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existing power structures did not get where they are by being bad at power the existence of easy and quick communication means that opposition to power is easy to organize therefore, power must be able to either suppress or subvert enemy communications https://t.co/YsGNIGtSno
suppression looks like censorship, disappearing dissidents, blatant propaganda it often leads to good ideas being harder to communicate i dont really know what the insides of suppression regimes look like, but the ussr and prc are two prominent examples
here in the us, where we are a civilized democracy, existing power structures subvert threats corporations sell che shirts, the people who push the most for racial equality are white, and people buy laptop stickers to "protest injustice" https://t.co/1pNtmKKSg4
@metadiogenes @nosilverv ideological hijacking and memetic advantage there are woke things that are anti-consumerism, but the advertisers hide them while helping the pro-consumerist wokeness advertisers are very good at spreading ideology, much better than activists
precisely communicating what you want is hard, cant be done at scale, and its not like most people agree about the details anyway so you dumb it down a bit, you be less precise, you build coalitions and then you open yourself to chapman sociopaths https://t.co/DFLQo5qpck
any sufficiently vague but good-sounding slogan has room for misinterpretation this can be used by you (motte/bailey) or against you (quote mining) it also allows people loyal to old power to twist your movement into whatever serves old power
the current power in the us is consumerism and the market the way that it twists movements is by selling paraphernalia and giving anyone successful at anything nice things in this way, people can "help" a movement by consuming and participating in the market
this is where the taboo on "selling out" comes from the end result is that everyone who "cares" about a cause will buy a hollowed-out identity, featuring the symbols that used to mean something good the real ideology will be eaten by the market https://t.co/QZRRdf3n9c
@BonbonFork @metadiogenes @nosilverv advertisers dont spread ideology per se, they spread identities which imply a certain "ideology" (which consists entirely of aesthetics as opposed to opinions) advertisers only come in after some activist success so that there is a market
this essay by moldbug is very relevant here https://t.co/ySm9l5L7Zo
behold, the face of moloch give up whatever you care about, so that you may have the power to fix it https://t.co/35JIWf2rkM
@imhinesmi piece I missed from the first read https://t.co/mGgDlMnmHx
