U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

Re:U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests by nostrademons on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @04:03PM (#25662457)

Historically, lack of a shared reality has been the rule. The idea that we all inhabit one reality is a construct of modernity, with the rise of mass production, mass media, and mass culture. Before the printing press there was no way for ideas to spread far enough to create a shared reality across a whole nation; indeed, the concept of a nation dates from this time. The closest you got was religion, but religions had a knack for splitting into sects and then bitterly fighting each other - witness the Protestant Reformation and the Wars of Religion that followed. Those wars were specifically fought over whose version of reality (both of which seem very quaint today) was true: each believed that the other was an existential threat to eternity.

The Internet just ushered in post-modernism on a global scale, which undoes a lot of the thought-unification (some would say thought-control) that came with modernity.

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Re:U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests by ImaCake on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @04:41PM (#25662958)

Building on the history theme here; plenty of modern revolutions have been preceeded by a rise in polarising media. The french revolution had the pulp paper of Jean-Paul Marat [0], the soviets had Lenin's writings [1], and the Nazis had Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer [2]. It's not difficult to draw comparisons to Bannon's Breitbart here.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Marat 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iskra 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_St%C3%BCrmer

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Re:U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests by pschw on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @09:02PM (#25666317)

Nit: the first issue of Marat's "L'Ami du peuple" wasn't published until several months after the fall of the Bastille and thus played no role in radicalizing the populace prior to the Revolution.

But the broader point that the French Revolution was proceeded by a radicalized literature [0] is accurate (Sieyes' "What is the Third Estate?" is the most famous work [1]). Though it's contribution to the origins of the Revolution is the matter of some debate [2].

[0] For a good overview, see the work of Robert Darnton, esp. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674536579 [1] https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Qu’est-ce_que_le_tiers_état... (I don't recall if there's a full English translation of this... there are excerpts in Keith Baker's French Revolution reader (U Chicago Press) [2] One of the better treatments of this is https://www.dukeupress.edu/The-Cultural-Origins-of-the-Frenc...

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Re:U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests by AshWolfy on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @09:43PM (#25666648)

Ok but the fall of the bastile was an early milestone, it was over 3 years before the insurrection of august the 10th toppled the king

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Re:U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests by ImaCake on Thursday January 07, 2021 @02:41AM (#25668333)

Thanks this is a great nit pick :) My knowledge on this topic is hazy at best so I jumped to the most famous populist screed writer of the french revolution.

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Re:U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests by _qulr on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @09:15PM (#25666433)

Correlation does not imply causation. Moreover, when hasn't there been polarizing media? There are countless radical publications that did not imminently result in a political revolution. Also, today's afternoon riot doesn't really compare with the aforementioned historical events.

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Re:U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests by karmelapple on Wednesday January 06, 2021 @05:14PM (#25663359)

There were gatekeepers before, who generally acted responsibly.

Now that anyone can publish anything, and make it appear reasonably professional, there's much more competition for everyone's attention.

And the media outlets who cater to specific biases, and are outspoken and over-the-top, seem to win the attention.

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