Chronotope’s avatarChronotope’s Twitter Archive—№ 94,531

                    1. This generation of Nazis thrive because we are somehow shocked they exist (though they've been pushing policy & entering gov't for years) and rush to read about them. Their power grows b/c, like Trump, publicly interacting with them generates capital, even if it is to deride them
                  1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                    The Overton window is a useful tool to understand what they're doing. But it's beyond that, b/c it isn't why they're succeeding. They're succeeding because they've discovered a flaw in the economic structure of the media and (sigh) discourse...
                1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                  That economic flaw in the modern form of the marketplace of ideas is further reinforced because social platforms unknowingly adopted it without thinking. It is this: generating hate is as profitable as generating any other emotion.
              1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                But it's a lot easier b/c you can generate hate without skill. Idiots do it naturally. You don't need facts, or research, or proof, or sources, or truth. So the gross profit of being hateful in the digital economy is equal to other emotions, but the net is much higher.
            1. …in reply to @Chronotope
              But we are instructed to give hate an equal playing field. We are foolish enough to retweet it, write long essays in theoretical defense of the capacity to say it, and invite it to shitty New Yorker festivals. Humanists stand in defense of it. But...
          1. …in reply to @Chronotope
            They don't understand. Their assumptions fail to take in this capitalistic aspect. Hate is the cheapest thing to produce in the digital ecosystem.
        1. …in reply to @Chronotope
          To give it an equal platform is to amplify it more than truth or love. It's making the people who handle it, for or against, more money b/c it is hate. The net profit is higher because it's cheap to produce and cheap to argue against.
      1. …in reply to @Chronotope
        But all amplification puts more money in hate's pockets and more attention. Illogical Nazi-style hate thrives because it gets more net profits in money and attention, it has so little cost to produce.
    1. …in reply to @Chronotope
      The only way to counter hate's advantages is to make it more expensive to produce. In the modern digital economy that means deplatforming it, not treating it as an equal but as a fringe to note and starve of attention. We must crowd it out.
  1. …in reply to @Chronotope
    But if your job is to turn attention into profits, it's real tempting to go in on the eyeball garage sale that is hate. Even just in inviting it to headline your festival. It will keep happening unless we enact and enforce economic consequences, b/c the motivation is economic.
    1. …in reply to @Chronotope
      So maybe, if inviting hate was enough reason for you to withdraw your participation, don't return just because hate was pushed off a particular podium. They got what they wanted without him ever speaking: more attention. Don't go back at all this year.
      1. …in reply to @Chronotope
        Punish them the only relevant way under capitalism: in their wallets.
        1. …in reply to @Chronotope
          Remember: M*lo is dying as a hate brand because he was deplatformed, but that's not the underlying reason, at its core the reason is because we've made hate very expensive for him to distribute as a result of that deplatforming.
          1. …in reply to @Chronotope
            Bannon and his like were fucking no ones. They were always fucking no ones. No matter what they achieve or what positions they hold, they are unskilled worthless hate mongers in a world where selling hate is easy.
            1. …in reply to @Chronotope
              They are not skilled or smart. They're just cheap and greedy. They don't have an ideology to thoughtfully examine, just grasping ego-stoking desire for profit. They don't have opinions, just marketing. Treat them accordingly.
              1. …in reply to @Chronotope
                I still don't understand why it is so hard for the left to get this. The hate mongers got it immediately. The easiest way to kill an idea is to make it less profitable to publish and more expensive to produce. It was G*merG*t*'s tactic from minute one.


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