Pet Haidt

These people deserve all the contempt in the world. I like how the students are showing their disapproval. No doubt Haidt and his pathetic friends will feel vindicated in theri complaint about “cancel culture”, because surely students expressing an opinion is the biggest threat to freedom of speech, while a fascist government destroying academic freedom is just “what the woke made us do”.

You have to watch this:
https://bsky.app/profile/404media.co/post/3mm2ivguvq22x

Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory is analogous to multiple intelligences theory. Same use of folk taxonomy, addition of popularly demanded dimensions such as liberty, unclear divisions, resistance to testability, etc.

His student Ravi Iyer is no better, as I detail in “The pseudoscience of libertarian morality.” (http://critiquesoflibertarianism.blogspot.com/2010/12/pseudoscience-of-libertarian-morality.html)

Ok, there is something very funny about Haidt saying people shouldn’t be fragile when their ideas are challenged; and then getting booed by an audience who think his theories are nonsense.

Maybe the etiquette for commencement addresses is to be a little more restrained that you would be in a graduate seminar. But, in general, you wanna be an academic you gotta be prepared to get booed sometimes.

I am not even in the USA, but I remember thinking at the time when he came out with his additional axes of morality for conservatives that that was (a) obvious nonsense and (b) weirdly and again obviously parochial. The entire idea hinged on grouping people into liberals and conservatives and then deriving some fundamental human axes of morality, but humans a thousand or six thousand years ago would not have conceptualised themselves into the boxes liberal and conservative, and nor do many humans in cultures other than the USA today.

And purity, honour, and order are simply not about morality. (I will grant loyalty, but it would be very silly to claim that liberals don’t care about that.) I could just as well claim that I have a deeper and more complete sense of morality than conservatives because, in contrast to them, I have an additional axis of morality in cycling to work.

That people take somebody like Haidt (or Jordan Peterson, or Nick Bostrom, etc.) seriously or pretend to do so is one of those things that makes me feel very alienated from most of humanity.

Haidt is typical of an entire class, including the other Jonathans (Chait and Rauch) and the rest of the Atlantic bedbugs and Harper’s Letter signatories who’ve made wringing their hands over “incivility” and “cancel culture” their entire grift. If you can’t tell, I utterly despise them.

Whereas liberals thought of Republicans as bigots and misogynists, concerned with preserving their own position in racial and gender hierarchies, Haidt explained that they actually had their own set of values, based on order, purity, honour and loyalty.

Bigots and misogynists also have their own set of values, and those values are based on particular concepts of order, purity, honour and loyalty. That might even be true by definition. So if somebody said that Republicans are not bigots and misogynists because they have their own set of values based on concepts of order, purity, honour and loyalty, my response would be that the reverse is true, that they are bigots and misogynists because they have their own set of values based on concepts of order, purity, honour and loyalty.

J-D and I are in agreement, but J-D said it better.

Let me also add:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meine_Ehre_heißt_Treue

Kudos for “Haidt’s work writings on this topic”.

What Haidt meant was always unclear. By his own account, he had a road to Damascus moment where he realized he and people like him had been unfair to conservatives. He had a tautology and he believed that was its meaning. Everything since then looks like the same move over and over again. It’s in different contexts but it’s always “the liberals are wrong and I’m in a position to explain to them why conservatives are right.” If that’s all he has to do, clarifying his meaning and checking it against evidence and logical are both moot.

If there are still Republicans who are upset that they read a book that told them conservatives value morality and other “old values” (beauty? Equal respect for other humans?), I hope they get their house in order and remove their support from the GOP.

Haidt pretends that these bigots have their sense of morality, that’s largely based on disgust, and that we need to respect their sense of morality. But he entirely omits that WE also have our sense of morality, that it is based on disgust and horror at the iniquities of these right-wing assholes, and yet somehow, our sense of morality is not given equal weight to that of the RWNJs.

Indeed, he pretends that he is a liberal just -explaining- the right-wing. But in his unwillingness to offer equal status to our morality and our disgust, he shows he is just another right-wing gaslighter.

Haidt explained that they actually had their own set of values, based on order, purity, honour and loyalty. The wheels started falling off that one when Donald Trump, the antithesis of all of these things, came along and received the unqualified support

No idea what Haidt thinks but to the extent that Trumpism has nationalist/fascoid elements (especially re immigration and suppressing dissent) it seems obvious it incorporates these themes.

I find lots to argue about with Haidt, and he certainly handles some of the issues he raises up quite clumsily. But there is a core of sense to the positions he takes, even though he takes them too far. He describes some of what’s going on with my more conservative relatives and friends quite aptly; his take on social media for kids is right on; and plenty of more careful researchers have started to examine these issues.

