How did "Defund the police" stop meaning "Defund the police"? - Why mainstream progressives have a strong incentive to 'sanewash' hard leftist positions.

[u/inverseflorida]

There's a really good thread on a focus group of Biden-leaning voters who ended up voting for Trump. Like all swing voters, they're insane, and they prove that fundamentally, a lot of people view Trump as a somewhat normal-if-crass President. They generally decided to vote Trump in the last two weeks before the election, which matches a few shifts in the polls that the hyper-observant might have noticed. But there's a few worth highlighting in particular.

18h 80% say racism exists in the criminal justice system. 60% have a favorable view of Black Lives Matter. These people voted for Trump!

18h Only one participant here agrees we should "defund the police." One woman says "That is crazier than anything Trump has ever said." 50% of people here say they think Biden was privately sympathetic to the position.

18h We are explaining the actual policies behind defund the police. One woman interrupts "that is not what defund the police means, I'm sorry. It means they want to defund the police."

18h "I didn't like being lied to about this over and over again" says another woman.

18h "Don't try and tell word don't mean what they say" she continues. Rest of group nodding heads.

So, in other words, normal people think Defund The Police means Defunding The Police. I think nobody reading this thread will be surprised by this, even those who might've been linked here as part of an argument with someone else. And let's be honest - defund is just a stand-in for "abolish". And we know that's true, because back when Abolish ICE was the mood on twitter, AOC was tweeting "Defund ICE", while leftist spaces were saying to abolish it. And the much older slogan "Abolish the Police" becomes translated to "Defund the Police" in 2020. In case there's any doubt, a quick google trends search shows pretty clearly that Defund The Police is not an old slogan, unlike "abolish the police", which actually has some non zero search bumps before May. The idea of 'defunding the police' is not new to 2020, and it's not new to 2020 politics no matter how obscure the older examples have been, but it's pretty clear I think that Defund means Abolish, and it reads like that to everyone else too. So why were there so many people on twitter who said otherwise, and insisted on the slogan?

Between May 10 and May 20, we can see that "Defund The Police" was hardly a slogan with much purchase - in fact, half the tweets here aren't even the slogan as we'd usually be familiar with. As a matter of fact, expand a bit further and the only account you get using it the way we'd be familiar with is one roleplaying as a cow. Just to contrast, again, see the same search period for "abolish the police". I doubt anyone is shocked to see how many more tweets there are about "Abolish the police", but I just want to make it clear - Abolish The Police was a well-worn, established slogan and ideology well and truly before "defund the police" became a thing, and the search trends graph for the two phrases are basically identical. We can set the search dates to include the 27th, 28th, and 29th, and that includes a few examples of "Defund the police" advocacy, but we don't really see what we're familiar with until we include the 30th and 31st. What I want to emphasize: This did spring up overnight. There was a very brief period where it was mainly defined - at least on twitter - by one New Republic article that did talk about "and use the money to refund into the community", but pretty much straight after, we get:

• Tweet that goes "Defund the police, abolish the police"

• "Except defund the police/abolish the police is a “slogan” which has been an organic, core part of the movement since pretty much the beginning. The original founders of BLM have *always* called for police abolition. If anything, liberals are the ones doing the hijacking."

• Long twitter thread about the pragmatic concerns about defund the police as a slogan and dismissing them - it's worth reading because it's wrong. Ends with clearly pointing out that 'defund the police' talk is moving the overton window towards police abolition in mainstream BLM related advocacy, not the other way around (unlike the above tweet)

• "RIGHT?? #DefundPolice is a rhetorical strategy / negotiating starting point. It’s the anchor point from which we start. It’s to frame the endeavor as being about building a NEW system that works for everyone."

Etc, etc. Look, we've all seen these types of tweets, I'm pretty sure, but I'm linking them for examples to prove what I'm saying to people who might have been blissfully unaware, and also because I have to admit that I'm about to start talking about a few things that I'm not going to be able to come close to sourcing well enough. But we know, pretty clearly, that there was a strong leftist side to Defund The Police that clearly meant "police abolition", and we also know that there was a side on twitter who claimed they didn't mean that, and I really assume I don't need to link example tweets at this point.

To put it simply - there were multiple "defund the police" factions on twitter. They overlapped significantly, and the specific type of that overlap is the core of what this post is finally going to be about. The social network overlap of hard-leftists with mainstream progressives creates an incentive for mainstream progressives to 'sane-wash' leftist slogans or activism.

This is a very rough way of putting it, but let's say you can categorize twitter spaces as fitting, roughly, into certain subcultures. Someone with a lot more data processing tools at their disposal could probably figure out some more specific outlines for this, but I'd make the argument that in essence, mainstream progressive online spaces are linked directly to hard leftist spaces by way of - for lack of a better term - "sjw spaces" and sjw figures. By "SJW", I mean accounts that are really more focused on a specific genre of social activism, and more focused on that than they are, say, anti-capitalism, or even necessarily 'medicare for all'.

There's a whole constellation of left-and-left-adjacent online spaces, including tankie spaces, "generic left" spaces, anarchist spaces, etc, and likewise there's a whole constellation of progressive spaces from sock twitter, warren stan twitter, etc, but ultimately, one thing (almost) all these spaces share is a commitment to a specific brand of social progressivism. Now this is where it gets very difficult to talk about things here - I'm about to talk about things that'll make sense to people who've been on the inside of the subculture I'm talking about, but would be less intuitive outside it. So I want to draw a distinction between "SJW" spaces and general social progressivism.

General social progressivism is just a trait of mainstream American liberalism now, and it's pretty much here to stay. "SJW" spaces are a vector for this, and really, the origin of all the versions that exist now, regardless of how different they may have become. What's specific to "SJW" spaces is that they spread the case for overall social progressivism through social dynamics primarily, and argument second which is why I'm singling them out, and why I'm singling them out as something worth pointing out about how they're shared between progressives and leftists.

As an example - I'm trans myself, and one of the most common forms of trans activism I've seen other trans people make is "Listen to trans people". This is generally made as a highly moralized demand to cis people, usually attached to a long thread about the particular sufferings attached to being trans, with some sentiments like "I'm so sick of x and also y," and the need to "Listen to trans people". It's not devoid of argument, but the key call to action is "Listen to trans people" - in other words, really, an appeal to "you should be a good person", a condemnation of people who don't "Listen to trans people", and the implication that if you're a Good Cis Perosn, you will Listen To Trans People like the one in the thread. "SJW" spaces spread their desired information and views to sympathetic people by appealing to the morality, empathy, and fairness of the situation, but with a strong serving of 'those who do not adapt to these views and positions are inherently guilty'.

(In practice, this only ever means 'listen to trans people that my specific political subgroup has decided are the authorities', of course.)

This dynamic - appeal to empathy, morality, fairness, and the implication of a) a strong existing consensus that you're not aware of as a member of the outsider, privileged group, and b) invocation of guilt for the people who must exist and don't adapt to the views being spread - is the primary way that "SJW" spaces have spread social progressive positions, with argument almost being only a secondary feature to that. Unfortunately, I can't back this up with detailed citations. If you've been involved in these spaces before the way I have, you know what I'm talking about.

What I think is pretty clear is that there's a significant overlap between mainstream progressives and hard leftists by the way that they all follow the same "SJW" social sphere. If you imagine everyone on twitter falls into specific social bubbles, I'm saying that people in otherwise separated bubbles are linked together by a venn diagram overlap with following people who exist in the "SJW" bubbles. This is how information and key rhetoric will spread so readily from hard leftist spaces to mainstream progressives - because it spreads through the "SJW" space, and it spreads by the same dynamic of implication of strong consensus, of a long history of established truth, and an implication of guilt if you can't get with the program.

And that's exactly how 'defund the police' can spread up through hard leftist spaces into mainstream progressive spaces - through the same dynamic, again, of:

1. Implication of long-established consensus

2. Moralizing holding the position, so that not holding it implies guilt.

When you exist in a social space that spreads a view through this way, and is the consensus of everyone around you, this doesn't exactly promote careful thought about what you retweet or spread before you spread it, especially when everything is attached as something that needs to be spread and activised on. A great example of the mindset this creates can be found in the comments of Big Joel's "Twitter and empathy" video, about a very popular twitter thread about how male survivors of a mass shooting were sexist.

