In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country's fate, thou alone art my stay and support, mighty, true, free Russian speech! But for thee, how not fall into despair, seeing all that is done at home? But who can think that such a tongue is not the gift of a great people!
Then something cannot be described, it does not become a fact of shared reality. Hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens had an experience of the thing that could not be described, but I would argue that they did not share that experience, because they had no language for doing so.
This is a very good point, but is I think a bit obscured because it seems to mistake the map for the territory. I think what the writer is getting at is that without a shared language it's harder to build up common knowledge. Which means more than just everone knowing something. It also means that they all know everyone knows it, and know that everyone knows everyone knows it, ad infinitum.
Each person can see the Emperor has no clothes, but without sufficient communication they cannot all know that it is safe to laugh at the Emperor.
> It also means that they all know everyone knows it, and know that everyone knows everyone knows it, ad infinitum.
Well not ad-infinitum. Just 3 levels needed:
1. I know (think of a graph with one node A)
2. I know that the other knows (A -> B)
3. I know that the other knows, that I know (A <-> B).
That's basically how common sense works, and it helps groups of people work as a group (solve problems, achieve a common goal). But first this bootstrapping is necessary.
Anyway, in this particular case it is like political or ideological common sense ("the emperor doesn't have clothes"). That's why large gathering of people were looked at with suspicion or were outright illegal, because it might start this bootstrapping process. Then before you know it, people start to act.
This is probably one reason that gatherings protests are useful to -- achieve this effect. It can be done online, but a lot of communication is non-verbal, it's how people say things, how they act, dress, tone of voice, etc.
But in the case of bad revolutions, would the story have ended up any better if people had somehow maintained the spell of ignorance about the previous regime? I think it more likely that would just lead to an even worse revolution a bit further down the track.
Democracy can produce horrible results. Dishonest and/or sociopathic demagogues can exploit dissatisfaction. In the US, for example, Presidential elections were designed to temper democracy, through the Electoral College. It's become restricted pretty much to tie breaking. But one can imagine situations where it would basically declare a cooling off period, by picking a caretaker President.
> Witch hunts cannot actually be carried out by losers, big or small: the agent of a witch hunt must have power.
Aaaaay, and now the public conversation has finally advanced.
The contention of the far right is that this statement is exactly right, but not in the way the author means. That is: there is no coherent rightist opposition to the national religion of progressivism, and this can be verified by checking for who is doing the hunting.
From he-who-must-not-be-named:
>Think about it. Obviously, if the witches had any power whatsoever, they wouldn't waste their time gallivanting around on broomsticks, fellating Satan and cursing cows with sour milk. They're getting burned right and left, for Christ's sake! Priorities! No, they'd turn the tables and lay some serious voodoo on the witch-hunters. In a country where anyone who speaks out against the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight with his head shrunk to the size of a baseball, we won't see a lot of witch-hunting and we know there's a serious witch problem. In a country where witch-hunting is a stable and lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed by millions of hobbyists on the weekend, we know there are no real witches worth a damn.
> That is: there is no coherent rightist opposition to the national religion of progressivism, and this can be verified by checking for who is doing the hunting.
Just because a bunch of people can do some witch hunting on twitter doesn't make it a lucrative and safe career. Twitter slacktivists aside, who do you think currently has an easier job - people fighting for civil rights, or people who are fighting against them?
One side in this fight uses water cannons in freezing weather on unarmed people. The other gets hit by water cannons in freezing weather. One side is untouchable. The other gets routinely beaten, harassed, and arrested - legally or otherwise. One side has killed ~50 people over this year in a series of hate crimes. The other... Punched a few nazis.
Or hell, if you want to talk about twitter slacktivism, have you seen how much abuse feminist writers, BLM activists, and LGBT people receive? You may claim that some martyr or other of the conservative sphere received similar levels of censure, but I assure you, the people on the other side of this are not having easy, cushy lives.
Is there a grand realization i'm missing in the observation that all people's belief systems are composed of data points that lead to those beliefs? This seems tautologically true to me, and mostly irrelevant.
> Both sides have their frame and mythology. ... it's narratives and semiotics all the way down.
That's an old propaganda standby - both sides are the same, it's all just opinion. Nothing distinguishes U.S. policy from Stalin's, they would say in the Cold War.
But there is good and evil in the world, and if we don't distinguish between them then we are accomplices for the latter. Furthering hate is not the same as opposing it; oppressing people is not the same as fighting for their freedom.
I've been rereading this trying to see a coherent argument, but I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say. The thing that you quote seems like it could win an award for stretching metaphors.
The issue of course is that if you don't flit in a distant metaphor, you tread disrespectfully upon _sacred ground_.
