Warring Factions of the Culture Wars
The nuances of the war between opposing authoritarian regimes
The classic divisions of right and left, liberal and autocratic, Democrat and. Republicans have become extremely strained, this is not a local phenomenon as similar processes are taking place around the world. Although the problems are diverse and complex, the basic issue is that entire groups of the population have broken from each other, their sources of information are Balkanized, and the algorithms of social media compound the issue. Different languages have evolved that, although they sound like English, the words mean completely different things for different people.
As Wittgenstein teaches us, each one of us have our own concepts in our mind. When Anna talks to Paul there are three separate ideas in play: The ideas that Anna wants to communicate, the Idea expressed in words, and the Idea that Paul receives. These are thee different things, neither Anna knows what Paul heard nor Paul knows what Anna meant to say, they have beliefs about it and those beliefs might approximate each other, but it’s not a given. Even worse off is John, who has a completely different context and is watching it on TV, being completely clueless and going only by how it feels.
Take a label like MAGA, a typical person within MAGA has a job, a roof over their head, goes to church, helps their neighbors. He is a good person, he fills like a good person, yet he voted for an adjudicated rapist, convicted felon, authoritarian, narcissistic con artist, and against his own interests. Why? Why would a normal moral person vote for a clown? Obviously with these facts on the ground, the anti-MAGA has to think that the MAGA are stupid.
Now take the label WOKE, just like a MAGA a typical person perhaps more educated and with a valid concern for the environment, science, climate, and their fellow man. Their concern extends to the point of not wanting to offend anyone and that the humanity and feelings of each individual are to be respected, except for those Nazis of course, tolerance can only go so far. By all measures a good person. Yet the label is associated by the anti-WOKE with cultural strains that are destroying education, academia, and the moral fabric of society. How can these two perspectives possibly be reconciled?
With the breakup of communications and dialogue, wider and wider rifts have opened, straining and stretching society to the limits. With fascism at the door, a way to improve communication is desperately needed, and it can be much simpler than we think. The first step is to identify and reframe the main factions in conflict in a way that represents the reality of the situation. (As a caveat, although I strive to be as objective as possible, it will be unavoidable for some of my biases to bleed through.)
MAGA
A faction of the Republican Party that believes in traditional values, working class, and is in general less educated and more religious than average. Within MAGA we can identify Authoritarian MAGA that, given the situation they perceive the country to be, believe a strong man is needed to upend the status quo.
Anti-MAGA
As the perception of the authoritarian forces of MAGA took hold, a large proportion of the population became anti-MAGA, rejecting everything that comes from the MAGA side. This is a mishmash of individuals from civil society with ideas that come from fact-based professions. Particularly relevant to them is the history of how authoritarian regimes take hold and the recent histories of Hungary and Venezuela, as well as fictional ones like The Handmaid’s Tale. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
WOKE
A faction of the Democratic Party that believes in more progressive values, mostly educated class and less religious than average, its main concern is in how we treat our fellow humans and the future of humanity itself. Within the linguistic aspects of the WOKE we can identify the authoritarian WOKE that want to impose their use of language on everyone else, even if that language contradicts what traditionally had been the norm. Many other aspects of equality and human value fall under this camp.
Anti-WOKE
As the perception of the authoritarian forces of WOKE took hold, a large proportion of the population became anti-WOKE, rejecting everything that comes form the WOKE side. Creating caricatures and straw men of the movement which in turn influence laws. This is particularly true of academic circles, where the impositions of the authoritarian WOKE are creating strains in academia that are being felt all throughout society, leading to further balkanization of the media. Listening to a scientific podcast with Anti-WOKE ears is rather grating, no wonder they have recoiled in anger.
Given the commonality of their enemies the anti-WOKE created common cause with MAGA while the anti-MAGA created common cause with WOKE. But these are normal folk forming distinct groups with their own voting preferences.
Reality
Reality is studied and analyzed by the fact-based professions, scientists, journalists, judges, historians, etc. Reality is the ontological truth that underlies all of what we know. Individuals committed to reality tend to be well educated, within meritocratic institutions, journalism circles, or government agencies, producing fact-based information for the rest of society to consume.
