I don’t think the usual mantra of politics is the mind-killer is meant to avoid all political issues, although that would be one interpretation. Rather, there are two distinct observations: one is purely descriptive, that politics can be a mind-killer. The second is proscriptive- to possibly refrain when possible from discussing politics until our general level of rationality improves. Unfortunately, that’s fairly difficult, because many of these issues matter. Moreover, it connects with certain problems where counter-intuitive or contrarian ideas are seen as somehow less political than more mainstream ones.
Moreover, it connects with certain problems where counter-intuitive or contrarian ideas are seen as somehow less political than more mainstream ones.
That’s… an excellent way of putting it. Non-mainstream political “tribes” are considered “less political” precisely because they don’t stand any chance of actually winning elections in the real world, so they get a Meta-Contrarian Boost on the internet. The usual ones I see are anarchists, libertarians, and neo-reactionaries.
Empirically I don’t think this is true. Minority political tribes sometimes get a pass for organizing themselves around things that aren’t partisan issues, or are only minor partisan issues, in the mainstream—the Greens sometimes benefit from this in US discourse, although they’re a complicated and very regionally dependent case—but as soon as you stake out a position on a mainstream claim, even if your reasoning is very different from the norm, you should expect to be attacked as viciously as any mainstream wonk. I expect neoreaction, for example, would have met with a much less heated reception if it weren’t for its views on race.
Minority views do get a boost on the Internet, but I think that has more to do with the echo-chamber effects that it encourages. It’s far easier to find or collect a group of people that all agree with you on Reddit or Tumblr than it is out there in the slow, short-range world of blood and bone.
That’s… an excellent way of putting it. Non-mainstream political “tribes” are considered “less political” precisely because they don’t stand any chance of actually winning elections in the real world, so they get a Meta-Contrarian Boost on the internet. The usual ones I see are anarchists, libertarians, and neo-reactionaries.
Considered where, and by whom? Because that is completely unlike my experience. On the Usenet groups rec.arts.sf.*, it was (I have not read Usenet for many years) absolutely standard that Progressive ideas were seen as non-political, while the merest hint of disagreement would immediately be piled on as “introducing politics to the discussion”. And the reactosphere is intensely aware that what they are talking is politics.
I don’t think the usual mantra of politics is the mind-killer is meant to avoid all political issues, although that would be one interpretation. Rather, there are two distinct observations: one is purely descriptive, that politics can be a mind-killer. The second is proscriptive- to possibly refrain when possible from discussing politics until our general level of rationality improves. Unfortunately, that’s fairly difficult, because many of these issues matter. Moreover, it connects with certain problems where counter-intuitive or contrarian ideas are seen as somehow less political than more mainstream ones.
That’s… an excellent way of putting it. Non-mainstream political “tribes” are considered “less political” precisely because they don’t stand any chance of actually winning elections in the real world, so they get a Meta-Contrarian Boost on the internet. The usual ones I see are anarchists, libertarians, and neo-reactionaries.
Empirically I don’t think this is true. Minority political tribes sometimes get a pass for organizing themselves around things that aren’t partisan issues, or are only minor partisan issues, in the mainstream—the Greens sometimes benefit from this in US discourse, although they’re a complicated and very regionally dependent case—but as soon as you stake out a position on a mainstream claim, even if your reasoning is very different from the norm, you should expect to be attacked as viciously as any mainstream wonk. I expect neoreaction, for example, would have met with a much less heated reception if it weren’t for its views on race.
Minority views do get a boost on the Internet, but I think that has more to do with the echo-chamber effects that it encourages. It’s far easier to find or collect a group of people that all agree with you on Reddit or Tumblr than it is out there in the slow, short-range world of blood and bone.
Considered where, and by whom? Because that is completely unlike my experience. On the Usenet groups rec.arts.sf.*, it was (I have not read Usenet for many years) absolutely standard that Progressive ideas were seen as non-political, while the merest hint of disagreement would immediately be piled on as “introducing politics to the discussion”. And the reactosphere is intensely aware that what they are talking is politics.