To toe the line a little for you, the witch-hunters are activists (good, noble ones) looking for sinners (bad, evil ones) and preaching about a world where the sinners have all the power.
In such a world, why would there be so many successful witch-hunters?
> In such a world, why would there be so many successful witch-hunters?
Because neither group has all the power (and there are many other groups too). The allegory, as someone pointed out, and the reasoning are both stretched past breaking.
> About 45 years ago there was a chance that they might
There was no chance. In the 1972 election, Nixon was re-elected winning 49 states (not a typo - he won 49 of 50 states) and won the popular vote by 23%.
And that was while the Watergate scandal was exploding. Per Wikipedia, not long before the November election, "On October 10, the FBI reported the Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee."[0]
There was no chance that the Democrats or anyone on the left was going to take "all the power".
It is hard to explain without attracting the attention of the moderators. I'm not sure it's possible to even talk about it without offending somebody, but fortunately I'm gradually losing the will to care.
A simple example would be this recent shooting in Las Vegas. Now: the fact is that this number of people die on a regular basis in certain cities, making it Vegas x 1000, but it doesn't attract uproar or congressional investigations.
Why not?
Another example would be the problem with certain gangs in the UK. I lived there for years and never realized the scale of it. It's not that the media doesn't report events, it's that we don't live in a world where posters line the streets saying "Watch out for Pakistani pedophiles". The media works very hard to tell us everything and nothing by neglecting to join up obvious dots.
We easily could live in a world of right wing witch hunts.
But we don't.
This is because the exact contours of the arguments that would be lost by one side are being routinely ignored.
Most of the public, especially the younger generations live in an unreality. Once you're old enough you become aware that the information streams are badly lopsided.
Also in that article: Dan Lyons is a Milo Yiannopoulos pen pal, who seemed to be obsessed with the gender of GamerGate harrasment victims. He just deleted his Twitter account in reaction to the publication of the article.
I was intrigued by a Moldbug comment (i.e., conveyed by MM himself) on a high-quality politics blog about a decade ago, and followed it up with extensive reading of his site.
Contrary to the comment above, I would recommend NOT diving into Moldbug's works. It really is reactionary bullshit, obliquely conveyed, which piques interest ("just what does he mean by this..."). The intrigue is all in the showmanship - which is considerable, I'll admit.
It is simply a waste of time. I say this as someone who reads a lot, a subscriber to NYRB (where OP was published), and has a lot of patience with unraveling complex ideas, blah, blah, blah. It is valuable time that you won't get back.
Are you saying there are no witch hunts on the American right? (Pizzagate, Benghazi, emails?) Nobody with a stable and lucrative career in these witch hunts? (Alex Jones, most of Fox News?) No hobbyists who enjoy witch-hunting on the weekend? (Again Pizzagate - an extreme case of the right-wing “do your own research to pierce the media veil” bullshit rabbit hole.)
If that’s not what you’re saying, why is the actual point dressed up in that overwrought allegory?
Benghazi - thoroughly debunked in Congressional hearings
emails - no criminality and no exposure of classified information
vs real news:
pissgate - a well-respected expert on Russian dirty tricks claims among other things that Trump hired prostitutes in Moscow to pee on each other. Some of those other claims have been corroborated - and we found out today that the special counsel investigating Trump's Russian connections (a Republican) has met with the author.
Russia - Trump's family, campaign officials, and appointees met with Russian operatives and lied about it repeatedly. His campaign manager offered private briefings to Putin's close ally. His sons bragged about Russian funding that Trump denies.
tax returns - Trump, who has a long well-documented history of shady financing and unsavory deal-making, would have rather lost the election than reveal where his money comes from.
LOL. Pizzagate wasn't wholly made up. The conclusions were silly and and almost certainly false, but there were real circumstances and posts that inspired it.
And you are seriously claiming pissgate is real news because "someone said"?
I understand you feel strongly, but if we can't emotionally detach when it comes to determining reality it just keeps going around and around in the same circle. Which is what I think OP was trying to say.
Are you equating "spy with experience on the topic making a statement in connection with a leaked document" with "fuckheads on the internet masturbate about how smart they are, spew out nonesense"?
There isn't equal weight behind those two kinda of "people saying things". One of those actually is news worthy and should be investigated.
And you're stupid of you think there isn't a difference. Your entire post is like those kids in math class who apply random formulas without a plan -- you're repeating things you've seen that sounded smart without actually thinking and creating a meaningful point.
A common tactic of any populist group is to paint itself as a persecuted outsider.
The far right and right have possibly never been stronger in the West, in fact. Throughout Europe, right-wing parties run government and far right parties have never had more power since perhaps WWII (and run government themselves in some countries).