Engels @ 20: “each of those his efforts are a vast improvement on the established liberal lines (roughly “evil people doing evil things cuz they’re evil” for the first one”

Surely you are aware that everyone imagines themselves as the hero of their story, no? I mean, nobody imagines themselves as a moustache-twirling villain, the Dark Lord, torturer of bunny rabbits and kicker of small dogs, in their legend, right? So everybody is going to have an explanation for why their own actions, their own judgments, are entirely cromulent, and it isn’t doesn’t take a PhD in rocket surgery (sic) to figure that out. Nor a doorstop book from Jonathan Haidt.

Haidt’s sin was imagining that these Reichwing nutters’ internal story-line was entirely justified, and -our- (as liberals/progressives/etc) internal story-line was not due any consideration at all.

He’s not some Nostradamus: just a modern-day Charles Murray.

Setting aside the obvious convenience of having the political and media class obsess over “young people being on their phones too much” instead of, say, ongoing economic, environmental, and social collapse — all of which would require changes unpopular with the wealthy and powerful — I can’t help noticing that social media seems to have been vastly more psychologically destructive for the wealthy and powerful themselves. Most people, after all, have at least some prior experience of being told they’re a tit. Our Noble Elites, apparently, did not.

Curiously, though, I’ve yet to see serious proposals to restrict or monitor social media use among politicians, media elites, or billionaires, despite the fact that they wield far more power and influence. Odd, that.

But there is a core of sense to the positions he takes, even though he takes them too far. He describes some of what’s going on with my more conservative relatives and friends quite aptly …

I’m sure it’s true that some of what he has to say has some merit and that there is a possibility of being led to a worthwhile insight by considering what he has to say, because this is true of everybody; but since it’s true of everybody, it’s not by itself enough to justify supposing that it’s worth paying attention to him rather than to somebody else.

The commencement speech NYU grads Haidted: seems like BS to me but not outrageous or unusual by the standards of these things:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/nyu-jonathan-haidt-commencement-speech/687168/

he started discussions on three important topics

Really, he started them?

I think John Qs characterisation of opportunistic bandwagon jumping, both siderism and normalisation is more accurate. Also, as much as I am trying to keep my kid away from social media for now, I really don’t need Jonathan Haidt for that, especially since he is just bloviating:

An analysis done in 72 countries shows no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the roll-out of social media globally. Moreover, findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the largest long-term study of adolescent brain development in the United States, has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital-technology use.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2

Chet skrev:

Haidt’s sin was imagining that these Reichwing nutters’ internal story-line was entirely justified, and -our- (as liberals/progressives/etc) internal story-line was not due any consideration at all.

He’s not some Nostradamus: just a modern-day Charles Murray.

So dropped the mic, and the countryside did shake with that feedback.

deploring “our partisan environment” is the defining position of centrists or people posing as centrists to support the right (since these strictures are almost always directed leftward). But your pseudonym appears as. a relic of a former position where partisanship (class struggle) was taken for granted

I want partisanship based on class, not lifestyle stuff or billionaire-funded parties. Democrats are generally better than Republicans but they’re still diabollically awful and on many issues (esp. but not only foreign policy) almost exactly the same. Republican voters aren’t all equivalent to Trump/“fascists”/deplorable people and some are open to persuasion. Any socialist will be speaking to those in preference to Democrat-supporting boogies making performatively radical gestures on teh internet.

Can any of the Haidt-ers point me to books that address the same question as the Righteous Mind (preferably but not necessarily by lefties)? Adorno’s was great for its time but nearly a century old now. Altemeyer’s interesting but by the author’s stipulation focusses on extremism on the right, not polarisation per se. Or alternatively arguments for why psychological approaches are misguided.

I’ve never read anything by Haidt and I imagine I never will. But I do have a couple of questions concerning the discussion here.

First, I am aware—because it happened to a friend of mine many years ago—that he raised some questions concerning the way his English dept. was dealing with certain pedagogical issues and that some of his colleagues then accused him of being racist and sexist. He wasn’t, but the attacks on him became so virulent that he left that institution. He also, as a result, did migrate from his far left positions all the way to the far right. I raise that because it seems to me there’s a bit of a tendency here to attack or at least be dismissive of those who don’t sufficiently hate Haidt. Consider the political damage that might do.

Second, and I imagine related to the first, it seems to me there’s a tendency here to press the notion that there are only two sides, one good, the other bad. What about those of us who detest Trump and all that he and his followers stand for, but find that every attempt to broaden and deepen the discussion of our political predicaments by exploring the interactions which got us to this point–which means that there’s a lot of criticism to go around–are, again, dismissed as providing support to an awful enemy?

