I know you’re likely to prefer avoiding any mention of individual “respectable” authors in such context, but… any examples? Please?
OK, I’ll try to give a current example, with the caveat that I’m giving it purely for illustrative purposes, not to start unwelcome politically charged discussions.
Observe the ongoing controversy over the recent shooting in Florida. Now, I’m not going to speculate on the details of the case itself at all—for the sake of the argument, you can assume any version of the events you wish, and what I’ll say will still apply.
Whatever may have actually occurred in this case, there is no doubt that: (1) conclusive evidence of what really happened is still lacking, and even less evidence was available when the controversy erupted some weeks ago, and yet (2) numerous respectable voices of the mainstream opinion rushed to express passionate condemnation of the shooter that went far beyond anything that could be reasonably inferred from the evidence, often going even beyond mere bias and spin into outright lies and fabrication. Even if, hypothetically, some evidence eventually emerges showing that their general conclusion was right, and the shooter really did something as nasty as they believe, it is simply undeniable that they have gone far beyond anything that might be justified given the presently available knowledge. (And it’s easy to find plenty of examples of vulgarity, silliness, malignancy, and dishonesty in their reactions.)
Now, how to explain these reactions? Clearly, some people’s reactions are easily explained with just plain “nationalism” in Orwell’s sense, since they share their own identity with the person who got killed. But what about those who have no such connection, which certainly includes the majority of the respectable opinion that got inflamed with such passionate intensity? It seems to me like a clear-cut case of “transferred nationalism” in Orwell’s sense.
(Again, I really hate to introduce any discussions of controversial daily politics on LW. I’m giving an example like this one only because I was specifically asked to do so, and I don’t intend to follow up with any specific discussion of the case. I’m interested in it only as a case study for examining the mechanisms of public opinion demonstrated in it.)
Okay, thanks. However, based on what I know of the US, nearly any murder or other serious incident caught in the news where the races of the victim and the accused were different would practically always provoke a hysterical reaction wracked with all the usual American neuroses. There’s nothing exceptionally bad about this case’s handling that hasn’t been true for a very long while IMO.
(Well, except for pre-Civil War times, when things might have been a little less convoulted but positively flaunted the heuristics we now find disgusting; the mainstream wouldn’t stop for a moment before assigning guilt based on how non-Anglo-Saxon* a participant was, and the radical anti-racists would jump to the opposite conclusion, often in a patronizing “Uncle Tom” way. Can’t point to a specific case from which I got this picture, and you might be justified in calling it oversimplified, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not just a modern political caricature of the bad old times.)
-* Were the Southern whites also considered Anglo-Saxon in the broad sense? If no, what word did they use to separate themselves and e.g. the Irish/Eastern European immigrants or other “inferior” whites?
However, based on what I know of the US, nearly any murder or other serious incident caught in the news where the races of the victim and the accused were different would practically always provoke a hysterical reaction wracked with all the usual American neuroses.
There is plenty of counter evidence to this.
Even some stuff that would seem to have all the building blocks for media exposure and revenue generation, like say the recent case of a home invasion where a young man sexually assaults and kills a 85 year old woman and beats her husband to the point of him being hospitalized.
Huh? So… what do you think makes the difference between this case and the ones that failed to detonate? If your answer looks too mind-killing to you, please PM me.
However, based on what I know of the US, nearly any murder or other serious incident caught in the news where the races of the victim and the accused were different would practically always provoke a hysterical reaction wracked with all the usual American neuroses. There’s nothing exceptionally bad about this case’s handling that hasn’t been true for a very long while IMO.
Well, I am giving it as an example of standard and long-standing attitudes of the sort that Orwell described as “transferred nationalism,” not some novel phenomenon.
Well, how about, say, Germany or Canada? The racial issues are obviously less charged here, and not due to their especial monoethnicity - and it appears to me from outside view that while people there might be unimaginably biased on other issues, they are at least more polite, less prone to contagnious hysteria and just have a higher sanity waterline as communities.
