The rest is entertainment, time for the progressive left to reflect?

[Taytoface]

I have always suspected Marina, and perhaps Richard of being a wee bit on the terfy side. Just listened to an episode where they talked about the impact of the culture wars on journalism and entertainment. They made the very astute observation that whilst the culture warriors screamed bigot at anyone who didn't proclaim TWAW and advocated for defunding the police, they totally missed the real threat to liberal democratic values. Now we have big tech bros owning key parts of what was mainstream journalism, like the Washington Post and Twitter.

They very much said that it was time for the 'progressive' left to reflect on what impact they have actually had over the last mad 15 years or so.

Blocked and Reported did a similar episode, having been accused of being the reason why Trump is in the Whitehouse.

I wonder, will there be a period of reflection, or will they double down on the madness?

Chris Hedges a US journalist us very interesting on the distraction of identity politics. He is considered to be left wing and has I believe described his own politics as socialist. Norm Finkelstein has written on this recently as well as the silencing of academics who fail to toe the line,

What was the episode of The Rest is Entertainment? I haven’t listened to many of them.

'I wonder, will there be a period of reflection, or will they double down on the madness?'

I wonder too, but so far I haven't seen any sign of reflection just a lot of digging their heels in harder.

With Trump being the unhinged moron that he is, they seem to see his excesses as an excuse to not reflect, they just think everyone will come to the senses about the Orange one and realise that they were right all along.
Both Canada and Australia have just re-voted they're woke parties back in to government, in response to Trump's action's.

While most of the Democrats seem to be doubling down there are definitely a few in the US who are trying to get their party to drop some of the extremism and come round to majority view points. Newsom, for instance, has made some steps in that direction. Not sure how deeply they are reflecting. I think of Newsom as an opportunist who will swing which ever way he thinks will get him support, not so much reflection as responding to polling. Even most of the more thoughtful friends I have tended to lament that working class Trump supporters don’t recognise how awful he will be for them rather think about how utterly pointless it’s been for working class people to vote for the Dems for the last 30 years.

On the tech front - I think the Dems have sort of understood that tech has been bad for democracy. They love to blame their poor showing on algorithms and Russian disinformation. But I think they are mainly concerned they can’t turn the tech in their favour rather than that it threatens democracy. They have tried half heartedly to hold people like Zuckerberg to account. But they’ve been incredibly ineffective (the inability to work with Republicans on anything at all being a huge part of that) and they are too caught in the language of outrage to come up with anything that sounds like a good plan for tempering things.

They were good post Trump’s election too. What irritates me a bit is they never come out and clearly state something. They’ll talk about how much JKR has done for reading and for the film industry in the UK and the stupidity of those in publishing or journalism of those who protest against working or writing about her. But they never come out and say I support JKR or say she’s allowed to express her opinions without hate or anything to that effect. And RO was on the HIGNFY where the Supreme Court win was mentioned and was mute. I know they don’t have to do anything and maybe it’s better in their work, as well for them personally, that they don’t but it’s just a bit weak imho. I suppose they are at least giving their probably liberal media and Guardian-reading, middle-class audience a different view and maybe that’s more effective.

I am fine with them keeping their cards close to their chest on this one. They are not political or feminist commentators. They are drip feeding common sense and I think that they are more useful doing that, than going down in flames for saying TWANW

Marina writes for the Guardian. Most writers at the Guardian who would present a reasonable view (eg sound even remotely Terfy) either are not allowed to, or chose not to lest they immediately be burned as witches.

I don’t need to apply a GC purity spiral to every sympathetic commentator out there, personally. Look at how that’s ended up working for the extremist left over the past 10 years!

I am slightly concerned by how short political memories can be, though. Illiberal extremists have been lurking at both ends of the political spectrum for decades. Remember Timothy McVeigh and the “black helicopters” conspiracy theorists of the 90s? Liberal democracy and its institutions are our only really effective way of combating them, which is why they are always so keen to subvert or even rip them down.

Marina has avoided the McCarthy esque purges at the Guardian by keeping Terfy comments low level. Her views are still clear imo and very welcome (to me).

You are all right, I know.