Comment by munificent

Comment by munificent 7 days ago

> You can say a dozen things morally condemning Trump and the Republican Party and then make one strategic criticism of the Democrats, and they'll look at you like maybe they can't ever trust you anymore.

I think some of this is a consequence of a decade or so of bad faith "wolf in sheep's clothing" online discourse.

I remember way back before Trump's first term, before GamerGate, before the alt-right when people would "joke" about racist and neonazi stuff on 4chan and elsewhere. It was framed as "We're just kidding around because it's fun to be edgy. It's ironic. Obviously, we're not really racist neonazis." People, mostly teens, took the bait and thought it was all in good fun but over time those ideas sunk in and actually stuck.

The next thing you know, we've got white supremacists parading in broad daylight.

If you poke around the dark (and these days not so dark) corners of the Internet, you can literally find people with toxic fringe beliefs discussing how to subtlely soften up their targets with seemingly innocent "just asking questions" when the ultimate goal is to (1) obscure which tribe they are actually a member of and (2) persuade people over to their tribe without them realizing it.

When you're in an environment where people like that do actually exist and participate in discourse, it's reasonable to wonder if the person you're talking to really does share your beliefs or not.

miningape 3 hours ago

In an environment where smart people pretend to be stupid for fun, actually stupid people will show up thinking they're in good company. As more of these people arrive the original ones begin to leave as it's no longer a joke for many of the people in the environment.

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dkarl 7 days ago

How are those two situations remotely similar? A criticism of the Democratic Party should not be seen as a morally reprehensible "joke" that you have to walk back like "ha ha, just kidding, I would never criticize the party."

The idea that the Democratic Party is a flawed, mundane institution full of fallible people who make mistakes is not a toxic idea that we need to keep out of the discourse lest it "sink in and actually stick." It's more like medicine that the party is trying to administer to itself with one hand while the other hand tries to bat it away.

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munificent 7 days ago

> The idea that the Democratic Party is a flawed, mundane institution full of fallible people who make mistakes is not a toxic idea
It's not about the idea which, as you say, is entirely reasonable.
It's about when you're interacting with someone—a stranger on the Internet—and they say something, you're both taking in their idea and also trying to guess at who they are and what their larger agenda is. And for better or worse, we've all spent the past decade or so living in a giant digital commons surrounded by strangers some of whom do have toxic hidden agendas that they are trying to get other people to believe, or at least to not fight back against.
In that environment, when someone criticizes your tribe, it's reasonable to wonder if that person trying to make the tribe stronger by pointing out its fixable flaws or if they are trying to make covert psychological inroads to eventually get you to believe something awful.
This is a real thing that does happen. Years ago, I watched one of my closest, dearest friends, get slowly radicalized by a white supremacist. My friend went from being a totally normal non-racist person to a full-on white supremacist that I had to cut ties with completely.
If the person who radicalized him had said, "Hey, I'm gonna try to get you to hate black people" on day one, my friend would have kicked him to the curb. But he didn't. He was friendly, charismatic. Asking rhetorical questions like, "Affirmative action to lift people up seems like a good idea, but what about poor white people? Who helps them?" That kind of stuff. A tiny step at a time over and over again until one day my friend was no longer my friend.
If you find yourself talking to a person who's ultimate goal is to get you to violate your values, there is no good faith discussion to be had and the best recourse is to identify it as soon as possible and get the fuck out.

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- dkarl 6 days ago
  
  With that kind of thinking, tribalism is inevitable.
  But you don't have to see it that way. That way of thinking is making excuses for Nazis and Trump supporters. You're saying that once they heard the honeyed words of thinly veiled edgelords on the internet, they couldn't help but be sucked in. Sorry, they could help it. If the only way to stop someone from being a white supremacist is to protect them from the so so compelling case for white supremacy that people are making on 4chan or gaming Discords or wherever that stuff happens, that's on them. They hear the other side as well. They hear enough to understand that the "tiny steps" bringing them to white supremacy aren't arguments, they're little tastes of a way of thinking that can't stand on its own intellectually but offers them comfort and validation. They choose it for social and emotional comfort. You can't rationalize it as intellectual seduction.
  The upside of that is, the ideas themselves don't have any power over you if you don't feel an aching need for the warm comforting embrace of a bunch of Nazis. The ideas aren't persuasive. They're the thinnest possible cover for an emotional decision.
  
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pseudalopex 7 days ago

I think paragraphs 4 and 5 were more relevant than paragraph 2.

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