There are several reasons for why the prestige press is so fundamentalist in its fervor to stereowipe… The third is ideology: knowledge is evil. The fourth is the sheer will to power.
Sorry, but I think this is too partisan and arational (has Sailer even tried to imagine what his “enemies” think and believe before professing that they are basically Stalin and O’Brien?) to quote on LW. You could’ve just linked to the post.
The fact that Zimmerman stinks so badly at his self-appointed job of “neighborhood watch captain,” it led him to kill an innocent man. (If you think Martin was actually committing a crime, I can probably give you 2-to-1 odds.) In the absence of social condemnation, Zimmerman might continue carrying a gun in pursuit of his hobby. The media has put itself in charge of condemnation. Since some of their leaders seem very stupid, we would expect them to make mistakes. (In fact, you could argue they stink at this job and shouldn’t be in charge of condemnation at all.)
The fact that Florida law might allow two men to “stand their ground” and escalate the use of force until someone dies also seems relevant. If it actually happened then Florida voters should know. But I don’t think this played more than a small role in the media’s actions, because they seem too stupid on the whole to make decisions based on policy concerns.
You are aware that according to the best theory based on public available evidence Zimmerman didn’t shoot Martin until the latter was beating his head on the pavement? Also in that kind of situation “stand your ground” laws aren’t all that relevant since there is no way to retreat.
Edit: Also, your “media incompetence” theory doesn’t explain why all the mistakes went in the same direction.
By saying “incompetence” you make it sound like I think the media wants to create accurate beliefs about reality, but fails due to other factors. This seems as silly as thinking the human brain evolved to get the right answer, in general, but has all these extraneous biases mucking it up. I thought I explained how I see the media’s motives.
I don’t understand what you mean. Are you assuming that beating someone’s head on the pavement would count as a crime? Because like I said, Trayvon Martin had a perfect right under Florida law to stand his ground if the strange man with the gun genuinely seemed threatening.
Edit: Also, your “media incompetence” theory doesn’t explain why all the mistakes went in the same direction.
Why not? All their mistakes seemed to go in one direction back when Chris T.N.O. Matthews was saying Al Gore “would lick the bathroom floor” to be President. But I explain that as the result of personal dislike combined with a tribal sense of offense at Bill Clinton’s actions, not a bias against Democrats. Why on Earth would you not expect idiots like that to fly off the handle at the death of an innocent child?
OK, I’ll try to give a current example, with the caveat that I’m giving it purely for illustrative purposes, not to start unwelcome politically charged discussions.
Observe the ongoing controversy over the recent shooting in Florida. Now, I’m not going to speculate on the details of the case itself at all—for the sake of the argument, you can assume any version of the events you wish, and what I’ll say will still apply.
Whatever may have actually occurred in this case, there is no doubt that: (1) conclusive evidence of what really happened is still lacking, and even less evidence was available when the controversy erupted some weeks ago, and yet (2) numerous respectable voices of the mainstream opinion rushed to express passionate condemnation of the shooter that went far beyond anything that could be reasonably inferred from the evidence, often going even beyond mere bias and spin into outright lies and fabrication. Even if, hypothetically, some evidence eventually emerges showing that their general conclusion was right, and the shooter really did something as nasty as they believe, it is simply undeniable that they have gone far beyond anything that might be justified given the presently available knowledge. (And it’s easy to find plenty of examples of vulgarity, silliness, malignancy, and dishonesty in their reactions.)
Now, how to explain these reactions? Clearly, some people’s reactions are easily explained with just plain “nationalism” in Orwell’s sense, since they share their own identity with the person who got killed. But what about those who have no such connection, which certainly includes the majority of the respectable opinion that got inflamed with such passionate intensity? It seems to me like a clear-cut case of “transferred nationalism” in Orwell’s sense.
(Again, I really hate to introduce any discussions of controversial daily politics on LW. I’m giving an example like this one only because I was specifically asked to do so, and I don’t intend to follow up with any specific discussion of the case. I’m interested in it only as a case study for examining the mechanisms of public opinion demonstrated in it.)
