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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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This is often referred to as the progressive stack,

By whom? The people I’ve seen insist on this term are not progressives, but critics interested in scoring rhetorical points.

Say I argued that Christians rely on a “religious stack.” I could probably come up with a half-decent ordering. Surely Christians tend to prefer Judaism to Islam, or insular Amish sects to rival missionaries, or spirituality to atheism. But it would be foolish to use a placement on this list—which I had just created—as an argument for Christians to do something differently. The model might be descriptive, but it is very much not prescriptive.

If progressives don’t pick their causes according to a stack, your strategy is dead on arrival. You will never gain mainstream support by fitting yourself into a model which the mainstream doesn’t use.

The people I’ve seen insist on this term are not progressives, but critics interested in scoring rhetorical points.

Here ya go, babe. And that's just three seconds on Google. First time I ever heard the term was, as described in another comment, in relation to the Occupy protests from one of the social media posts in their favour.

First time I ever heard the term was, as described in another comment, in relation to the Occupy protests from one of the social media posts in their favour.

This was my experience as well. The term "Progressive Stack" became popular IIRC during the Occupy Wall Street protests, being pushed* as the correct way to create a hierarchy in whose voices got heard first in these intentionally structure-less organizations. I had never heard the notion that this was actually a term of denigration by critics, but perhaps it's not too surprising, since that criticism tends to get leveled at many terms that some progressives choose to label themselves when other people start associating those labels with the underlying characteristics of the actual thing that the label is pointing at (obvious examples being "woke" and "social justice warrior").

* There's a very common conspiracy theory among leftists that Occupy Wall Street and/or aspects of it were intentionally sabotaged by progressives inserting their identity politics into it, as a way to sow division among people of different demographics within the working class. The fact that some seem to believe that the very term "Progressive Stack" is a term of denigration that critics imposed on the people pushing it makes this conspiracy theory funnier to me.

There's a very common conspiracy theory among leftists that Occupy Wall Street and/or aspects of it were intentionally sabotaged by progressives inserting their identity politics into it, as a way to sow division among people of different demographics within the working class.

I've heard a somewhat different version of this, in that it was deliberate, it was done to "gatekeep" out portions of the working class, and that it was done knowing it could prevent the movement from attaining its goals, but that such "sabotage" was not the intended goal, merely a possible — and acceptable — price to attain the actual goal: to keep out Fascists. Because anyone whose position on the economic political axis would put them on board with Occupy Wall Street's goals, but whose position on the social/cultural political axis would cause them to oppose things like the "Progressive Stack" enough to be "turned away" (as opposed to at least holding their nose and putting up with it) is thus in the Fascist Quadrant of said political plane.

but that such "sabotage" was not the intended goal, merely a possible — and acceptable — price to attain the actual goal: to keep out Fascists.

It was 2008, not 2016, no one was hyperventilating about "fascists" back then.

I left the united states for years, plural, because I believed Bush was going to declare himself dictator for life. I acquired that belief from a steady diet of blue-tribe media.

Neutral question: Has it occurred to you that, with the sides changed, you are still overreacting now as you were back then?

The thought does occur. On the other hand, I can go back and read my posts back to 2015, when I was quite the reasonable moderate, and observe a process, not simply a straight swing from one extreme to the other.

Damn... I was as permanently online back then as I'm now, and as blue-tribe as I am anti-blue now, and somehow never got the impression this sort of talk was anything beyond run of the mill bitching at politicians.

It was 2008, not 2016, no one was hyperventilating about "fascists" back then.

I remember left wing folks going on about the threat of "fascists" in America when I was attending college in Southern California in 2000-2005. The person who described this theory to me was a left-winger who did so approvingly, arguing that the failure of OWS due to the Progressive Stack was a good thing for the left, as compared to the alternative.

I remember left wing folks going on about the threat of "fascists" in America when I was attending college in Southern California in 2000-2005.

I suppose these people didn't show up out of nowhere...

The person who described this theory to me was a left-winger who did so approvingly, arguing that the failure of OWS due to the Progressive Stack was a good thing for the left, as compared to the alternative.

