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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35663 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Something unspecified happened at the Eradicate Hate Conference this week and nobody who’s upset is saying what

I feel like there's enough information leaking through here to infer what happened -- why would they stay quiet, with no defectors; "a range of events"; etc -- but I'm too stupid to put it together.

Any guesses?

Looking back into this a few days later: some people went to a strip club

Much less interesting than I was imagining.

I had no idea who this crowd were and I'm still not clear. The amount of "don't say anything but something definitely happened" is ridiculous. I'm betting that it's a split between the original set of people who set this up - white, probably majority Jewish because it was in response to an attack on a synagogue, and older male - and the new cluster of people who got included, who seem to be female and BIPOC. The old guys probably don't know what all this intersectional stuff is about and want to concentrate on global anti-Semitism, which might have caused a row between them and one of the new set who are trying to get more power and influence. Old Jewish guy verbally slaps down younger woke BIPOC female, tears before bedtime, but because it's all a lefty in-house fight and more importantly because it's to do with avoiding even the perception of anti-Semitism, nobody makes it public because it would be too embarrassing all round.

All the above is just wild guessing on my part, though. It could have been a row about vegan catering.

it could be related to this: https://twitter.com/Skip_Borders/status/1574542329465036801

My last panel I was ejected for asking simple topic based questions by a radicalized individual that was triggered by the very notion that there were different thoughts on the topic.

Hoping future panels are open to market place of ideas & interested in addressing key issues!

it sounds like they had some wrongthinkers at the event

The rest of that users comments and replies do not seem to have much in common with someone who would have been at the event.

it's like the rumors spread in hushed voices when the Pope or queen fell ill or something.

Ah, speculating on the happenings of a conference I hadn't even known existed before reading the comment, my specialty. I'm registering a prediction that this is an entirely fabricated happening meant to raise awareness of the Eradicate Hate Conference.

I don't know much about this conference, but from the tone and keywords in their public materials it sounds a lot like a gathering of offense-seekers. When a lot of people who are concentrated on seeking things to be offended at and hyper-over-react over them get together, I guess some people offending some others and some people literally shaking and some people complaining to Twitter would only be expected.

It actually isn't. They have this in Pittsburgh so it gets mentioned on the news, and most of the speakers are people from law enforcement, DHS, mental health professionals, etc. Former PA Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, and his wife each moderated a panel discussion, and last year's conference had recorded remarks from George W. Bush. One of the co-chairs is Mark Nordenberg, who made a name for himself as Pitt Chancellor and, while a Democrat, has a reputation for being moderate and mostly nonpartisan. There are some dippy sounding panels but most of them are stuff like FBI guys talking about how to investigate suspected hate crimes and the like.

OK, I am interested - so what law enforcement, DHS, Tom Corbett, etc. did there actually? I mean, for me the conjugation of "DHS" and "stopping hate" immediately invokes the abortive "disinformation panel" as an attempt of the Government to route around the First Amendment somehow and get rid of the annoying necessity to ask Facebook/Twitter to censor for them "voluntarily" and demand the same directly and without question. An offer nobody could refuse. I mean, not that Big Tech would ever refuse to censor people they don't like, and it so happens the people who control the government and the people who control the Big Tech dislike the same people, so we have perfect harmony - but still, the control is in the wrong place. That's how I see this combination. But I am ready to keep an open mind and let myself be surprised.

So I didn't spend much time on it, but I went to look at the agenda. Looks like I need to correct my prior almost-zero-information impression about it and add some details.

  1. The Military and Veterans are major source of Hate. If fact, they are the only segment of society that has a separate track concentrating on how to deal with Extremists among them. It's actually Track 1.

  2. Far-right is full of Hate and Extremism. Far-left does not exist at all. I did find one single panel that suggests left-wing extremism exists, though nobody cares to study it, but no mention of it beyond that.

  3. Antifa does exist, but only as a target for hate from the Far Right, because for some of them for reasons beyond comprehension, think anti-fascists are their enemies.

  4. Anti-semitism exists, but the sources of it are on the Right only.

  5. There's no hate at all directed towards white males (yay!) unless they're Jews of course (dang...)

  6. January 6 demonstrators are roughly the same thing as Nazis. At least considering them together in one bucket is entirely appropriate.

  7. Islam does not exist. Islamic State did, but it's all in the past and they didn't do anything of interest to anybody there. Wait, no, Muslims do exist - as targets of hate from the right.

  8. The reaction to violent extremism should include increased censorship and suppression of speech on the governmental (or inter-governmental) level. This includes suppressing "misinformation", as it is a major driver of extremism.

Of course, this is from the agenda description only, but I think I'm not wildly off base here.

So yes, I think I was wrong in my initial assessment. This is not a gathering of people who want to feel offended. This is a gathering of people who want to suppress and eradicate "haters", "extremists" and "domestic terrorists", by which they will primarily designate their political opponents, and these political opponents will be mainly residing on the right. The terms "hate" and "right" aren't really as much equated as "hate" is presumed to be almost fully contained and encapsulated by the "right".

Now I wish my original assessment were true. It was so much more comfortable.

OK, I am interested - so what law enforcement, DHS, Tom Corbett, etc. did there actually?

They've got a YouTube channel, although it only seems to have the keynote speeches uploaded now; the smaller side conferences seem to be in-process.

Looks like they're uploading all the tracks now, starting right after you posted https://youtube.com/watch?v=n4isUbJwPeo

Going to try to listen to a few. My thousandaire kingdom for auto-transcripts.

Well, that sounds much worse than JarJarJedi's assumption.

My guess is that the conflict mostly comes down to disrespect, and when the disrespect was called out, the person doing the disrespecting did not sufficiently admit guilt.

I have no idea what happened at the Eradicate Hate Conference, but the implied tears say more than actual facts ever would.

(I'm just making the Simpsons reference, but the reply by Arie Perlinger isn't far from this seriously)

I have no idea what happened at the eradicate hate conference but I’m certain I want to back the offensive behavior.

It would make me so happy if Requires Hate was present, protesting something.

Lol, I'm here to eradicate hate and bang mad pussy... and I'm all out of pussy.

Out of mad pussy anyway, probably overstocked with crazy pussy.

The only thing I can pick out here is that it's an man or men's fault. There's more oblique references that they might be white and cis.

Are they being vague because they know it will look stupid and petty? Some minor, dongle-level micro aggression?

I suppose I'm buying into this sort of marketing. I'm fascinated at the weaponization of "consent" language here:

Be mindful when someone has confided in you. That does not mean they have consented to have their name and story shared widely across the field....Please do not share detailed accounts of stories which are not your own. Everyone has to have their own agency to tell their stories themselves, on their own terms

Distilled down, this is "Shut the fuck up until the head of the serpent decides they can release.... whatever this is for maximum impact" but it's couched in truly impressive nothingspeak.

But yeah I'd love to see what happens next.

The same sentence stood out for me. What a masterful twist of rhetoric: in the name of protecting agency, I forbid you to speak about this thing! I can only imagine that it's somehow embarrassing (or can be framed so) for the bluecheck left.

What is that conference and why does it matter?

It was a conference run from Sept 19-22 in Pittsburgh, and while not drawing a huge attendance count (the layout looks to be designed for the low hundreds), had a large number of high-profile governmental and non-governmental big names, including the director of the ATF, a variety of DHS bigwigs, and some ODNI names, along with reps of various big tech companies and special cases like the Christchurch Call To Action group. So while you probably don't care about it, it does care about you.

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