No gods and precious few heroes.
No devils and precious few demons.

[…] some of his colleagues then accused him of being racist and sexist. He wasn’t, but the attacks on him became so virulent that he left that institution.

How about you let us decide that by providing us with more pertinent details of the case? What were these “certain pedagogical issues”? How was the department dealing with them? What were your friend’s questions?

find that every attempt to broaden and deepen the discussion of our political predicaments by exploring the interactions which got us to this point–which means that there’s a lot of criticism to go around–are, again, dismissed as providing support to an awful enemy

Every attempt? Every! attempt! Maybe you should broaden and deepen your search for better interlocutors.

Yes, it does feel bad to get a negative reaction from others when voicing your ideas. Perhaps the bad feeling is a signal that you have attracted unjust disapprobation. Or maybe the bad feeling is telling you that you violated an important social norm; therefore, inviting a legitimate negative reaction from present parties. The truth depends on the details. And the signaling utility of that bad feeling hinges on your ability to weigh those details against competing explanations.

RobinM, your diction in post#41 betrays an excess of pathos relative to the evidence provided to support such pathos. So, if you are trying to project the umbrage you seem to feel from proffered scenarios “First” and “Second” onto the readership of this blog, then you will need to produce more detailed receipts.

RobinM at 41 tells a sad tale of a friend malignly treated by oversensitive colleagues, and cries out for understanding, but i must ask, did these malign English dept. employees pass a law in the state legislature to prohibit the friend’s point of view from being taught? spoken? contained in a public library? discussed on social media? spoken over the public airwaves? surely the English dept. bozos could have been kinder – every bozo could, naturally, especially me…

but i wonder, i wonder yet…

the friend who so facilely and easily became “alt-right”, now living a happy life, I assume, considering the present overwhelming power and wealth of their faction, completely dominating all aspects of life for every citizen, and most nations of the earth via the crushing military power and infinite treasure at their command… I wonder at what it takes to completely change a person’s moral, political, spiritual and intellectual compass. usually this is a trauma like war or some kind of religious revelation, god themself reaching down to transform us utterly. not, frankly, a bad job experience. lots of people work in shitty job environments every day, lots of people are picked on by their boss every day, and it doesn’t change their inner commitments. so it is that I wonder yet….

I wonder yet if perhaps the English dept. dastards saw something RobinM didn’t, or heard something RobinM didn’t, or spotted something in RobinM’s friend that RobinM hadn’t – after all, RobinM would despise his friend’s point of view if they had held it earlier. But they hold it now…

…so isn’t the more obvious solution to this conundrum not that the filthy English dept. bastards somehow did this to RobinM’s friend, changing every part of their mind and spirit permanently and irrevocably without even a gun or a god, but instead that they spotted the truth about RobinM’s friend, who did not appreciate, at the time, being told the truth. i wonder if the friend felt that RobinM would think less of them if they knew the truth! RobinM assures us they would have despised them… what if they valued RobinM’s friendship too much to reveal that part of themselves to RobinM, and hid it as long as they could, until, completely exposed (or eager to join the side they were increasingly delighted to see march victorious and powerful across a cowering, fearful, helpless globe), there was no other choice. it is the friendship that makes the tragedy here, not the English dept. jerkos.

Anyway, dont worry, everyone in the English dept. will be fired next year when the legislature moves the money out of the humanities into building the latest Conservative Center For Free Enterprise And Transphobia on campus and staffs it with youth pastors and cryptocurrency podcasters.

Right-wingers imagine themselves as the villains all the time …

There is no inconsistency between imagining yourself as the villain of somebody else’s story but at the same time imagining yourself as the hero of the story; all that’s required is to imagine that the people in whose story you play the part of villain are themselves the bad guys. That’s how Liam Neeson’s character in Taken is thinking when he says:

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you’re looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that will be the end of it – I will not look for you, I will not pursue you… but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you… and I will kill you.

‘I am a nightmare for people like you’, he says, but he also believes that nightmares are what the people he’s talking about have earned, and from what I can tell (I haven’t actually seen the whole thing) the film is made for people who agree.

They don’t imagine themselves as protectors or defenders or liberators — instead they imagine themselves as the scourges of an unworthy humanity which doesn’t deserve to be rescued.

Nazis, and Klansmen, and MAGA, imagine themselves as scourging the unworthy in order to be protectors, defenders and liberators. They don’t imagine themselves as protectors, defenders and liberators of people like you and me because people like us are the ones they imagine to be unworthy.

While I think concern about excessive moral condemnation is valid in principle, and I agree that political and intellectual communities can become socially punitive in ways that are counterproductive, at the same time I wonder if there’s a bit of an asymmetry here. Haidt-style arguments for “robust discourse” generally defend the right of people to say things others may find offensive, abrasive, or even harmful. But critics of those positions are often asked to respond in especially restrained, charitable, and sensitive ways.

