wing news might be, right wing news doesn't even try to be objective, I'll make a different critique.

Chait's argument holds as well for the left-wing mainstream media. It's full of conclusory statements, often tossed in offhand, like "X's baseless claims that..." or "Y's false statement that..."

My personal favourite is “so and so claimed, without evidence…”

I left that point alone because I figured it might come across too much like "no u". Like, yeah, Chait shows some of his own biases in the piece, but they're not really that relevant to the discussion.

Chait's argument holds just as well for Chait, who makes no effort whatsoever at concealing his overwhelming bias. The people at the conference are The Enemy, and they must be Stopped At All Costs. He's nothing more than a Democrat operative with a byline, as they say.

The reason this is relevant is that every take he has is pre-loaded with hostile assumptions--the very opposite of charity--and it takes Kremlinology skills to dig through the bias to come up with any type of neutral reading of what was said. Only at that point can you evaluate whether anyone said anything useful.

Chait's argument holds just as well for Chait, who makes no effort whatsoever at concealing his overwhelming bias. The people at the conference are The Enemy, and they must be Stopped At All Costs. He's nothing more than a Democrat operative with a byline, as they say.

Overwhelming? I'm not sure where you're seeing that.

It's true that Chait makes some serious missteps in his article, but they're small points that don't detract from what he's saying. For that matter, most of what he says is just summarizing and characterizing what was said at the conference.

Overwhelming? I'm not sure where you're seeing that.

It's not like Chait is hiding this perspective. But as an example from this case:

... whose official title is director of rapid response for the governor but whose role could be more accurately described as minister of propaganda, held forth at a panel on marginalizing independent media. The challenge, she explained ruefully, is that many older Americans, such as her parents, still give some credence to old-line outfits like the New York Times. This reputation, she believes, comes from the perception that they have access to both parties, so the correct response by Republicans is to freeze out the mainstream media.

This particular section is painful to read if you're familiar with Chait's techniques, but I think it's useful as an example more because it's the very same thing as it's trying to criticize. Does this look like a sober and honest description of Pushaw or her talk, or does it sounds like someone that thinks his job is to write the opposite of this? If I googled "independent media", do you think any examples on the front page would come across as any of the people or organizations that Pushaw mentioned in her talk? Do you think this is giving a good understanding of Pushaw's goals, or ability to predict the contents of her talk?

Chait argues that Pushaw wants to eliminate the idea of a journalist altogether - there will instead be "left journalists" and "right journalists". This is idiotic, because there are going to be people who synthesize the materials and present themselves as objective journalists. Both sides would do it and nothing changes. CNN will tell you what DeSantis told his favored journalist and continue on without pause.

I don't think this is a good understanding of the concerns or purposes specific here. Pushaw et all's position is that, by providing support to existing left journalists, conservatives (and other weirdos) are providing tools to those left-journalists to not only present themselves as objective journalists, but also specific weapons to attack with.

As an example case, take CBS's past and pretty aggressive slice-and-dices of DeSantis presentations. This is not an especially developed version of this particular approach -- more specialized version will do more to isolate their mark or prevent them from having evidence of manipulation, or provide (false) reassurance of honest intent -- but note that it had a very specific format: Alfonsi and video crew went to the press conference in a way that gave them the audio they needed to slice. Not (just) because that allowed them to manipulate the sound bites, or increase their perceived credibility, or because of the somewhat sloppy boundaries of fair reporting privilege in Florida; because it also means that they owned the video rights.

That's actually kinda important! I don't particularly buy the whole "pivot to video" concept, and indeed I'd argue to its opposite, but people are a lot less aware of the extent outright video manipulation can occur and be undetectable. There's a reason this class of reporter believes, even if incorrectly, that it's worth spending . And we've found even the most aggressive behavior is not meaningfully possible to contest or punish in courts from the position of a target, even one willing to suffer the Streisand effect.

There's some economic costs to other media sources if Fox News-likes are the only place in Florida with video of a Governor's Press Conference, but the bigger impact is that a CBS devolved to trimming words out of other newspapers is far less likely to persuade people when doing that.

Thank you, I don't follow Chait and this piece just happened to cross my path. I do agree that that piece you linked is fairly indicative of Chait's bias towards being a conflict theorist.

This particular section is painful to read if you're familiar with Chait's techniques, but I think it's useful as an example more because it's the very same thing as it's trying to criticize. Does this look like a sober and honest description of Pushaw or her talk, or does it sounds like someone that thinks his job is to write the opposite of this? If I googled "independent media", do you think any examples on the front page would come across as any of the people or organizations that Pushaw mentioned in her talk? Do you think this is giving a good understanding of Pushaw's goals, or ability to predict the contents of her talk?

