When so much is thrown away (women’s rights, the environment, gay rights - all more intertwined than is clear sometimes) leaving only “affordability” and “childcare”, it is not good. The left has the left flank and liberals. They are both important parts of the coalition.
Too many bigotries are sneaking in using war to rationalize acceptance of idiots like Rogan.
My standard media diet is: Current Affairs/Salon Mag/Yasha Levine/Lucien Greaves/Ed Zitron/Chris Ketcham/Matt Stoller and a few others. Though more and more slop is coming in via Salon at least. It is icky.
However, recently I added in The Forward and WhyEvolutionisTrue for balance with my generally farther left diet. I am anti-war too. But I dislike social media companies and influencers and they way they are exploiting the situation in the ME.
Based on my own experiences I think targeting and attacking people with progressive or even lefty sympathies with “Hated in the Nation” style stuff is about damaging the left of centre more than antiwar.
Don’t know if you watch Black Mirror yardwork - it is about the dark side of tech. That episode is about unleashing swarms of insects to target people. Humans or botnets (don’t remember which) vote on eliminating someone hated. Disruptive and malicious street traffic would be another example.
Yasha Levine who is very critical but also invested in results has written about the spectacle and influencing.
How is turning campuses into war-like spaces ending war? It doesn’t raise awareness above a threshold of aggressive shock jock tactics. For every person you convince, another will go the other way.
A lot of the more serious activists are very committed to bridge building. I saw with animal rights how much more THL accomplished than groups who use tactics like throwing blood.
The Forward has some interesting articles, like this one about an unfortunately named university, but more broadly about a less war-like learning environment:
https://forward.com/news/antisemitism-decoded/774076/october-7-elon-university-israel-gaza/
I am not Jewish and I am very much on the left and sympathetic to the tribulations of the Muslim community- many of my doctors are Muslim.
But I disapprove of this alienation of a generally progressive community for cheap clickbait. What are all sorts of random quieter Jewish students supposed to do? None of it ever accomplishes much. If it stopped war ok. It just seems to make everyone miserable which surely cannot help.
As Green as I am, I was also never a fan of nosiy protests which rarely do more than parade being on the right side of history.
Honestly that effort could go into the stuff Lina Khan was doing and take down some of these media cos and more
And goading. I have sympathy especially for the quieter students who those types sneer at and undoubtedly stress.
School is hard enough as is and turning it into a constant rohrschak test? That is okay for the “thick-skinned” but it has to strain Jewish students who are just trying to lead quiet lives - something I understand. The jeering response would be “try living in a war zone”. Well I mean really so should the influencers. They live comfortably as lame edgelords. All it does is make getting an education (and doing a job that is not influencing) harder. Which will mean more of the purely apolitical in hard science, medicine etc shifting society farther right.
I have some experience living with disruptive tech and disruptive human dynamics budding out of that. It is terrible for work. Especially with this foul thing “emerging”:
https://www.noemamag.com/are-we-accidentally-building-a-planetary-brain/
= new reply since forum marked as read