Western Democracy broken by woke social media proxification and alt right misinformation cults

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Many good points raised here in this opinion piece that asks if social media has led to Western Democracy turning on itself…

Why are free societies sinking into an anarchic pit of social media hate?

Is it right to deny people who incite violence a public platform? You bet it is. All free societies do this to a greater or lesser extent.

Open democracies which guarantee freedom of expression have always drawn lines. You cannot attend a civic meeting, or even stand on a street corner, and shout death threats without being arrested. The obvious charge would be of threatening behaviour or causing an affray.

Scarcely anyone would be likely to dispute this. So that’s the easy one. There are far more difficult questions to examine in what is becoming a major political issue for our time.

…meanwhile Blackadder sings the blues…

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The star of Blackadder and Mr Bean has long advocated for free speech and has campaigned against legislation he believes stifles expression.

…I’m surprised there isn’t an action station petition demanding Blackadder be banned for appropriating a marginalised colour.

Social media algorithms have allowed for a toxicity of debate that is easily manipulated. A cacophony of sweaty truths all screaming for attention and no one listening. Woke Identity Politics activists have seized the joy of having no gatekeepers to express how much they hate white men while alt right Incel Nazi’s have seized upon the joy of having no gatekeepers to express how much they hate everyone else.

Millennial woke culture sees macro violence coming from micro aggressions and piously police those micro aggressions with virtue signalling purity mantras.

Alt Right Incel Nazis see white persecution and create some bullshit replacement narrative to justify their powerlessness and feed that resentment online.

Most people are on social media and most people have a woke activist or Qanon fanatic in their social media feed screaming their feverish truths. While these activists certainly think they are speaking truth to power by endlessly calling people out for breaches of woke mantra or fake news anti Trump lies, to everyone else they are simply toxic.

People stop seeing the political party and only see the activist and in the end proxification means the activist becomes the proxy representation of the Party, and seeing as people have negative feelings towards the proxy, they turn from the Party.

Voters aren’t voting on policy, they are voting on who made them feel resentful on social media!

The political is the personal now means what hurts me personally becomes political.

Before social media activists could only face each other off at protests or through letters to the editor or talkback radio. There were constraints of interaction but with social media there are none and it turns out the freedom to insult and dehumanise others is more addictive than nicotine, alcohol and meth combined.

Wokeness has become a puritanical religion with none of the beauty – it’s not so much the personal virtue signal, we are all dicks at times, it’s the weaponization by algorithms that make it so dangerous and damaging.

The danger of identity politics is that it locks people intellectually into only defining the world through their skin colour, genitalia or sexual orientation – it also becomes toxically subjective and tribal where the only solidarity is with other people who share the skin colour or genitalia or sexual orientation- without shared truths and values, the 1% and their 9% enablers continue to divide the rest of us 90%.

The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched.

This current Western Democracy is late stage capitalism at its culturally most self defeating.

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12 COMMENTS

  1. I have always maintained, the far left eventually eats itself in order to become the ‘most woke’ person or group.
    At one stage all groups and individuals were in some form of agreement (mainly by having a common ‘enemy’) but when that enemy is gone and no natural new enemy arises then the same groups start white anting themselves…its not the new social media per se thats caused this, its simply human nature and social media has just quickened the process.

      • And they will get back up to the 40ish percent again Sam when voters tire of Labour and non delivery and finally see Arden is out of her depth when the Covid fear porn from Govt diminishes.
        Its all cyclical nats then labour…rinse and repeat.
        I wasnt talking political parties anyhow, talking about individuals, woke SJW’s who destroy anything/anyone who is not in total agreement with their particular woke bandwagon (and their band wagon take precidence over any other woke SJWs bandwagon etc etc)

        • And when voters finally see seemore is a fuckwit whose liberal on gun ownership and other issues but trying to make covid vaccinations mandatory.

      • You’re deluded if you think it will stay like this. Currently the pendulum is swinging to the left. But just as in John Key’s time, it will quickly swing back again. That is why its important for the left to get as many wins as possible whilst we are in power. To tinker around the edges while we have a super majority is idiotic and progressive insanity. But that’s what is happening and will continue to happen whilst we all kneel at the alter of Ardern and refuse to call her out on her incompetence.

  2. You’ve written an excellent article Martyn – I’m pleased someone from the ‘traditional’ left can see just how toxic and unstable things have become.

    A few points:

    I wonder how much of this woke witch hunting is driven by a generation of young adults who have been pandered to throughout their childhoods. Nobody has ever said NO to these narcissistic little shits and maybe they’re finding real life rather confronting.

    The term ‘hate speech’ has a clear legal definition and virtually none of conservative product in social media meets this definition. Someone being ‘offended’ because, for example, I say there are only two genders isn’t hate speech. They’re just deluded and fragile. Yet despite the legal definition, police in the UK are arresting people for such mild comments and putting them on a public database with the intention of ruining their careers. Yet no actual crime has been committed. We don’t want this happening here – someone tell Labour that their proposed hate speech laws are toxic and have no place in a free society.

    With Trump leaving the White House, just you watch the left turn on itself. It will be fun to watch from the sidelines. Put the popcorn on!

    • ” I’m pleased someone from the ‘traditional’ left can see just how toxic and unstable things have become.” Apart from sticking a “label” on people that allows people to pidgeonhole them, simply to make it easier to generalise about their opinions/beliefs, which is exactly what one of the main problems with “wokeness” has become for everyone else….
      “With Trump leaving the White House, just you watch the left turn on itself”.. and immediately show yourself up for what you really are…. Just another ditto head… The real enemy here, is the sheer lack of depth, or perspective that those who find it easier to make specious generalisations regarding this so called “left” than make a grownup effort to see beyond the shallow, self absorbed assumption that underpins pretty much every example of woke “philosophy”… The real problem, is the utterly moronic and selfish tripe that far too many people have settled upon as “truth” without making any effort to see beyond their own noses…. THAT is what scares me when I think about where NZ’s leadership will be coming from in the next couple of decades…

  3. And when voters finally see seemore is a fuckwit whose liberal on gun ownership and other issues but trying to make covid vaccinations mandatory.

  4. There is an extra component to the idea of a threat to our democracy.

    It’s in the opposition to collective action, or solidarity, in response to external threat – say a pandemic.

    Some are saying that this is a threat to their freedom (imposed lockdowns and take up of vaccines).

    There is a certain cynicism to it.

    On the one hand it’s said the the lockdowns are imposed on the young and minorites to keep older white people safe (suggesting oppression of them by the white establishment). On the other it’s then said that vaccines are unsafe for the old and vulnerable poor health ethnic minorites (that the governmetn action to protect them is actually a threat).

    The number of young ethnic doctors (or so says their twitter handle) who claim the first, and number of older white women who claim the latter (or so says the twitter handle) is too glaring to ignore.

    It’s as if the arguments were designed by those seeking to divide and conquer democracy against itself. But it’s not the left wing woke leading any of this – it’s either the domestic right (pushing identity nationalists towards the freedom camp) opposing collective solidarity, or it’s foreign “mischief”.

    • Working across intersectional lines also includes supporting and aiding the most fractional of intersectional groups, the extreme and hard right. They a minority group too, just as affected by corporate power alike.

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