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I think she pulls punches here, but why wouldn't she, because that's what she's writing about. The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded

I think she pulls punches here, but why wouldn't she, because that's what she's writing about. The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it. They exist in the Public sphere, and so the thoughts and conversations of others are suddenly subject to "accountbility." There is no conventional notion of what is ones business and what is not. As though for these atomized people with few close relationships and a lack of personal boundaries, that nothing is their business because they are not invited into intimate relationships means everything is because they don't know there is a difference between what is and what isn't. Appelbaum says: > A decade ago, I wrote a book about the Sovietization of Central Europe in the 1940s, and found that much of the political conformism of the early Communist period was the result not of violence or direct state coercion, but rather of intense peer pressure. Even without a clear risk to their life, people felt obliged—not just for the sake of their career but for their children, their friends, their spouse—to repeat slogans that they didn’t believe, or to perform acts of public obeisance to a political party they privately scorned. Even Appelbaum, who wrote a scathing survey of this very phenomenon, hedges herself as not being overly sympathetic to wrongthink, lest she be expelled from the intelligentsia circles she works in for a lack of fervency. What bothers me is that even smart people like her are not seeing the forest for the trees, and how this is a managed phenomenon. > Despite the right-wing rhetoric that says otherwise, these procedures are not being driven by a “unified left” (there is no “unified left”), or by a unified movement of any kind, let alone by the government. While I can see why she would want to avoid risking the attention of the people behind this, it is in fact co-ordinated, and the "left," is only one of the hosts and funnels used for it. Anyway, it's not a discussion or discourse. There is an entire generation of young people who understand attention as power, and any engagement at all is just an enabler. The solution is to form personal networks of intimate relationships based on establishing incremental trust, without permanently recording every second of it, and try to restore some of the Private sphere as an overall effect. If Anne Appelbaum has been cowed by these people, we are much further down the road to perdition than we know.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago
>The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it. Monsters from the Id. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU
robotresearcher 5y ago
> it is in fact co-ordinated Who is doing this and how? This is a question in good faith. I’m not sure if your comment expects me to know the answer and I don’t.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  Indeed, and my answer is also in good faith: short version is Hannah Arendt covers the whole progression. Long version is: Regarding the who, naming individuals just invites mobs, but they aren't of a particular ethnicity or nationality (other than being mostly of european descent), and of no particular religion other than mostly non-religious, as the thing they have in common is a simple ideology, because to scale it needs to be simple. They aren't a shadowy conspiracy, they're in plain sight, they write books, give talks, and publish everything. Arguably it's just this prevailing generation of leaders responding to recent massive technology change with a new alignment to technocratic governance that tech makes possible. Perfectly well intentioned, like when Hollerith (now IBM) enabled a new kind of agility for government in the 20's with their punch card systems that enabled states to finally solve problems they couldn't previously without massive co-ordination and automation, and elevate all of humanity into a new age, once they got rid of some pesky holdouts, many of whom were our grandparents. So how are these people different from just regular people with beliefs participating in democratic processes? Their intent is to dissolve distinct and diverse nations and subvert democracies by destroying the discourse that makes it possible. The goal is one humanity under a single co-ordinated bureaucracy, not unlike modern China. The Davos/WEF people and their networks are very public about their admiration of that system. If you are a leader and you see what China has done with over a billion subjects in the space of a few decades, how do you argue they've got it wrong? Sure, terrible things happen, but with over a billion people working in harmony, the edge cases of a few million people here and there aren't significant. In that view, the only people standing in the way of this shared prosperity for hundreds of millions are the hereditary elites, the exceptional, the individual, and the nationalist. What leader wouldn't give a few years of turmoil in exchange for being on top of a machine like that? What the article talks about is mainly members of the mob who are in academia, and not the faction who sponsors and directs their attention. Some of the the cancel crowd believe this, but mostly they're on the tactical subversion edge of this alignment and are content to just see stuff burn without much thought as to why or in whose interest. Regarding the how, for anything to scale it needs to be simple, and the popular presumption is that if there is intent, there must also be a static command and control structure operating it, and if you can't identify the C&C, then there must be no co-ordinated intent - which is wrong, and this is a stealth tactic by design. The mechanism is an alignment of interests between an elite faction who have co-opted the mob(s), where the faction directs targets and the mob piles on. By now it's metastasized into a kind of an economy and culture. The directing faction has a gradient of intent and membership, where the objective is to subvert the US and its allies, and replace it with their own systems and membership that do not have the constraints and volatility risk of a democracy - not unlike the way the EU imposes regulations on its member states that are against the will of the local populations. The ideology is technocratic and secular (mostly nihilistic), and only uses movements and nations as hosts and stepping stones. Meaning and truth itself are fluid to them because power is its own end, and once you have the power, truth is what you make it. To adapt a quip that summarizes their ideology, "when we have our boot on the necks of the world, what does it matter whether it's the right boot or the left boot? It's all for their own good." Long comment about complex ideas, but I hope you found it chilling, and if nothing else, at least it shows how it's simple enough to scale.
AlanYx 5y ago
>Anyway, it's not a discussion or discourse. There is an entire generation of young people who understand attention as power, and any engagement at all is just an enabler. The solution is to form personal networks of intimate relationships based on establishing incremental trust, without permanently recording every second of it, and try to restore some of the Private sphere as an overall effect. That's part of the solution, but it probably isn't enough on its own. In the Soviet Central Europe of the late 60s and early 70s, there were moderately active spheres of private thought sharing samizdat amongst themselves (leading to initiatives like Charter 77, etc.), but one of the major points Václav Havel made in "The Power of the Powerless" is that ultimately people need to be able to express themselves in the public sphere to effect meaningful change.

