It's not even so much that Hobbes and his ilk are far to the left of most people, it's that they're so incredibly MEAN about it. They yell all day, dunk on people all day, paint good-faith disagreements as moral monstrosities, and alienate so, so many would-be converts with their behavior.
The default mode of expression with these people is basically: "Hahaha, I can't believe you're so fucking stupid, imagine thinking anything other than what we believe, and I shouldn't even have to explain it to you."
It's a behavior that makes countless enemies and few friends. It's Mean Girls behavior, and Twitter is their eternal high school, where they never have to leave their hive of Cool People.
This is just default behavior on Twitter. I commented on something Richard Hanania said, and now my replies are stuffed with right-wing people behaving almost exactly the same way. Team Productive Disagreement is pretty small, and very few people have the moral fortitude to keep waving its flag when it's inconvenient; frankly I'm not sure I can count myself as one of them.
It is funny how one of the many psychological tricks social media has played on its users is that it's convinced upscale urban liberals that they are the voice of the people (TM), that they are the literal incarnation of justice and equality, and therefore any disagreement with them is punching down on the helpless oppressed.
I think this is partly the inevitable downstream effect of the New Left defeating the Old Left, when the battle against inequality and oppression moved from union halls and shop floors to the Humanities Depts, so whereas being a member of the Old Left meant attending a strike w smelly workers and their suspiciously retrograde beliefs, being a member of the New Left means you can stay in the library and battle oppression by interrogating texts, policing language and crafting jargon (Symbol manipulators of the world unite!).
Part of this too is that whenever a new ruling class coalesces and begins to solidify its place at the top of the food chain, it wants of course to be seen as financially and intellectually superior, but also as morally superior.
Moral legitimacy is as crucial to a ruling class as the police or the army.
The people who make the argument that twitter is the great defender of the marginalized are the same ones that believe their post doctoral work in critical theory is striking deep and meaningful blows against hetro-patriarchal capitalism on behalf of the downtrodden working class.
David French recently made a related point about partisan claims to be doing politics on behalf of the oppressed:
"And if you think that most-partisan cohort is seething with anger because they suffer from painful oppression, think again. The data is clear. As the More in Common project notes, the most polarized Americans are disproportionately white and college-educated on the left and disproportionately white and retired on the right.
"The people disproportionately driving polarization in the United States are not oppressed minorities, but rather some of the most powerful, most privileged, wealthiest people who’ve ever lived. They enjoy more freedom and opportunity than virtually any prior generation of humans, all while living under the protective umbrella of the most powerful military in the history of the planet.
"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people." - Terry Pratchett
Love this. As a non twitter user, every time my spouse tells me what’s on Twitter, I am puzzled and alarmed because it’s so completely detached from my everyday experience. It helps to know I am not alone.
This solid essay helped to crystalize my own thoughts. I think Wokescolds are basically conservatives with different sympathies.
Movement conservatism was successful in deemphasizing economic status as a distinction between Americans and replacing it with cultural status. Doesn't matter how much you own or how much you earn--are you gay? Religious? A single parent? A fan of the military? Do you think Murphy Brown was part of the new era or just part of the new problem? It's maddening, and it makes Americans foolish enough to ignore attempts to shred the social safety net, and to tacitly sign off on lavishing tax cuts on people who just don't need them.
Distressingly, woke-liberals have done the same thing, except the cultural markers reflect their differing sympathies. Do you #BelieveWomen? Are you non-binary? Do you agree that rape-prevention strategies should focus only on men? Do you recognize that racism is purely a white problem? Do you think trans women are women? These litmus tests serve mostly to make enacting progressive programs nearly impossible, because they set liberals to tearing at one another over often arcane points of abstract philosophy.
The woke crowd have gone so far left they've bent back to the right, except where conservatives favor whites, men, and Christians, liberals favor people of color and people of no gender. So you look from right to left, and from left to right, and from right to left again, but it's difficult to say which is which.
See also: canceling student loan debt, which is a complex issue but one where reasonable compromise approaches (partial relief by dollar amount or by interest-capping, focusing on those exploited by fraudulent programs, reform going forward) are vigorously rejected, I think in large part because they are much less likely to give money to young people who went to expensive elite schools and who may have a fair amount of debt now but have excellent future prospects. Who are also disproportionately represented on Twitter. So the line is “immediately cancel it all” but it’s very self-interested.
(I have mixed feelings, I’m not an absolutist on providing no relief, at all, but to me it’s obvious that complete cancellation without reform is wildly regressive and a huge moral hazard and I wish democrats would stop talking about it.)
It boggles my mind every time someone claims that white people (or some other group) are “privileged” to not have to think about politics. No, you got that backwards - it’s a true privilege to spend your day arguing about politics instead of, say wondering whether your paycheck will cover all of your expenses.
