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Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

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Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#41

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jancsika wrote: post #37
mc32 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me one of the scariest things is Twitter wokeism. It echoes Honeckers DDR. Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions. Some of it due to personal revenge, some of it to provide cover for their own shortcomings, some true believers. Honecker did it for power and oppression. These people gleefully enlist voluntarily, attacking enemy and friends and each other to prove who the better dehuman…

> Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions. Does this happen often on Twitter? Literally every example I've ever read about on Twitter is one of the following: 1. some poster completely unknown to the person in question-- either revealing content of old Tweets or aggressively responding to a recent utterance. Then that goes viral. 2. some victim of assault makes an accusation as a last dit…

There have been several cases of exactly this, e.g. students ratting out their professors for some kind of ideological heresy, or journalists agitating for coworkers to be fired based on what they publish.

But even when the first finder is a stranger, it's the people you know who have to do the damage. Some Twitter mob gets after your company to fire you. Only works if your boss, i.e. someone you know, folds to the mob. So in the end it's always friends and neighbors turning on each other.

Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#42

Post by NoOneNew »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #26
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't talking about how did these two systems come up with their values, but about how similar they are in enforcing them.

Yes, I too remember the many people executed by overeager woke committees on Twitter. Like, seriously? People being shamed into getting fired or quitting is the same thing as death to you?

Folks get fired online in a public fashion over this stuff. That's the mob's power play.

Companies research a person's online activities to see if this person is going to be dangerous for their brand image.

This person can no longer find work.

Sure, it's not an execution, but how about you don't have a job for a few years. Lets see how cheery you'll be about it. In dialogues where lack of complete inclusion and split second micro-aggressions are enough to cause catastrophic mental harm to someone... being jobless is considered a backrub?

Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#43

Post by neartheplain »

dhoe wrote: post #36
neartheplain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the PBS lawyer who said Republican voters should have their children put in re-education camps? https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-entertainment-corona...

I agree that this guy losing his job over something he says at a bar is a prime example of right wing cancel culture.

“This is Wesley Yang’s “Dexter rule,” named for the TV serial killer who kills only other killers: Cancel only the cancelers.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/america-ha...

Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#44

Post by Context_free »

mc32 wrote: post #19
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #2

I was born in the USSR, and I have read a great deal about this period (and have read works of all writers mentioned), so i think i have a very clear pictire of how things were at that time... And that's why I'm very opposed to today's 'woke' culture, because it is so much alike the totalitarian USSR society that caused so much harm. Sure, some of the proclaimed values are different, but methods are almost the same.

To me one of the scariest things is Twitter wokeism. It echoes Honeckers DDR. Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions. Some of it due to personal revenge, some of it to provide cover for their own shortcomings, some true believers. Honecker did it for power and oppression. These people gleefully enlist voluntarily, attacking enemy and friends and each other to prove who the better dehuman…

> Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions.

Neighbors denouncing their black, Mexican, LGBTQ what have you neighbors. Then other neighbors denouncing the denouncers - this latter part seems to be where you start having a problem with it.

Incidentally, the US government surveils its citizen's phone calls etc. far more than the DDR under Honecker ever did.

Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#45

Post by varjag »

brokenkebab wrote: post #25
varjag wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any grassroots attempt to challenge the system values (what you would call "woke") was met with the full repressive force of the system. It only softened in the last 3-4 years of decay but even then was still sporadically enforced.

Wokeness is certainly among the strongest movements in developed Anglophone countries, having a huge discoursive power, and embedded in structures of authority for quite a long time. Last 7-8 yrs it became more visible simply because its demands are growing more radical, and it started to fight a wider circles of opponents.

It can be a powerful movement on its own without being anything at all like Soviet authoritarianism. I seriously fail to see the point in this comparison except as a cheap rhetorical device. Let's find parallels to the crusades or Inca human sacrifice, am sure it's just as relevant.

Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#46

Post by varjag »

brokenkebab wrote: post #24
varjag wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also born in USSR and old enough for Komsomol when it disintegrated. Nope, it wasn't much similar to woke culture, mainly because it was rather rigid top-down command hierarchy of values. The current brands of values and socialist morals were rationalized in the Central Committee, then propagated through Republics committees, then oblasts and regions down to town administrations into individual organizations, f…

Wokeness is built on networked flexible leadership (which was not possible before the internet) therefore certainly is not as rigid, centralized, or bureaucratic as CSPU. But OP obviously didn't mean structural similarity. It still values ideological higher truth of social justice over empirical truth, and strives to silence those who don't howl in unison.

The structure, motivation, means of execution and persecution were entirely different. But sure, in the super general sense of "things people do about other people" everything is alike.

Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#47

Post by strogonoff »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #34
strogonoff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe, while the general population’s suffering has clearly contributed to the original cause of the revolution, it did not in case of the subsequent forced top-down censorship system, which was established purely by and for the new elites to maintain power. I like to think that distinguishes it from the current “woke” culture, but maybe I’m mistaken and not able to notice a coordinated manipulation of public opi…

> while the general population’s suffering has clearly contributed to the original cause of the revolution, it did not in case of the subsequent forced top-down censorship system, which was established purely by and for the new elites to maintain power. Agreed. We're not there yet, and perhaps (hopefully) we'll never be - that's why I alluded to the times before October Revolution, back when USSR itself didn't exist…

Doesn’t the stochastic nature and absence of central coordination give it higher validity than censorship in USSR or China? At least if enough people change their minds, this may work because no one will roll tanks on them.

But yeah, like then, some people are now acting out of fear (or the dreaded value signalling) and self-censoring, which is a sad similarity.

Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#48

Post by rufus_foreman »

dhoe wrote: post #36
neartheplain wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the PBS lawyer who said Republican voters should have their children put in re-education camps? https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-entertainment-corona...

I agree that this guy losing his job over something he says at a bar is a prime example of right wing cancel culture.

He lost his job at PBS. PBS is right wing now?

Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#49

Post by orbital-decay »

brokenkebab wrote: post #24
varjag wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also born in USSR and old enough for Komsomol when it disintegrated. Nope, it wasn't much similar to woke culture, mainly because it was rather rigid top-down command hierarchy of values. The current brands of values and socialist morals were rationalized in the Central Committee, then propagated through Republics committees, then oblasts and regions down to town administrations into individual organizations, f…

Wokeness is built on networked flexible leadership (which was not possible before the internet) therefore certainly is not as rigid, centralized, or bureaucratic as CSPU. But OP obviously didn't mean structural similarity. It still values ideological higher truth of social justice over empirical truth, and strives to silence those who don't howl in unison.

>which was not possible before the internet

The same game was practiced since French Revolution, it's nothing new and I'm sure as hell it wasn't invented on the net. Following OP's analogies with Russosphere, it's much more like RSDLP (i.e. the pre-revolutionary loosely organized umbrella socialist party with a bunch of very different movements) than the late USSR they are talking about. Many people from RSDLP like Alexandra Kollontai would feel right at home today, for example.

Re: Howling in Unison: The Soviet Writers' Union

#50

Post by Rebelgecko »

jancsika wrote: post #37
mc32 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me one of the scariest things is Twitter wokeism. It echoes Honeckers DDR. Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions. Some of it due to personal revenge, some of it to provide cover for their own shortcomings, some true believers. Honecker did it for power and oppression. These people gleefully enlist voluntarily, attacking enemy and friends and each other to prove who the better dehuman…

> Neighbors and friends denouncing each other for minor transgressions. Does this happen often on Twitter? Literally every example I've ever read about on Twitter is one of the following: 1. some poster completely unknown to the person in question-- either revealing content of old Tweets or aggressively responding to a recent utterance. Then that goes viral. 2. some victim of assault makes an accusation as a last dit…

For a recent example, a woman in her 30s was asked to resign from Teen Vogue because her colleagues weren't comfortable with a joke about East Asian eyelids that she tweeted as a teenager. Even though her coworkers weren't the one who uncovered the tweet, if they didn't take the bait she'd still be working there
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