I don't mean to accuse you of silence on what the government is doing. What I worry is you've "taken the bait" of accepting a framing on this that over-emphasizes images and narratives optimized for polarizing social media.
If people like you and I are more exposed to (and moved by) images Elon Musk posts (of the flaming car, the Mexican …
I don't mean to accuse you of silence on what the government is doing. What I worry is you've "taken the bait" of accepting a framing on this that over-emphasizes images and narratives optimized for polarizing social media.
If people like you and I are more exposed to (and moved by) images Elon Musk posts (of the flaming car, the Mexican flag guy, etc.) than by the livestreams you'll see on any social media platform of the "99% of people protesting peacefully," then it makes sense why he bought Twitter: it offers a way to shift the narrative to ground he'd rather fight on.
"Posting is the most powerful force in the world," as you have often and rightly said -- and this is an element of posting's power, is it not? A post does more than merely make a point, it sets the context into which other peoples' points may enter. And I think you make a tactical mistake by addressing the "shitheads who burn cars" first, you cede narrative ground.
I also think your view of the "political struggle" is distorted by that framing. In the Civil Rights movement, change was not accomplished by gradually convincing a group of Americans in the middle to accept their fellow people as equal citizens based on images they saw on TV. Change happened through a controversial campaign of "direct action" which, although nonviolent (and very crucially so) was often illegal and extremely disruptive of property, businesses, and everyday life. Protests in American history are not about asking politely for power or winning in the court of public opinion, but about modeling courage and exercising power to change the conditions on the ground and force decision makers to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.
While I respect where you’re coming from, I think the argument that these folks are to be ignored is based on some heavy optimism. I don’t know how possible it is to ask folks to ignore what amounts to movie posters of war torn countries. Even if they are snapshots of a much larger movement, it can’t be ignored for a similar reason to that old adage about how one solid negative comment on your work makes more of a mark than fifty positive ones. Humans are wired for being on the lookout for threatening behavior and responding harshly which is what those folks burning cars provide.
THAT’S why they need to be loudly denounced because otherwise we cede narrative grounds by allowing the only folks actively addressing it to be folks looking for an excuse to militarize. It also provides these more extreme and counter productive people to gain ground because we would rather ignore them than remove them (think the Nazi bar story). They can fester and grow until they do get a moment of power where we end up not only failing to denounce them but have people deciding to validate it as purely the language of the unheard like in the summer of protests we had a few years ago.
I don’t think we accomplish anything by asking people to not look at what is, on an instinctual level, more interesting than political talking points, even if they do affect them.
I agree the civil rights movement was very disruptive because they needed folks to pay attention, but the face of the movement was heavily curated to be the non-violent and more respectable looking face available. That organizing force was vital and something we do need to figure out how to incorporate in the modern world of activism.
In general, today’s protests model arrogance and privilege, do nothing to change conditions “on the ground” or force decision-makers to do anything. Rather, they tend to alienate those who might support their aims, result in completely sidetracking progress because of violence and lawlessness and reflect personal grievances and dysfunction having nothing to do with the issue nominally at stake. Having lived through the Civil Rights era, I saw that the “direct action” was not only violent but postdated most of the change and indeed represented the end to positive change and popular support for new civil rights advances.
I think you should go to a protest near where you live and look at these things yourself rather than reading about them on the computer. This image, and the resulting alienation some may feel, is more a result of rightwing information campaigns than anything else -- which was precisely my point on Jeremiah's post here.
I don't mean to accuse you of silence on what the government is doing. What I worry is you've "taken the bait" of accepting a framing on this that over-emphasizes images and narratives optimized for polarizing social media.
If people like you and I are more exposed to (and moved by) images Elon Musk posts (of the flaming car, the Mexican flag guy, etc.) than by the livestreams you'll see on any social media platform of the "99% of people protesting peacefully," then it makes sense why he bought Twitter: it offers a way to shift the narrative to ground he'd rather fight on.
"Posting is the most powerful force in the world," as you have often and rightly said -- and this is an element of posting's power, is it not? A post does more than merely make a point, it sets the context into which other peoples' points may enter. And I think you make a tactical mistake by addressing the "shitheads who burn cars" first, you cede narrative ground.
I also think your view of the "political struggle" is distorted by that framing. In the Civil Rights movement, change was not accomplished by gradually convincing a group of Americans in the middle to accept their fellow people as equal citizens based on images they saw on TV. Change happened through a controversial campaign of "direct action" which, although nonviolent (and very crucially so) was often illegal and extremely disruptive of property, businesses, and everyday life. Protests in American history are not about asking politely for power or winning in the court of public opinion, but about modeling courage and exercising power to change the conditions on the ground and force decision makers to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.
While I respect where you’re coming from, I think the argument that these folks are to be ignored is based on some heavy optimism. I don’t know how possible it is to ask folks to ignore what amounts to movie posters of war torn countries. Even if they are snapshots of a much larger movement, it can’t be ignored for a similar reason to that old adage about how one solid negative comment on your work makes more of a mark than fifty positive ones. Humans are wired for being on the lookout for threatening behavior and responding harshly which is what those folks burning cars provide.
THAT’S why they need to be loudly denounced because otherwise we cede narrative grounds by allowing the only folks actively addressing it to be folks looking for an excuse to militarize. It also provides these more extreme and counter productive people to gain ground because we would rather ignore them than remove them (think the Nazi bar story). They can fester and grow until they do get a moment of power where we end up not only failing to denounce them but have people deciding to validate it as purely the language of the unheard like in the summer of protests we had a few years ago.
I don’t think we accomplish anything by asking people to not look at what is, on an instinctual level, more interesting than political talking points, even if they do affect them.
I agree the civil rights movement was very disruptive because they needed folks to pay attention, but the face of the movement was heavily curated to be the non-violent and more respectable looking face available. That organizing force was vital and something we do need to figure out how to incorporate in the modern world of activism.
In general, today’s protests model arrogance and privilege, do nothing to change conditions “on the ground” or force decision-makers to do anything. Rather, they tend to alienate those who might support their aims, result in completely sidetracking progress because of violence and lawlessness and reflect personal grievances and dysfunction having nothing to do with the issue nominally at stake. Having lived through the Civil Rights era, I saw that the “direct action” was not only violent but postdated most of the change and indeed represented the end to positive change and popular support for new civil rights advances.
I think you should go to a protest near where you live and look at these things yourself rather than reading about them on the computer. This image, and the resulting alienation some may feel, is more a result of rightwing information campaigns than anything else -- which was precisely my point on Jeremiah's post here.