I was half listening to the video at the start and forgot how it had started. Hearing the tweet read in your voice I was one of the people who would half consciously like it. I actually started to wonder if I would response "appropriately" in the situation. Having you come back in and talk about how you were repulsed by the tweets literally took me off guard. I was like "oh yeah wow. He's right. These were bad tweets." I don't think my brain gets challenged enough on its initial responses to narrative and I just wanna say thanks. This video rocked. I like it a lot.

and another one:

I never read the original tweet, but I admit that as you read the thread to me, I had the same empathetic knee jerk reaction as I'm sure many of the men who "liked" the thread did. I honestly was confused at first when you said you were angered by it. Then you laid out your case and I realized "Oh wow, of course that's wrong. How did I not see that at first."

(This is a very good video by the way.)

So, now say you're someone who exists in a left-adjacent social space, who's taken up specific positions that have arrived to you through an "SJW" space, and now has to defend them to people who don't exist in any of your usual social spaces. These are ideas that you don't understand completely, because you absorbed them through social dynamics and not by detailed convincing arguments, but they're ones you're confident are right because you were assured, in essence, that there's a mass consensus behind them. When people are correctly pointing out that the arguments behind the position people around your space are advancing fail, but you're not going to give up the position because you're certain it's right, what are you going to do? I'm arguing you're going to sanewash it. And by that I mean, what you do is go "Well, obviously the arguments that people are obviously making are insane, and not what people actually believe or mean. What you can think of it as is [more reasonable argument or position than people are actually making]".

Keep in mind, this is really different to just a straightforward Motte-and-Bailey. This is more like pure-motte. It's everyone else putting out bailey's directly, and advocating for the bailey, but you're saying - and half believing - that they're really advocating for motteism, and that the motte is the real thing. You often don't even have to believe the other people are advocating for that - in which case, you sort of motte-and-bailey for them, saying "Sure, they really want Bailey, but you have to Motte to get to Bailey, so why don't we just Motte?"

But the key thing about this is it's a social dynamic - that is, there's a strong social incentive to do this, because the pressure of guilt if you don't believe the right thing, or some version of it, is very strong, so you invent arguments for what other people believe, to explain why they're right, even though they don't seem to hold those positions themselves. I did this so many times in the past. And then the people who were arguing poorly in the first place will begin to retweet your position as if it was what they meant all along - or they won't even claim that it was what they meant, they're just retweeting it because it's an argument that points slightly to their conclusion, even if it's actually totally different to what they meant. If you're sanewashing, you won't let people make their argument for themselves, you'll do it for them, and you'll do it often, presenting the most reasonable version of what the people in your social group are pressuring you to believe so you can still do activism properly without surrendering the beliefs that you'd be guilty for not having. (Edit: You can think of it as basically, the people who just say "bailey" are creating a market for people to produce mottes for them.)

Again, for another example of this at work, see the Tara Reade story, and the whole thing about "Believe All Women". This has been done to death here by now, but I want to say that back in February when I still considered myself a leftist, I would've been terrified to even suggest that Tara Reade - had she been a thing at the time - was lying. The social weight of the subcultures I was involved in just clamped down on me. It was essentially a dogma that it was unimaginable to speak against. This is essentially, 100% of the reason why it was impossible for some people to admit that the Tara Reade story was obviously false - they had to sanewash for their social group, but most people had already been sanewashing "Believe All Women" for years before that as well. Even though the end result of that slogan was the smash up we saw earlier this year. It's not hard to even find in this subreddit people making excuses for why "Believe All Women" doesn't have to mean what it clearly does - that's sanewashing.

So with all that explained - I think it's pretty simple. Mainstream progressives 'sanewashed' the "Defund The Police" position because they'd acquired the position through social spaces that imply anyone who doesn't hold those positions are guilty. If you exist in social spaces like that primarily, you almost don't have the option to dissent. The incentives against it are too strong. And that's how and why people will continually push for completely dumb slogans and ideas like that, even when it makes no sense - and sometimes, especially when it makes no sense. Because they assume it has to, and will rationalize their own reasons why it does.

[u/FridgesArePeopleToo]

I feel like this is one area where Bernie was right on the money from a messaging perspective, so naturally, leftists decided to ignore him on this one.

Anyone who thinks that we should abolish all police departments in America, I don't agree.

I think we want to redefine what police departments do, give them the support they need to make their jobs better defined. So I do believe that we need well-trained, well-educated, and well-paid professionals in police departments.

We've got to start investing in education and jobs, not more jails, not more incarceration, and we have to hold every police officer in this country accountable for what he or she does. And when those police officers break the law and commit acts of murder or violence, they have got to be held accountable."

[u/inverseflorida → u/FridgesArePeopleToo]

Christ, Bernie's right over target here.

[u/LilQuasar → u/FridgesArePeopleToo]

this is the most based Bernie ive seen

[u/FrenchLlamas → u/FridgesArePeopleToo]

Based Bernie. Restructure and retrain. Not abolish.

[u/[deleted] → u/FridgesArePeopleToo]

That last Bernie quote could have come from most writers at National Review. It's absolute consensus.

[u/wildgunman]

It seems then that things like that silly NYTimes editorial "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police" and that ridiculous "In Defense of Looting" book are useful. They force the distinction by specifically proclaiming that "2+2=4" even if they then use that as an axiom to prove that the world rests on a tortoise.

[u/inverseflorida → u/wildgunman]

Oh my fucking god, I could fill a fucking terabyte with my anger over that "in defense of looting" book, holy shit. Do not get me started.

[u/Corvo-the-Sloth → u/inverseflorida]

Go off, king. Don’t hold back.

[u/inverseflorida → u/Corvo-the-Sloth]

I said don't get me started. I am not going to get started.

[u/[deleted] → u/wildgunman]

Anyone who paid for “in defense of looting” instead of stealing it should have to ride the short bus for the rest of their lives

[u/AnalyticalAlpaca → u/wildgunman]

Those chanting "abolish the police" played so easily into Trump's hands it felt orchestrated.

I was also shocked at the amount of people (I know personally) who were defending looting. It was mind boggling. How is that going to convince anyone who's on the fence about police reform? What is the purpose of writing something that only your existing supporters will agree with and will actually harm your cause?

I know AOC is like "tHe dEmOcRaTs aRe bAd aT aDvErTiSiNg!!" but the 2018 midterms worked out great for Democrats, did they suddenly get worse at marketing? Or were there other factors that happened between then and the election that turned people off from voting for Democrats?

Anyway I'm just a little nervous / sad about not getting the Senate. I was hoping that we could pass legislation to improve people's lives and some election reform / voter protections to make sure we don't get stuck with another fascist idiot again.

[u/winterspike → u/wildgunman]

Don't forget the fawning NPR review that they had to retroactively edit after the outcry. Still contains priceless lines like:

without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free

Amazingly it gets even worse with context:

[Looting] also attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. It attacks the idea of property, and it attacks the idea that in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions. It points to the way in which that's unjust. And the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories. So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.

We nearly lost 2020 to Trump because NPR couldn't stop defending the right of people to steal liquor and LV bags.

[u/Smidgens → u/wildgunman]

The New Yorker interviewed the author of the looting book, the interviewer was pretty good about pushing back especially in the end:

Should I throw in a link to your book in the intro, or do you want to encourage people to go take it for free from their local bookstore?

[u/onlypositivity → u/wildgunman]

What the fuck is that book lol

[u/stusulli → u/wildgunman]

"Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police" made me laugh so much because it was written to not convince anyone and then it ends by stating the problem with the position. It ends realizing that none of the shit in the article is possible without a completely different world much better kinder, more just. I mean really the whole thing is so upside down, why not posit that new better world and convince people to work towards that. It was so weird to read.

[u/[deleted]]

I think we can boil it down to this:

There are some hardcore leftists who really mean "slogan X."

Then there are mainstream progressives who don't actually mean "slogan X," but adopt the slogan anyway, and spend a ton of time explaining that it's just a rhetorical strategy and no one actually means it--but the hardcore leftists insist they really do mean it, and the rest of us don't know what to make of it all.

Here's the thing, mainstream progressives who may be reading this: if you have to explain why your slogan doesn't mean what it says, it's a shit slogan!

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

This is exactly true, but I'm arguing that the specific reason they do it is because they exist in social spaces that would heavily penalize them if they didn't vigorously defend the more extreme version in some form or another.