In the U.S., there is a large, coherent rightist power structure that dominates government and politics, not an opposition. The rightists control the White House (and thus all regulatory agencies and the rest of the executive branch), both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, 70% of governorships, and a large majority of state houses. Most police are right-wing (AFAIK). The most popular cable news channel (Fox) and the most popular newspaper among the business elite (WSJ) both serve right-wing propaganda as a modus operendi (the WSJ on its editorial page). There are a vast number of other popular right and far-right publications. There are many major funders (Kochs, Adelson, Mercers, etc.); there are major think tanks, such as Heritage, dedicated to generating intellectual cover for the right and far-right agenda. And the power structure works together to a surprising degree; you can see read Heritage talking points in many places, often without realizing the source.
Here's an article I just read talking about the coherent rightist power structure, including a chief advisor to the President:
There is no such thing. Again, see the actual state of affairs, described above (and in this religiously progressive country, Donald Trump won). The far right again tries to portray itself as persecuted and also tries to portray anyone who disagrees as mindless followers of "religion", like the right-wing ideologues, not reasoned supporters of human rights, democracy and freedom.
"Reason" is a far right-wing publication funded by the Kochs. Yes, I know people will claim that it is "libertarian" but in practice there is little difference. The magazine recently published an article entitled "The Climate Alarmists Are Wrong", basically parroting Republican talking points claiming that the science is unclear on the issue (it isn't).
> "Reason" is a far right-wing publication funded by the Kochs.
I'm going to need you to substantiate your claim that Reason is a far-right publication, because it really seems like a centrist libertarian publication. They predictably project a pro-individual and pro-business (in that order) message, I've seen them argue for NAFTA (not popular with the right these days, which is more protectionist), they consistently argue against restrictions on social taboos (social controls being the primary distinguishing factor of the right).
I already did. Sowing the seeds of doubt that climate change isn't a problem and/or not caused by fossil fuel use, as in the article I mentioned is pretty clearly far-right, not centrist at all.
Firstly: debating the specifics of the impact of climate change, and the efficacy of proposed solutions is not a "far-right" position. The presentations given to the public on climate change are obviously intended to be more motivating (by being alarming) than accurate. The predictions are rarely born out by the observations, the crises are constantly averted through no human action.
The main point of this article is that there is no clear correlation between global mean temperature and the severity of hurricanes. If that's a far-right position, then where do the centrist positions start? Licking Al Gore's boot?
I don't speak German, so it was somewhat surprising to me when I learned that Führer means "leader" (or "guide", according to Wikipedia). And that that word is essentially dead in modern German speech. So how do you refer to the "leader" now?, I asked. I didn't get a good answer to that question, but it would probably take more understanding of German as to how they get by without the obvious word.
I wonder if "news" may be dead in English in the near future.
Yes, when I lived in Germany I heard "Leiter" a lot when I expected "Führer". To me it sounds like it should mean "conductor".
Can real German speakers tell me if "Leiter" was always a very common word for this usage or merely a not-unreasonable word that won out post-war because it happens to be a bit like the English word? (In fact I suspect they are cognate, maybe that's why electrical conductors are sometimes called "leads").
Führer and Leiter seem similar in meaning, but are really quite distinct, both in denotation and connotation. And, contrary to what grandparent poster said, Führer is by no means dead.
"Führer" means guide. As in, a mountain guide ("Bergführer"), tourist guide ("Reiseführer" - both guide book and person), or driver of a vehicle: driving license ("Führerschein").
Similarly, "Anführer" is a leader of a like-minded group, often in the sense that he is not a formal leader. To pick an example from current affairs: Carles Puigdemont is (formally) the president of Catalunya, and (informally) the leader ("Anführer") of the independence movement. There is quite a number of words derived from Führer.
The verb "leiten" means to direct. Thus, a "Leiter" is somebody who gives directions: a director. This was, and is, a reasonable word, especially in a professional context.
To explain the Nazi diction a bit. Think of uses like Bergführer ("mountain guide"): somebody who leads his charges skillfully through treacherous terrain. I suppose that was the kind of image the Nazis wanted to project on Adolf Hitler (who you are of course referring to). It's true that Führer may sound politically piquant to German ears, but only in quite specific contexts. It's a pretty normal word.
Thanks for your explanation. It tallies well with what I observed living there.
But I still sense there is a post-war avoidance of the word: to you it might seem very common but I hardly ever heard it except as part of a larger compound. Compound words are so common in German, that the omission might not be obvious to people who are too familiar with it.
Führer isn't dead in modern german unless you're talking about a person who leads. Most guide books are still called Reiseführer, and most germans have a Führerschein (driver's licence) etc.
