RIP Culture War Thread

You share democratic institutions with sincere adherents of those odious beliefs, and they win elections at least some of the time. Understanding the “other” population and how to reason with it, or at least negotiate with it, is required if those democratic institutions are to continue.

Today’s dogma was yesterday’s odious belief. If we feel that the correctness of consensus opinion is on the rise, shouldn’t we be hesitant to freeze out future changes? If we feel it is falling, shouldn’t we want some protection for today’s correct ideas when they become odious again?

I can really only imagine subscribing to this viewpoint from within a long-term stable utopia whose primary threat is that someone will spoil it.

EDIT:

>What it does is normalize those beliefs and enable them to propagate while simultaneously exhausting those who oppose them.

I think this is is simply a mistaken view of human nature. Nothing confirms a conspiracy theory quite like jack-booted thugs who are actually out to get you for saying it. Nothing galvanizes a cause quite like official suppression. See the Streisand Effect or, for that matter, Christianity.

I don't know what your message is meant to be in citing this, but this quote does not at all support rejecting and excluding people who espouse beliefs that one considers morally reprehensible - quite the opposite. From the page you linked:

> In a 1997 work, Michael Walzer asked, "Should we tolerate the intolerant?" He notes that most minority religious groups who are the beneficiaries of tolerance are themselves intolerant, at least in some respects. In a tolerant regime, such people may learn to tolerate, or at least to behave "as if they possessed this virtue"

Substitute "religious group" with "political group", and the same applies. If you ostracize and reject people who hold views you find reprehensible then you're relinquishing your best opportunity to change them. If the surrounding community rejects them, then these rejected people will commiserate with like minded people and probably become more extreme and vengeful of society.

"Intolerant of intolerance" refers just as much to the intolerance for different worldviews and values that we harbor within ourselves as it does to the intolerance we sometimes witness in others.

In my experience, actually having conversations about meaningful and controversial subjects is impolite and a good way to lose friends.

At least on the internet, the other party can just stop talking when they're done. They won't feel like they're cutting off or abandoning a friend.

Previously, I've been following /pol/ on 4chan for some years. What have impressed me is not the content itself, but its organization, the social structure, the creation of memes, the evolution of fringe political/identity movement that is unimaginable before the Internet. To understand its associated problem with it, it's crucial to establish a solid understanding of the underlying mechanism, the underlying social and economic factors that contribute to the problem of trolling.

This is why I'm quite disappointed about the mainstream media. For example, what are the social and cultural basis of Gamergate/Dark Enlightenment/incel movement? If you can't understand the underlying social basis and mechanism, and just blindly discredit them it as "far-right troll campaign", then it is parts of the problem, not the solution.

I've said repeatedly online - this kind of cultural issue is NOT about "the liberal media", "antifa", "SJWs", "trolls", "incels", "alt-right", "fake news", or "Donald Trump", these are just the "first-order" effect - what most people have easily observed. But the underlying issue - how Internet works to produce these ideas, the larger social problems behind them, can only be understood by looking at it from a higher perspective, as a postmodern phenomena, and to study it faithfully and carefully by the best sociologists and psychologists, and by the people who understand these online community and technology, and can analyze it in a neural way, just tell us how the system works, without preexisting bias or political stance. So we can finally have some ideas to solve it. Unfortunately, the number of people who are doing academic studies on these subjects, is almost nonexistent.

Personally, I'm only aware of the following people who are studying it.

o Book: Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web, by Cole Stryker. This is probably the earliest and the most well-known one. However, its ~2007 narrative of 4chan and its politics is out-of-date, but it still covers how an online platform can popularize a radical social movement.

o Book: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture, by Whitney Phillips, published by The MIT Press. This book explores history of trolling, and studies it from a cultural and social perspective, and identifies some of the underlying mechanisms.

o Talk: The dark side of free software communities, by Morgan Gangwere, at LibrePlanet 2018. The talker discovers the fringe tech culture on the wild Internet, on 4chan/8chan, characterized by hatred - where RMS was the official mascot, and quite a few people (possibly basement dwellers) who believes the Internet is controlled by the evil monopolists/Freemason/Jewish/capitalist conspiracy, free software is not an exception but it's still a powerful tool against their rule, and how SJW is undermining it. Unfortunately, the talker's research focused on building a good community, not a detailed study of fringe tech culture.

o Book: Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right, by Angela Nagle, focuses on the history of the current cultural war online. I haven't read the book yet, so I'm not sure what is the perspective of book.

It seriously deserves more complete study from more people, I'm more interested in an ethnography-based approach. However, I don't have any background knowledge on sociology to make any insightful commentary on it... Seriously, reading /pol/ has almost made me wanted to change my major from software engineering to sociology, just to study it and trying to understand how the counter-cultural fringe politics works online, however, it's an unlikely career for me to pursuit.

In addition, we can ask some more serious questions.

Freedom was the ideal behind the advent of personal computing and Internet. Quote John Barlow,

> "We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity."

And people believed, once you have the Internet, it will be an inherently platform of democracy and equality, which empowered the individuals to be free from the social and political establishment. However, this narrative from the 80s has been proven to be partially correct, partially wishful thinking.

It appeared to be true, because it coincided with the economic boom of 80s neoliberalism until ~2010. When middle east politics started to become destabilized, people celebrated because the revolution was liberal, there was even the "cute cat theory of digital activism", which says when there are funny memes involved, people are more likely to join the political protest of Internet freedom. And it was seen as a good thing - a faceless dictatorial government was overthrown by lolcat. Isn't it the miracle of the postmodern Internet?

But it has been clear that ANY idea, can by popularized and supported by a free Internet. Now in the current age of deglobalization and political and economic failure, naturally, conservative, nationalistic, or even racist and fascist ideas are getting more and more support. Suddenly, the same medium (Like the social media, or the political memes) are being called hate symbols and should be banned by major platforms. It has been clear that the Internet can surely empowers "individuals to be free from the establishment", it is very true, but unfortunately, any ideas, not only ideas of "democracy and equality", as long as long as it has support, can be empowered by the Internet. Not even needed to be popular support, support from a portion of people with shared identity is enough.

When we've realizing an free and open Internet does not necessarily support liberalism, or democracy, or equality, the next question naturally arises - when the central argument for Internet freedom, that it brings democracy and equality, no longer works, should the Internet be free and open? And should we even have the right to free speech anymore, at all? I believe the answer must be yes, including those unpopular ones.

But the media, as I see it, just blindly discredit the trolls, and only solution they purposed was "don't feed the trolls", or Twitter and Facebook should ban "hate speech" and "fake news". If the mainstream cannot actually to study and understand its mechanism, and the underlying social-economical basis this conflict, of this new online anti-establishment trends and trolls, and to provide a social solution, I don't think the problem is going to be solved at anytime, and the answer to free speech, and a free, open Internet is going to be "No" soon.