I think this example is somewhat problematic as I can't even find the talk itself. It's not on the youtube channel for the NCC, and even searching for it yields nothing. But the prior link does cast some doubt on it.

I don't think this is a good understanding of the concerns or purposes specific here. Pushaw et all's position is that, by providing support to existing left journalists, conservatives (and other weirdos) are providing tools to those left-journalists to not only present themselves as objective journalists, but also specific weapons to attack with...There's some economic costs to other media sources if Fox News-likes are the only place in Florida with video of a Governor's Press Conference, but the bigger impact is that a CBS devolved to trimming words out of other newspapers is far less likely to persuade people when doing that.

Another round of strong links, but I don't think it's going to have the impact you're claiming. I'd posit we're not, and may never have been, in a position where people hinge their politics on the view that the news orgs they consume are "objective journalists". The only people you'd reach are those without a strong political belief system themselves, but also diligent enough to verify what is being said. I'm not sure how many of these people even exist.

I've seen how people spread new news sites to others for "learning what happened", and it's often just a reflection of the person's own political views.

That said, I don't see how video rights necessarily come into it. The tactics are done in service of the politics, not vice versa. If they can't selectively edit their own videos, they'll do the same to other videos, and I'm pretty sure that you'd be allowed to do this in the first place under fair use.

I'd posit we're not, and may never have been, in a position where people hinge their politics on the view that the news orgs they consume are "objective journalists". The only people you'd reach are those without a strong political belief system themselves, but also diligent enough to verify what is being said. I'm not sure how many of these people even exist.

I'm not sure you need people to be directly diligent enough to catch this stuff: few, if any, would have been able to catch the 60 Minutes trick for sheer mechanical reasons. But once one did, you didn't have to be diligent. Uou had to hear from either right-leaning media or even some mainstream media that covered the resulting scandal.

So you're less asking about those without a strong political belief system, but also diligent enough to verify; instead, you're looking for those without a strong political belief system and also who see anything from non-manipulative media. Which, to be fair, is still not a huge set! But one of the awkward secrets of modern coalition politics and general democratic politics is that you aren't trying to persuade a majority of people or even a majority of voters: you're working the margins of a fairly small set of a squishy middle voters who could be persuaded, or marginal voters who are flexable on whether they want to vote at all. And a lot of these gimmicks -- both the abusive manipulation of video, and the Look At This Bad Actor -- are designed pretty clearly to inflame the interests of those groups.

Individually, I don't think any one of these changes all but the most marginal of elections... but they're not individual things. Overt and uncontroversial examples that get caught are maybe once a news cycle. But the people doing this doesn't exactly stop with overt and uncontroversial examples.

That said, I don't see how video rights necessarily come into it. The tactics are done in service of the politics, not vice versa. If they can't selectively edit their own videos, they'll do the same to other videos, and I'm pretty sure that you'd be allowed to do this in the first place under fair use.

The extent a piece can be changed can sometimes be complicated, but even where not fair use, editing's usually a pretty cheap usage right, and just using the video seldom falls under fair use in this context -- that's why reporters begging for use permissions is such a common gimmick.

There's workarounds -- ambush journalism is a thing, albeit with a well-deserved reputation, certain types of public feed or event are effectively uncontrollable, a lot of places will (and already do) slice-and-dice text form. I'd expect that rather than a simple sorting of left- and right-media, you instead end up with a complex balkanization where individual politicians at certain levels of power have differing (and changing) sets of media that they'll meet with, not just based on those reporter's actions but even on the actions of those that the reporter's work with. I'm certainly not claiming that this is good as a policy, or legitimate as a constitutional matter.

But it's pretty obvious that it's at least a significant part of Pushaw and DeSantis' policies, and that Chait has been following them long enough that he should recognize this, and it's noticeable that this isn't something that Chait wants to present, not just here, but as far as I can tell ever, when he instead provides explanations that seem to be little less than 'eviiiiiiiil'.

How to Make a Semi-Fascist Party.

The Enemy.

a notable break for a movement that, in the pre-Trump days, had at least pretended to stand against “big government.”

Assumption of bad faith.

Christina Pushaw, whose official title is director of rapid response for the governor but whose role could be more accurately described as minister of propaganda,

Seriously? Pushaw is certainly a PR/press contact person for a politician, similar to the White House Press Secretary. I'd like an example of Chait evenhandedly referring to, say, Jen Psaki as Biden's "minister of propaganda."

Why yes, overwhelming bias sounds exactly on point. And given that obvious bias, an intelligent reader should not take his "summarizing and characterizing what was said at the conference" at face value, which undermines everything else in the article. These aren't "small points;" from the headline on down, it's his entire framing of the conference!

Why yes, overwhelming bias sounds exactly on point. And given that obvious bias, an intelligent reader should not take his "summarizing and characterizing what was said at the conference" at face value, which undermines everything else in the article. These aren't "small points;" from the headline on down, it's his entire framing of the conference!

