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I will try to make this short.The fascists are completely dominating the discourse right now, to the degree that the modern right is unironically calling Germany’s Angela Merkel (chancellor and member of the conservative Christian Union) a far left agitator. This has to stop. In this post I want to raise this question and seek your input as to what we can do about it. Watch a gaming video on YouTube. Let autoplay do its thing. Within just a couple of steps, the algorithm will lead you to Prager U or some other chud channel who’s complaining how leftists, SJWs, and The Gays are ruining Western culture. Look at the comments under practically any article from local newspaper sites, especially if it concerns immigration, race, minorities, women, and related topics. Tell me that doesn’t turn your stomach upside down. Look at how far right groups are spreading their memes and narratives over social media like wildfire. You can skip this text box for the sake of brevity, but in it I outline what brings me close to despair sometimes: quote:Everyone has some sort of explanation as to why it has come that far. So, it’s 2020. For as long as I can remember, the fascists have been dominating the discourse online, partially due to the tactics and reasons I outlined above. And in my opinion, this is not just an online shitposting phenomenon without real-world consequences. People get a big part of their discourse and information online these days, and social media especially carry a lot of weight given that people are more likely to trust sources they're familiar with. Societal discourse has shifted so far that wearing face masks has become a symbol of radical leftism, and that “don’t hurt and kill people” has become a controversial opinion. But perhaps with the current protest movement in the US (and its tentative off-shoots in the EU), there’s a window to gain back in control over the online discourse and the overton window that determines which political opinions are acceptable and which are not. This year might be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring social justice, welfare, and peace for everyone back on the menu. How do we do this?
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Jun 28, 2020 18:17
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I think you are observing a divide between age and politics across the internet. I doubt anybody under the age of like, 30 has ever posted on a newspaper comment section. Content production for online also skews heavily white and older than the viewership. Stuff like prageru is literally bankrolled by far right ultra rich assholes as propaganda. You can not "reclaim" the internet because arguably it was never left wing to begin with, not in the modern sense, a lot of the early adopters again were white, well off (because computers are expensive) and a lot of the older sorts in the content creation game like the youtube skeptic crowd were not left wing, which is why they went hardcore islamophobic and antifeminist. Online culture has always had a massive toxic streak which the history of this very website perfectly illustrates. I don't think you're looking at it quite right if you think that what's happening now is a chance to reclaim the discourse, the discourse has always been hideously right wing, what you're seeing now I think is much better characterised as the first big emergence of bottom up politics. It's independent of any party, it's decentralized, it's facilitated by communication between people all over the world. Unless its demands are met I think you're only going to see more of it, and I think actually you're probably gonna see a lot more of it anyway because if its demands are met that shows people it loving works, and other people are gonna start getting ideas. There's no one weird trick here, what happens is outside your or anyone else's control, the reason the protests have been so successful is because there is no leadership to target, nobody to assasinate to take the steam out of it. It's material conditions and class consciousness asserting themselves in the political sphere. All you can do is what you can to contribute to that.
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Jun 28, 2020 20:42
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Reclaim? If anything, the left is far more dominant in the online discourse sphere than it is in real life. Look at the disconnect between online support for Bernie or Corbyn and their performance at the polls. Honestly if anything there’s the opposite problem, where being so dominant online leads certain segments of the left to deeply misunderstand the actual political reality they are situated in. You could say that this is just my Internet and that yours is dominated by fascists, but that leads to a whole other can of worms, which is that there is no one “internet culture” anymore, and there hasn’t been for a long time. Most big websites have hundreds if not thousands of different subcultures and discussion spheres within them. Trying to reclaim anything would be like trying to fight a million front war. The concrete battles that can be fought and won are through things like changing algorithms and demonetizing high profile grifters etc., but that’s not reclaiming anything, it’s just normal politics and activism.
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Jun 28, 2020 21:22
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I will say I think the internet as an interpersonal communications medium is spectacularly helpful for helping to create class consciousness in a world that has in previous decades, had much of the community stamped out of it with the destruction of unions and the further atomization of society, with cohesion sustained by consumption of mass media rather than communal participation. The ability to connect with other people across the country and the world and to share information directly when everyone has a camera in their pocket, that's been a huge thing in building the BLM movement. None of this would be as known as it is without that work and connection by people to each other. If there's anything to learn I think that's where to start. That's what happens when community reasserts itself in a space.
