Chapter 7: How to Conquer a Society (Part 4)
So luckily this wasnÄt just about the ACLU. That was only like the first 10 minutes or so, I kind of zoned out for that.
Thankfully, for the rest of this, Urban tries to give some potential criticism of the book some room. That is a noble effort, so thanks. I remain fairly unconvinced, though Urban addresses some of the points I have raised before. But the refutations are just kind of too brief to be substantial. For instance, he tackles the question "if SJF is so prevalent, how come Joe Rogan and others have these massive platforms?" by saying "well it's different what someone with a lot of money and influence can do as opposed to the average person". And this seems kind of reductive. Of course by itself the existence of Joe Rogan doesn't disprove his claims, but clearly that is just a stand-in for a broader trend. It's also worth pointing out that Joe Rogan didn't begin his podcast from a position of wealth and power as far as I can tell, but rather achieved fame through the podcast. That also doesn't quite work with under Urban's perspective.
But well, Urban himself makes it clear that is is not his intention to convince people like me, but rather to pull people in the center farther to the right to convince those who are somewhat critical of "wokeness" (come on, you made it this far without relying on that term, why start now?) but don't think it poses a great threat.
Anyways, rather than get lost in these critiques of individual points I think it's good for me as well to take a step back and look at the greater whole. I think the big disagreement I have with Urban is how he lumps in two very disparate but vague left ideologies. The first of these I would call "liberal identity politics" (LIP, see I get to make up my own acronyms too!) and summarize in the polemic slogan "if only a proportional number of billionaires are women and BIPoC, well will have achieved justice". Let's call the second position "Marxist Anti-Racism" (MAR) with the slogan "the only way to get rid of racism and sexism for good is to dismantle capitalism".
For Urban, it seems that LIP and MAR are actually one and the same, namely SJF. Since he doesn't distinguish these positions, and attributes bad things to SJF, he argues we should get rid of all of SJF, i.e. LIP and MAR. This failure to notice a distinction leads to a lot of the strange claims he makes - companies supporting anticapitalists and so on. But they are very different: LIP still pretty firmly believes (at least on paper) in what Urban calls the "liberal games" and thus places responsibility on the individual and is big on shaming for bad behaviour. MAR believes in systemic racism and thus the focus is not on the critique of individuals but rather on dismantling the system that perpetuates it.
You can illustrate the two sides as they reappear in climate activism: There is one side (LIP-like) who's big on individual responsibility and caring about people's "ecological footprint" and to avoid carbon use wherever possible, and another side (MAR-like) that has no issue with using a fossil-fuel car to drive to a coal power plant in order to sabotage it.
The is the core problem with this book I believe. Urban clearly thinks both LIP and MAR are bad, but he cannot decide which one to critique. I am on the MAR side of things and so most criticism that I could agree is warranted is of LIP. But Urban wants to use this to also get rid of MAR.
There is a final bit in this chapter, where he wants to defend himself against the accusation of "bothsideism". He does that by... arguing that he's not saying both sides are equally bad, but rather that the low-rung version of both sides is equally bad and the high-rung version of each side is equally good! It's pretty funny to me that he thinks this is an argument shielding him from being called a "bothsideist".
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Topic: The Necro Wars (Read 346601 times)