I try very hard to listen to a spectrum of viewpoints, but I rarely come across someone whose perspective I distrust more than Michael Hobbes. He’s either the most deliberately bad-faith writer I’ve ever seen or he’s a actual genuine idiot. I can’t decide which.
There are a lot of vaguely annoying people in media who don't operate with complete honesty, but from what I've seen of how Hobbes handles issues I know a little bit about, he has a tendency to misrepresent stuff that is so chronic it stands out even on Twitter.
Here to lament (for the Nth time, where N is a large integer) the collective amnesia developed by the leftish of today around the issue of economic class. An open door for populist chancers turn elite progressivism into an endlessly self-defeating feedback loop.
Well damn. That's as good as anything I can come up with, but I think we need to create a mini-word game here -- "What Did Jesse Mean?" -- and politely bar Mr. Singal from contributing until the commentariat settles on a winner.
A while back I got sent a link from an acquaintance about a panel about police abolition and the black community, and every single panelist was for it, despite the fact that only 28% of the black population supports "defund the police". Is retreating into the bubble really a good idea?
Superb piece, Jesse. Táíwò speaks so much sense: education and class, more than ethnicity, are huge factors at play in the toxic worst of Twitter. It will be fascinating to see what Elon does with the platform. I can imagine that the radical left are already lobbying sympathetic corporate big tech America to start another platform for them to transfer en masse to.
Progressives tend to be among the highest degree holders, which correlates with higher income. I suspect that their love of diversity is in no small part due to the fact that they can isolate themselves from the very diversity they adore.
Jesse has different politics than me but I sure admire his tenacity when it comes to fighting for the truth. Intellectual honesty is his mantra; his project is obsessed with accuracy. It’s a real pleasure.
It's not even so much that Hobbes and his ilk are far to the left of most people, it's that they're so incredibly MEAN about it. They yell all day, dunk on people all day, paint good-faith disagreements as moral monstrosities, and alienate so, so many would-be converts with their behavior.
The default mode of expression with these people is basically: "Hahaha, I can't believe you're so fucking stupid, imagine thinking anything other than what we believe, and I shouldn't even have to explain it to you."
It's a behavior that makes countless enemies and few friends. It's Mean Girls behavior, and Twitter is their eternal high school, where they never have to leave their hive of Cool People.
This is just default behavior on Twitter. I commented on something Richard Hanania said, and now my replies are stuffed with right-wing people behaving almost exactly the same way. Team Productive Disagreement is pretty small, and very few people have the moral fortitude to keep waving its flag when it's inconvenient; frankly I'm not sure I can count myself as one of them.
This was great, thanks!
It is funny how one of the many psychological tricks social media has played on its users is that it's convinced upscale urban liberals that they are the voice of the people (TM), that they are the literal incarnation of justice and equality, and therefore any disagreement with them is punching down on the helpless oppressed.
I think this is partly the inevitable downstream effect of the New Left defeating the Old Left, when the battle against inequality and oppression moved from union halls and shop floors to the Humanities Depts, so whereas being a member of the Old Left meant attending a strike w smelly workers and their suspiciously retrograde beliefs, being a member of the New Left means you can stay in the library and battle oppression by interrogating texts, policing language and crafting jargon (Symbol manipulators of the world unite!).
Part of this too is that whenever a new ruling class coalesces and begins to solidify its place at the top of the food chain, it wants of course to be seen as financially and intellectually superior, but also as morally superior.
Moral legitimacy is as crucial to a ruling class as the police or the army.
At this point I’m wishing you had your own Substack. Or that I could encapsulate things as elegantly as you. Either would do, frankly.
hey thanks! you are very kind.
great essay
You are correct and stuff like this is why I subscribe to Singal on Substack.
The people who make the argument that twitter is the great defender of the marginalized are the same ones that believe their post doctoral work in critical theory is striking deep and meaningful blows against hetro-patriarchal capitalism on behalf of the downtrodden working class.
David French recently made a related point about partisan claims to be doing politics on behalf of the oppressed:
"And if you think that most-partisan cohort is seething with anger because they suffer from painful oppression, think again. The data is clear. As the More in Common project notes, the most polarized Americans are disproportionately white and college-educated on the left and disproportionately white and retired on the right.
"The people disproportionately driving polarization in the United States are not oppressed minorities, but rather some of the most powerful, most privileged, wealthiest people who’ve ever lived. They enjoy more freedom and opportunity than virtually any prior generation of humans, all while living under the protective umbrella of the most powerful military in the history of the planet.