So, upon reading gattsuru's response, I do agree with you that he's being fairly biased.

However, I'm not convinced that what's being reported in necessarily affected by his bias because it sounds like what has been reported by others regarding the strengthening of the conservative populist movement in the first place. The general points about identifying left-leaning journalists, seemingly-woke corporations, and making the perceived 2020 election theft as the important narrative thrusts seem like the kind of thing we were already hearing before Chait's article.

So I think it's necessary to separate what his bias is (his title about the fascist slide or his description of Pushaw as a propaganda minister) from what he's reporting about. It's certainly possible that even that isn't accurate, but I'm not convinced of that yet.

Earlier today I reread Neutral vs. Conservative: The Eternal Struggle, which seems useful background. My question is, you say:

Then there's what amounts to a very foolish, but understandable strategy.

Why? There's really no hope for conservatives to get fair representation in ostensibly neutral institutions, and nearly all the relevant voices on the Right have abandoned them. By ideology and cultural background, the participants in those institutions are incapable of thinking of alternative viewpoints as anything except motivated by evil. And we've reached a point where in 2021 only 12% of adults had a lot of trust in national news organizations, which is a record low.

At some point in the recent past it was probably true that national news organizations were more accurate/fair in their reporting than the explicit partisanship of right-aligned media. I don't think that's the case anymore. Even if you disagree, it's likely that the Right can convince an outright majority of voters that institutions are just a mirror image of Breitbart. Discrediting and delegitimization seems like a winning move.

I am not sure why you think that poll refers to the "liberal media," given that Fox News has been the #1 cable news channel for 20 years and that in Q2 of 2022, Fox had the top 8 cable news shows, and 9 of the top 10.

Fox News has been the #1 cable news channel for 20 years

And yet none of the CBS, ABC, or NBC newsmagazines or Sunday morning talk shows have taken note and even pivoted to neutrality. They remain staffed with left of center ex-Clinton and ex-Obama staffers with panels that, at best can be expected to have one milktoast Republican as a whipping boy.

That's a fair point, as it just refers to national media organizations and not particular organizations.

Reading the tea leaves, though, the high trust ratings are mostly sustained by Democrats in the same poll. It's unlikely that the organization Democrats are expressing high trust in is Fox, and the decline over the past several years is driven heavily by Republican and Republican-leaning adults, who are the primary targets of this strategy.

I like pointing to this, not because I think the study or survey is especially accurate -- the low quality of the methodology doesn't encourage! -- but because it's the sort of question people are asking when they ask this, and it says something when examined in close detail what that is.

It would be nice to see the leaners analyzed separately. Those are people whom both sides should be trying to reach, so it is their attitudes which should determine whether the strategy is wise.

How does Fox compare to CNN+MSNBC+ABC+NBC+CBS?

Well, based on the total data on the scribd document in the link to the Q2 2022 data, it looks like these are the audience totals (based on the third column, which appears to be how they are ranked):

CNBC 2132

CNN 6874

FBN 2446

FOXN 32390

HLN 288

MSNB 16002

NMX 2334

TOTAL 62466

But the point is not the exact percentages. The point is that, given that Fox is a very popular news organization, it is impossible to infer anything about the public views of "liberal media" from a poll that asks merely about "national news organizations." Perhaps those numbers are driven by declining trust in the "liberal media," or perhaps they are driven by a decline in trust in Fox News, or perhaps there has a decline in trust in all of the above. It is impossible to tell from that source.

My impression is that opinion in Fox had become extremely polarized by the mid Bush II years. Opinions on the other networks didn't really crater until the last 5-10 years. But at this point, almost no one has a generally favorable view of "the media". We might see a more nuanced picture if there were another question like "Is there any national televised news you think is trustworthy?"

At some point in the recent past it was probably true that national news organizations were more accurate/fair in their reporting than the explicit partisanship of right-aligned media.

ABC morning news in 2022 reminds me of clips John Stewart would play of Glenn Beck in 2004. Even the pretense of objectivity feels like gaslighting. They don't care at all that you learn any facts about what happened, the only important thing is that you feel who are the bad guys (the Republicans) and who are the good guys (the Democrats).

Did you see the “Stewart -> Tucker pipeline” article linked on ACX? It’s a closely related theory that Stewart’s Daily Show sold networks on exactly such a tribal news-adjacent program. Obama-era Fox pundits just figured out how to target it for their group, and by today it’s what all the major programs are trying to tap.

I found it pretty convincing.

Yeah, I saw that. Pretty close to my existing opinion on the influence of The Daily Show, except I think TDS had a much more destructive influence on the lefter shows than Fox, because Fox was already pretty low-brow culture war. I think TDS taught an entire generation of progressives that political debate consisted of sneering at maliciously edited caricatures of the outgroup, and we are still deaing with the repercussions of that.

