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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9631 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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You can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools.

In any war both sides use plenty of similar tools against each other because they work. You don't see a war when one side is capable but decides to not use bullets, missiles, tanks, artillery, air force.

Promoting sympathy for X by portraying them as a minority group under threat is a tool that seems like it would work. X is treated with less sympathy because of rhetoric promoting sympathy for Z as a minority under threat and X as the threat. There isn't any logic to why this won't work if you potray different groups with sympathy and others as threatening them.

Throughout history different tribes promoted narratives that were pro their tribe and antagonistic to other tribes, which worked better than if they did nothing.

One can say that going too far with tribalism might lead to backlash, or can be detrimental in how other tribes are treated. But not going far enough is guaranteed to be detrimental and never lead to any dismantling or weakening of ideology against the group that is adviced not to use the master's tools. So it is a bad advice for the side that has been under siege to avoid using any of the tools of their more tribalist opposition. From a general ethical viewpoint, what in excess is immoral and in too little quantity is bad, in the right amount can be the right thing to do. Beyond just effectiveness.

Slavery itself was ended through force and so it was ended by the tool that maintained it. Rhetoric advocating for and against slavery was another rhetoric used by both sides. Both sides even used the bible. Supporters of slavery might have thought of their own political influence and opponents might have thought of their declining political influence and rise of influence of slave states. Economic interests that relate to slavery and then to those whose under industrial revolution and their different societal organization they didn't benefit with slavery as much and might saw such areas as antagonistic, might had been a factor. Both enslaved who opposed slavery and slave owners where thinking of their interests in opposing each other.

This idea that X group unlike Z group should not pursue their own interests and promote rhetoric framing things in defense of themselves because in doing so they will lose, is not only false but very counter intuitively false.

I never understood why this aphorism is a thing. It seems wrong both literally (in what setting that is not a video game do tools come with friendly fire proofing?) and as a metaphor (almost every successful revolution co-opts components nurtured by the system it overthrows). Are there reasons to keep it alive beyond some sort of postmodern appeal (it sneaks in the assumption that your opposition are akin to slaveholders, and appears to say authoritatively that you should reject "tools" on association with the enemy rather than on merit)?

I’m sure it’s as falsifiable as any other absolute, but it’s not a bad heuristic. The master of the house has a head start. Better to deny him his tools than to try and catch up.

They don't have to be akin to slaveholders, they just have to be in charge of a corrupt process.

Because it rings true. The contents of Lourde's essay "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House" are largely postmodern garbage, but the title is clearly getting at something. The methods those in power used to construct the institutions they use to exercise power can only build those institutions. You can't build a hereditary monarchy by voting, and the divine right of kings will never get you a democracy.

A lot of hereditary monarchies start by winning a vote (Hugh Capet, or the old greek cycle where democracy devolves into tyranny) .

the divine right of kings will never get you a democracy

Divine Right of Kings => Mandate of Heaven => Popular Sovereignty imbued by the Creator.

The old Greek cycle almost never resulted in a hereditary monarchy- a series of dictatorships usually had their succession dealt with through power struggles.

Cypselus was the first tyrant of Corinth in the 7th century BC. Like the signori of late medieval and Renaissance Italy, the tyrants usually seized power at the head of some popular support. As in Renaissance Italy, a cult of personality naturally substituted for the divine right of the former legitimate royal house. He ruled for thirty years and in 627 BC was succeeded as tyrant by his son Periander, who was considered one of the Seven Sages of Greece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypselus

According to Polyaenus, Syloson was a general of the Samians who was believed to have democratic leanings. He suggests that Syloson was the founder of a tyrannical dynasty which ruled Samos for most of the sixth century BC, being succeeded first by Aeaces and then by Polycrates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syloson_(son_of_Calliteles)

Pisistratus  was a politician in ancient Athens, ruling as tyrant in the late 560s, the early 550s and from 546 BC until his death.  Pisistratus' championing of the lower class of Athens is an early example of populism. Pisistratids is the common family or clan name for the three tyrants, who ruled in Athens from 546 to 510 BC, referring to Pisistratus and his two sons, Hipparchus and Hippias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisistratus

To use a left-wing example (since the anti-colonialist movement influenced a lot of the rhetoric): you don't want to be playing into ethnic competition that allowed divide and rule since it won't work for you the way it worked for the white man.

This is basically what Lourde seems to be drawing on to justify claiming that treating groups like black lesbians as non-central is some great betrayal of feminism. This argument is much less unconvincing on its face when applied to some state trying to maintain a hierarchy of ethnic groups.

...but Germans voted in Hitler, and Juan Carlos I sort of ordained a transition to democracy in Spain after Franco (if you squint). Outside of the low-N domain that is the political system of a country, there are even more examples of a house being dismantled using its master's tools, first and foremost the progressive takeover of positivist academia. What is entryism, even, if not an attempt to seize the Master's tools to have a go at the house?

(On the meta level, as a right-winger who is adopting this catchphrase, are you not also aiming to use the postmodernist Master's tool against his house - directly, and one step up the meta ladder in that you are in fact even copying the strategy of claiming that "the master's tools will never..." while aiming to employ the master's tools to that end yourself?)

The progressives did NOT dismantle the house; they skin-suited it. This may be almost as good or even better politically, but it's not the same as bringing on their postmodern utopia.

I’m sorry, did you mean “main’s house with the main’s tools”?

—GitHub, probably

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