Why would 'news' become dead? Nazism had a substantial impact on German both on its way in and out - it developed/repurposed its own special phraseology and terms and those terms later fell out of use (or at least, in out of use in the contexts of their Nazi use). But this happened through focused effort, up to and including laws. Nothing of the sort has happened or is likely to happen to the word 'news'.
As far as I know, there's never been a post-war effort to ban the word "Führer", nor did the Nazis try to remove the ordinary meaning. Heck, calling Hitler "The Leader" was in no way an abuse of language. And yet the word has become uncommon because of a kind of shared embaressment.
Now I think tacon is wrong to think that "news" will go a similar way, but if it can happen to simple and basic words like "leader", then it's a reasonable thing to speculate about.
I want to suggest that "Führer" did have an unusual specific ideological connotation in the Third Reich that is very different from just saying "Adolf Hitler was the leader of Germany and FDR was the leader of the United States".
Correct, but that is still in line with it being an appropriate use of language.
In Iran Ayatollah Khamenei has the unofficial title of "Supreme Leader". This is a very specific title within Iran, and has a specific ideological connotation. And yet it is also a perfectly normal and accurate use of the word "Leader".
There's still "Anführer", which is a leader of a group and makes sense to me, as opposed to "leadership" without any qualifiers. That is, "leadership" seems to be often used not to describe the fact that someone leads or is in the lead, but for some shifting cloud of properties that lead to them being leader or in the lead, or making it a good thing they are. Totally off-topic, but my pet peeve of American English. I bet there's a German equivalent, but I sleep better not knowing it (it's not "Führerschaft", that I know).
Come to think of it, English "news" is more like the German "Neuigkeiten", while "Nachrichten" is more like the English "messages". But German news are as sensationalistic as everywhere else, so that seems to have no effect.
Regarding NPR's choice of words: it is in fact quite common to avoid very direct accusations in politics and news. I really doubt the author came about this for the first time ever, but rather wonder if he detested it as much each and every time earlier.
The reason to avoid very direct accusations in politics in news is to keep your powder dry -- so that you can have greater impact when you truly need to do so.
The argument the author makes is exactly that this is a time where words like "lies" are necessary, and to avoid them now constitutes lying to your audience rather than avoiding inappropriate overstatement.
Diminutives are all the same, -a, -ya, -ik because of diminutive suffix replacing the ending. Full names usually end on -[y]a for women and on consonant for men. So there is no general rule, I think. (native speaker)
That was a pleasure to read. Pushing the politics to one side; there is a call here to use words correctly and to use clear and unambiguous descriptions. That is a coherent and entirely reasonable expectation on any political dialog.
Doubly rewarding was that the writing style, while not pro-Trump, avoids the bile and hysteria that has been common since the last American election. Limiting criticism to unclear language does the author a lot of credit. Limited changes are needed to apply this article to many political statements.
Trumps pronouncements are particularly entertaining examples though. His speech can make it so clear that he isn't using specific facts. Watching his opponents trying to deal with something so audacious can be very entertaining.
I also loved the article. However, I thought that he was too hard on Trump, in his dissection of that interview. I'm certainly no Trump supporter. And yet, his comments about the missiles in Syria struck me as honestly reflective. Trump does bullshit a lot, and it's easy to make fun of him. But that's arguably more honest than typical Presidential rhetoric.
It's hard to know how to criticize your comment constructively, though one might say that it's not that "Trump does bullshit a lot", it's that he cannot escape bullshitting in any situation. He exists outside facts.
As I said, I'm not a Trump supporter. He's a demagogue. And worse, he's arguably the first "Reality TV" president, in that he honed his public persona for "The Apprentice". If Stephen Colbert wins in 202, he'll be the second. It's a strange world.
Anyway, it is refreshing to hear a US President reflect on the enormity of the power at their command, and on the risks of using that power. No matter how incoherent they may be.
I don't know whether Trump could escape bullshitting, if he wanted to. It could be entirely an act, designed for his target audience. But either way, what concerns me is that such a persona is so evidently popular.
> Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he survives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of arrives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.
This is like a variant of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which posits that your language constrains what you can think about, but I am not convinced (not in general, and not in this particular case.) It is not a failing of language that it can be used inconsistently, or to lie; this is inevitable. The problem in current political discourse is a growing preference among the electorate for having their emotions stimulated without regard to facts. To put it another way, the author had no difficulty in refuting those inconsistencies and lies; his problem is that not enough people care about it.
