So, last week, Freddie made what I thought to be an obvious and straightforward observation — tribalism begets tribalism. The irrelevant scalp you take now will one day be your own. Once more, with feeling:
This is going to happen: sooner or later, some CEO or sports team owner or similar is going to get ousted because he or she supports a woman’s right to an abortion, or the cause of Palestinian statehood, or opposes the death penalty. It’s inevitable. I can easily see someone suggesting that, say, Israel is an apartheid state, and watching as the media whips itself into a frenzy. And when that happens, the notion that there is no such thing as a violation of free speech that isn’t the government literally sending men with guns to arrest you will be just as powerful, and powerfully destructive, as it is now.
The context in which this simple point was made provoked furious reactions from Balloon Juice and LG&M. Freddie updated his post to say that not one of his critics had attempted to explain how they would have any ground to stand on in the event of a hypothetical such as he described, which, again, was the whole point of the exercise. Blog comment sections continued to make a persuasive case for their retroactive abortions. Drama, drama everywhere, nor any thought to think. I shook my head at the spectacle and then got busy with work for several days.
I blame that overwork for not thinking of the obvious rejoinder at the time. So when I finally got a free minute this evening, I just did a simple search at each of the posts in question to see if anyone had thought to bring up the infamous example of the Dixie Chicks. Silly me, I thought that if anyone had, it would be as an admonishment to progressives — hey, remember how horribly unfair and cynical you thought it was when their career was threatened for simply voicing an opinion? Shouldn’t that at least make you pause and reflect before jerking your knees and calling for someone’s job the next time they offend you? Did you all shrug and agree with Bush’s smirking response, which sounds so similar to the laissez-faire attitudes you hold now?
The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say…They shouldn’t have their feelings hurt just because some people don’t want to buy their records when they speak out. Freedom is a two-way street.
Like I said, silly me. One person at Freddie’s and three at Balloon Juice mentioned it. A couple of them brought it up in a tit-for-tat manner, as if Freddie were a disingenuous right-winger who needed to be reminded that conservatives can be tribal too, and the other argued that public shaming was free speech in action, apparently happy to allow the occasional consumer boycott of progressive artists in return for the right to have trial by social media. All of this in response, remember, to an attempt to argue for an increasingly charitable spirit of free speech. It’s not about the merits of Brendan Eich or Donald Sterling or the Dixie Chicks or anyone else in particular, but about trying to transcend the principles of “Mom, he started it!”, and “But it’s different when we do it!” It’s a reminder that your opponents will one day disingenuously take advantage of the same loopholes and technicalities to gain a trivial bit of revenge on you, and for what? A race to the bottom. Whatever, so be it. Hatfields and McCoys forever; you deserve one another.
If I weren’t going to be busy for at least a couple more days, it would sure be fun to hop in the wayback machine and go visit some of the progressive blogs circa 2003 to see what the reaction was at the time. Sanguine, I’m sure. I’ll bet you a vast sum of imaginary money on it.
ADDENDUM: Let me approach this from another angle to hopefully clarify some things. It seems evident to me that Freddie often takes a more, shall we say, meta-perspective on the issue du jour than most other bloggers. (I like to think I do as well, but I think he does it better than me.) If online progressivism is a fishtank, most bloggers are just writing about the details of the other fish. Freddie is more likely to be writing about the pH level of the water, the condition of the filter, and the size and shape of the tank itself. He’s more interested in the context in which these issues are being discussed. So, if I understand his general drift, he might ask, “What does it mean that all these people online are squawking about Brendan Eich or Donald Sterling or whothefuckever it is today?” A straightforward response might be, “It means that they oppose racism and homophobia and they think people who hold to such beliefs should pay a social penalty, duh. That’s a good thing, obviously!” To which he might respond, “No no no — what does it mean that they’re squawking about it in this particular environment?” Meaning, the incestuous environment of progressive social media.
