Comment by WillDaSilva
5 years ago
The point about minority views no longer being able to take over is a scary one. There has been a great amount of social progress in the past several decades, and that sort of progress wouldn't be possible under the effects of strong social cooling.
White supremacy is a minority view in the US and seems to have gained huge amounts of traction in spite of these believed effects. White supremacists have lost jobs for being caught out attending rallies; it doesn't seem to stop the rallies.
I remember reading a story about a Black man attending KKK rallies to understand their argument and successfully convince some of them to leave the group. I think it was Daryl Davis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
Nowadays this would be very difficult because the mere fact of being around "bad" people ("bad" depends on the context and might be something relatively innocent) would also brand you as "bad" regardless of any good intentions you might have.
What ends up happening is that "bad" people are stuck in their own echo-chamber surrounded by like-minded people and anyone outside of the group wouldn't dare to engage with them (and provide counter-arguments) because of consequences for their own career & social circle (as their own friends would distance themselves from him for the same reasons).
Daryl Davis is a really interesting guy. His episode on the JRE is really good and his stories keep you engaged. Even if you don't like Joe Rogan, you should still be able to enjoy his episode because Davis does the majority of the talking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGTQ0Wj6yIg
It's gained a lot of attention. Is there any real evidence that it's gained traction?
The definition of it has widened to include more groups than before. The original groups are about the same size.
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This is a question that I have wondered about. It feels like it’s just being heavily advertised more so than gaining any traction.
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Don't get out much, eh?
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In short, yes, there's quite a bit of evidence of this.
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/the-facts-on-white-nationa...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/white-national...
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Calling people you disagree with "white supremacists" has certainly gained ground.
But people self identifying as such are extremely rare.
Many non-identifying white supremacists have white supremacist adjacent ideals such as xenophobia.
It's very hard to support with a straight face that the acceptance of the confederate flag in the south does not have racial overtones.
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In the way it might be casted upon supporters of the President, the distinction between white supremacy and white power is largely semantics.
As far as I understand it, "white supremacy" for those that desire it is the idealized end result of "white power." Much of the rhetoric from President Trump is to rally support for white power. [1]
Given the most common disagreement in the US is between those who advocate for or oppose President Trump, it makes sense that his followers would be deemed "white supremacists"
I believe the broad awakening among many white people in the US currently is the ambient benefits of invisible white power.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6iSgqFahoM
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It is exactly because of social cooling that you heard so little about white supremacy for so many years. The tacit endorsement of one famous person (see if you can guess who!) helped to somewhat raise the ambient temperature for it.
I'm not sure there is causation here. Far-right ultra-nationalistic movements are gaining speed in many places in the world. I think there are many factors at play, one being that we get further and further away from WW2 and people forget how bad it can get (especially here in Europe). Only the military and very old people in the west now know what a real war feels like. On top of that there's general social unrest and increased inequalities (the infamous 1%), software eating the world etc...
I do think that white supremacy, fascism and nazism was really a lot more fringe even only 10 years ago, it wasn't just under-reported.
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If true, that raises two interesting questions relative to the socialcooling.com content:
1) It begs the question of whether social cooling should be considered a universal ill. After all, white supremacy is bad, and consequences for publicly embracing it are useful.
2) It begs the question of whether the impact of digitally-originated social cooling is particularly relevant if one thought-leader can upend it.
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> White supremacy is a minority view
This depends on how your aggregation function is weighted.
If your measure is "how many people in the US are white supremacists?" then, yes, it's definitely a minority view (though still more widely held than it should be!).
But if you scale it by each person's power/wealth, you get a very different view. If your question is "what is the total power held by white supremacists?" you'll end up with a larger number.
And if you really want to get an accurate measure where you treat each person's white supremacy value as a number that ranges smoothly from positive (actual white supremacist) to zero (not interested in putting effort into race relations one way or another) to negative (anti-white supremacist), your function may produce a number that explains a hell of a lot of US history.
> If your question is "what is the total power held by white supremacists?" you'll end up with a larger number.
I very much doubt so. The richest people in the US are whites (e.g. Besos, Gates, Buffet), but not suprematists. If you have data which proves otherwise, please share.
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The key thing here is white supremacy is endorsed by the state in the US
Well, a subset of the state.
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No it is not. I literally never heard that "white supremacy is endorsed by the state in the US". I heard the highly exaggregated unsubstantiated claims though. (Eg by calling all people wearing MAGA hats white supremacists.)
The idea has always been widespread but not accepted in the open. In the US the Trump administration’s embrace of white supremacy has lifted the fear of social recourse for supremacists (racists, sexists, fascists) and I suspect the same goes for other far right parties around the globe.
The global context is more complicated, but (as my international friends are fond of reminding me) the US has outsized cultural influence on what other countries consider best practices.
The belief that everyone who doesn’t believe exactly what you do is a fascist might not be as widespread as your echo-chamber confirms...
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> the Trump administration’s embrace of white supremacy
"embrace" by the definition "openly supporting white supremacy"? Or "dared to suggest there where two sides at fault in Charlottesville"?
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> White supremacy is a minority view in the US and seems to have gained huge amounts of traction
Well obviously, the definition expanded:
https://i.imgur.com/gW9sQoM.jpg
As far as I can tell the number of people who are part of the KKK hasn't gone up any appreciable amount.
In fact, calling perfectly normal and valuable things "white supremacy" and then deplaforming "white supremacists" is an excellent example of this social cooling.
This seems broken, especially with 'MAGA' thrown in there, are you saying only whites voted for that candidate? Because I got news for you... MAGA wasn't even original to Trump.
According to this list since I believe people can bootstrap themselves I must be a white supremacist. Except I highly doubt the KKK are fond of mestizo people, I even doubt they even like "white" Hispanics at all. I know people who have been homeless and now make more money than I do, living on cars or purely on the streets, minorities included.
As a minority I am astounded at all the bikeshedding people are doing to fight racism, worse yet finding racism where there is none like git branches.
Edit: Also, just because someone supported Trump and is white and voted for him doesn't automatically make that person a racist. This kind of prejudice rising up today is very worrisome and way too topical in a discussion about social cooling.
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> calling perfectly normal and valuable things "white supremacy"
[citation needed]
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> White supremacists have lost jobs for being caught out attending rallies; it doesn't seem to stop the rallies.
Yesterday, there was a documentary movie on German's private TV station Pro7 about Nazis. An actual Nazi confirmed live on camera: yes, deplatforming Nazis (and that includes them losing jobs, family, friends) works and is a huge source of pain for the movement because many people don't hold up to that pressure and leave.
Just imagine how big the rallies would be if there was no social pressure on not being Nazi would no longer be there... at the moment many attendees either don't give a f..k about how they are perceived, or they relish on that being accepted in their social circles.
This strongly suggests social cooling is a positive effect.
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It's because this page is using "minority views" as a code word for "ruling class threatening views." Which has always been the case. A minority view that doesn't threaten business interests will face little suppression (see: white supremacy)
I don't think we can assume white supremacy doesn't threaten business interests. Particularly not in the US, where approximately 2 out of 5 Americans aren't white. How many companies are willing to put on the table as their business model "We'll be actively hostile to 40% of our potential customers?"
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That one really rings false. Minority opinion holders are gathering online in record numbers. I'm thinking in particular of the nut jobs like anti-vaxxers and flat earthers, but also fan bases for obscure culture (reddit saved The Expanse) or the support for non mainstream political figures like Ron Paul or Andrew Yang. If anything, their ability to brigade online forums makes them seem far more prevalent than they really are.
The people who effected that progress often did so under constant, actual physical attack and various forms of blacklisting.