I think you're conflating the two. Take, for example, the word "election". If the word "election" can mean both an election, and a not-election – of the sort experienced in the USSR – then how do you describe the election you want to have? The word is meaningless, and thus it throws the very concept into doubt. This has nothing to do with Sapir-Whorf, which isn't really a strong proposition anyway. You have a concept, but when I use the word that describes the concept, I could be describing the concept or the not-concept.
Yeah, this makes sense to me according to my experience of people's perceptions of loaded words. When a word may seem like it has e.g. five or six meanings
- it conveys more bits of information
- plausible deniability -> capacity to retroactively compress the word's meaning
- people 'analyze'/recognize simpler words (only one meaning, i.e. GitHub) differently than they do loaded words (multiple meanings, i.e. dream)
- people take their own personal uncertainty (over which meaning is the correct one that they need to interpret the word as) as a sign that if they share their recognition, it's more likely to make them look like a fool in public
Observers realize that the original speaker's (e.g. Trump or Stalin) plausible deniability is a kind of insurance policy against audience members calling them out
I am not sure that plausible deniability is much of an issue, because the people making such statements don't seem to care if they are caught in a contradiction or lie. Why don't they care? Because their supporters, and those who are close to being their supporters, don't care. It's not so much about deceiving the skeptics (who are not likely to be deceived anyway) as it is about giving those who incline to one's views an excuse for believing that their instincts were unquestionably right, and to get them worked up about it (this applies to Trump et. al. rather than Stalin, because the latter had other means of getting his way, and whatever you think of Trump, he is no Stalin.)
I agree, but what I'm saying is that perceived plausible deniability makes speaking out against quadruple-entendres seem more futile, as any supporter can say it meant something else
I find it more useful to think in terms of information theory and the related results in machine learning, signals, and computational theory. For example, I claim that 'linguistic relativity', AKA the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, is an informal intuitive restatement of some of the consequences of Kolmogorov complexity and other parts of algorithmic information theory and machine learning. Put simply: Different languages are differently efficient for expressing and therefore working with a given piece of information. The hypothesis space you explore is defined by the language you use to express hypotheses and a hypothesis space that is smoother and cleaner in the region of the "true" or "target" function will give more correct results more easily.
In this case, confusing the meaning of the words that describe hypotheses near a particular target concept can force the use of a language that lacks terms that efficiently represent that concept, which dramatically hinders computations involving that concept.
The point I was trying to make is that 'election' means election and not non-election, and the problem is when people don't care about the ab-usage. My understanding (admittedly very second-hand) is that this sort of nonsense in the USSR was the subject of widely-circulated jokes, indicating that those who cared about the difference found a way to express themselves, and to create a shared culture of cryptic dissent (less cryptic dissent was suppressed with more than the abuse of language.)
The author indicts Trump's use of language. While his speech does have a certain word salad quality, the left's use of language has been far more damaging. The proponents of academic intersectionality have been using language in a characteristic manner, the effect of which is to attach the emotional valence of an everyday English word to a politically charged concept, giving the language abuser a cudgel with which to beat his political opponents.
Word | Meaning in 1990 English
---------+--------------------------
Gender | Personality
Violence | Critique
Harassment | Disagreement
Safety | Uniformity
Diversity | Uniformity
Unsafe | Controversial
Equal | Identical
Sexist | Non-discriminatory
Racist | Non-discriminatory
Problematic | Dissident
Biased | Discerning
You may find the above table inflammatory, but I didn't intend it as such. My table reflects a real abuse of the language of the sort the author of the article describes. People at work have said that "violent and oppressive ideas" require physical violence as "self-defense". These people were referring to mere words. Others have claimed that to be "safe", people with disagreeable opinions must not be allowed to speak. Obviously, words are not violence (1990 term), even if some people call them "violence" (2017 academic left term).
The same shift in denotation (but deliberately not connotation) features in discussions of concepts like "decolonialism", "science", and "culture".
If that isn't authoritarian language, what is?
I don't blame the right generally and Trump specifically for playing the same game. Unfortunately, the only winning move is not to play.
When writers and academics question the limits of language, it is invariably an exercise that grows from a desire to bring more light into the public sphere, to arrive at a shared reality that is more nuanced than it was yesterday.
Is the author seriously trying to suggest that the likes of Derrida was trying to do that?
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This is a very good point, but is I think a bit obscured because it seems to mistake the map for the territory. I think what the writer is getting at is that without a shared language it's harder to build up common knowledge. Which means more than just everone knowing something. It also means that they all know everyone knows it, and know that everyone knows everyone knows it, ad infinitum.
Each person can see the Emperor has no clothes, but without sufficient communication they cannot all know that it is safe to laugh at the Emperor.