So I suppose my question is: if we genuinely support a more open and adversarial discourse culture, shouldn’t that include tolerating sharp moral criticism as well – even from pseudonymous commenters on a left-leaning blog?

engels: “Can any of the Haidt-ers point me to books that address the same question as the Righteous Mind” [The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion ]

I thought the answer to the question what “divides” people should be rather obvious for a self-identified Marxist?

With respect, I don’t agree. This is above and beyond the usual thing. Historically, the set of people I think of as the Slavers made one American movie asserting that they were actually the heroes and that their opponents (abolitionists) were the villains. That movie was Birth of a Nation. In it, the Slavers are presented as conventional heroes; they are protectors/defenders/liberators — of endangered white womanhood and oppressed white (Western) civilization. Later the Slavers took pride of place in another movie — GWTW — which was made about them if not specifically by them of for them. There they were put forward as recognizable human beings with recognizable motivations and the strong implicit claim was that whatever they were, they were not monsters. (Whereas in Birth of a Nation the implicit claim was that even if the Klansmen were monsters, they were sacred, holy monsters who were fighting on God’s side.) In the first flick the Slavers are heroic and right, and in the second, though they may not be either one, they’re human and consequently it’s okay to sympathize with them. In neither case are they villains. In fact in both instances the case is specifically made that they are not villains. In America, cartoons and the movies together have compiled a very comprehensive précis of what a villain looks like, acts like, and does, and that’s the profile Trump and the people have been diving into when it comes to crafting their image(s), individually and collectively. (I feel like I’ve given enough examples of this but if you want more I can come up with them.)

Unfortunately there’s no cinematic example of the clear ascension of the villain (as opposed to the misunderstood hero or the other guys’ hero or the protagonist who is substituted for a hero) to top billing or central cultural focus today. The Boys comes the closest, but even in The Boys the bad guys are shown to be bad and they lose in the end. Birth of a Nation is a self-exculpation and GWTW is an apology, but as of yet there’s no movie-version of a nonapology, so I can’t provide one. But if Trump and his associates are successful in the long run that may change.

Similar to what bekabot wrote at 40:

I had assumed for a long time that everybody needs to see themselves as the good guys to preserve their ego, but no, there is a second option: convince yourself that everybody is evil, and that therefore all that matters is to win. That is what fascists, including the nazi subcategory of fascists, and objectivists plus adjacent kinds of libertarians do to justify their sociopathy to themselves:

Fascists see everything as a zero-sum struggle for dominance, and to them, anybody who claims otherwise (e.g., socialists who say they want equality) must merely be pretending as some kind of underhanded, cheating tactic. So, everybody is sociopathically out for power, but the fascists are the only honest and honorable people because at least they openly admit it.

Nazis see history and politics as a struggle between races, and to them, anybody who claims otherwise (e.g., socialists who say they want equality) must merely be a traitor who wants the other, inferior races to win because they hate themselves. So, everybody wants some race to win a race war, but the Nazis are the only honest and honorable people because at least they openly admit it (and aren’t race traitors).

Objectivists see the world as a struggle between individuals, and to them, anybody who claims otherwise (e.g., socialists who say they want equality) must merely be pretending because they realise they can’t win and thus opt to drag the heroic creators down to their own level of inferiority through underhanded means like a welfare state. So, everybody at least secretly accepts that life is a struggle between individuals where the greatest entrepreneur should win, but the objectivists are the only honest and honorable people because at least they openly accept that.

Another, albeit very idiosyncratic, example is Robert E. Howard, they guy who wrote the original Conan the Barbarian stories. He was a massive racist, but he was also very disgusted by civilisation in the sense of complex societies with laws, which he unfavourably contrasted with the noble, natural state of barbarism; thus Conan being the hero. So, everybody at least secretly accepts that life is a struggle between individuals where the strongest should win, but some people know they wouldn’t win fairly so they invent laws to drag the strong down to their own level of inferiority.

Point is, evil people don’t convince themselves they are good people; they psychologically project their own evil onto everybody else, then convince themselves that everybody else is in denial about being equally evil, and then pat themselves on the back for being evil but honest.

Regarding academics accused of abuse, driven from their institutions, and then joining the far right: I can recommend the video on The War on Science by the Youtuber Shaun. It is very long but easy to listen to while doing chores, for example. Not to spoil too much, but it is unbelievable how many of the chapter authors of that book who claim unfair oppression by the woke mob did in fact variously assault women, had inappropriate relationships with their students, racially or gender discriminated against their students, or do not consider indigenous people to be, well, people with rights and feelings. A strong predictor of a the-woke-are-after-me story is being a massive reputational liability to one’s employer and colleagues.

