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Democrats Are, In Fact, Cracking Down at the Border
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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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politics
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I don't think cancel culture is a thing. You literally can't cancel anyone in this day and age. Ben Shapiro, Hulk Hogan, Jordan Peterson, Trump, Elon Musk, none of these people who "got cancelled" ever suffered anything other than an opportunity to get their names out there. The controversy is the point, they got clicks out of it. So there's that. Cancelling isn't a thing. It just gets you views.
...that usurps the politics of shame, and it's a very recent change. It now functions as a signal amplifier and makes things into a constant moralization machine. A machine that creates judgementalness. Like, an unnatural and exhaustive amount of judgementalness which starts to come off as fragility. Frailty, weakness, "victim culture" whatever you want to call it. It's a space ripe for trolls who want more views. Like there's a reason Matt Walsh can make millions from the "documentaries" he makes.
Anyways, I don't have a coherent answer for you. I've come to the conclusions I have, seen what I've seen and tried to explain it - it's all very new to me. I realized whilst trying to explain the garbage truck thing on here today.
...that there's two narratives on Trump the garbage man, and that they don't connect, and only one explains Trump's strange behaviours, appearances, and strategies.
Some of the credit for me seeing this, goes to monitoring right wing spaces, and videos like this one from ShoeOnHead - who says she's a progressive leftist, but essentially supports and explains the positions of young right wing men.
...and that probably ties into part of it, gender, race, class, ethnicity. These things are close to people's emotions. To their emotional identities.
I don't think I'm giving a good explanation here because I'm still figuring out how to explain it. But it has to do with
the digital landscape changing the function and profitablity of the politics of shame (Jordan Peterson brags about it this way "I've figured out how to monetize the Social Justice Warriors").
The moralization and judgemental landscape this creates being ripe for more trolling.
Identities being core to what emotionally drives people's responses. Whether that's fragile white masculinity, or Black Lives Mattering, or Trans rights.
An exploitative fascist like Trump coming along who understands PR.
All of this coming together at once creates a digital and emotional landscape that can be manicured by fascists in a way that may get them into office.
Re: coherent answer, that's okay. I'm rarely coherent.
Cancel culture is most certainly a thing. It has the effect of saying to people "hey, if you don't change your views, then your life is going to be a little more unpleasant." You'll get dirty looks when you order coffee with your MAGA hat on, or get laughed at when you drive your Cybertruck down the street. No one is entitled to not have these things happen to them, so in my mind they're fair game.
The reason cancel culture has largely failed is because instead of hearing numerous people say "hey, your opinions and actions make me a little uncomfortable to engage with you as I normally would another person, and so I'm going to not engage with you", conservatives have instead retreated to their own corner (think treehouse that says No Girls Allowed) to all gather and complain that no one else will play with them. In short, they've taken the wrong lesson from it.
The way that podcasts and other methods of engagement have changed the way shame works is an example of this, not evidence that it doesn't work. I would argue that if your identity is built largely on being disrespectful of certain groups of people and looking down upon them, your identity doesn't really deserve to exist. I disagree that Trump "understands" just about anything he says. He has ridden a wave of podcast bros, crypto fanatics, undercover racists, gun nuts, and other people who have taken the wrong lesson from the admittedly annoying moralizing that people have sent their way.
Fascists have most certainly taken advantage of the landscape to boost recruitment and foment dissatisfaction and anger, but I think once again, we're learning the wrong lesson. We need to stop being so tolerant of those who do not in turn show tolerance.
But they do exist, and they're winning the average of polls right now, by 0.4%. They're in place to win the election. That's the problem, they do exist. It's not about that, it's about why they exist.
If you're still "arguing" something, then I don't think you get what I'm saying. There's not a rational explanation. It's emotional. They're operating on emotional paradigms and responses.
Someone wearing a MAGA cap hence, can't be proof cancel culture still exists. You explained peoples reaction to the hat, as cancel culture; the shame the wearer gets, the looks, how uncomfortable that must be - but you didn't explain why the MAGA person still wears the hat!
They've not been cancelled - they're trying to be. They want that level of attention.
They're wearing the hat to "flaunt the law". They're wearing it as a fuck you, I'm part of the club that I think is cool, and we're on Trump's side and they'll all defend anything I do in this hat so you better watch out. It's the Christian side, the family side, the white side, the side that sticks together and are sick of woke, left, moralists. "Tell me I'm wrong, so I can tell you I don't care what you think!" That's their mindset.
They're people who will use the N word if you discuss ethics and morality with them too long. Because that would show you they don't care about that stuff, it hurt when it got pinned on them (before they found MAGA). They didn't like the shame, so now they bask in it, and they think they're good and true and right for doing so. Because no one has a right to judge them (except maybe Trump).
That's not cancel culture working.
They want the intolerance you want to be shown to them. They're celebrating that Biden called them garbage, they see it a chance for a response, and as proof of their emotional position.That: "See! The left were the bad guys all along, they are the moralist bullies we said they were. Mean to us for no good reasons." That's their premise.
They want those things so they can claim that they're being bullied. It's Christianity all over again - a group of people who historically have been pandered to and coddled claim that everyone is being mean to them and so we should be instituting some sort of theocratic state. That'll show them.
I'm not arguing with them, though, am I? I'm making the argument to you and others who (seemingly) aren't all the way down the rabbit hole.
My overarching purpose with all these comments is to dispute the idea that the left is somehow responsible for how the right has gone full-on fascist over the past 4 election cycles. The right is responsible for their own logical and moral failings.
No, the left aren't in any way responsible for the right's fascism, but understanding the role they/we have played in the Trumpist manufacture of a kind of "emotional pornography" that gets used in their propaganda narrative for their fascist outlook, might help in better responding to it, and avoiding the further adoption of that role in the cycle of its production.
Having an emotional role, a part you fall into playing in something, isn't quite the same as being responsible for it. Because this role just comes naturally for a lot of people.
But yeah, thanks you for clarifying your purpose, the right will try regardless, so I agree with what your purpose, and that the left is not responsible for the right, even if the right will sometimes use the left's outrage as a cog in their propaganda machine.