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Online pile-ons and culture wars: how did we get here?

Online pile-ons and culture wars: how did we get here?

The Age02-05-2025

But he warns those of us who see these and other rights as self-evident (while acknowledging the right to free speech, and to argue that they are not), to be wary of making our points too vociferously, lest we find ourselves wrestling in the mud pit with our detractors.
'Campaigners for social justice have much to gain from taking Aristotle's point about anger, 'to be angry with the right person, in the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose'. That is not easy, but necessary,' Grayling advises.
And in a world where everyone with an online connection can tear strips off just about anyone else on the planet, we find that well-calibrated judgements on when to let fly are in short supply indeed. You don't need a lot of evidence to build a case against an opponent, especially when sharing your views with those of like mind. So it's no wonder that an adversary's harmless quip taken out of context can, and often does, snowball into a bloodthirsty social media pile-on.
These days it is far easier to ignore Aristotle and follow the lead of Cardinal Richelieu, to whom Grayling refers toward the end of the book as having 'once remarked that he could use two lines from anything anyone wrote to hang him.
'He meant that by clever insinuation and manipulation he could prove anyone guilty of something. Often a superficial, partial or deliberately distorted reading of something someone did or said can be given the Richelieu treatment. It is a stock-in-trade of political quarrels, and has become likewise in the so-called woke wars.'
Most internet trolls aren't nearly as clever as the Cardinal, but nor do they have to be. Any witless primary or high-school bully can wreak emotional havoc with a mobile phone and delinquent parents. Discriminations is a cogently argued plea for moderation and empathy in a world where we all have the technical capability to behave like the school cyber-goon, and far too many of us do.
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In me, Grayling is preaching to the converted, and I concede that there's nothing like a well-written confirmation of one's beliefs to bring on a contented nodding of the head.
Today is election day, and at time of writing, I've noticed that the word 'woke' has been used sparingly, if at all. Perhaps Peter Dutton has been advised that promising to make school curriculums 'less woke', as he did at the starting gate, was sounding a tad too Trumpian for local tastes.
And whoever becomes prime minister tonight, A. C. Grayling would be the first to point out that the last thing Australia needs, now or ever, is a full-blown US-style culture war.

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