Okay, thanks. However, based on what I know of the US, nearly any murder or other serious incident caught in the news where the races of the victim and the accused were different would practically always provoke a hysterical reaction wracked with all the usual American neuroses. There’s nothing exceptionally bad about this case’s handling that hasn’t been true for a very long while IMO.
(Well, except for pre-Civil War times, when things might have been a little less convoulted but positively flaunted the heuristics we now find disgusting; the mainstream wouldn’t stop for a moment before assigning guilt based on how non-Anglo-Saxon* a participant was, and the radical anti-racists would jump to the opposite conclusion, often in a patronizing “Uncle Tom” way. Can’t point to a specific case from which I got this picture, and you might be justified in calling it oversimplified, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not just a modern political caricature of the bad old times.)
-* Were the Southern whites also considered Anglo-Saxon in the broad sense? If no, what word did they use to separate themselves and e.g. the Irish/Eastern European immigrants or other “inferior” whites?
There is plenty of counter evidence to this.
Even some stuff that would seem to have all the building blocks for media exposure and revenue generation, like say the recent case of a home invasion where a young man sexually assaults and kills a 85 year old woman and beats her husband to the point of him being hospitalized.
Huh? So… what do you think makes the difference between this case and the ones that failed to detonate? If your answer looks too mind-killing to you, please PM me.
Man bites dog partially explains it.
Well, I am giving it as an example of standard and long-standing attitudes of the sort that Orwell described as “transferred nationalism,” not some novel phenomenon.
Well, how about, say, Germany or Canada? The racial issues are obviously less charged here, and not due to their especial monoethnicity - and it appears to me from outside view that while people there might be unimaginably biased on other issues, they are at least more polite, less prone to contagnious hysteria and just have a higher sanity waterline as communities.
I think Steve Sailer does a good job of analysing this.
Sorry, but I think this is too partisan and arational (has Sailer even tried to imagine what his “enemies” think and believe before professing that they are basically Stalin and O’Brien?) to quote on LW. You could’ve just linked to the post.
Good point, fixed the post.
The fact that Zimmerman stinks so badly at his self-appointed job of “neighborhood watch captain,” it led him to kill an innocent man. (If you think Martin was actually committing a crime, I can probably give you 2-to-1 odds.) In the absence of social condemnation, Zimmerman might continue carrying a gun in pursuit of his hobby. The media has put itself in charge of condemnation. Since some of their leaders seem very stupid, we would expect them to make mistakes. (In fact, you could argue they stink at this job and shouldn’t be in charge of condemnation at all.)
The fact that Florida law might allow two men to “stand their ground” and escalate the use of force until someone dies also seems relevant. If it actually happened then Florida voters should know. But I don’t think this played more than a small role in the media’s actions, because they seem too stupid on the whole to make decisions based on policy concerns.
You are aware that according to the best theory based on public available evidence Zimmerman didn’t shoot Martin until the latter was beating his head on the pavement? Also in that kind of situation “stand your ground” laws aren’t all that relevant since there is no way to retreat.
Edit: Also, your “media incompetence” theory doesn’t explain why all the mistakes went in the same direction.
By saying “incompetence” you make it sound like I think the media wants to create accurate beliefs about reality, but fails due to other factors. This seems as silly as thinking the human brain evolved to get the right answer, in general, but has all these extraneous biases mucking it up. I thought I explained how I see the media’s motives.
I don’t understand what you mean. Are you assuming that beating someone’s head on the pavement would count as a crime? Because like I said, Trayvon Martin had a perfect right under Florida law to stand his ground if the strange man with the gun genuinely seemed threatening.
Why not? All their mistakes seemed to go in one direction back when Chris T.N.O. Matthews was saying Al Gore “would lick the bathroom floor” to be President. But I explain that as the result of personal dislike combined with a tribal sense of offense at Bill Clinton’s actions, not a bias against Democrats. Why on Earth would you not expect idiots like that to fly off the handle at the death of an innocent child?