Well not ad-infinitum. Just 3 levels needed:
1. I know (think of a graph with one node A)
2. I know that the other knows (A -> B)
3. I know that the other knows, that I know (A <-> B).
That's basically how common sense works, and it helps groups of people work as a group (solve problems, achieve a common goal). But first this bootstrapping is necessary.
Anyway, in this particular case it is like political or ideological common sense ("the emperor doesn't have clothes"). That's why large gathering of people were looked at with suspicion or were outright illegal, because it might start this bootstrapping process. Then before you know it, people start to act.
This is probably one reason that gatherings protests are useful to -- achieve this effect. It can be done online, but a lot of communication is non-verbal, it's how people say things, how they act, dress, tone of voice, etc.
Some were good, some were bad, and some were epically bad.
Aaaaay, and now the public conversation has finally advanced.
The contention of the far right is that this statement is exactly right, but not in the way the author means. That is: there is no coherent rightist opposition to the national religion of progressivism, and this can be verified by checking for who is doing the hunting.
From he-who-must-not-be-named:
>Think about it. Obviously, if the witches had any power whatsoever, they wouldn't waste their time gallivanting around on broomsticks, fellating Satan and cursing cows with sour milk. They're getting burned right and left, for Christ's sake! Priorities! No, they'd turn the tables and lay some serious voodoo on the witch-hunters. In a country where anyone who speaks out against the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight with his head shrunk to the size of a baseball, we won't see a lot of witch-hunting and we know there's a serious witch problem. In a country where witch-hunting is a stable and lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed by millions of hobbyists on the weekend, we know there are no real witches worth a damn.
Just because a bunch of people can do some witch hunting on twitter doesn't make it a lucrative and safe career. Twitter slacktivists aside, who do you think currently has an easier job - people fighting for civil rights, or people who are fighting against them?
One side in this fight uses water cannons in freezing weather on unarmed people. The other gets hit by water cannons in freezing weather. One side is untouchable. The other gets routinely beaten, harassed, and arrested - legally or otherwise. One side has killed ~50 people over this year in a series of hate crimes. The other... Punched a few nazis.
Or hell, if you want to talk about twitter slacktivism, have you seen how much abuse feminist writers, BLM activists, and LGBT people receive? You may claim that some martyr or other of the conservative sphere received similar levels of censure, but I assure you, the people on the other side of this are not having easy, cushy lives.
I get that you feel like you're doing what's right and true by advancing yours, but it's narratives and semiotics all the way down.
That feels like a charitable euphemism but I suppose it is literally true in a way.
My point was simply: "We can tell when you're preaching."
I think HN functions well when it talks about topics where the community is roughly on the same side.
That's an old propaganda standby - both sides are the same, it's all just opinion. Nothing distinguishes U.S. policy from Stalin's, they would say in the Cold War.
But there is good and evil in the world, and if we don't distinguish between them then we are accomplices for the latter. Furthering hate is not the same as opposing it; oppressing people is not the same as fighting for their freedom.
The issue of course is that if you don't flit in a distant metaphor, you tread disrespectfully upon _sacred ground_.
To toe the line a little for you, the witch-hunters are activists (good, noble ones) looking for sinners (bad, evil ones) and preaching about a world where the sinners have all the power.
In such a world, why would there be so many successful witch-hunters?
> In such a world, why would there be so many successful witch-hunters?
Because neither group has all the power (and there are many other groups too). The allegory, as someone pointed out, and the reasoning are both stretched past breaking.
About 45 years ago there was a chance that they might, but Nixon saw to that by inventing the War on Drugs.
> About 45 years ago there was a chance that they might
There was no chance. In the 1972 election, Nixon was re-elected winning 49 states (not a typo - he won 49 of 50 states) and won the popular vote by 23%.
And that was while the Watergate scandal was exploding. Per Wikipedia, not long before the November election, "On October 10, the FBI reported the Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee."[0]
There was no chance that the Democrats or anyone on the left was going to take "all the power".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Cover-up_and...
Jon Ronson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9G6L4ZNuWk
Evergreen State College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1RoBi5HKWc
It is hard to explain without attracting the attention of the moderators. I'm not sure it's possible to even talk about it without offending somebody, but fortunately I'm gradually losing the will to care.
A simple example would be this recent shooting in Las Vegas. Now: the fact is that this number of people die on a regular basis in certain cities, making it Vegas x 1000, but it doesn't attract uproar or congressional investigations.
Why not?
Another example would be the problem with certain gangs in the UK. I lived there for years and never realized the scale of it. It's not that the media doesn't report events, it's that we don't live in a world where posters line the streets saying "Watch out for Pakistani pedophiles". The media works very hard to tell us everything and nothing by neglecting to join up obvious dots.