But did they do so post- or pre-Trump?

Pre-Trump — IIRC, in 2014. This same person held that Bush II's "compassionate conservatism" made him a Fascist, because it too is "economically 'left-wing' but socially 'right-wing.'"

I don't know about intentional sabotage, they seemed to manage that pretty well on their own. Though I have no doubt that there was entryism by much more radical left groups hoping to steer what at the time seemed like it might blossom into a popular movement in the 'correct' direction. But given that they allowed obvious grifters, petty criminals, and the crazies off the street to wander around and demand stuff, and the frazzled volunteers who started out all starry-eyed about community direct action by The People got a hard lesson in being taken for a ride, I don't imagine it needed too much of a push to knock the blocks over.

But yes, "well I never heard it and none of my friends ever used it, so it must be the horrid right-wingers are to blame!" is funny 😁

What 07 failed to mention is that the conspiracy theory goes that the radical entryists were given an opportunity to do so by Big Business, who were scared of how loud OWS's megaphone proved to be.

The original term comes from the activist playbook deployed at Occupy protests and designed by intersectional academics. The idea being that the more oppressed someone is (the more oppressed group markers they possess), the earlier their voices should be heard. There's plenty of video and articles that describe the process and show it operating at the time.

The second life of the term is as a description of the underlying philosophy of intersectionality by its opponents, who critique it for essentially creating a privilege hierarchy in the name of abolishing privilege hierarchies.

Like "woke" and basically any other descriptor for the ideological cluster intersectional feminism belongs to, it originated as a self descriptor and was discarded as soon at the opposition freezed it as a label (to borrow Alinsky's phrasing). This is of course a typical post-structuralist tactic, much like the redefinition of racism and other forms of linguistical warfare that attempt to manipulate the enemy's frame of understanding of the world by manipulating the language the enemy uses to describe the world.

Now if we turn to this term as analysis and descriptor of progressive ideology, I think it's fairly accurate. It predicted the formation of such internal interest groups as "BIPOC" and, ostracism of gay men and Jews as well as the underlying justification for all these. When you see Black feminists say that black men are the white people of black people, they are appealing to intersectional ideology and enacting the behavior described by this label.

But it predicted justification, not what would have to be justified.

So long as progressives truly believe in intersectionality, the progressive stack model will be accurate. Because the process it is named after was specifically created to manifest intersectional ideology into the world.

The question is then whether they actually believe in intersectionality and are moved by its ideological precepts, or are merely political agents using the ideology to organize and justify preexisting political interest regardless of contradiction. And it is my strong belief that almost every single political movement that has ever existed is the latter, and not the former.

If alliance with autists is politically advantageous, they are oppressed neurodivergents. If war with autists is preferable, they are incel nerdbro oppressors.

Well, I guess I learn something every day. I'll concede that actual protestors were using this actual term to describe their procedure.

I don't think we disagree that it was useless, even then, for an outsider. There was a post a while back about--I think it was "the cool kids don't have to ask." They've read the room and have a feel for the consensus. Then and only then can they refer to the stack.

I don't think we disagree that it was useless, even then, for an outsider.

Why? It's a very good descriptor of what their philsophy is about, especially for an outsider following more classical ideas of equality, and wondering why certain demands are being made of him.

We've been through this dance of pretending a term applied to this ideology is somehow not useful so many times, from Cultural Marxism, through Political Correctness, SJW, Woke, CRT, and now apparently Progressive Stack, regardless of whether the term was an ingroup, or outgroup designation, or how many citations you can pull to support it, that the only conclusion can be that the actual objection is there being a term at all. If you disagree Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand.

An outsider can not and could not have walked up and said “here, I am higher on this stack than you, so let me speak.” Progressives settled on a consensus for that stack before ever showing up to a protest. The OP’s approach wants to change that consensus, and it’s not going to work.

Well, I'm not sure about it being "useless", I did hear of a few successful attempts at fending off entryism by utilizing the stack, though you're probably right that adding new entries to it as an outsider is going to be too obvious, and won't work.

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