If you’ve read even half of the links I’ve made to him, then you’re probably aware that he frequently revisits a theme, one that I find perceptive and rarely broached elsewhere. He frequently describes the way progressives behave online as being primarily concerned with an elaborate display of signaling, sorting, and other forms of jockeying for social status within the in-group. Numerous studies have shown what your own eyes have probably told you as well: the sheer volume of information available to anyone browsing the web, contrary to many of the early, rosy prognostications, has often tended to reduce people’s openness to new facts and perspectives. People cling more tightly to their beliefs for fear of losing their identity, with the added bonus that the web’s design allows them to customize their filters to an extent that they rarely, if ever, have to encounter any news or opinions that might seriously rattle their worldview. “Internet silos” is as good a name as any for this phenomenon. Political progressives may often be smug and self-satisfied about how tolerant and reality-based and culturally sophisticated they are, but they’re just as prone to this as any other group of humans who spend too much time inhaling their own fumes.
Another recurring theme of his that I like, one that he just revisited the other day, is that politics, if it’s intended to actually make a difference in the world, is about trying to convince people who don’t already agree with you. Simple, obvious, yet still almost radically powerful, because when you think about it, you realize that most “political” blogging is actually just preaching (or ranting) to the converted. If you’re a reader and a commenter, how much time do you spend at sites that actually challenge what you think, engaging people in thoughtful conversations, possibly changing your mind in the process? And how many do you go to where you can be sure that you’ll be surrounded by people who already agree with you on everything of substance? If you’re a blogger, how many times are your links either of the “Yeah, me too, +1,” or the “Ha ha, hey everybody, look at this stupid clown saying something stupid” variety? And how many times do you link to people who, even when you think they’re wrong, are still worth grappling with because doing so forces you to think more deeply about your own priors and assumptions?
If you’re at all typical, you probably go for the reinforced conventional wisdom and cheap laughs. Which is fine, but gossiping about political issues on a blog is not politics. It’s not activism. Like Freddie said, it’s a coffee klatsch. It’s a way to gather with like-minded people and reassure yourselves that you’re on the side of the angels, unlike all those benighted heathens over there. It’s a mutual admiration and handjob society. If someone from “the other side” actually did show up to attempt to argue a point, you or your comrades would almost certainly shout at him to scare him off, or you’d insist on reducing him to a cartoonish caricature, making it into a competition to see who could get in the most clever jab before running him off. Freddie likes to call this We Are All Already Decided, or something to that effect. We’re not trying to convince any undecided bystanders or question any assumptions; we’ve long since made up our minds on everything important, and now we’re just preening and grooming one another while we wait for the world to come around and recognize our obvious brilliance. Again, everybody needs to enjoy some form of entertainment, and I’m all for people wasting the company’s time while pretending to work. But this seems to be a form of entertainment with delusions of grandeur.
My personal take on the Sterling drama, ferzample, should you need it spelled out in so many words, is pretty much the exact same as that of the Ruthless Reviews article I linked to: I don’t care. So, some mummified old rich fuck who will be dead in a few years anyway said something racist on tape. Apparently, people familiar with this corner of the sports world had known the guy was racist for quite a while, but until the revelation got presented in a bite-sized, chocolate-coated, sugar morsel format that the subliterate Twittards could absorb, no one else cared much either. But viral attention suddenly meant everyone had to publicly present the appearance of caring, so there was much joy and cheer as the bad man was forced to sell his team at a huge profit and retire before the grim reaper himself could show up to escort him away. Do I have that about right? If so, then again, this isn’t news. This is useless drama. This is soap opera gossip. This is irrelevant fluff masquerading as something culturally significant. This changes nothing. So what does it mean that so many people online devote so much attention to it?
It is in this absurd context that people like Freddie and myself start to notice, hey, you know what, it seems like this incestuous little environment is starting to get a little too enamored of the idea that political activism amounts to little more than baying like a hound at the first sniff of a naughty word or a reactionary attitude, a little too complacent in thinking that justice has been served by getting someone fired. Granted, that’s a judgment call, a vague perception, and yours may differ. But if you’re waiting until Barack Obama, the Congressional Democrats, Paul Krugman and all the A-list bloggers all come out together and say in so many words that anyone found holding certain verboten opinions should be fired from their job before you decide to take seriously the idea that the spirit of free speech should be a bit more generous than the letter of the law, it’s probably too late at that point.
And again, if I haven’t made it already clear, I think that if there is to be any chance of such a charitable attitude gaining favor, it won’t begin online. I think that the dynamics I’m complaining about are exactly what the system is set up to produce, and I have no realistic hope that it could be any other way. Cement-headed idiots screaming at each other in sentence fragments. 500 people all trying to talk at once in the same enclosed space, reacting instead of thinking, trying to be the first to fire off a snarky one-liner. The kinds of conversations worth having are simply not going to happen in this environment. Everything is structured against it.
