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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26356 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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Multiheaded:

we need access to this kind of violence. We need to present a credible threat. We need to be able to hurt people. We need to illuminate the everyday experience of humiliation and suppression – by temporarily reversing it if that’s the only way to make people see. The necessity of wielding force, of having some destructive option in the struggle is not overridden by the problem of its abuse and corruption.

What's changed, other than the people resisting this behavior being even more marginalized than they were in 2014? The tactics haven't changed, the vain last stands on hills of civility haven't changed, and nor have the fellow travelers telling the defenders to surrender yet another hill "because it's just the nice thing to do."

Nothing substantive has changed. It's still late for talking and early for fighting, and in this place, the latter is still off-limits.

It was never off-limits for the Multiheadeds, was it? They always got to do this. They always got to frame every discussion as "prove to us that you shouldn't be silenced and banned," because it was a useful tactic to waste people's time in fruitless discussions while they took over mod teams and organized NYT hitpieces and violent street gangs.

The name "multiheaded" sounds familiar, but I have no idea from where. I honestly wondered if you were quoting me. In any case, I'm entirely, one might even say notoriously aware of the double-standard and the general nature of the problem. I am not confused about where this is all going. What is your point?

I was quoting from the "Living By The Sword" thread that Netstack said was very different than current year discourse. My point was that it wasn't actually different: the Multiheads were always there in the SSC-sphere, always being assisted by fellow travelers, and the only thing about the discourse that's changed is that they now run the entire country instead of the discourse on tumblr dot com.
The tactics they use haven't changed, the defenses against them are still futile, and the same people still make excuses for them. We're just going through all the same motions with the same meaningless arguments as the overton window slams left even faster.

(Edit: just found out I can link SSC blog comments directly)

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