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Jun 28, 2020 21:32
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a reactionary/fascist billionaire facebook board member took a look at the most popular content on their platform, singled out the farthest left outlet, and secretly bankrolled a half a dozen lawsuits to drag them into bankruptcy. he succeeded. even better than that though, he got away with it because he successfully reframed it as an sjw concern troll "because they outed him" the era of the cluetrain manifesto is loving dead. we cannot "reclaim the internet" as if the comments section is the first step toward justice. we will have reclaimed the internet when we have reclaimed the tribes water from the billionaires.
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Jun 28, 2020 22:32
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If one defines "the internet" as social media (which it looks like the OP is), one has to look at all kinds of media and see that every time a new "look at how far left we are!" channel comes out in any form, it falls flat. There are a number of factors here, but I want to focus on the biggest question: how do you reach people? Not just literally "how do you get this message in front of someone", but also "how do you connect with some internet rando". You can eloquently address an issue dear to you, but it's not going to make a dent unless you package it into the form of mirror to the viewer. This is where your more progressive left figures fail when it comes to media share - too much time is spent preaching to the choir and not enough time is spent reaching out to the curious. The fact that right-wing media has been with us our whole lives isn't just a terrible accident - they've figured out that to get people on their side is to act like a guy at a bar talking to just you, no one else. Once the far left accepts that they have to play to the lowest common denominator and go low in the media, the better off they'll be. tl,dr: Get TikTok superstar Addison Rae to lip-sync to the Internationale.
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Jun 29, 2020 06:03
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we can only take the internet by putting fash, cops, and capital owners in the grave or in jail, OP (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 29, 2020 06:56
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Utgardaloki posted:we can only take the internet by putting fash, cops, and capital owners in the grave or in jail, OP  
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Jun 29, 2020 07:04
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Utgardaloki posted:we can only take the internet by putting fash, cops, and capital owners in the grave or in jail, OP hehe haha yeah grave them! we must pile the corpses high and proclaim the internet is once again for the good guys
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Jun 29, 2020 07:41
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Sorry, the left can't meme.
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Jun 29, 2020 08:49
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The dominant liberal ideology for the past three decades primarily involved ignoring material problems, assuming their victory is preordained and requires no effort, and instantly ceding ground to the far right at the first opportunity and considering impotent scolding to be the height of action, while society mass-produces disaffected, alienated and atomised young men at an unprecedented rate for whom nobody has anything to offer but the far right until extremely recently.
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Jun 29, 2020 09:10
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The internet is not less leftist than the rest of the world. Leftism is not suddenly at a disadvantage at this point of time because it's easier to be for change than against it. Past leftists succeeded. They did so because they were right and because conservatism is apathetic. Conservatism also loses its biggest advantage on the internet which is entrenched power structures. That's why you see more fascists since that's not an actual conservative ideology.
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Jun 29, 2020 10:34
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Edward Mass posted:If one defines "the internet" as social media (which it looks like the OP is), one has to look at all kinds of media and see that every time a new "look at how far left we are!" channel comes out in any form, it falls flat. There are a number of factors here, but I want to focus on the biggest question: how do you reach people? Not just literally "how do you get this message in front of someone", but also "how do you connect with some internet rando". You can eloquently address an issue dear to you, but it's not going to make a dent unless you package it into the form of mirror to the viewer. This is where your more progressive left figures fail when it comes to media share - too much time is spent preaching to the choir and not enough time is spent reaching out to the curious. The fact that right-wing media has been with us our whole lives isn't just a terrible accident - they've figured out that to get people on their side is to act like a guy at a bar talking to just you, no one else. Once the far left accepts that they have to play to the lowest common denominator and go low in the media, the better off they'll be. Get Belle Delphine to promise she'll do porn if you read Das Kapital.
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Jun 29, 2020 16:25
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doverhog posted:Get Belle Delphine to promise she'll do porn if you read Das Kapital. This is the way in which, as Marx rightfully observed, capital produces its own dismantling.
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Jun 29, 2020 17:42
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People forget that the right wing as we call it now used to be the de-facto standard culture for the west. The left being, almost by definition, outside of the establishment always has an uphill battle. It's a battle that's as old as humanity. Being that the establishment is always against the left wing, the left wing has ideologies that aren't comfortable for people to accept and are by their nature difficult to monetize and propagate. For example, it's much more profitable to be a right-wing grifter than a left-wing grifter (Yes, we have some). As it stands in social media it might seem as though it is completely right-wing. I would argue that since the people that are left-wingers are generally in a more vulnerable position in society financially or otherwise (being either minorities or younger), they tend to stay quiet about their political views. It's easy to get likes on a facebook post about those terrible protesters or the supposed destruction of history through toppling of mass produced statues than it is to take a counter establishment view, regardless of how much you might agree. Right now we are winning the culture war more than we even know because it's not expressed very well through the establishment. The only way to truly gage how much we win is how fervently the established deride it. With the almost complete removal of Christian dogma and the near destruction of the legal and institutional structures underlying it, the culture is in an attempt to find new ideology to adhere to. Much like a religion it is why the left has taken to extremely narrow views of thought and acceptability with extreme retaliation (without the power of the establishment) against those who are apostates. That's a key part of the power of an ideological revolution. #metoo and cancel culture are very effective forms of this internet cultural revolution. So, we are winning. It's just simply less visible and more pervasive than is immediately apparent. These huge attempts (eg. Trump) by the right to take back control are the coughing, sputtering, dying gasps of a thrashing monster that is being put down. Slowly but surely. They have the money and power but the left has the youth and time to win through attrition.
