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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   18980 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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(This, incidentally, is a major reason why conservative protests are usually incompetent).

Define "incompetent" because in my experience conservative protests/rallies (especially the pro-life and pro-gun ones) are typically larger in terms of attendance, and better organized in terms of transportation, porta-poties, trash pick-up etc... than progressive protests. They just don't enjoy the friendly relationship with the media that the progressives do.

better organized in terms of transportation, porta-poties, trash pick-up etc

See, this is the crux of it. Even if this was true (of which I am skeptical), none of this is relevant. The goal of a protest is not to stand around politely, then leave with your trash in an orderly fashion. It is either to be such a colossal nuisance that you can get concessions for stopping or to build sympathy for your political movement by baiting the police into kicking the shit out you. Conservative protestors occasionally try to cargo cult left-wing protest tactics, but tend to be either too docile (zero impact) or too aggressive (generate negative sentiment).

My take on this is essentially the same as @ArjinFerman's

Seems to me that your complaint against conservatives is that they are too conservative and need to become less so if they want to be taken seriously. Forgive me for finding such arguments unconvincing and suspecting ulterior motives.

I'm not complaining that conservatives are too conservative (at least not in this context); I'm offering a theory for why conservatives are really bad at playing the role of counterculture. Your garden-variety normiecon does not have the mindset to be an effective counterculture member. They're too uncomfortable with disorder and nonconformity. The types that do suffer from being intolerably crankish - the type of person who thinks a pop star dating a football player is a Pentagon (?) op.

I'm not complaining that conservatives are too conservative (at least not in this context); I'm offering a theory for why conservatives are really bad at playing the role of counterculture. Your garden-variety normiecon does not have the mindset to be an effective counterculture member.

Except we've seen what happens when anyone to the right of the establishment does do effective counterculture - deplatforming, shadowbanning, algorithmic throttling, selective giving in to heckler's veto.

I get it, Western societies base their legitimacy on the consent of the governed, so we all have to act like anything that happens is a bottom-up organic event. The illusion looks convincing as long most people trust their elites, but the moment they start doubting them, it turns out the consent of the governed is no more real than the divine right of kings, or any other myth. This is how we go from the establishment fighting for the free speech rights of actual Nazis to them declaring parents who don't want racism taught to their children being declared Nazis.

Except we've seen what happens when anyone to the right of the establishment does do effective counterculture - deplatforming, shadowbanning, algorithmic throttling, selective giving in to heckler's veto.

...arrest and conviction on novel felony charges, disqualification from office. Thanks to January 6 we know what happens when the right protests like the left; the right is punished severely and further suppressed as a result.

He did say "counter culture", so I was thinking more memes than protests.

tend to be either too docile (zero impact) or too aggressive (generate negative sentiment).

I'd like to remind you that the media turned a conservative teenager standing and smiling into a national (maybe even international) scandal. Something that couldn't possibly get more docile was somehow portrayed as too aggressive. If you think there's a way out of this bind, and can actually deliver results, I'm sure lots of conservatives would love to pay you to be a protest organizer.

but tend to be either too docile (zero impact) or too aggressive (generate negative sentiment).

If you were a right-wing protestor, how would you protest in order to get positive media coverage?

They just don't enjoy the friendly relationship with the media that the progressives do.

That's like saying a business is run amazingly well, but can't make any sales. A friendly relationship with the media (or at least positive coverage in a wide-reaching format) is an essential part of many protests. If you can't do that, then your protest is failing at one of its core goals.

Are you saying that we are not discussing "competence" per se so much as "conforming to liberal preferences"?

More "rationality competence is systematized winning".

If a protest's goal is to get people to show up and raise the profile of an issue, then your comment only focused on the participants and not on what effect they have on the wider world. I'm not fully convinced that conservatives are worse at effective outreach given the loss of prestige of the mainstream media, but those (alleged) failures can't be dismissed by pointing to the challenges they face.

Which brings us back to @Lewis' point.

You can argue that conservative protests are typically "unsuccessful" but that's a very different charge from being "incompetent".

The enemy gets a vote, and sometimes the enemy simply has overwhelming force. The best possible protest a conservative organization could run (say, the March for Life) might not get any traction because of the efforts of the media to minimize it. That's not a competence problem; it's a power problem.

But that just goes back to institutional capture. What you’re essentially saying is that the protests are irrelevant and impotent, which, while quite possibly true, is a different problem from them being incompetently held.

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