A strong predictor of a the-woke-are-after-me story is being a massive reputational liability to one’s employer and colleagues.

Well it’s fortunate that intellectual progress is never brought about by people who are a reputational liability to quasi-corporate unis funded by donations of from the mega-rich and fee income from the wannabe rich.

Thanks for the recommendations and I agree with MrMr #54.

I was thinking of reading Honneth, but along the lines of some other comments on this post, at some point I realized that at least half the people reading a book like “the struggle for recognition” are going to come away from it believing they know who the struggle is against and it’s “liberal cosmopolitan elites,” and more than half are going to come away from it believing they read a book about a kind of original sin and just learned about a new way people try to defend selfishness, and yes there will be people who believe both 100%.

There they were put forward as recognizable human beings with recognizable motivations and the strong implicit claim was that whatever they were, they were not monsters. (Whereas in Birth of a Nation the implicit claim was that even if the Klansmen were monsters, they were sacred, holy monsters who were fighting on God’s side.)

The use of the word ‘monsters’ reminds me of Sesame Street. Originally, and still in most contexts, it’s clearly understood that ‘monster’ is a negative description. For whatever reason, the people who made Sesame Street decided to do the equivalent of ‘reclaiming’ the word. As well as describing themselves as ‘monsters’, some of the monster characters in Sesame Street clearly incorporate into their design features traditionally considered monstrous. But the monster characters are not ‘monstrous’ in the original sense: they are just other members of the community. Horns on the head? Fangs in the mouth? Glaring yellow eyes? Yes, but so what? They’re not using these features to affirm anything negative, even though that’s their traditional use; they’re using them (how consciously I don’t know) to undermine the idea that traditional symbology is a reliable guide to what’s good and what’s bad. But something similar can be done by other actors with worse motives than Sesame Street …

In America, cartoons and the movies together have compiled a very comprehensive précis of what a villain looks like, acts like, and does, and that’s the profile Trump and the people have been diving into when it comes to crafting their image(s), individually and collectively.

I question whether it’s novel for people to adopt as part of their symbology what have traditionally been insignia of villainy, but novel or not, it’s fully compatible with considering oneself heroic.

Nazis see history and politics as a struggle between races, and to them, anybody who claims otherwise (e.g., socialists who say they want equality) must merely be a traitor who wants the other, inferior races to win because they hate themselves. So, everybody wants some race to win a race war, but the Nazis are the only honest and honorable people because at least they openly admit it (and aren’t race traitors).

Yes, Nazis believe that there is a race war which every race wants to win for itself, but also yes, Nazis believe that the races opposing them are inferior which means (necessarily) that they consider their own race superior. To struggle and fight for the victory of the superior is heroic.

Objectivists see the world as a struggle between individuals, and to them, anybody who claims otherwise (e.g., socialists who say they want equality) must merely be pretending because they realise they can’t win and thus opt to drag the heroic creators down to their own level of inferiority through underhanded means like a welfare state. So, everybody at least secretly accepts that life is a struggle between individuals where the greatest entrepreneur should win, but the objectivists are the only honest and honorable people because at least they openly accept that.

Yes, Randian Objectivists do indeed believe that the greatest entrepreneurs should win and yes, they do indeed believe that they are resisting efforts to drag heroic creators down to the level of their inferiors. Consider that language. The greatest! Their inferiors! Heroic! ‘Heroic’ is indeed the word: absolutely they consider themselves the heroes of the story.

Rorty was a nominalist, historicist and a fierce critic of language, i.e. ‘ironist’ – that’s hardly revolutionary in the history of philosophy and I am still somewhat surprised by how much push-back he received from the academic establishment.

@J-D 64
‘Never do anything that might antagonise people’ is not a sensible rule to try to live by.

I never said this, and as a matter of fact I think that “moralistic agression” is a necessity: eg., for anti-racism, if some people are not racist, but do nothing against the racist, racism will go on forever; anti-racism (the shaming or shunning of racist people) is a form of moralistic aggression necessary to stop racism.

But, moralistic aggression also works because there is a large group that reinforces itself through enforcing this moralistic aggression on outsiders (that might in some cases be excessive, in other correct).

What I find weird in Haidt is that he doesn’t claim that SJW or similar are going too much into moralistic aggression, he in facts totally ignores this and assumes that lefties are super-rational Benthamites, wich is weird.

@63

In re: monsters — I was not talking about the Sesame Street variety. (Margaret Mitchell can speak for herself.)