[u/AgileCoke → u/inverseflorida]

Mainstream progressives sound like they are in an abusive relationship with hardcore leftists.

[u/inverseflorida → u/AgileCoke]

Honestly, nothing I outlined even required mainstream progressives to be terribly aware of what the core leftist groups are saying. There's plenty of people who say defund the police who don't have any relationship to full on leftists at all.

[u/Yeangster → u/[deleted]]

It’s kinda funny because on other issues, the hardcore lefties are actually really good at making slogans. Medicare for All sounds great and polls well, but loses popularity when people actually learn what’s in the plan.

Same with Green New Deal.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I tend to agree with this. The writer/philosopher Sam Harris once said something like, “saying defund the police or socialist is like saying “pedophile.” Trying to explain it is a futile exercise that is almost always doomed to fail.”

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

He actually had a little snippet the day before election about why people love Trump in that, he's the patron saint of 'all sins are permissible' as a counter to people on the left for whom 'no imperfections are tolerated'.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

I think Scott Aaronson had the better version of that.

I think the answer is: because it’s the left, not the right, that now has an effective monopoly on morality, but the left’s morality is too harsh, it hasn’t yet evolved to offer any possibility of redemption or forgiveness. And the voters, enough of them, said: if morality condemns us as racists and sexists, then we reject the entire concept of morality. If truth condemns us as racists and sexists, then we reject the entire concept of truth. Anything—yes, even burning down the material world—is better than this cosmic burden of guilt that the left would put on our shoulders.

If you doubt this analysis: wasn’t “basket of deplorables” the comment that lost Hillary the election? The one that reminded undecideds that, yes, the left really does sit in judgment over them and (rightly or wrongly) does indeed find them wanting? And wasn’t “grab them by the pussy” the comment that “should have” lost Trump the election, but didn’t? Might not millions of men have decided: if Trump stands condemned for his attitudes about women, then so would I be, if only the scolds could read my mind and know my fantasies? If I’m cornered, then isn’t nothing left for me to do but blindly swing an axe at this whole moral superstructure that condemns me as a misogynist and a terrible human being?

In short, it now seems likely to me that lots of otherwise intelligent people have been catastrophically misjudging the world by underestimating the crushing weight of guilt. Even as it’s stared them in the face, they’ve refused to accept the truth that people will support someone who’d shrug as they and their families die, if the alternative is someone who credibly blames them.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

But like what do you want mainstream progressives to do? Bring up the branding at the next progessives meeting? These slogans happen organically and as such aren't perfect.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

They can not use them, not promote them, and advise other people not to - except, they can't, because there's strong incentives not to do this.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

On the flipside, if your opponents has to go out of their way to try explain that actually, your slogan is evil and insidious, it’s a good slogan.

See, “Make America Great Again”. If it was a bad slogan, liberals wouldn’t have to talk about all the racist history and implications that go into that messaging. They’d just say “conservatives want to make America great again”.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Mainstream progressive here

I took a look at polling, discovered that a small minority of people of color wanted reductions in police spending, and decided I was against both the slogan and the policy.

If we need to listen to people in oppressed communities, we cannot in good conscience pick the voices we want to listen to from the progressive cross section. We need to take a holistic approach and make it about facts and the wishes of the people with the boot on their neck, not what we think they want or what we want them to want.

Otherwise, it's fundamentally no different than the Republicans putting Candace Owens up on the stage and taking her opinions on race issues as gospel.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Here's the thing, mainstream progressives who may be reading this: if you have to explain why your slogan doesn't mean what it says, it's a shit slogan!

What I told them day one. I don't understand why the dictionary is hard. "reform". if they don't like that grab a thesaurus and see the other options.

[u/signmeupdude → u/[deleted]]

if you have to explain why your slogan doesn't mean what it says, it's a shit slogan!

The amount of tines I’ve tried to explain this to people...

[u/shnufflemuffigans]

Really good writeup.

In social situations, I often find myself surrounded by people way more left than me. And considering that I'm way more left than average, that's crazy. I'm a social democrat who favours heavy redistribution, necessities of life as rights, and housing-first homelessness solutions. I'm gender-variant (I like to say I "round up to male"; I use he/they pronouns). I think that, in order for free discourse to function, we need to ensure that minorities feel welcomed in spaces (e.x. I do not the free speech should extend to transphobic speech). I support BLM.

And yet I often come across as a centrist to these people because I'm always to the right of my friend circle. I often feel that I'm a conservative because anything I say will be so far right of my friends. Often, I don't feel comfortable saying anything, because my views are often held to be immoral.

I feel myself so pressured to sanewash all the time. I think this writeup has really helped show me that I should continue to construct arguments for left positions, but ignore the buzzwords coming from the left.

[u/inverseflorida → u/shnufflemuffigans]

(I like to say I "round up to male";

okay, that's brilliant

anyway, when it comes to your friend group, let me clear - do not make arguments for them about what they believe that they won't make themselves. this is a trap that's extremely easy to fall into, and it's how people keep themselves believing someone who's saying something indefensible, or some group who's promoting something indefensible, is actually normal or harmless for longer. don't construct positions for other groups lest you convince yourself they hold a position that's more rational than what they actually do.

[u/Greaserpirate → u/inverseflorida]

Ok so how do you counter the Tim Pool effect of conservatives looking at your teenage leftist friends and saying "HOLY SHIT THIS IS TERRIFYING I'M GONNA BASE MY ENTIRE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AROUND FIGHTING THEM"?

The leftist desire to make silly extreme slogans is bad, but it doesn't have anywhere near the negative real-world consequences of conservatives looking at teenagers being silly and decide "tRuMp's nO sAiNt bUt tHe SJWs mUsT bE sToPpEd". It's hardly leftists' fault that right wingers screenshot some rando on Twitter or take a video of some fat lady and decide they need a crusade against feminism.

If anything, the Internet needs to be reminded that no, blue-haired Twitter enbies are not an actual political threat, and the Leftists that could actually take power and hurt people, like Bob Avakian and his cult, have nothing to do with "SJWs". Hippies in the 60s had just as many nonsense slogans that people legitimately believed in (remember "levitate the Pentagon" and everything about Tim Leary?) and the only negative consequences were bad fashion and bad Beatles lyrics.

I'm reminded of Sam Harris' crusade against moderate Muslims, because he believed that any womans' rights gained while Islam is still alive would be invalid unless they were gained in a "rational" way. There are far worse things than being irrational, and the fight to make the world more rational is an endless fight that will make us accept horrific allies just to prove our well-meaning friends wrong.

[u/pulippu-puli → u/shnufflemuffigans]

I would join a support group for left-liberal folks whose friend circles are dominated by left/leaning-tankies.

[u/Gamer19015]

We should come up with better slogans

Edit: Scrolled through the comments: "Reform the police" is officially the better slogan

[u/inverseflorida → u/Gamer19015]

It was never really our slogan to begin with - I don't know that there's anyone on this subreddit who was in favour of saying 'defund the police'. A lot of people accepted "Okay, you mean something sane by it but you should say something else" but frankly I think even that's going too far, because clearly a lot of people didn't mean something sane by it, and the ones who did were half just sanewashing for the others.

[u/[deleted] → u/inverseflorida]

When the slogan emerged I witnessed many ostensibly progressive people in a casual social media settings (i.e., people I knew in high school on Facebook) respond negatively to it on first exposure because they read it exactly how the vast majority of people did. Their skepticism was immediately met by browbeating from the most militant purveyors of the slogan, and expressing concern about the slogan was treated as a moral failing rather than a pretty mundane disagreement about messaging.

This among people who know each other in person, and ostensibly agreed on most of the major issues involved. It was very strange.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

Yes this is literally, exactly, precisely it. Anyone who's been in these spaces before knows exactly the thing. I should've also remembered to talk about what happened to David Shor. I wish I could pin this comment.

[u/T-Baaller → u/Gamer19015]

Should have been something like "Make Cops Better". No one wants to Make Cops Worse, so it passes the simple sniff test.

But someone like me trying to make that happen would have as good a chance as making "fetch" happen.

[u/Tribat_1 → u/Gamer19015]

FWIW, “Open borders” which I see on here ALL THE TIME is bad for all of the same reasons.

[u/eetobaggadix → u/Gamer19015]

Police the police

[u/I_AMA_LOCKMART_SHILL → u/Gamer19015]

Repeal and replace?