We easily could live in a world of right wing witch hunts.
But we don't.
This is because the exact contours of the arguments that would be lost by one side are being routinely ignored.
Most of the public, especially the younger generations live in an unreality. Once you're old enough you become aware that the information streams are badly lopsided.
You struck me as better than buying this shit. You don't have to care, but I am disappointed.
If you diff Moldbug and a harmless eccentric, which areas are concerning?
If you diff Moldbug and a harmless eccentric, which areas explain his greater audience?
Also in that article: Dan Lyons is a Milo Yiannopoulos pen pal, who seemed to be obsessed with the gender of GamerGate harrasment victims. He just deleted his Twitter account in reaction to the publication of the article.
I was intrigued by a Moldbug comment (i.e., conveyed by MM himself) on a high-quality politics blog about a decade ago, and followed it up with extensive reading of his site.
Contrary to the comment above, I would recommend NOT diving into Moldbug's works. It really is reactionary bullshit, obliquely conveyed, which piques interest ("just what does he mean by this..."). The intrigue is all in the showmanship - which is considerable, I'll admit.
It is simply a waste of time. I say this as someone who reads a lot, a subscriber to NYRB (where OP was published), and has a lot of patience with unraveling complex ideas, blah, blah, blah. It is valuable time that you won't get back.
If that’s not what you’re saying, why is the actual point dressed up in that overwrought allegory?
Pizzagate - demented and wholly made-up
Benghazi - thoroughly debunked in Congressional hearings
emails - no criminality and no exposure of classified information
vs real news:
pissgate - a well-respected expert on Russian dirty tricks claims among other things that Trump hired prostitutes in Moscow to pee on each other. Some of those other claims have been corroborated - and we found out today that the special counsel investigating Trump's Russian connections (a Republican) has met with the author.
Russia - Trump's family, campaign officials, and appointees met with Russian operatives and lied about it repeatedly. His campaign manager offered private briefings to Putin's close ally. His sons bragged about Russian funding that Trump denies.
tax returns - Trump, who has a long well-documented history of shady financing and unsavory deal-making, would have rather lost the election than reveal where his money comes from.
And you are seriously claiming pissgate is real news because "someone said"?
I understand you feel strongly, but if we can't emotionally detach when it comes to determining reality it just keeps going around and around in the same circle. Which is what I think OP was trying to say.
There isn't equal weight behind those two kinda of "people saying things". One of those actually is news worthy and should be investigated.
And you're stupid of you think there isn't a difference. Your entire post is like those kids in math class who apply random formulas without a plan -- you're repeating things you've seen that sounded smart without actually thinking and creating a meaningful point.
A common tactic of any populist group is to paint itself as a persecuted outsider.
The far right and right have possibly never been stronger in the West, in fact. Throughout Europe, right-wing parties run government and far right parties have never had more power since perhaps WWII (and run government themselves in some countries).
In the U.S., there is a large, coherent rightist power structure that dominates government and politics, not an opposition. The rightists control the White House (and thus all regulatory agencies and the rest of the executive branch), both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, 70% of governorships, and a large majority of state houses. Most police are right-wing (AFAIK). The most popular cable news channel (Fox) and the most popular newspaper among the business elite (WSJ) both serve right-wing propaganda as a modus operendi (the WSJ on its editorial page). There are a vast number of other popular right and far-right publications. There are many major funders (Kochs, Adelson, Mercers, etc.); there are major think tanks, such as Heritage, dedicated to generating intellectual cover for the right and far-right agenda. And the power structure works together to a surprising degree; you can see read Heritage talking points in many places, often without realizing the source.
Here's an article I just read talking about the coherent rightist power structure, including a chief advisor to the President:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart...
> national religion of progressivism
There is no such thing. Again, see the actual state of affairs, described above (and in this religiously progressive country, Donald Trump won). The far right again tries to portray itself as persecuted and also tries to portray anyone who disagrees as mindless followers of "religion", like the right-wing ideologues, not reasoned supporters of human rights, democracy and freedom.
The Kochs fund far-right publications? Which ones? They seem explicitly not far right, or even really right at all.
I'm going to need you to substantiate your claim that Reason is a far-right publication, because it really seems like a centrist libertarian publication. They predictably project a pro-individual and pro-business (in that order) message, I've seen them argue for NAFTA (not popular with the right these days, which is more protectionist), they consistently argue against restrictions on social taboos (social controls being the primary distinguishing factor of the right).
The main point of this article is that there is no clear correlation between global mean temperature and the severity of hurricanes. If that's a far-right position, then where do the centrist positions start? Licking Al Gore's boot?
http://reason.com/archives/2017/09/13/thr-climate-alarmists-...