OneEyedRobot 5y ago

>The underlying factor is that the Private sphere has been eroded, and there are generations of people who have no concept of it. Monsters from the Id. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU

robotresearcher 5y ago

> it is in fact co-ordinated Who is doing this and how? This is a question in good faith. I’m not sure if your comment expects me to know the answer and I don’t.

motohagiography 5y ago
Indeed, and my answer is also in good faith: short version is Hannah Arendt covers the whole progression. Long version is: Regarding the who, naming individuals just invites mobs, but they aren't of a particular ethnicity or nationality (other than being mostly of european descent), and of no particular religion other than mostly non-religious, as the thing they have in common is a simple ideology, because to scale it needs to be simple. They aren't a shadowy conspiracy, they're in plain sight, they write books, give talks, and publish everything. Arguably it's just this prevailing generation of leaders responding to recent massive technology change with a new alignment to technocratic governance that tech makes possible. Perfectly well intentioned, like when Hollerith (now IBM) enabled a new kind of agility for government in the 20's with their punch card systems that enabled states to finally solve problems they couldn't previously without massive co-ordination and automation, and elevate all of humanity into a new age, once they got rid of some pesky holdouts, many of whom were our grandparents. So how are these people different from just regular people with beliefs participating in democratic processes? Their intent is to dissolve distinct and diverse nations and subvert democracies by destroying the discourse that makes it possible. The goal is one humanity under a single co-ordinated bureaucracy, not unlike modern China. The Davos/WEF people and their networks are very public about their admiration of that system. If you are a leader and you see what China has done with over a billion subjects in the space of a few decades, how do you argue they've got it wrong? Sure, terrible things happen, but with over a billion people working in harmony, the edge cases of a few million people here and there aren't significant. In that view, the only people standing in the way of this shared prosperity for hundreds of millions are the hereditary elites, the exceptional, the individual, and the nationalist. What leader wouldn't give a few years of turmoil in exchange for being on top of a machine like that? What the article talks about is mainly members of the mob who are in academia, and not the faction who sponsors and directs their attention. Some of the the cancel crowd believe this, but mostly they're on the tactical subversion edge of this alignment and are content to just see stuff burn without much thought as to why or in whose interest. Regarding the how, for anything to scale it needs to be simple, and the popular presumption is that if there is intent, there must also be a static command and control structure operating it, and if you can't identify the C&C, then there must be no co-ordinated intent - which is wrong, and this is a stealth tactic by design. The mechanism is an alignment of interests between an elite faction who have co-opted the mob(s), where the faction directs targets and the mob piles on. By now it's metastasized into a kind of an economy and culture. The directing faction has a gradient of intent and membership, where the objective is to subvert the US and its allies, and replace it with their own systems and membership that do not have the constraints and volatility risk of a democracy - not unlike the way the EU imposes regulations on its member states that are against the will of the local populations. The ideology is technocratic and secular (mostly nihilistic), and only uses movements and nations as hosts and stepping stones. Meaning and truth itself are fluid to them because power is its own end, and once you have the power, truth is what you make it. To adapt a quip that summarizes their ideology, "when we have our boot on the necks of the world, what does it matter whether it's the right boot or the left boot? It's all for their own good." Long comment about complex ideas, but I hope you found it chilling, and if nothing else, at least it shows how it's simple enough to scale.

AlanYx 5y ago

>Anyway, it's not a discussion or discourse. There is an entire generation of young people who understand attention as power, and any engagement at all is just an enabler. The solution is to form personal networks of intimate relationships based on establishing incremental trust, without permanently recording every second of it, and try to restore some of the Private sphere as an overall effect. That's part of the solution, but it probably isn't enough on its own. In the Soviet Central Europe of the late 60s and early 70s, there were moderately active spheres of private thought sharing samizdat amongst themselves (leading to initiatives like Charter 77, etc.), but one of the major points Václav Havel made in "The Power of the Powerless" is that ultimately people need to be able to express themselves in the public sphere to effect meaningful change.