May 12, 2014 @ 2:00 pm
I have mentioned several times how important content is in these sorts of cases. Speech that implies a serious level of bigotry, or calls for violence, is over the line. If you and Freddie agree with that statement, then the argument is about whether that judgement has been correctly determined, not simply tribalism. The most liberal Supreme Court justices average about 10% difference in favor of free speech rights for liberals over votes against conservatives, the conservative justices, about 40% in favor of their tribe. So while I sort of agree with you, it looks to me like you guys are picking on the wrong people: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/us/politics/in-justices-votes-free-speech-often-means-speech-i-agree-with.html?_r=0
May 12, 2014 @ 3:23 pm
Boycotts are not new. Would you have opposed the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Damian? Why not? Wasn't the company's right to discriminate being oppressed?
So, there is still a difference, between the Dixie Chicks and the right-to-employment of Mr. Eich.
I am a little bothered by this "They said something I strongly disagree with but I am mandated to still buy his or her product…or give them a job as CEO." I'm not sure that is as clear cut as you see it.
And Freddie's warning….well it already happens all the time already.
May 12, 2014 @ 10:36 pm
So while I sort of agree with you, it looks to me like you guys are picking on the wrong people
It occurs to me that we might be talking past each other a bit. I'll add an addendum to this post when I get some time. (In the meantime, I answered late to one of your comments from a week or so ago; don't know if you saw it.)
I am a little bothered by this "They said something I strongly disagree with but I am mandated to still buy his or her product…or give them a job as CEO." I'm not sure that is as clear cut as you see it.
Blink. Blink.
May 13, 2014 @ 11:00 am
OK, addendum finished. So, Noel, if I'm understanding you correctly here, you're basically asking: Hey, all things considered, bigotry is an especially bad thing, and conservatives are generally less supportive of free speech principles than progressives anyway, so why do you spend so much time attacking people on your own side? Is that accurate, more or less?
May 13, 2014 @ 5:21 pm
Not exactly. I'm digging down to where we agree, to find the points where we diverge. I think you and Freddie would agree that some instances of bigotry deserve as strong a rebuke as what you are saying is, in other instances, a denial of "freedom of speech". Once we establish that, the criticism becomes a dispute about what speech crosses that line. So what you consider obvious tribalism may be just a matter of personal agreement or disagreement in particular cases. For example, the Dixie Chicks were "fired" for saying they found the president to be an embarassment. That was wrong. Eich was fired for believing some people do not deserve the same rights as others. That was right because he was in a position of power. You would be wrong to automatically consider these positions "tribal": I do not believe a conservative should be fired for saying the president is an embarassment; I do not believe a store clerk should be fired for having homophobic or racist opinions that are only revealed in private. Your broad-brush criticism depends on false equvalences.
As far as the fact that liberals are generally more egalitarian than conservatives: I think it's significant, but I didn't say not to attack people on our side. Just be judicious about it. Consider every one of these sorts of cases individually. Sometimes "political correctness" is right; sometimes it's stupid.
May 13, 2014 @ 7:40 pm
A couple more things: The tribalism we're talking about is pretty entrenched . The "this will happen" stuff is naive – "this" has happened over and over again for decades.
And "… the spirit of free speech should be a bit more generous than the letter of the law…" is something almost everyone believes. No serious intellectuals have disputed it. The president has never called for his critics to be fired. The more serious blogs like Talking Points Memo have never implied anyone should be fired for their political beliefs. XKCD didn't mean to imply otherwise – that was an ungenerous reading on your and Freddie's part: the cartoon said that freedom of speech literally only protects one from prosecution, not that no other injustice for speech is possible – the context being that there are those who make the most ridiculous claims of oppression.
May 14, 2014 @ 1:13 am
http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-correctness
May 14, 2014 @ 1:18 am
Of course, too many of the commenters on this essay quote Steven Sailer and vdare. NOT good sources, imho. LOL.
May 13, 2014 @ 9:44 pm
Boycotts are not new. Would you have opposed the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Damian? Why not? Wasn't the company's right to discriminate being oppressed?