I wonder if "news" may be dead in English in the near future.
Can real German speakers tell me if "Leiter" was always a very common word for this usage or merely a not-unreasonable word that won out post-war because it happens to be a bit like the English word? (In fact I suspect they are cognate, maybe that's why electrical conductors are sometimes called "leads").
Führer and Leiter seem similar in meaning, but are really quite distinct, both in denotation and connotation. And, contrary to what grandparent poster said, Führer is by no means dead.
"Führer" means guide. As in, a mountain guide ("Bergführer"), tourist guide ("Reiseführer" - both guide book and person), or driver of a vehicle: driving license ("Führerschein").
Similarly, "Anführer" is a leader of a like-minded group, often in the sense that he is not a formal leader. To pick an example from current affairs: Carles Puigdemont is (formally) the president of Catalunya, and (informally) the leader ("Anführer") of the independence movement. There is quite a number of words derived from Führer.
The verb "leiten" means to direct. Thus, a "Leiter" is somebody who gives directions: a director. This was, and is, a reasonable word, especially in a professional context.
To explain the Nazi diction a bit. Think of uses like Bergführer ("mountain guide"): somebody who leads his charges skillfully through treacherous terrain. I suppose that was the kind of image the Nazis wanted to project on Adolf Hitler (who you are of course referring to). It's true that Führer may sound politically piquant to German ears, but only in quite specific contexts. It's a pretty normal word.
But I still sense there is a post-war avoidance of the word: to you it might seem very common but I hardly ever heard it except as part of a larger compound. Compound words are so common in German, that the omission might not be obvious to people who are too familiar with it.
Now I think tacon is wrong to think that "news" will go a similar way, but if it can happen to simple and basic words like "leader", then it's a reasonable thing to speculate about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip
In Iran Ayatollah Khamenei has the unofficial title of "Supreme Leader". This is a very specific title within Iran, and has a specific ideological connotation. And yet it is also a perfectly normal and accurate use of the word "Leader".
Come to think of it, English "news" is more like the German "Neuigkeiten", while "Nachrichten" is more like the English "messages". But German news are as sensationalistic as everywhere else, so that seems to have no effect.
> that word [Führer] is essentially dead in modern German speech.
This is not at all the case. It's a perfectly ordinary word. It's merely burnt in specific (but not even all) political contexts.
I went in more detail in another reply further down the thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15414994
In school I knew a boy named "Misha" (so assuming I am remembering his nationality correctly) it would seem that "-sha" can go with either sex.
Edit: added -ik
Doubly rewarding was that the writing style, while not pro-Trump, avoids the bile and hysteria that has been common since the last American election. Limiting criticism to unclear language does the author a lot of credit. Limited changes are needed to apply this article to many political statements.
Trumps pronouncements are particularly entertaining examples though. His speech can make it so clear that he isn't using specific facts. Watching his opponents trying to deal with something so audacious can be very entertaining.
It's hard to know how to criticize your comment constructively, though one might say that it's not that "Trump does bullshit a lot", it's that he cannot escape bullshitting in any situation. He exists outside facts.
If you think the author's criticism of Trump is too harsh, then you should read her earlier piece published just after the election: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autoc...
Anyway, it is refreshing to hear a US President reflect on the enormity of the power at their command, and on the risks of using that power. No matter how incoherent they may be.
I don't know whether Trump could escape bullshitting, if he wanted to. It could be entirely an act, designed for his target audience. But either way, what concerns me is that such a persona is so evidently popular.
A timeless work about language misuse in Politics.
[1]http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit...
-- George Orwell, letter to Noel Willmett (1944)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/george-orwe...
- it conveys more bits of information
- plausible deniability -> capacity to retroactively compress the word's meaning
- people 'analyze'/recognize simpler words (only one meaning, i.e. GitHub) differently than they do loaded words (multiple meanings, i.e. dream)
- people take their own personal uncertainty (over which meaning is the correct one that they need to interpret the word as) as a sign that if they share their recognition, it's more likely to make them look like a fool in public
Observers realize that the original speaker's (e.g. Trump or Stalin) plausible deniability is a kind of insurance policy against audience members calling them out
In this case, confusing the meaning of the words that describe hypotheses near a particular target concept can force the use of a language that lacks terms that efficiently represent that concept, which dramatically hinders computations involving that concept.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12110997
The same shift in denotation (but deliberately not connotation) features in discussions of concepts like "decolonialism", "science", and "culture".
If that isn't authoritarian language, what is?
I don't blame the right generally and Trump specifically for playing the same game. Unfortunately, the only winning move is not to play.
Is the author seriously trying to suggest that the likes of Derrida was trying to do that?