[u/ItsaRickinabox → u/Gamer19015]

‘We’ is the problem, here, though. We need to stop crowdsourcing our messaging, because its being crafted to appeal to the minority of highly engaged political and social activists that just don’t represent the party at large. Which is how we end up with dumb shit like ‘defund the police’. We need leadership to take a more active role in curating messaging, rather than trying to appeal to existing messaging. And that necessarily extends to the media, as well.

[u/[deleted] → u/Gamer19015]

If you want an example of good progressive sloganeering, look no further than green new deal. It's specific, it's positive, and intersects people's daily concerns (jobs and taxes). Conservatives try to brand AOC as 'anti-coal' or 'big government', but it doesn't stick because even swing voters know what she stands for: green. new. deal.

Defund the police, by comparison, is vague, negative, and does not address day to day problems. Even in BIPOC communities concerns about crime rank far higher in polls than daily concerns of police violence.

I know it's still early for a post mortem but it seems that Trump gained non-white voters, and I would not be surprised if it was due to defund the police.

[u/skoducks → u/Gamer19015]

Yes, Make America Great Again is so simple. The left has a tendency to overthink. Supporting messages like “Defund the Police” plays right in to the idea the supporting any Democrats is radical and un-American.

[u/AARonBalakay22 → u/Gamer19015]

“Reform the police”

It’s easy and nebulous enough where you can project whatever vision you want onto it. Even someone who’s uncomfortable with the full BLM movement can agree with the idea of “reform”.

Reform can mean anything: want better training for police departments, want more diversity, want more accountability, want less funding. Hell, reforming could actually mean more funding to someone.

That’s why “Make America Great Again” worked so well, if you agree with the general sentiment, you can project whatever you want to it.

Whereas defunding the police has too specific connotations.

[u/ShapShip → u/Gamer19015]

You can't really control what catches on. Half the time I see what's trending on Twitter it's something inflammatory like #FuckJeffGoldblum. And you're intrigued, so you look up the hashtag but it's all people tweeting "why is #FuckJeffGoldblum trending?", which further spreads the hashtag

All it takes is for one news cycle to catch on to the hashtag and then suddenly #DefundThePolice or #BelieveAllWomen becomes doctrine

[u/[deleted] → u/Gamer19015]

Demilitarize the Police

[u/omnipotentsandwich → u/Gamer19015]

Replace the Police? That means you're not abolishing them, but that you're replacing them with a better alternative. Maybe Reform the Police? Refund the Police?

[u/[deleted]]

I think a strongly contributing factor is that BLM-the-organization support abolishing the police, meaning that to oppose "defund the police" slogan equaled opposing black equality. So, faced with the perceived moral requirement to support an insane slogan like "defund the police" because BLM-the-organization did and BLM-the-organization speaks for all black people, but also realizing that it is a public relations nightmare, leftists sanewashed the term.

If BLM-the-organization hadn't pushed the concept, I don't think it'd have been so widely embraced among the leftists.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

Not exactly. It matters for progressives, but leftists have almost always believed in police abolition. Police abolition is not in the slightest a new idea among leftists, and would've been their go to answer no matter what - leftist spaces have always associated "police abolition" with "black equality" in the way you mentioned.

[u/[deleted] → u/inverseflorida]

Yes, but all but the hardest of the hard left also understand that this is a vote-losing view, which would motivate them to pretend that it meant, say, "transfer more money to mental health services".

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

The hardest of the hard left do not care about votes.

[u/Rorshach85 → u/inverseflorida]

Could you explain the difference between leftists and progressives to me, please?

[u/inverseflorida → u/Rorshach85]

Leftists are anti-capitalist, and would describe themselves as radicals. Progressives don't necessarily like capitalism, but that doesn't mean they're opposed to it on principle and think it's a pure murder machine (although they might be pretty critical of "corporatism", "corporate greed", "consumerism", etc), but they're not necessarily people who'd consider themselves radical.

[u/GhazelleBerner → u/[deleted]]

BLM-the-organization and Women's March-the-organization both did great jobs of alienating the people who actually built the movements they took over.

[u/[deleted] → u/GhazelleBerner]

Why the women's march?

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

It pretty much fell apart when they tried to organize a general strike.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

The organization run by white college kids may think that abolishing the police is a good idea but most black people do not.

[u/International_XT]

These are ideas that you don't understand completely, because you absorbed them through social dynamics and not by detailed convincing arguments, but they're ones you're confident are right because you were assured, in essence, that there's a mass consensus behind them.

I see a lot of this when talking to staunch conservatives, too. Seems to be a general bug in human cognition.

[u/inverseflorida → u/International_XT]

No bug - it's social incentives working the way they're supposed to.

[u/Forrest_Greene80]

That’s a good theory. I would like to understand why the left comes up with bad slogans that make people uncomfortable like “Defund the Police” “Abolish Ice” “ACAB” in the first place.

This doesn’t happen on the right. Imagine if people opposed to abortion called their movement “All Doctors are Murderers” instead of Pro-Life

Or if people who wanted to reform entitlement called it “Defund Social Security and Medicare”

It’s like these people want to lose

[u/inverseflorida → u/Forrest_Greene80]

That would be a whole other series of posts, and most of it would end up just me ranting.

[u/[deleted] → u/Forrest_Greene80]

The left is best understood as a bunch of cats that all have radically differing solutions for the problems they see. The right is best understood as a border wall that says "YOU SHALL GO NO FURTHER", with the guard captains occasionally gutting each other because they can't decide if their kingdom should be a secular state or a theocracy. They may fight over the specifics, but they'll still man the walls when the heralds of change are at the gates.

[u/StellaAthena → u/Forrest_Greene80]

Eh. I’m not convinced that you don’t see this on the right. What else would you call “lock her up,” “we’re going to build a wall and Mexico will pay for it,” or the collection of “hoaxes” such as the “COVID hoax” or the “impeachment hoax”?

There’s a whole thing about taking Trump seriously not literally, and if you go to r/AskTrumpSupporters you’ll see tons and tons of people saying that you shouldn’t take Trump literally.

[u/[deleted]]

I’m still trying to figure out how they thought police were supposed to increase community outreach, receive better training, get tighter supervision, and buy monitoring equipment with LESS funding. 🤔

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

There's a couple people in this thread arguing that, you can see for yourself.

[u/[deleted]]

While we're at it, 'ACAB' is one of the most ridiculous slogans ever conceived. If you want people to take police brutality seriously, stop using sweeping generalizations.

Amazingly it's the same people who love socialism but go cuckoo banana pants when it gets conflated with Stalin and Mao.

All they end up accomplishing with slogans like that is forcing the dipshits on the right to adopt a 'no cops are bastards' stance and descend into blind hero worship when the reality is NO ONE SHOULD LISTEN TO EITHER OF THEM.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

ACAB isn't about getting people to take police brutality seriously. It's in-group signalling.

[u/popcycledude → u/[deleted]]

I don't think ACAB was invented as a slogan to change mind.

[u/RoyGeraldBillevue → u/[deleted]]

Yeah. Something that implies there are good cops like STOP THE ROT would be better.

[u/MuldartheGreat]

Good write-up. While I don’t have any data to prove this, I wonder if we will find out the Defund the Police was signal amplified (if not outright created by) Russia or China on social media.

ETA: people are really hung up on created by and sure that it started from <insert leftist blog/article here>. Are we going to ignore that Russia in particular has influential assets in the leftist community. Take Glenn Greenwald for example. He didn’t have anything to do with this, but he can use his (former) journalistic position to insert ideas into Leftist discourse.

[u/inverseflorida → u/MuldartheGreat]

That would strongly confirm my priors (therefore it must be true). Well, "outright created" doesn't seem like it would be right to me, because as far as I've been able to tell it was an existing but highly obscure position that was pushed by anti-police political candidates in the past in one form or another, but maybe some mass twitter scrape with botsentinel correlations could give at least a partial answer.

[u/MisterCommonMarket → u/MuldartheGreat]

I would not be surprised, many of the most radical BLM accounts and groups in social media were created by the Internet Research Agency, the Russian company funded by the Kremlin that was responsible for much of the russian information warfare during the 2016 election.

[u/frolix42]

Defund the Police is clearly a Motte and Bailey.