For brevity's sake, I'm going to just assume that you don't actually need me to spell out the differences between Montgomery and, say, a drooling fuckwit like Tristero stamping his feet and pitching a fit because he thinks Whole Foods owes its progressive customer base a progressive CEO figurehead. One is a genuine grassroots movement; the other is but one example of the countless social media shitstorms that have blown across the landscape and died out within days.
So, then, let me drive this point home with a sledgehammer: My problem is not with boycotts per se, but what I think of as boycott culture. That is, boycotts as a social media phenomenon. Whether it's Whole Foods or Chik-fil-A or Papa John's or Mozilla or Barilla or, jesus, who the fuck can keep up with this shit, these don't actually deserve the name "boycotts". They're barely more than temper tantrums, being thrown largely by a bunch of entitled brats who, having been told all their lives what precious, brilliant little snowflakes they are, have no idea how to make anything happen in the real world. Like Freddie said about his students, they're bright and progressive and they've read all the right authors and they know all the right slogans, but they are absolute, utter shit at communicating with and convincing anyone who doesn't already share their beliefs, so they just shout their buzzwords and expect the world to roll over and do their bidding.
I would love to see someone go all Gunnery Sgt. Hartman on them and say look, you dumb little shits, learn to pick your fucking battles. You have no discipline. No serious plan of action. No commitment to sustained effort. No clear idea of what exactly you even think you're going to accomplish with these impulsive crusades. You attention-deficient dipshits are incapable of refraining from blindly reacting to whatever irrelevant stimuli flits across your toy phone screens, and the shit you are mostly reacting to is a fucking waste of everyone's time. If you want to maybe, possibly, one day be worth something slightly more than nothing, go get involved in an already-existing cause being run by people who know what activism is, shut your self-involved mouths, listen, and learn what enormous effort it takes to accomplish anything worth doing.
As it stands, because boycott culture is just another method of signaling, it accomplishes nothing and isn't really intended to. In this absurd environment, getting someone fired or publicly shamed counts as a significant result, despite the inherent emptiness of the gesture.
May 13, 2014 @ 9:59 pm
And "… the spirit of free speech should be a bit more generous than the letter of the law…" is something almost everyone believes. No serious intellectuals have disputed it. The president has never called for his critics to be fired. The more serious blogs like Talking Points Memo have never implied anyone should be fired for their political beliefs.
That's what I was saying in the addendum — if you wait until that has actually happened, then something has been rotten for far too long already. Death by a thousand cuts is a real concern. The LGM post you linked took that tack — "Oh, no one other than some random nuts on the web have actually said anything along those lines; give us citations to anyone significant saying it!" We can safely assume that, even if you happened to have saved a folder full of quotations and links, none of the individuals involved would be considered significant enough to worry about. People are of course free to prioritize their time and attention however they want, but I don't think the perspective deserves to be dismissed as irrelevant until a politician feels safe enough to act on it.
May 14, 2014 @ 2:00 pm
Hmmm… Where you see a dangerous trend, I see same as it ever was. The phrases "band wagon" and "rabble rouser" come to mind. People have always called for boycotts, firings, and worse. The targets may change, but mob psychology doesn't seem to. I hate it, too.
May 14, 2014 @ 6:55 pm
I do agree with noel. Same as it always was. HUAC, Hollywood Blacklist, etc. etc.
The ONLY difference is there is more "blacklisting" from the "left" now. Expedited, admittedly, by social justice warriors on the internet. So…I find the "backlash" somewhat… disingenuous, to be honest.
Not to say that I disagree with Ruthless Reviews either. The backlash focuses on what is private trivia, not the egregious systemic "crimes" rampant in the NBA and all big business-big government collaborations.
Nor do I disagree with the ineffectiveness of social justice warrior movements. One problem, though, is that if anything, the right steeps its own culture warriors in manure that is so deep and impervious I am not even sure this conversation can be held with many people. How can you have a conversation with a Steven Sailer who thinks blacks are an iferior species? Or a Vox Day who is arguably a certifable sociopath towards women? The thought crimes of the FTB people, which notable (I love Thunderfoot's response videos, by the way) seem…trivial.
It's a challenge I don't have a good answer for.
May 14, 2014 @ 9:33 pm
Now I have to admit that THIS is a textbook example of Freddie at his best. Even though I think (as an amateur) the science is much less settled than Freddie seems to believe.
http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/05/14/culture-war-in-everything-gmo-labeling-edition/
May 14, 2014 @ 9:56 pm
I just have a lower tolerance for it, especially among people whom I expect to know better. Oh, well.
