It's harder when the maga minions have taken away the language for talking about structural problems

Also, there's an anti-intellectualism at work here. In my experience teaching gender studies, I find students are often drawn to keywords & concepts that help them analyze how the world works. This is often a first step towards changing unjust systems & structures.

I could see giving up a couple of them only if they were replaced with autocracy and fascism.

Half a century of increasing lack of repercussions and accountability for the wealthy, the powerful, and their servants has brought us here.

I’m guilty of performative action. I work at the food pantry. I defend my harassed colleagues at work and have quit in solidarity. I founded a local newspaper to defend democracy. But I’m guilty of asking others to wait their turn for rights I enjoy. I refused to see my privilege as injustice.

People have embraced authoritarianism in large part because they've been sold individualistic explanations for social problems. If you think people are poor or unhoused because they've made "bad choices," then you'll see appeal in authoritarian leaders who promise to punish those who are "bad."

See this three-post quote from The Origins of Totalitarianism: bsky.app/profile/davi...

That's why they hate any critical theories about anything, because they're generally looking at systemic problems.

And they’re always surprised when they find themselves among those being “punished” for their “bad choices.” “MY little mistakes aren’t supposed to count. I’m not one of THEM!”

Authoritarian systems turn on the individual supporters who empower authoritarian systems using the EXACT logic that appeals to those supporters in the first place.

This is part of why I’m so disheartened by people who I think should know so much better arguing that these terms aren’t being used in campaigns. They should be used in the shaping and execution of campaigns and policies to end what they’re saying they want to end.

YES. And the focus on individualism and refusal to acknowledge systems is also what has allowed the conspiracies to take hold that authoritarianism thrives on. Conspiracies provide appealing alternate theories to systems thinking.

That's a great point!

Academics and activists have tried to help people see that social problems are structural--that people's struggles often stem from the way systems of power and privilege prevent them from getting by or getting ahead. That kind of structural thinking is inoculation against authoritarianism.

📌

Stunned by lack of irony in trying to convince people the way to survive annihilation conservativism is to in fact embrace fantasy of conservativism as state of nature/common sense

Absolutely.

Practically, having worked with several local and national campaigns, from knocking in doors to strategy, I did hear those words being spoken/shouted/used much. So, boh: a nothingburger. Like: in rural MI we wouldn’t focus in heteronormative social structure to beat goppers. Bah.

Because structural thinking offers inoculation against authoritarianism, the Right has vilified terms that nod to structure (privilege, patriarchy, critical theory), and attacked the institutions trying to help people understand systemic problems. Refusing to use the terms emboldens further attacks.

If structural thinking requires systemic solutions that no single person can fix, then radical individualist ideology is reified in the person of the authoritarian themselves: only One Man can fix our problems, in fact, it's a solution in search of a problem.

“Privilege” is not vilified - it’s opaque and not self-explanatory to secretaries and bus drivers

Maybe use simpler words that mean the same thing.

Maybe learn to fucking read

Refusing to use structural terms also makes Democrats' job HARDER politically. Because if people think about social problems only in individualistic terms, they become more skeptical of progressive policies (since the implication is that those policies benefit people who don't "deserve" support).

And so, unless Democrats help people understand structural inequalities (including by using terms like privilege), then the only surefire way to pull voters in is to promise each of them something that benefits them personally and directly. Which is usually impossible and creates its own problems.

no coincidence that one of this admin’s explicitly banned research topics is big, social causes of racial disparities in health. If you want to research genetics issues, fine… individual bad habits, fine… but income disparity or systemic racism…nah! www.science.org/content/arti...

Exactly. Authoritarianism thrives on evidence that points to individual explanations for social problems (eg, genetics, "lifestyle choices"). It's only structural research that poses a serious threat.

Stop assuming that the Dem's job is to try to do good things. Their job is to help the Republicans and provide the illusion of democracy. (The US isn't a democracy.)

But voters judge presidents based on what they personally receive. That's not politicians' fault.