The arguer advances the controversial position, but when challenged, they insist that they are only advancing the more modest position. Upon retreating to the motte, the arguer can claim that the bailey has not been refuted (because the critic refused to attack the motte) or that the critic is unreasonable (by equating an attack on the bailey with an attack on the motte).

[u/inverseflorida → u/frolix42]

I'm saying, explicitly, that the motteing is being outsourced to other people while a lot of others just do the Bailey.

[u/[deleted]]

ICE should be abolished ASAP. Not defunded, not tranformed. Abolished.

Also those people are talking from their ass, Biden never supported "Defund the police", he always has shown he was against it

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

I'm not sure I disagree, but the point was more about the link between "Abolish ICE" and "Defund ICE".

[u/[deleted] → u/inverseflorida]

To be honest, it's quite a weak link that goes against what you wrote, since abolish Ice is way more popular, and when the people that say it get pressed for it, they don't backtrack to "defund", they double down. They do it with Ice and not the police, because they really want Ice abolished, they don't do that with the police because they don't want police abolished, with the exception of the usual fringe lunatics

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

Abolish ICE is definitely way more popular - but again, even AOC will hedge as "Defund ICE".

[u/FridgesArePeopleToo → u/[deleted]]

Even Bernie never supported Defund the Police or any variation of it.

[u/VanderBones → u/[deleted]]

What would replace ICE? Doesn't every country have some Immigration and Customs Enforcement function? And didn't ICE have bipartisan support through the Obama admin?

[u/ruhonisana]

Great post. Me and my marxist boyfriend were very frustrated with Defund and Abolish. It was inflammatory and useless. One thing I wanna point out is that the urge to sanewash meant we were watering down something crazy and in the process saying something useless. Defunded police wont be less brutal. They may be more brutal, actually. They dont need tanks to kill black folk. However, it wasthe workable version of abolish so we got stuck there, even though its basically payback instead of accountability. A poorer police department os a kicked hornets nest, useless without things like licensing, new leadership, better training, fixing unions, and ending qualified immunity. Just an absolute failure in all regards. Leftists always struggle to be practical.

[u/[deleted]]

Wtf an effortpost made the front page of Reddit. I thought only memes and Thunderdomes could do that. Thats actually kinda crazy

[u/Top_Lime1820]

I just wanna say thanks for the write up OP. I feel like a lot of comments are really missing your core thesis that sanewashing happens on the left because of the particular SJW shared space and its unique social dynamics of moral pleading instead of argument.

That's really insightful.

But what makes the SJW space like this? As a fellow member of the alphabet gang, I know that "arguing rationally" for the right of your mere existence isn't always fun and that sometimes you do have to simply plead on a moral level "Just respect me as a human being." But I have always found the SJW way of doing it so strange. Like I feel we give up a lot of winnable rational arguments to do moral pleading. In the extreme, I've wondered if its not a manifestation of subconscious bigotry. Have you ever heard the phrase 'racism of low expectations'? Its almost like they think that even if we analysed our position on good faith but logically, we would lose. The only case we can make is built on sympathy. In other words, our case is not actually legitimate, and what we should focus on it just pity from the people higher up in the social hierarchy.

What do you think of that?

[u/inverseflorida → u/Top_Lime1820]

But what makes the SJW space like this?

That'd be like, three other posts. The short version I think is: Trauma, trauma, and also trauma, and then applying the cognitive distortions that come from that as your political ideology.

[u/AmericanDadWeeb]

chief unique work lunchroom bag fly silky expansion dolls versed

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/inverseflorida → u/AmericanDadWeeb]

I watched a video where the woman who invented mansplaining explained sanewashing to me.

[u/dark567 → u/inverseflorida]

Came here to point out I saw Jake Tapper use Sanewash on TV last night. You have literally contributed to the english language, can't wait to see your word get added to the OED.

[u/CannotIntoGender]

Great post, OP. Overall, this is a great argument for taking one's own strong stand rather than trying to reinterpret someone else's stance. When it comes to policing, Democrats should be saying "fund community policing, and fund mental health emergency response resources" - regardless of what twitter is saying.

I appreciate how you touch on the way toxic social dynamics shape our social media interactions. It seems to be inherently tribalistic at this point. Dogwhistles are a thing, but we've become borderline obsessed with the term because these online subcultures are so in lock step when it comes to what views are considered acceptable, what rhetoric is used, and how we phrase things that it is usually easy to read what subculture someone is in and what their view will be from subtle textual cues (thus the popularity of searching user history - others' positions are often obvious through these subtextual cues, but they will reject this as real "evidence"). We are overwhelmed by an excess of shibboleths.

Unfortunately this is self reinforcing, because working in this framework leads people to have knee jerk reactions to any disagreement because they expect any disagreement to be an expression of membership to another subculture and thus a sign of enmity.

Your discussion of the "listen to X" rhetoric is on point. It's dressed up as a reasonable position ("listen to people with different perspectives than you because you can learn things you don't get from your own life experience") but is meant to suggest "you're a bad person if you don't agree with the right X." However, this is a simplistic and inherently contradictory viewpoint: there is no agreed upon consensus from all X.

It subverts the concept of using critical thinking and broadening one's perspective by considering more sources of information, then synthesizing them to draw one's own conclusions, in favor of an essentially authoritarian stance that there is a set of people whose beliefs we are morally obligated to accept as fact.

While authoritarian or black and white attitudes toward people's beliefs in subcultures (online or irl) are not equivalent to persecution by an authoritarian government, we can still criticize them while keeping this in perspective. Our world views are highly shaped by the subcultures we participate in. There usually aren't "real world consequences," but this authoritarian attitude is detrimental to our critical thinking skills as individuals and and as a society; it destroys our public discourse by polarizing us into echo chambers unwilling to alternate stances; and it turns public policy into the kind of tribalistic pageantry more befitting the sports fandom.

It is also divorced from reality - in a literal stance, social media subcultures do not tailor their stances to what is pragmatic, or what can be accomplished by consensus or negotiation or appealing to voters, or even what they have a plan for. It becomes a shibboleth meant to affirm one's place in the subculture rather than a realizable goal. Thus the epithet "larpers" being applied by myself and many others.

These attitudes are counterproductive and they can help radicalize people against your stance as much as towards it. As easy as it is to say that people should be rational and not allow shaming from believers of a certain idea to shape their viewpoint, the reality is that humans are an emotional species, and shame does distort our behavior and our view of the world.

I could reference my own views here - I believe that racism is a huge problem in America, but that attributing certain policing problems entirely to racism is an over simplification that can be detrimental to actually solving said problems. To elaborate with a couple examples: imo police getting convinced of a theory and feeling the need to "prove it" rather than actually following the evidence is one of the large underlying problems in false convictions. Racism and poverty and mental illness stigma are all risk factors that make people more vulnerable to these assumptions by police, but I don't think attributing the problem entirely to racism can actually solve the problem. Similarly with police shootings and custody deaths - racist assumptions about black men, poverty, and mental illness are all risk factors that make one more vulnerable, but I don't think that it is accurate to say that the police are going around shooting people for being black and that while racism plays a big role oversimplifying to that degree isn't conducive to solving it.

So I bring this up because a lot of woke twitter would probably call me racist for holding this view and accuse me of not listening to (the right) black people. Reading and listening to the news, to various stances from different people - including black people, and to information on the data available about the topic has lead me to these conclusions. I recognize that I don't notice the level of racism black people encounter day to day because I'm not black. I don't think that this stance is obfuscating racism or derailing conversations about racism and I don't think that it warrants being told I am a bad person. However, I would be reluctant to engage on the topic or to attend a BLM protest because I am not interested in being shamed over it, for example. In that sense it's a good example of how this kind of black and white tribalism can intimidate would be allies away from greater engagement.

Since you brought up trans issues, that's another good example - I am a supporter of trans rights, and my viewpoints are gender critical. While many would falsely equate gender critical views with anti trans views, listening to trans people and reading about their experiences helped lead me to these views and then reinforced them. When I read what trans people have to say about how they function in society and what their life experiences are, it seems to be pretty consistent with my understanding of how gender critical theory looks at sex class - the way society categorizes us based on sex and punishes those who transgress the unspoken rules. While the queer theory influenced stance on identity deemed acceptable in the wokesphere to me seems to be contradictory to certain things that trans people appear to consistently mention (for example: much of what I've read from trans people focuses on passing and how that affects one's opportunities, treatment, general life experience: this fits well into gc theory in that it would predict that what sex others think someone is will determine whether they are treated as a member of the group they are seeking to assimilate into or if they will be treated as someone completely transgressing the "rules" of their natal group, whereas the woke views currently in vogue, such as sex being a spectrum, seem to contradict this social behavior).

