<div class="header-image"></div> <table class="table-header"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="2"></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2024-12-29</td> <td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> # The End of the Culture War..?  I'm beginning to think that Elon Musk buying Twitter was a real turning point in the general conversation of our culture. I don't think it was really understood before just how much influence Twitter had on everyone. The algorithm affected the news being told everywhere. What happened was that journalists put themselves in a [woke] bubble online by only interacting with each other on Twitter. They curated their feeds by following other journalists, and subscribing to the same massive block lists. The stories they wrote would all be duplicated from one publication to the next, as they all took cues from each other as to the important topics of the day. This includes producers and writers for all major newspapers as well as news channels. If your mother/grandmother is only getting news from watching CNN, for example, she too would effectively be placed inside this bubble, without ever having looked at Twitter. Twitter was banning people from its site for posting opinions that didn't belong inside of this Far-Left bubble. For example, Meghan Murphy, who is a radical feminist, posted "Men aren't women tho" and was [kicked off the site](https://www.nationalreview.com/news/journalist-sues-twitter-for-banning-her-over-women-arent-men-tweets/) just for that. Anyone posting things about there being only 2 sexes, making fun of made-up pronouns, etc., were removed from the conversation. This was a huge shift from Twitter's previous position as a champion of free-speech. As the company's UK General Manager Tony Yang said in 2012, "[Twitter is the free speech wing of the free speech party](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/mar/22/twitter-tony-wang-free-speech)." From here it got worse as [sharing particular memes became enough to ban people](https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-45888176) too. And certainly don't tell any journalist to [learn to code](https://reason.com/2019/03/11/learn-to-code-twitter-harassment-ross/). The effect was an emboldening of those within a very narrow set of ideological beliefs. With so many people being removed just for sharing memes and making jokes, the humour died, leaving behind a bunch of self-righteous tattle-tails scolding everyone, and telling the teacher when someone said a naughty thing. The algorithm rewarded this behaviour too, and Twitter became pretty unbearable for years. It was a risk even being on the platform as you never knew when the wrong utterance would have people try to dox you and get you fired by harassing employers. When Elon bought Twitter, he reinstated a number of accounts that were banned (including those mentioned) and even announced a plan to help people prosecute for libel any person banned who was wrongly accused of bigotry. Gina Carano, who was fired from <u>The Mandalorian</u> over a tweet, is now [suing Disney](https://deadline.com/2024/10/disney-gina-carano-trial-2025-1236119451/). The playing field began to level out again. Humour started coming back too. And the very worst of the radical bullies began to leave for other platforms. Included in this list of radicals is many of the journalists who collaboratively decided on what to report and how to report it, such as accounts belonging to The Guardian, NPR, and the European Federation of Journalists. Since the breakup of this collaboration, the stories told have been, if not more reasonable, at least more balanced with the acknowledgement of differing perspectives. Since Trump won the 2024 election, this trend has been accelerating. People do seem more willing to speak their minds now. There is some real pushback happening in the US, as many pundits from either side of the isle are pointing out that [the Democrats have gone a little crazy](https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4981585-america-rejects-woke-democrats/amp/). In Canada, [Trudeau seems destined to lose the coming election](https://abacusdata.ca/conservatives-lead-by-18-evaluations-drop-trudeau-government-abacus-data/), and people everywhere are getting fed up with wokeness, intersectional feminism, identity politics, cancel culture, whatever you want to call it. From the opposite end of the spectrum, however, another group is now crawling out of the woodwork. I've always called this group Neo-Nazis, but in more recent terms they would be called the "Alt-Right." Many now seem to have settled on the label "Woke-Right." This is a very loud minority, peeking out from their Gab accounts, emboldened by what they *think* is their chance to shine. There is quite the battle going on right now for the mainstream Right to separate itself from this group. Without naming the actual Woke-Right pundits, I believe Conservatives need to disassociate with this group as soon as possible. Statements such as this by Ted Cruz are exactly the sort of hard stance that is needed, and it needs to be done repeatedly.  The hot-button topic that seems to be bringing all the Right-Wing identitarians out to the yard is H-1B visas. These are temporary work visas allowing US employers to employ foreign workers on a temporary basis. These visas are specifically for filling gaps in the American workforce, in specialty occupations, often in tech fields. Indian tech workers are frequently given H-1B visas. The outcry against the visas has been enough to grab the attention of many, and it does fly in the face of what Republicans have been claiming for years: that no one has any problem with legal immigration, no matter the race of those entering the country legally. Just control who's coming in, and deport those here who don't deserve to be. Those speaking out against this now, wanting to keep out specialty workers too, are also engaging in extremely racist vitriol, using words and phrases I don't care to repeat here. I will, however, present one Tweet I came across (one tweet among dozens that I actually took the time to read, before deciding to ignore them all), seemingly in response to Elon Musk coming out against this racism:  And Elon Musk has been speaking out loudly. For all the accusations of racism against him these last couple years, he sure seems to despise it.   And, of course, why wouldn't he feel this way? Elon is, himself, an immigrant to the US, who has generated as much wealth, and created as many jobs for the country as anyone. Of course he is going to promote meritocratic immigration. So far, Trump is echoing these sentiments, to the sheer chagrin of the woke, racist Right. Most are focusing on [recent statements, since he was elected](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-h-1b-visas-maga-immigration-2006948). They like to highlight a supposed hypocrisy here, saying he's going back on promises to eliminate H-1B, but for this election cycle, he has clearly been in favour of it, going so far as to say that anyone entering the country who graduates from an American college will [get a green-card as a part of the diploma](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-green-card-college-students-maga-reaction-1915810). Just as this decade-long culture war is coming to a close, the victors on the Right are now sabotaging themselves with their own wokeness. I'll not make the mistake of calling out the entire Right, as clearly this isn't the case. This is a fringe, Far-Right minority being extremely vocal. [70% of the American public favour keeping the same rates](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/06/28/shifting-public-views-on-legal-immigration-into-the-u-s/) of legal immigration, or even *increasing it* (link from 2018). I can admit that there are legitimate arguments for decreasing rates of immigration, but to deny that meritocratic policy isn't preferable to hiring based on heritage is just insane. This is precisely what the Right has been criticising about the Left's woke policies for **years**. It's gaslighting. In the same way the Left was reduced to cowering before a vocal minority of ideological lunatics, the Right is now in danger of being taken over by a minority of puritanical white-nationalists. The reasonable centre has to separate itself from the radical extremes. If the Left did this a decade ago they would not be in the shambles they find themselves today. Let's not repeat their mistake. Keep drawing the line at identity politics. Make the moral stand against racism and antisemitism. Do it now before the centre is completely washed away. We must keep differentiating ourselves. Show that we're different from the woke, radical Right. Identity politics killed the left; we must understand that and not make the same mistake. The centre will win. There is no longer a Centre-Left, so we must be the Centre-Right.