Even if you disagree, it's likely that the Right can convince an outright majority of voters that institutions are just a mirror image of Breitbart. Discrediting and delegitimazation seems like a winning move.

Pushaw's specific strategy is to advocate for the right to stop speaking with journalists deemed "on the left". The problem is that she's just shifting where they'll get their info from the conservative reporter/site as opposed to the person themself. This is fine if your goal is to build up an army of right-friendly reporters (in the literal sense), not if your goal is to delegitimize your enemies. And now, they won't even have to ask that person to speak for themself, since everyone will know that "the right doesn't talk to the NYT". You'll just see "person X did not reply to requests for comment".

In my opinion, Pushaw's view on why people who say they are on the left or right might believe that the NYT is a fair journal is wrong. At the very least, it is not because they think the NYT has access to the comments from both sides, and even in her own hypothetical, they'd still have that access. Compare the following.

"Governor DeSantis told the NYT that he doesn't think he's anti-LGBT."

"Governor DeSantis told Pushaw's Trust Journalists that he doesn't think he's anti-LGBT."

If you saw the same article with only this distinction, would you tell anyone they were meaningfully different? I wouldn't. It's just another chain in the "where did this come from" game we all have to play.

If Pushaw wants to delegitimize the NYT, I don't think any plan is going to revolve significantly around the idea of not talking directly, even if that's something you'd do anyways.

This is fine if your goal is to build up an army of right-friendly reporters (in the literal sense), not if your goal is to delegitimize your enemies.

The right does not have the power to delegitimize its enemies in anyone's eyes but its own, and right now even that task is incomplete.

If you saw the same article with only this distinction, would you tell anyone they were meaningfully different? I wouldn't.

The problem is you would never see that article in the first place, at least framed that way. The interview would be chopped and pasted and recontextualized as something like "DeSantis angrily disputes homophobic concerns from civil rights groups". I watch network news in the morning because my parents do, and they want to talk to me about it, and the problem is exactly what Pushaw is talking about. They see 40 seconds of clips featuring three different question/responses from an interview with Hershel Walker, and they have no idea how long that interview was, what was left out, what context is being omitted, etc. They just get the impression that "Walker was interviewed by the news and this is what he had to say". They don't even notice until I point it out that that 40 seconds features more intense grilling than all Democrats combined have gotten on that channel in the last two years.

Compared to living with that crap, a full court press delegitimating effort is at least an actionable strategy. Actually treat them like the partisan SuperPAC they essentially are.

Gotcha. I agree that this will only marginally push the needle on delegitimization, albeit positively. Perhaps someone will go check out Pushaw Trust Journalists; perhaps the monoculture of who interacts with those institutions will make a couple more people skeptical of what they say or print.

The linked complaint is...hard to judge. DeSantis most definitely said what he did, so we're left to judge if Athey is referring to the actual words spoken or Chait's claim that the governor is courting anti-vaxxers.

Can you explain why you think her comment is hard to judge? There's no ambiguity; she says directly that the quote is accurate and the attribution is accurate, but that his spin in the second sentence is not.

Whoops, my mistake. You are correct. Edited appropriately.

This is idiotic, because there are going to be people who synthesize the materials and present themselves as objective journalists. Both sides would do it and nothing changes.

I think you're too quick to criticize this. Those "Objective Journalists" will at least be required to take some kind of criticism to maintain that moniker, it may be the only path back to journalism that doesn't include advocacy in its mission statement. Most of the hack activists masquerading as journalists won't be able to hold back the venom long enough to affirm that there are two legitimate sides worth being objective about. Those that do will feel pressure to moderate lest they get labeled non-objective.

Those "Objective Journalists" will at least be required to take some kind of criticism to maintain that moniker

From who, the Journalism Credentialing Board? No, trust in journalism is an entirely subjective business, heavily influenced by the partisan lean of the viewer.

Those "Objective Journalists" will at least be required to take some kind of criticism to maintain that moniker, it may be the only path back to journalism that doesn't include advocacy in its mission statement.

The good ones will, but we already live in an environment where they have to do that in the first place if they want to be trusted. The likes of Scott Alexander exist in this reality and in Pushaw's hypothetical just as easily.

Secondly, people are already willing to believe whatever CNN or Fox tells them as objective truth. That doesn't change in Pushaw's world either. You suggest that someone like, say, Taylor Lorenz won't be considered an objective journalist, but I'd ask you if that's the reasonable consensus in this reality either.

People in general are not interested in learning what might be true when it comes to the news, but they want to be affirmed in their viewpoint. The only time they might adjust is if the journalist too strongly conflicts with other trusted sources.

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