It's undoubtedly more dangerous to be critical of the mainstream narrative now than it was 10-20 years ago.
There's an alt right author called Vox Day (and I'm a little afraid to be referencing him here) who makes the following argument: if mainstream thought becomes increasingly constricted, and disagreeing with it becomes increasingly dangerous, people will do one of two things. Either they'll self-censor, or they'll "flip the switch" and just go totally anti-mainstream, because it's safer to associate and identify with people who won't get them fired for their opinions. The greater the censorship and fear, the more people will "flip" in a search for safety.
Now he is alt right and he has a vested interest in portraying the ascendancy of the alt right as inevitable, but the point is nonetheless logical, and quite disturbing. It may be that punishing moderately "wrong" speech will ultimately drive moderates into the waiting arms of the extreme right, where they won't be judged so harshly for their errors. Moreover if the purity spiral [1] theory is correct, this phenomenon may be hard to stop, because punishing people for their dissenting speech is an effective way to gain status in many communities!
> Either they'll self-censor, or they'll "flip the switch" and just go totally anti-mainstream
I wouldn't call myself alt-right, far from it in fact. But I definitely see this happening in me over the past few years. Starting the night of the 2016 election.
It's one of those things that makes me wonder how much I've changed vs how much society has changed around me.
For instance, I learned first thing this morning that I have a corrupt faith and that I've fractured the nation [1]. There's only so much debasement one can listen to before you just tune out.
Aye, same. I was a Bernie voter before it was cool, and now it feels like I'm being beaten over the head with left-wing propaganda daily.
Given that we're less than 6 months out from an election -- the election -- it's not a surprise. Lots of propaganda, foreign and domestic, is going to go hard all summer.
Maybe not from NPR, but it's hard not to see a cynical motive here. If you incite more and more escalation, you get more violence and unrest which means more clicks and views.
> It's undoubtedly more dangerous to be critical of the mainstream narrative now than it was 10-20 years ago.
I have observed that in the last 10-20 years the definition of "mainstream" has come to mean something very personal and subjective. Some media are referred to as "mainstream" only if they offer a supporting bias, and others are labelled "mainstream" only if they have demonstrated disagreement, depending on your ask. The epithet "mainstream media" has become a brush with which one may paint a canvas any colour one desires to forward one's peculiar viewpoint. It is a phrase that has become as meaningless as "political", "science", and even "unbiased". Just another empty adjective to lend pseudo-credence to your opinion.
I don't know about that. In the context of history's broad arc I think you can come up with some adjectives that describe the post-WW2 era in broad terms. Liberal, open, globalized, emancipatory, diverse, individualist, capitalist, etc. I think this set of adjectives seems to characterize the mainstream trends of thought in Western society from 1945-2020 compared to other periods in history, and most major media outlets embrace most of these values.
My country right now is deeply divided between literal left (not USA left, I mean actual marxists) and "right" (almost noone support true rightwing, either in historical sense, being monarchists, or in the current sense, being capitalists, what they support instead is a populist authoritarian way of doing things, more in common with left than with any kind of right).
I now have to be very careful with who I talk to, often whatever I say spark trouble because where I live most people are marxists, and I am ex-marxist.
So I decided yesterday to talk with people in an whatsapp group that is anti-marxist... instead found myself having to be careful and self-censor because they went all the way to the other side, hard, people there were mad our former justice minister praised the army honor... because to them, that is evil, what he should be praising is the army might, as soon I touched on the subject it sparked hostile rants against anyone that believes that a violent army-backed coup is wrong, in a chillingly civil way, they explained to me that the army job is basically kill people in the government until it obeys the majority of the population, basically a literal dictatorship of the majority.
It became obvious then... I won't find a place to talk about my now somehow "moderate" views.
I think there must be a place "outside" where you can talk about it. Somewhere were people do not know the facts of your country and so on. And have less bias about it.
There's an alt right author called Vox Day (and I'm a little afraid to be referencing him here) who makes the following argument: if mainstream thought becomes increasingly constricted, and disagreeing with it becomes increasingly dangerous, people will do one of two things. Either they'll self-censor, or they'll "flip the switch" and just go totally anti-mainstream, because it's safer to associate and identify with people who won't get them fired for their opinions. The greater the censorship and fear, the more people will "flip" in a search for safety.
Now he is alt right and he has a vested interest in portraying the ascendancy of the alt right as inevitable, but the point is nonetheless logical, and quite disturbing. It may be that punishing moderately "wrong" speech will ultimately drive moderates into the waiting arms of the extreme right, where they won't be judged so harshly for their errors. Moreover if the purity spiral [1] theory is correct, this phenomenon may be hard to stop, because punishing people for their dissenting speech is an effective way to gain status in many communities!
[1] https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...