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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35669 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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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.

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