In re: villainy — I’m sorry, but if you act the part of the villain long enough and hard enough and do a sufficiently convincing job, you have to be prepared for the possibility that the audience will buy into the act. If they take you at your word, it’s not the critic’s fault. This remains true no matter how you feel about it.

i try not to wrap myself up too much in counterfactuals. what if obama said this, what if a democrat did that, what if it was a rich white conservative pastor and not a poor black trans youth who did this thing that x, the everything app, is upset about…very difficult to wrap one’s brain around in any kind of honest way, difficult enough going through life trying to understand this world rather than formulating an alternative world and trying to understand that one …. but in considering ETB’s #68, especially the clear-headed observation that one reason public condemnation and shaming has become more prevalent may be that there simply is nothing else that can ever be done…

what if you privately report your assault to a supervisor? the supervisor will side with the rapist 100 times out of 100. privately report it to hr? you will be fired, the rapist will be promoted. call the police? they won’t pursue the case, and if somehow they do, the jury won’t convict if the guy who did it is rich enough to pay influencers and publicists to smear you enough (i leave it to the reader to choose their favorite example here.) if somehow a conviction takes place or a civil suit goes your way the rapists (note the plural!) on the supreme court will ensure the conviction is overturned, or the rapist president will pardon them if he can. and on top of everything else, you’ll also be permanently bankrupted by a ruinous, life-destroying lawsuit from your rapist (sometimes even if you’re successful! see e. jean carroll today!)

so there are two choices. either you keep your fucking mouth shut forever or go on social media and tell your story and try to motivate other people who are fed up with being treated this way to help you. who else will help? churches will tell you to shut your mouth, you’re a filthy slut trying to destroy a good christian man. the authorities will shrug, the powerful will close ranks, not 90 percent of the time, but 100 percent of the time. so what else is someone supposed to do? shut up forever, i guess. that’s the anti-woke free-speech theory of hashtag Me Too: “they should shut their slut mouths or we’ll shut it for them.”

so i do indeed wonder – if sexual assault was investigated and prosecuted properly, if workplaces were overseen by supervisors and managers who saw the elimination of sexual assault as desirable, if civil cases against sexual abusers were handled with speed and care, would hashtag MeToo (writ broadly) ever have happened? would it even make sense for hashtag Me Too to happen in such a world? i know that i shouldn’t wonder; on some level this is approximately as historically and politically plausible as imagining a world where everyone rides to work on pink donkeys. but i do wonder nonetheless.

In re: monsters — I was not talking about the Sesame Street variety.

Of course you weren’t! I never imagined you were!

The point I was trying to make is that the monsters of Sesame Street are an illustrative example of how people who do not think of themselves as evil can adopt and make use, for their own purposes, of symbols traditionally associated with evil.

In re: villainy — I’m sorry, but if you act the part of the villain long enough and hard enough and do a sufficiently convincing job, you have to be prepared for the possibility that the audience will buy into the act.

I find unconvincing the rhetorical device of saying ‘I’m sorry’ in this kind of context.

Part of the audience for Donald Trump and MAGA (for example; or for the Nazis or the KKK) consists of opponents who were always against them and who regard them as villains not on the basis of their symbology but on the much more relevant basis of their actions (although they may also find their symbology uncongenial). But they themselves continue to think of themselves as the heroes of the story, and this is fully compatible with the deliberate use of symbols traditionally associated with villains, and another part of their audience can feel similarly. As for any part of their audience which has turned from pro to anti, I don’t think it’s because they accepted the symbols at first but then became uneasy about them; I think it’s deeds, not symbols, that have made the difference.

In the Mitchell and Webb ‘Are we the baddies?’ sketch which I am guessing many here will be familiar with, the Nazi characters begin to doubt themselves because of the SS use of death’s-head (skull) insignia. But that’s a joke, not something that really happened. When the SS adopted death’s-head insignia, they must have been aware of the traditional evil associations. Despite this symbological choice, however, they continued to think of themselves as the heroes of the story, not the villains.

If somebody tells me that it was continuing to use the villainous sign of the death’s-head that eventually transformed the SS into villains, or transformed perceptions of them so that they came to be considered villains (by themselves or by anybody else), my response is ‘No, the symbols were not the thing that made them be perceived as villainous, and also not the thing about them that was actually villainous’. When the Nuremberg Tribunal ruled that the SS was a criminal organisation, they had stronger grounds for doing so than their insignia.

Why, then, would the SS, or anybody else, knowingly adopt insignia traditionally associated with villainy? There might be more than one reason, but one might be to inspire terror in their enemies. It’s true that villains inspire terror, but it’s also true that a desire to inspire terror in one’s enemies is (alas!) fully compatible with considering oneself heroic.

beka skrev:

I’m sorry, but if you act the part of the villain long enough and hard enough and do a sufficiently convincing job, you have to be prepared for the possibility that the audience will buy into the act. If they take you at your word, it’s not the critic’s fault. This remains true no matter how you feel about it.