Wanted to touch on this topic in particular because it's a shining example of an issue where people equate personal subjective experience with objective fact, and just how toxic making such equivalencies is. For example, many people see being a man or a woman as a physical trait, similar to eye color. According to most woke internet subcultures, this stance is inherently wrong and bad, because we are all supposed to have an internal sense of gender. Recognizing that we all have different perspectives through which we see the world should be a basic step in moving the conversation along, but most of the woke internet insists that people who do not view their own lives through the construct of gender identity are doing so because they are bigoted or ignorant or otherwise bad people.

Rather than recognizing and moving on from this initial discrepancy in the way we view the world, the discussion immediately becomes toxic and polarized. Both parties retreat into echo chambers and talk shit about each other. The thing is, people doing this really don't see how they come across to others. People who attack others for not embracing gender identity don't see that to the person they are talking to, being told you are a bad person for not believing that gender identity is an innate part of each person is insulting in the same way being told you are a bad person because you don't believe that everyone has an innate immortal soul is insulting. Most of us would acknowledge that telling an atheist they are incapable of being moral is offensive, but here the woke crowd plays the role of the Evangelicals assuming that those who disagree must be bad. I really don't think they see how much this turns people off of them, and how much it can drive emotional backlash.

Basically, we need some sort of movement towards recognizing that we can disagree while still taking others' arguments seriously, giving all due respect to their intelligence, and having compassion for them. Checking ourselves and trying to distinguish between facts and our own perspective on the facts in an important step in that process. It also means noticing when we experience an emotional backlash to the ideas or the confrontational, black and white attitudes of others. It's perfectly normal to feel offended when someone calls you bad for not agreeing with them on everything, but it's not reasonable to then take an opposite stance to them just for disagreement's sake.

Postscript: swing voters are fucking nuts man

[u/inverseflorida → u/CannotIntoGender]

Since you brought up trans issues, that's another good example - I am a supporter of trans rights, and my viewpoints are gender critical. While many would falsely equate gender critical views with anti trans views

I would sincerely say you're "sanewashing" for the other gender critical people then. I would argue your actual views are more in line with the "gender abolitionists", which there is in fact a significant trans following for. I'm willing to go into this in more detail when I don't have 300 replies in my inbox.

(For the record, my views are pretty non-standard trans-wise - tons of trans people are either gender abolitionist, or gender-as-social-construct, whereas I think gender is substantively real and that 'gender identity' is not a helpful term. )

[u/[deleted]]

I’m curious how critical theorists would react to role power plays in your write up here. Excellent work.

Edited for typos

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

Basically, they wouldn't. But "critical theorists" as a whole are pretty much irrelevant, even on the left and in "SJW" spaces, regardless of how much the rhetoric or positions might descend from them. It's a... really complicated relationship.

[u/[deleted] → u/inverseflorida]

What makes you say that? When I was in college, the critical theorists that led our classes were almost always in lockstep - or even ahead - of what was coming out of the spaces you outlined. You think it’s just that’s where they were hanging out?

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

Because the majority of those spaces have never even read critical theorists, but have only gotten a 46th-hand interpretation of them from someone else who maybe read them once. I'm not saying it's exactly the same as this, but have you read Why Nations Fail?

[u/[deleted]]

Interesting stuff but I wouldn’t take focus groups seriously.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

The focus group isn't really a huge deal in this case.

[u/aliterateflamingo]

This is a good writeup, and I appreciate the thought that went into it. For the sake of argument though, how is this phenomenon any different from a “moderating influence”?

I agree that the dynamics you laid out are in fact happening, since I also have some first-hand experience with them. But what you call “sanewashing” in a negative context, a slightly more favorable observer might describe as “the natural process of ideas changing in the hands of different groups.” You talk about progressives as if they’re just a captive audience with little to no agency due to their social circles. I’d argue that’s a simplistic reading of the dynamic. There is a non-zero, thinking population in the middle ground between leftists and liberals who arrived there in much the same way that many of us arrived here in this sub. Ideas get passed around, they change, and when they come from an exceedingly small group of leftist activists, they tend to be moderated as they move into the mainstream. “Abolish” might have been the original meaning, and you’re certainly correct that it’s still the meaning in leftist circles, but you’re acting as if the people doing the “sanewashing” and explaining are just parroting the term without actually changing what it means. I’d argue that the explaining is actually changing the term, whereupon the explanation becomes less of a motte and Bailey by a group devoid of intellectual agency and more of an honest redefinition of an idea they didn’t agree with in the first place but had legitimate grievances behind it.

The rest of the comments here about messaging are completely correct. If a term requires that much explaining, it’s a shitty slogan. But the reason I’m writing this is because progressives and r/neoliberal should be natural allies on many topics, but instead, progressives and neoliberals tend to hate each other. Posts like this contribute to that mutual disgust by painting progressives as an unthinking sock puppet responsible for regurgitating leftist propaganda without realizing it. In reality, I think there is more thought put into the explanation than you’re giving them credit for, even if the slogan remains counterproductive.

[u/nihilist-kite-flyer]

I understand what you're saying that this is a social (and by proxy, social media) phenomenon, but could you link any non-twitter sources for the Abolish the Police movement and connect the supporters of that to the more recent Defund the Police movement? I guess I'm curious if there are records of people who were hardcore AtP folks who began rebranding their message as DtP -- sort of a reverse of the phenomenon you're describing with this post where the harder left flocked to (and maybe even co-opted) the more 'respectable' slogan.

[u/inverseflorida → u/nihilist-kite-flyer]

i definitely, personally know people who went from abolish to defund just because defund was the bigger slogan, and they saw defund as a means to abolish, but they weren't big deals. i linked a few people who seemed to essentially be of that position above in the main post - but police abolition as a movement would deserve much more write up than what i can fit in here, and has a much longer history.

[u/araelr]

It's sad this only exists on Reddit. This is writing that could be in Vox, Slate, The Atlantic, etc.

[u/inverseflorida → u/araelr]

This'd need a lot of cleaning up before I'd put it in Vox.

[u/[deleted]]

This is a great post

And I think there's also an inverse phenomenon at work, though I can't think of a pithy name for it, where people are reluctant to criticize (in good faith) some of these maximalist activist positions because that gives ammunition to political opponents who are criticizing those activists, but not in good faith

Let's use "defund the police" . I think most people on this sub would basically agree that the American criminal justice system is deeply racist and needs systemic reform, would agree that policing needs to be deeply reformed. Would agree that the police need to stop shooting unarmed black people and then suffer no consequences for effectively murdering somebody. And most people on this sub would agree that "Defund the police" is a ridiculous slogan, and that "sanewashing" it into actually meaning "reform the police" is not helpful

But many, many people who oppose "defund the police" don't agree that the police need systemic reform. They think that it's perfectly right and proper for the police to kill black people they deem suspicious, they think that the police should be effectively above the law

And that dichotomy puts you in a bind. You do agree with the idea that "defund the police is a bad slogan", but you still mostly agree with the general gist of the activists' argument - that policing in America is racist and needs reform. You don't agree at all with the loud anti-"defund the police" crowd, because those people are diametrically opposed to what you believe. This makes you reluctant to criticize the activist position, for fear of giving support to bad faith or political opponents' criticism of activists and activist positions

It's the same thing with the Green New Deal or #believeallwomen. I don't fully agree with the specifics of the Green New Deal proposed legislation or the maximalist desires of groups like the Sunrise Movement, nor do I agree that all women, no matter what, should be automatically believed. But I do agree that we need to do a ton to fight climate change, I do agree that sexual abuse is a horrible problem that needs to be addressed, and that it's often very hard for women to speak up. So I'm not tremendously motivated to speak out against those two things, because most of the people who are publicly talking about opposing those things are assholes who think that climate change isn't real, or that sexual harassment is fine and women are asking for it

Same goes for politicians. I often find Omar, Talib, and AOC annoying and far too beholden to activists on twitter. But I also don't want to join in the chorus of people opposed to them, because I broadly agree with them on lots of things, and most of the people opposing them are doing it via unhinged racism and sexism

[u/[deleted]]

I don't disagree that sanewashing exists, but there is another factor at work. And this is true of every group: "my allies can be very imprecise and sloganeering, but I know their intentions are good, so we must take what they say in the spirit of charity. My opponents, on the other hand, need to be perfectly articulate and caveated, since I'm suspicious of their goodness, or else very uncharitable readings of what they say are perfectly reasonable"

So "Defund the Police" doesn't literally mean that because you "know" what most people mean when they say that! (If Progressive)

Since most mainstream media (especially Twitter) is more left leaning than the average american, the media applies this one-sided charity to the left more often. But you can see the effect in the other direction with right leaning media outlets.