Thatcher said "there's no such thing as society" The donor class fights a class war, period. The working class is divided via identity politics. The PMC left has aided this by selling trauma, self help, self-recover. Its virtual, lonely. Rather than a working class community of interdependence.

I’d agree on helping people understand structural inequalities but I do think it is very possible to provide more universal benefits like child care, housing, food, college, etc. Things like UPK are hugely popular and we have enough rich people to tax and pay for these costs 100x over.

Yep, it's empathy erosion.

The hyped individualism is also a way to deny services. RFK Jr's whole pitch boils down to "You don't need vaccines if you just make the right choices."

A wild charge to level at actual infants, too.

This is the sharpest response to this I've seen.

Amen

Thanks ❤️

exACTly!! bsky.app/profile/l1vy...

Exactly

They are trying to convince us not to stand up for ourselves and accept what they are doing. But if we don’t stand up for ourselves, no one else will. That’s just a fact.

Who will stand up for my right to privacy if not me? Certainly not ppl who don’t think I’m important enough to have that right

I certainly don’t see anyone standing up and saying the way that *I* was treated was wrong.

Even if it’s objectively true

All I hear is some BS about using sir and ma’am. That’s semantic bullshit while you are literally sneaking in thru my back door

Let’s talk about respect

Let’s talk about good faith. Let’s talk about “making sure ppl feel comfortable and safe.” The use of mister gives you greater sense of safety than my actual, real privacy deserves?

The problem though is that they could use more normal terminology to get the same messages across. The nuance missing here is that there’s more than one way to say these things and you don’t have to make it academic.

Who is they here? if your complaint is about Democrats or progressive politicians, they have not been using this language. If your complaint is that we academics have been using this language, well, newsflash: specialists use complicated terminology sometimes to articulate complicated ideas

What has happened here is that Republican pundits or opposition research flunkies have dug into obscure comment sections in remote corner of social media and tracked down the most offputting language they could find, in order to attribute it to the official Democratic Party platform

So in this context, the only solution is apparently to go back in time, speak to nerdy postdocs and professors up for tenure and convince them to stop using complicated theoretical jargon on the off chance that some troll might attribute it to the Democratic Party nominee 10 years hence

My complaint is that they don’t talk about it either way.

it has been shown that democratic politicians rarely use the academic terms third way objects to, so even if someone thought using them was a problem, it is still a nonexistent problem

Often times more "normal" terminology is more general, and using it the same way gives more attack surface since the terms cover a wider breadth of meaning. Using the less "normal" but more specific terms gives less wiggle room, which is part of why they attack the terms themselves.

I hear your point, though I'd argue that the failure is usually less in the terms themselves than in the lack of effort by policymakers and media members and educators to help people understand them. There's value in brevity, but it has to rest on shared understanding.

Agreed. The problem, imo, is that politicians listening to Third Way hear “don’t talk about these concepts” instead of “don’t use these specific terms” and don’t do any extra work to figure out what they could say instead that might reach people

Thing is, it sure seems like that's what Third Way are aiming for.

Oh I agree

Exactly

I absolutely agree with this, however I think academia can (sometimes) be part of the problem in the language used and how they speak to people. Then add to this the lack of critical thinking as part of everyone's education and the total underfunding of state education and VOILA!

Yes, and trained by propagandists to hate those other people. The explanations you cite are not based on data or facts. They are myths based on misinformation and disinformation circulated by said propagandists. Blame this trend on Fox News, its ilk, and Trump. Divide and conquer — the fascist way.

It also gives people a shield against seeing themselves in others and seeing their own risk: “Bad things happened to those people because they made bad decisions. I won’t make bad decisions, so I won’t end up poor/unhoused/sick.”

A big part of what’s behind the attack on public health, IMO, and on the collection of population data.

🎯

and take care of those who are 'good'

Exactly. And the frequent argument that these terms are a product of "academic hot houses" alone ignores the existence of platforms like this one, where all this language was actually workshopped and deployed. They are useful to people struggling with these concepts, how they show up in their lives

It is also important to note that, because of all you say in this thread, there is no way to talk about these structural forces in a language that isn't going to invite right wing appropriation and backlash. They don't want to talk about it