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Jun 30, 2020 06:41
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gee, I dunno, how would leftists go about reclaimimg a technology which was designed to be and still is one of the most successful intelligence gathering and weapons platforms that the US military has ever devised? I assume you mean "reclaiming" it from the military/industrial/corporate complex that owns it and the data that pipes through it. And not, say, reclaiming discourse, since that's already a battle the left is clearly already winning online, even if most of the battles are fought through hollow as gently caress corporate gestures leftists finding a way to "reclaim" DARPAs best cyberwarfare platform, sounds about as likely to me as getting to a world where the majority of ToR exit nodes aren't run by the US or Chinese military. Also, those two things are pretty connected!!
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Jun 30, 2020 16:53
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Not sure if I quite understood the OP, but recently multiple social media companies have been moving to ban "violent" anti-fascist pages and accounts. And youtube has been loving with accounts that post political videos about organising and activism, (including mine) over what it calls content violations, but doesn't tell you what the violation is or gives a completely nonsensical reason. Because of this, many political groups now use other sites like Peertube instances as a backup as a minimum, so that in case the channel gets taken down the content isn't lost. Recently though Sub.media and the Brazilian Antimedia groups have decided to collaborate on a new platform themselves to see if that will bear some fruit. Its called Kolektiva https://kolektiva.media/videos/watch/bcb4bbfa-c39d-4fd2-96cf-bc4747d2d9d9 So far there's tonnes of interesting and educational content on there, and the viewer base is slowly growing.
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Sep 7, 2020 13:03
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MightyBigMinus posted:a reactionary/fascist billionaire facebook board member took a look at the most popular content on their platform, singled out the farthest left outlet, and secretly bankrolled a half a dozen lawsuits to drag them into bankruptcy. Gawker was pure trash. Nothing of value was lost. Thinking we lost some great avenue of leftist thought because some gossip rag got taken down for doing the objectively wrong thing is dumb.
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Sep 7, 2020 13:40
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Yeah, while Thiel is a scumbag even by tech industry mogul standards, his vendetta against Gawker had less to do with ideological battles, and more to do with them outing him for clicks.
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Sep 7, 2020 14:11
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very successfully reframed
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Sep 12, 2020 16:59
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remove the anonymity and enforce a right to privacy
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Sep 12, 2020 17:03
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Fame Douglas posted:Gawker was pure trash. Nothing of value was lost. Thinking we lost some great avenue of leftist thought because some gossip rag got taken down for doing the objectively wrong thing is dumb. Valleywag was loving amazing and one of the few voices on the internet rightfully questioning and mocking Silicon Valley. Sam Biddle is a treasure.
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Oct 9, 2020 08:11
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Solkanar512 posted:Valleywag was loving amazing and one of the few voices on the internet rightfully questioning and mocking Silicon Valley. Sam Biddle is a treasure. #bringbackbullying Biddle?
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Oct 9, 2020 08:24
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I kind of agree with OwlFancier. If you’re under 40 in America, you just kind of accepted old people as racists, but tuned them out until they could appear in newspaper comment sections. You also have likely become more radical than you used to be ten years ago, which makes you despair more about things that you used to tolerate. We’re the forum that made “punch her in the oval office” a thing (I remember explaining that one to someone in the middle of Disney World, so it had to be 2007ish) and now you’re kind of on the outside here if you aren’t aiming long-term toward the abolition of private capital. For example, society has never been a fan of equal outcomes. So if in the past ten years you’ve decided that equal opportunity policy is biased against minorities and equal outcomes are the real goal, of course the world is suddenly going to look like a very ugly place to you. But it didn’t change, you did.
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Oct 15, 2020 20:50
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Ghost Leviathan posted:#bringbackbullying Biddle? as your personal political development has taught you, he was 100% right
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Oct 15, 2020 21:33
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