How can you have a conversation with a Steven Sailer who thinks blacks are an iferior species? Or a Vox Day who is arguably a certifable sociopath towards women? The thought crimes of the FTB people, which notable (I love Thunderfoot's response videos, by the way) seem…trivial. It's a challenge I don't have a good answer for.
Well, if I wanted to be conciliatory, I could agree and say yeah, lunatic racists are worse than deranged feminists. If I wanted to be argumentative, I could say that I don't even know what you mean by "worse" in this context, or what metric you could use to even measure such things. I could split the difference and say that aggressively stupid and hostile people of any type are always a danger just waiting for the right circumstances to align for them to inflict their schemes on the rest of us.
Instead, I'll return to the "meta" theme and say, again, consider the context. What does it mean to say "Boy, I sure hate racists; they're so stupid!"? Well, it depends. The same words mean different things if you're speaking them at a Klan rally as opposed to saying them in the comments of a liberal blog. One might be a suicidally brave attempt to confront ignorance and change minds, while the other might be just a mealy-mouthed attempt to fish for praise from people you want to impress.
Speaking only for me, I see no need, in this space, to distinguish between who's "worse". The only reason I could think to do so would be for signaling purposes. Again, I'm just a dude writing on the web for fun. I'm nobody important, and I only have a single-digit number of regular readers. It would be pompous and absurd for me to adopt a rhetorical stance as if I'm an orator, addressing the multitudes in order to sway and motivate them toward some political goal. So why would you feel it's important to make such a statement in the first place? For whose benefit would it be?
May 14, 2014 @ 9:56 pm
(Continued)
Most people aren't very deep thinkers, nor are they good writers. But the online environment requires people to perform their character more than they would in meatspace. It's difficult to adequately present or express yourself in a text-based medium, so the tendency is for people to focus on presenting the unambiguous, clearly-defined parts of their character more prominently. "This is what I'm for, this is what I'm against." Personally, I think communication suffers greatly as a result, because the most interesting people, IMO, tend to be ambiguous, inconsistent or even conflicted. But the main point is: being that I have no interest in being part of anyone's coffee klatsch, I don't feel the need to spell such things out for the benefit of whomever might be reading. If someone happens across one of my posts and decides not to come back again because they couldn't tell at a glance what my politics are, I don't care. Good riddance. If they don't like ambiguity and don't like having to puzzle things out, I probably didn't want them bothering me with their inane comments anyway.
For me, thinking about racists and fundamentalists is not at all interesting. I've been there and done that; I don't see any further insights to be gained. But the kind of campus-style pseudo-radicalism that dominates the twitosphere is still somewhat interesting to me, because I ignored it for most of my life. I didn't go to college, so I never saw it firsthand; I only heard about it from my former academic friends. And I accepted the conventional wisdom that says "Sure, they're stupid, but the racists/homophobes/Republicans are worse, so just ignore them." So when it exploded over the online atheist scene like an infected zit, I finally started looking closer at it. For the time being, it stimulates and entertains me to consider the multitude of ways in which these people are philosophically stupid, politically illiberal and personally inept. Eventually, I'm sure, I'll get bored with them and move on.
All of this, then, is a long-winded way of saying, I don't see it as a challenge requiring you to pick and choose. We (or, at least me) are not making policy or shaping opinions here. We're just talking about what interests us.
May 15, 2014 @ 3:51 am
fair enough, Damian. And please, in the context of your busy life, CONTINUE talking about what interests you!
May 15, 2014 @ 1:13 pm
If someone happens across one of my posts and decides not to come back again because they couldn't tell at a glance what my politics are…
Strong evidence that most consumers of the internets are insipid is the lack of traffic this blog gets. I disagree with you sometimes, but then again, I disagree with myself sometimes.
May 15, 2014 @ 9:09 pm
Pshaw, I bet you say that to all the bloggers.
I'd like to believe that my arch, meta, ironic tone, my dry wit and my offbeat topical interests discourage casual readers from getting comfortable long enough to hang around. The truth is probably more prosaic: as in offline life, so too here — I make zero effort at socializing, schmoozing, gladhanding, or networking, so no one knows I exist.
And that's the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it. Uh huh uh huh.