Anti-Reality
As the culture wars progressed, reality itself came into question. Facts and truth became just stories you tell, and whatever story is better or makes you feel better is the one you choose. Knowledge, being Justified True Belief, when the belief doesn’t conform to the ontological substrate of Truth, an alternate “truth” is fabricated. Over the years this tendency created a loosely coherent alternate reality with a different set of truths. In order to make the justifications work, fallacies, and multiple other reasoning failures become the norm and cognitive dissonances abound. In this complicated post-truth environment, doubt is only dispelled by those with the fame and authority to dispel it, not by scientific pursuit. A leadership cabal of sorts. People in this camp reject the well-earned authority of Reality and all of the merit-based professions dealing with it.
Liberal Media
Given capitalistic forces, the media will realign with the warring factions and cater to different aspects of society. Fear and strident headlines sell, so they naturally amplify the thundering noises coming from the other side. The Reality-aligned media, which is generally referred to as mainstream media, strives to provide the truth of the situation but it’s in constant conflict trying to create a balance with the Anti-Reality faction. This faction being unmoored from the truth, to be fair in reporting, balance has to suffer. Due to this imbalance the Anti-Reality group will accuse the media of bias, unfairness, and censorship, as they don’t see their Anti-Reality faction being well represented. This is why reality has a liberal bias.
MAGA Media
With the vacuum left by traditional media, a media environment designed to cater to the needs of the Anti-Reality faction, arose. Given how flimsy the relationship with truth is, it’s a media environment driven by emotions, by how people feel. And as fear and sensationalism sells, they generate massive amounts of noise. This audience capture happens all the time, but if one faction wants to hear professional reporting while the other just cherry-picking of the news which make them feel better, one side will be obviously better informed than the other.
Social media
Social media has become the battle ground of the culture wars, it’s an algorithmically curated pool of information for constant consumption and interaction. A massive memetic breeding ground where memetic exchange happens with abandon. A battleground where the warring factions at best shout past each other and at worst engage in campaigns of harassment, doxing, and stochastic terrorism. With the battle cry of “absolute freedom of speech” the Anti-Reality faction forces media companies to relax policies allowing for more falsehoods, propaganda, and lies to fill the space. While, seeing the invasion of their feeds, the Reality faction and its battle cry of “censor and block them” try to limit the barrage. With the algorithms and selective boosts, the Balkanized Users shout past each other without understanding the most basic rules of discourse. Parallel universes within whispering distance of each other. With algorithms and policies not being able to deal with the strain, social media companies themselves begin to balkanize.
Words
Under all of these dynamics the soldiers of the culture wars, the words themselves, suffer. Their meaning morphs to the point that they can mean completely different things for different people. Fallacies of equivocation, where two people don’t have the same concepts for the same word, abound. No words suffer more than the signifiers of the groups themselves. As the culture war is taking place in this space, and the authoritarian Woke concentrates in this space, it’s no surprise that the most battles surround the words WOKE and MAGA. Making these seem as the main warring factions, the factions that vie for taking power and the presidency itself.
Alliances of necessity
To complicate matters further, WOKE and Anti-MAGA blur into each other and MAGA and Anti-WOKE do the same. But these are separate factions with separate goals and interests that might get insulted by the association. They are being insulted by the association. This is particularly true for the Anti-WOKE academic faction that, although sharing many commonalities with the WOKE at large and rejecting much of what MAGA represents, feel themselves being constantly attacked from the WOKE side for expressing valid concerns. And of course they attack back with gusto and big words.
People, with their multiple alliances, would be constantly confused and would start identifying with others in the alliance just to reduce the pain of their cognitive dissonances. Gelling the alliances even more. But these alliances are in place due to the way we communicate, of fail to. These are a dynamic set of interests that are not set in stone. And the only thing keeping them together are the words being used and the feelings these generate.
In conclusion
The media uses all of these words with abandon as if the meaning was understood by all. Just by using more precise terminology we could quickly solve a vast number of our communication problems, and allow messages to get through. So I have provided a handy translation guide as an attempt to sort things out.
Joseph Goebbels, the infamous Nazi Germany's Minister of Propaganda, developed and implemented propaganda techniques to exploit emotional responses while undermining factual information and critical thinking itself. His approaches included:
Repeating simple messages frequently
Appealing to fear and anger
Creating emotional associations rather than logical arguments
Dismissing contradictory information as untrustworthy
Using entertainment media to normalize political messages
Why should they be the only ones playing that game, while we keep a hand tied behind our back? we have reality on our side let’s put it to good use.