“It’s like Nietzsche said: If you wave your pom-poms for the monsters long enough, eventually you get to play on the monster team. Or something like that.”
— Moran, Jenna Katerin (as R. Sean Borgstrom), Strange Bedfellows. In Chambers, John, ed. Aberrant: Worldwide Phase I. Clarkston, GA: White Wolf Game Studio, 2000.

It’s hard to know what to say to people in 2026 who still think Twitter is going to smash the patriarchy.

@74

I wonder why Boehm believes he knows what hunter gatherers were thinking. Structurally the behavior would be the same if one replaced “got rid of people who were trying to dominate” with “got rid of people whom no one liked”. The failure to address that suggests a desire to prove a specific way of life in the present is better than others MAGA thinks liberals want to dominate them, after all. Someone who was trying would have questioned their assumptions by now.

So, to summarise: action is too close to persecution, protest is divisive identity politics, and public criticism is “performative Twitter activism” – which leaves very little that would be considered acceptable as a form of engagement…

“Complainants have legal anonymity” is an interesting rebuttal – particularly regarding a system that campaigners, watchdogs and even the CPS have spent years criticising for retraumatising rape victims through invasive data demands, endless delays, humiliating investigations, and routinely treating complainants as less credible than the accused. Still, reassuring to know all of those concerns were apparently resolved – presumably with the same institutional competence that gives the Met its outstanding reputation on misogyny and violence against women.

It’s hard to know what to say to people in 2026 who still don’t recognise structural oppression as a hegemonic institutional problem, beyond noting their role in its continued reproduction.

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blockquote>Thinking of oneself as engaged in a heroic struggle does not mean thinking of oneself as a good person.<?blockquote>To recap:
Chetan R Murthy wrote a comment which included this:

Surely you are aware that everyone imagines themselves as the hero of their story, no? I mean, nobody imagines themselves as a moustache-twirling villain, the Dark Lord, torturer of bunny rabbits and kicker of small dogs, in their legend, right?

In a subsequent comment, bekabot responded:

This is a quibble and maybe it’s not entirely germane, but I’m going to try to drop it in anyway. Right-wingers imagine themselves as the villains all the time, going right back to the Nazis and before.

I then responded:

There is no inconsistency between imagining yourself as the villain of somebody else’s story but at the same time imagining yourself as the hero of the story; all that’s required is to imagine that the people in whose story you play the part of villain are themselves the bad guys.

If you’re now telling me that it’s possible for somebody to think of themselves as doing something heroic but not good, my response is that whether or not what you’re telling me is true, thinking of yourself as the hero of the story is incompatible with thinking of yourself as the villain of the story.

Just think of the fascist obsession with being hart wie Kruppstahl …

I hadn’t heard of that expression before; but I note that hart wie Kruppstahl is not the same as bösartig wie Kruppstahl. If I say in English that somebody is hard, it’s true that I’m not suggesting anything morally positive but I’m also not suggesting anything morally negative; it’s compatible with both.

@J, not that one 79

Well I can’t summarize a whole book in a comment, but Boehm works from a lot of narrative ethnographies of recent hunter gatherers, included many interviews.
There is of course a lot of interpretation involved, however there is this point that all the hunter gatherer societies that Boehm thinks are reasonably similar to paleolithic ones involve some forms of common hunting and later egalitarian division of the meat, while chimps and bonoboes don’t do egalitarian division of meat (and depend much less on meat and never big game meat).

The most common anthropologic theory is that humans developed better social brains and language in large part because they where forced to become group hunters of large game, hence the connection.

If you want to try to equate the hatchet men of the current regime with Big Bird and a bunch of PBS schoolteachers, then do your best (or worst). I dare you.

You dare me?

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

How old am I supposed to be, seven?

I can’t resist the impulse to mention that when I was seven the rule was ‘Darers go first’. But I don’t want to become further entangled by this rhetorical ploy, which (as on a previous occasion) I find unimpressive.

Instead, I will state plainly that I am not trying to equate anything with anything else.

In addition, I think you confuse the wish to be the center of the story with the wish to be the hero of the story. If you’ve surveyed your situation and concluded that you can’t be the hero of the story (that is, constructive) you might well decide to settle for being the villain of the story (that is, destructive) — as long as you remain at the center of the story and are not remanded to the margins.