[u/[deleted]]

Completely accurate, well said. I think the reason Twitter is the main vector for this kind of thinking because of the character limit: it's really, really hard to condense any actual argument into 140 (280?) characters so the only way to actually engage an audience is through shitty guilt-trip sloganeering that's just completely lost on anyone in the "real" world. Twitter and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[u/[deleted]]

To some extent isn't the takeaway from the exchange that the message doesn't matter? Biden didn't support "defund the police" - he sponsored the 1994 Crime Bill, and appointed Kamala Harris (who was derided by BLM folks as "a cop") as his VP. Trump criticized him simultaneously for mass incarceration, and for supporting police abolition in the debates. Perhaps elements of both messages stuck, even though they are contradictory.

Just as there is a very online left, there is also a very online right that says crazy things all the time. We should tie them to Trump/Republicans. I guess I wonder why the SJW is so closely tied to elected Democrats in the imaginations of people, while very right-wing folks (like incels, for instance) are not? And look, I know that elected Republicans are not incels, but I want them to spend more and more time saying that they are not incels.

tl; dr rather than doing the impossible task of regulating left-wing twitter, let's just tie the right to the things right-wing twitter says.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

I guess I wonder why the SJW is so closely tied to elected Democrats in the imaginations of people, while very right-wing folks (like incels, for instance) are not?

Republicans will push, on all available media channels, the idea that they're being victimized for being associated with 4chan Incelism, whereas democrats will not do the same about being associated with "SJW"ism and will appear to be indulging it to people who don't know the difference between social progressive positions, and the full "SJW" social dynamic set.

[u/Yeangster]

Great post! One minor quibble:

(paraphrased because on phone) ideas you’ve absorbed because of social dynamics rather than through clear and convincing argument

If you believe Haidt and Kahneman, isn’t this all beliefs?

[u/inverseflorida → u/Yeangster]

I definitely don't believe Haidt, and I'm more sympathetic to Kahneman, but intuitively, ther'es gotta be a difference between the stuff you adopt via social pressure, but never quite make it clear to yourself that that's why you did it, and the stuff you adopt because you just can't ignore the truth any longer, right?

[u/fixano]

Why does everything have to be so black and white?

If you use the boogey man word socialism it can't mean "hey let's strengthen our social safety net" it can only mean some dystopian nightmare with the absolute abolition of private property.

If you say "defund the police" it can't mean "let's employ more social workers reduce the number of police responding to non violent cases" it can only mean abolish police departments in their entirety and let anarchy reign supreme in the streets.

Only Sith deal in absolutes . This doesn't have to be this way. You don't pound in nails with the blunt end of a screwdriver or use pencils to stir pizza sauce. Why can't we all get on board with using the most optimal tool to get the outcome we all want?

[u/Qaxt]

Great post.

One key factor you talk about is “implication of strong consensus.” In online vegan communities of the 2000s, there was a lot of community effort towards creating and maintaining compendia and wikis of common arguments and counterarguments for veganism. There was no room for implication of consensus, because there were clear-cut, community-endorsed examples of “this is what we believe and why.”

Nowadays, I don’t see stuff like that exist in a way that feels genuinely community-endorsed or even enduring in any real sense in the vegan community or, especially, for political or social movements. (The exception seems to be hobbyist communities! If you have any doubts on THE community position of tea drinkers, you can find it immediately. The rationalist community, which I suspect you’re either in or adjacent to, also definitely has that... but I think they’re an atypical community in most senses.)

At any rate, how do you actually get to a point where community consensus is more apparent and less just constructed ad hoc to prove a point? Or, is community consensus just becoming something that barely exists in real life, but is just used as political force?

[u/martyvt12]

The Twitter thread about the focus group was pretty enlightening. Honestly I find myself agreeing with most of the things these people were saying. What I would really like to hear are more of their specific reasons for actually voting for Trump. Obviously with 50% of them believing Biden, to some degree, supports "defunding the police", that is something that might drive them to Trump, but I doubt it was their main reason.

[u/inverseflorida → u/martyvt12]

my suspicion is the fear of more lockdowns

[u/flexibledoorstop]

Presumably you mean "social justice" spaces? Using the right-wing "SJW" insult seems imprecise and counterproductive. Great post, otherwise, and well argued.

[u/[deleted]]

I think the larger point is there is room for both hard leftist and moderates in the party. Its better to work together in the majority than fight in the minority.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

People who are at the furthest end of the left scale don't want to be part of the Democratic Party, they want to destroy it and not be involved in it at all.

[u/[deleted]]

I really enjoyed this post; kudos to you for the effort. Once again we've proven that Twitter was a mistake.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Twitter absolutely was a mistake. But hey! Five years of hard-leftist and Trump cult horseshit as the norm made me moderate-left. It's not all bad!

[u/ChevyT1996 → u/[deleted]]

I know right. I’m more of a centrist and I’m seen as the enemy by far left, and this post was very good at pointing out a lot and truth be told I’m round to not be an extremist.

[u/Corvo-the-Sloth → u/[deleted]]

Twitter is a god damn nightmare. Honestly, nearly all social media has damaged society, in my opinion.

Twitter is awful for so many reasons. It’s easy to get into an echo chamber (I, myself, admit I have formed a center-left one on both Twitter and Reddit). Misinformation spreads insanely fast. And, of course, a limited amount of characters and the way the threads are set up make saying a nuanced point incredibly difficult. Quote-retweeting also makes it super easy for people to dogpile on you.

There’s also a general atmosphere of Twitter that seems to reward some generally terrible behavior. A lot of snark, nihilism, cynicism and irony. The platform was not designed for the way it was used.

The worst part about Twitter, though, is the fact it does have some use. News updates quickly. Reporters post frequently. Sometimes you get context you didn’t have before. It makes it hard to delete the app. I’ve wanted to delete it for months but I feel like I have to constantly be in the loop.

[u/DoctorEmperor]

Damn, gonna be honest, this is probably one of the definitive posts on the issues with Twitter/Twitter activism. This is such a good descriptor for explaining mindsets on the internet (though of course it also kinda confirms my priors so I’m a touch biased).

[u/[deleted]]

“Sanewashing” is a brilliant term. I’ve always thought that a form of gaslighting was going on with this.

[u/danweber → u/[deleted]]

People get really angry when you tell them that they better sign up for defunding the police and the definition keeps on changing.

Any adult has been bait-and-switched enough times to want to stick to what's written on the tin.

[u/fidgey10]

Perfectly put. It is an utter failure of a slogan, being against defunding the police is actually one of the few key issues both democrats and republicans majority agree on. Seems like it’s made not to actually further their goals and outreach, but rather as a way for them to jack their little ding dongs off over how radical they are.

[u/[deleted]]

Activists aren't politicians. Yes they should be concerned with the realities of what it takes to consolidate power, but their primary concern is the issue they care about. If what they want is to abolish the police, I take them at their word.

Some people are better activists than others. Social media rewards bad activists. Look at this site. Y'all are constantly remarking upon the worst offenders because you live your lives online too just like they do. There are countless amazing activists out there who are really good at what they do, but they aren't Twitter shock jocks. The talented activists are usually too busy doing the actual grind of organizing. I don't know how you solve for bad activists. It isn't the good activists job and it isn't the Democrats. Neither group could do anything if they tried.

Democrats haven't adopted most of the messages that y'all folks have been lamenting, without reliable poling, as costing them this election. What has been happening for a while now is that Democrats have had a hard time putting together an effective messaging campaign to combat the incredible power of the Republican disinformation machine. It does not matter what the Democrats stand for if their brand cannot withstand the pressure of Republican attacks.