"It’s simply an astonishing level of discontent in the midst of astonishing wealth and power." (https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/john-adams-fear-has-come-to-pass)
"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people." - Terry Pratchett
Love this. As a non twitter user, every time my spouse tells me what’s on Twitter, I am puzzled and alarmed because it’s so completely detached from my everyday experience. It helps to know I am not alone.
This solid essay helped to crystalize my own thoughts. I think Wokescolds are basically conservatives with different sympathies.
Movement conservatism was successful in deemphasizing economic status as a distinction between Americans and replacing it with cultural status. Doesn't matter how much you own or how much you earn--are you gay? Religious? A single parent? A fan of the military? Do you think Murphy Brown was part of the new era or just part of the new problem? It's maddening, and it makes Americans foolish enough to ignore attempts to shred the social safety net, and to tacitly sign off on lavishing tax cuts on people who just don't need them.
Distressingly, woke-liberals have done the same thing, except the cultural markers reflect their differing sympathies. Do you #BelieveWomen? Are you non-binary? Do you agree that rape-prevention strategies should focus only on men? Do you recognize that racism is purely a white problem? Do you think trans women are women? These litmus tests serve mostly to make enacting progressive programs nearly impossible, because they set liberals to tearing at one another over often arcane points of abstract philosophy.
The woke crowd have gone so far left they've bent back to the right, except where conservatives favor whites, men, and Christians, liberals favor people of color and people of no gender. So you look from right to left, and from left to right, and from right to left again, but it's difficult to say which is which.
See also: canceling student loan debt, which is a complex issue but one where reasonable compromise approaches (partial relief by dollar amount or by interest-capping, focusing on those exploited by fraudulent programs, reform going forward) are vigorously rejected, I think in large part because they are much less likely to give money to young people who went to expensive elite schools and who may have a fair amount of debt now but have excellent future prospects. Who are also disproportionately represented on Twitter. So the line is “immediately cancel it all” but it’s very self-interested.
(I have mixed feelings, I’m not an absolutist on providing no relief, at all, but to me it’s obvious that complete cancellation without reform is wildly regressive and a huge moral hazard and I wish democrats would stop talking about it.)
It boggles my mind every time someone claims that white people (or some other group) are “privileged” to not have to think about politics. No, you got that backwards - it’s a true privilege to spend your day arguing about politics instead of, say wondering whether your paycheck will cover all of your expenses.
I try very hard to listen to a spectrum of viewpoints, but I rarely come across someone whose perspective I distrust more than Michael Hobbes. He’s either the most deliberately bad-faith writer I’ve ever seen or he’s a actual genuine idiot. I can’t decide which.
There are a lot of vaguely annoying people in media who don't operate with complete honesty, but from what I've seen of how Hobbes handles issues I know a little bit about, he has a tendency to misrepresent stuff that is so chronic it stands out even on Twitter.
Anyway I'm not a superfan is the point.
An older way to say that is he is dishonest.
Here to lament (for the Nth time, where N is a large integer) the collective amnesia developed by the leftish of today around the issue of economic class. An open door for populist chancers turn elite progressivism into an endlessly self-defeating feedback loop.
Errata thread!
" I hesitate to say that Twitter is of greater net benefit to more powerful people than less powerful ones." I think you mean this to be reversed?
If you replace "hesitate" with "lament" I think it represents Jesse's view based on the thrust of the article and is less ambiguous.
Well damn. That's as good as anything I can come up with, but I think we need to create a mini-word game here -- "What Did Jesse Mean?" -- and politely bar Mr. Singal from contributing until the commentariat settles on a winner.
I think he's used to it as that's basically how most people seem to interact with his work, excluding any actual attempt at understanding him. :p
I had the same question. That would comport with the other material.
If I had to write about people as meat-headed and misguided as Mr. Hobbes, I would be fucking up every other sentence.
A while back I got sent a link from an acquaintance about a panel about police abolition and the black community, and every single panelist was for it, despite the fact that only 28% of the black population supports "defund the police". Is retreating into the bubble really a good idea?
Then again, I didn't actually watch the panel.
Superb piece, Jesse. Táíwò speaks so much sense: education and class, more than ethnicity, are huge factors at play in the toxic worst of Twitter. It will be fascinating to see what Elon does with the platform. I can imagine that the radical left are already lobbying sympathetic corporate big tech America to start another platform for them to transfer en masse to.
That last chart about diversity is funny.
Progressives tend to be among the highest degree holders, which correlates with higher income. I suspect that their love of diversity is in no small part due to the fact that they can isolate themselves from the very diversity they adore.
Jesse has different politics than me but I sure admire his tenacity when it comes to fighting for the truth. Intellectual honesty is his mantra; his project is obsessed with accuracy. It’s a real pleasure.