You appear to be confusing two different distinctions, one between hero and villain and the other between constructive and destructive. Sometimes constructing something is villainous; sometimes destroying something is heroic. Sometimes a hero finds that the way to achieve their (positive and beneficial) goal is to destroy some obstacle which stands in the way. The fact that somebody has chosen to take destructive action does not mean that they are thinking of themselves as villainous. Anybody who thinks of what they are doing as good can think of themselves as the hero of the story, and anybody can think that what they are doing is good.

The dude @85 Is still me, I just used the nick I use on other sites usually.

How weird is it that we are debating in this thread whether the left has become “increasingly aggressive” while we otherwise spend most of our time denouncing the timidity and lack of aggressiveness of the left of center parties in the US and Europe. Which is it? I think it’s the second. We are way too unaggressive.

A great example, and germane to MisterMr’s comment, about how Hakeem Jeffries almost held off from denouncing one of Trump’s many racist posts. To be clear, saying “Fuck Donald Trump” in public is not aggressiveness. But it sure beats Jeffries’ preferred strategy of “silent defiance”.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/05/hotel-art

there are no such people. I don’t know why anybody would repeat the lie that there are

It is impossible to see into the minds of such flagrant fabulists. They must just hate you for your freedom.

Ok I’ll bite: which Marco Rossi are you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Rossi

@TM 90
Perhaps we are speaking past each other, so here is my explanation:
Supposa that A comes out as gay. B, who has a traditionalist upbringing, starts to mock and humiliate A with homophobic jokes; C is very pissed by B and starts do insult, mock and humiliate B.
Both B and C’s behaviours are, on my book, a form of moralistic aggression, meaning an aggression motivated by the perceived violation of cultural norms.
However in a normative sense, B is an ass because his behaviour is not going to produce any good result, whereas C is on the side of good because his behaviour will have positive outcomes.

You will notice that my judgement of what is positive and negative is based on good old utilitarianism, so from a normative point of view I’m an utilitarian.
However, contra some old utilitarians that believed that utilitarianism is “natural”, I think it isn’t (otherwise why would B be an homphobe? what’s the utilitarian logic of that); I think people have a lot of more or less instictive or interiorized cultural values, and utilitarianism is a rationalization of those values because those are A) often conflicting and B) largely parochial, whereas we live in a world where we need universalistic values.

So when we speak, not of normative good and evil, but of the psychological roots that maken so that we have value of sorts, most of these psychological “proto morals” might result in actually good (utilitariam most happyness for most people) or sometimes quite bad (a lot of unhappyness for some).
In this sense what I call “moralistic aggression” is, IMHO, a fundamental building block of our morality, however it could be turned for good (when used to block people who are doing actual damage) or for bad (when it creates random witch hunts).

The conservative version of it (hate foreigners, gay, transgender and whomever is vaguely different) clearly is in the witch-hunt cathegory; the progressive version (anti-racism, anti-rape etc.) has more moral value obviously, however it also has the potential of the witch-hunt, and in my opinion this is due to the fact that it is becoming more and more personalized and more and mo0re about personal morality, while the effect of internet is tocreate echo-chambers where this kind of dynamic is reinforced.

None of this means that Trump is not a fascist, or that he shouldn’t have been impeached etc.; however if I take a pure utilitarian POV it is difficult to explain why the Epstein files, bad as they are, are worse than, say, cutting energy to Cuba (that i suppose is causing some deaths), or the likely effect of the lack of fertilizers on poorer parts of the world due to the closure of the strait of Hormuz, or for that matter Bush 2 attacking Iran on false pretense.

@Peter T 92
About the less hunters, more defenders: Ineresting, I’d like to read something about this, googling I find Blood Rites, by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Do you know if that is the to-read book about this argument? Or if there are articles that I can read for free?

Personally I would hesitate to declare that nobody in the world holds any opinion, however outlandish it may seem. Eg. before seeing this thread I would not have believed that anyone would attempt to analyse America’s descent into fascism like this:

the monsters of Sesame Street are an illustrative example of how people who do not think of themselves as evil can adopt and make use, for their own purposes, of symbols traditionally associated with evil

@ 87

“It is as if the architects of the Trump regime had cribbed their entire governing agenda from cheap cyberpunk thrillers about fascist dystopias.” — Ned Resnikoff

Same with the people in front of the cameras, who are directed by the people behind them. I’m not the only one who thinks so.

I may have more to say about ‘good but not heroic’ later, but for now I will confine myself to noting that it is a category not in wide use in America, or in fact in Great Britain, or even in France, or (short version) pretty much any nation the Enlightenment was good to. If you want to implant it here you will have to sever us from what is Anglo in our roots, and that will be a job of work. Lastly, it has (of course) little or nothing to do with the MAGA aesthetic. Elon Musk would be the only point of entry there, and he’s a foreigner and acts like one. He’d be a frail reed from which to hang.