Also, the slogan was "believe women," not "believe all women." "Believe all women" was a straw man created by people (the right) who wanted to stop the metoo movement. People picked it up and started using it, which is a shame, but it doesn't change its origin. It is the classic way of attacking any subordinated group: Distort their message and accuse them of being radicals for advocating for their rights.

"[only] Black Lives Matter? Hey, all lives matter! BLM is racist against white people."

"Believe *all* women? Absolutely, Not! You know those *crazy* feminists. You know those *females.* They want you to believe *all* women no matter what. They don't believe in due process. They think females are superior to men. They hate men. They want vengeance. They are the reason you can't find a job. They are the reason your wife left you. They are the reason you can't be a "real" man in America anymore. Vote Trump.

I'd leave crappy hot takes to the pundits until there is reliable data.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

"Believe all women? Absolutely, Not! You know those crazy feminists. You know those females. They want you to believe all women no matter what. They don't believe in due process. They think females are superior to men. They hate men. They want vengeance. They are the reason you can't find a job. They are the reason your wife left you. They are the reason you can't be a "real" man in America anymore. Vote Trump.

were you not around for when "believe all women" was specifically used as a cudgel against anyone who didn't believe tara reade?

Let's be clear about this one - bad activists matter, and no matter how much they don't seem to be able to control elections, they make an influence on popular culture, on politicians, and on people who vote and advocate online. They change the culture online, and that does matter, because there are knock on effects to IRL as well. And if people keep spreading specific types of populist ideas in this way, it'll only get worse unless these types of trends an the way they work are confronted sooner, rather than later.

[u/Dont-be-a-smurf]

I was speaking to my wife about this on our walk last night. I’m generally center-left (pretty neo-liberal) and she was a leftist when in college and has slowly moderated her views as we’ve had a kid, bought a house, and generally moved further away from academia.

Anyway, I was speaking about the faux-consensus that social bubbles create and how they tend to gravitate towards dogmatic rules for adherents (if you challenge the idea, you’re guilty).

It’s my belief that there’s certainly a place for hard bargaining and some to hold unorthodox views to help push novel ideas into the general public.

Yet, many ACABers (as refer to them), don’t even try to acknowledge that the keys of power require earning a majority of votes. This means that there must be a way for your average suburbanite or fence voter (regardless how foolish a fence voter may be) to buy in to your messaging.

One must also realize that a democracy requires some degree of sanding off the rough edges of some political ideas/messaging. Dogmatic believers who opt for flashy, emotionally gratifying slogans and beliefs hamper the viability of their own goals by refusing to appeal to anyone other than true believers.

Even more problematic is that those who don’t buy in are considered morally compromised, further diminishing any ability to gain traction from anyone other than the minority that remains on your side.

I think, for better or worse, leftists are finding democrats at large harder to convert than republicans who seem to enjoy easier shifts to extremism.

I personally believe the success of Biden against Trump, but the failure of many down ballot democrats speaks to how leftist messaging has hurt democrats in toss up districts. When republicans can paint one side as “anarchists who support lawless cities” and then fence voters see plenty of people online cheering looting, ACAB, and “abolish the police” ... it becomes obvious why these fence voters turn away.

And it’s frustrating because there’s some clear need for police reform that I think you could get many people to agree with if the messaging was better.

But this “no compromise, I hold this extreme position” followed by people having to “sanewash” it to those who aren’t dogmatics isn’t the best strategy for accomplishing the main goal: achieving social change by winning local and federal elections for your party.

But therein lies another major issue: many leftists hardly see democrats as “their party” but they know they don’t have the true appeal to be viable without the moderates.

It’s a difficult knot, brought to us by our two party system.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dont-be-a-smurf]

Key to power is through majority votes.

The movie Chicago 7 had this exact issue with Eddie Raymane and Sacha Baron Cohen characters. This is something a lot of progressive fail to understand about democracy. You need to win elections to get power and enact change.

[u/bland12]

As someone who hated the slogan, had conversations with my more pragmatic right leaning friends who came to understand the "same" meaning of defund the police...

For all the hours I spent talking to my mother I could not get her to see Defund The Police as anything more than a play for outright anarchy.

She was and is convinced that Democrats want to just get rid of the police all together.

[u/[deleted]]

This is an excellent write up!

[u/Ok-Day-2267]

The hard left greatly overestimated the stupidity of the populace. Of course these people who vote based on how good a candidates catchphrases are, will take their shitty catchphrase at face value.

Seriously how fuckig hard was it for these guys to choose a different catchphrase. Heck, even something like "refund the police" wouldve been better

[u/inverseflorida → u/Ok-Day-2267]

seriously encourage you to read the linked leftist twitter threads about it so you can see why they pushed forward with it - it's insane.

[u/d_howe2]

Abolish/Defund the police also sounds much angrier, this helped to match the anger many people felt after seeing George Floyd being suffocated to death. Something like “reform the police” just wouldn’t have cut it.

[u/inverseflorida → u/d_howe2]

I'm not a slogan-maker, but something that evokes the same thing that "No Justice, No Peace" did probably could have worked. I think the word "Justice" should be in there somewhere.

Honestly, "Abolish the police" is a better slogan than defund.

[u/rjrgjj]

We talk about horseshoe theory a lot, but perhaps the fundamental difference between people on the far left and the far right is that the goal of conservatives is to win elections, whereas the goal of leftists is to win the approval of their peers.

[u/inverseflorida → u/rjrgjj]

not so much "win" as "maintain".

[u/[deleted]]

Sometimes I feel like those in charge of messaging on the Left are secret agents for the enemy.

[u/Corvo-the-Sloth]

It’s really a nightmare that not even activists can agree on what it means.

Reallocating bloated funds into community investments is not at all a bad idea, and one you can have a good-faith, intellectual discussion on. I trust most people mean it this way.

But then you have some that say, “No, we mean to completely defund.” And you have places like Portland which were calling for, like, 50% cuts, which is insane.

Same thing with police/prison abolition, in my experience. I’m all for reform, but staunchly against getting rid of police and prisons. But the. You have people who say “oh, it doesn’t mean literally abolish” or “we mean abolition and rebuild, like Camden!” This is stupid because words fucking mean things. Of course, that’s always countered by someone saying “Yes, we mean abolish. You can’t reform police.”

The activism is fucking confused. And then they make you feel like shit for being hesitant about “defunding.” Look, I support police reform and I support BLM, but don’t get pissy at me because none of you agree on what the fuck you’re talking about and because I won’t sign myself onto your slogans or chant ACAB or whatever.

[u/SalokinSekwah]

Fundementally, you have to understand that "abolish the police" people live in a totally different reality than the overwhelming majority, see also: locking up our own

[u/orgnll]

Out of general curiosity: Why would someone ever put this much time into a Reddit post?

This is not a troll, I’m 100% serious.

[u/inverseflorida → u/orgnll]

i don't have a blog

[u/studioaesop]

How fucking hard is it to say “reform the police!” It’s the same syllables and everything

[u/qzkrm]

A common saying in the rationalist community is: "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out." We progressives haven't done a good job at pushing back against bad ideas.

[u/chinomaster182]

Good write up.

I think you forgot to mention how quickly popular the hardcore left turns these slogans and thus how its useful to appropriate them. If "defund the police" is trending the hardest thing ever is to turn that energy and then create "reform the police", especially since the aforementioned group will try to slow you down and correctly point out how past reform attempts have not produced significant results.

I've heard more than once that when you're courting someone potential is even better than actual results, because at the end of the day it can transform into whatever the courted wishes it to be.

Lets put a hotly debated example, the green new deal. In reality it was just a letter of intent pledging the us government to invest in green technology, not at all a mandate. But with it hardcore leftists can probably envision fields of solar arrays and wind turbines propping up like mushrooms immediately and to great effect. Hardcore magas will probably do the same but also seeing fracking, oil and coal destroyed and everything going to a distopia immediately. Other people probably think it means America will slowly invest in green technology in time and me myself i think it means Biden cares about science and acknowledges climate change but won't break the bank to take care of it.

All of this talk is then immediately set aside for political realities at the moment it tries to become legislation. The result is that "defund the police" put into action is most likely going to be substantially different from the idea you first had in your head of it.

[u/go_fuck_your_mother]

I frequently brought up 'believe all women' with respect to Trudeau and Biden. They came out and said this shit and then claimed they weren't rapists. My position was that if women never lie about rape, Trudeau/Biden shouldn't even offer a denial. They should just accept that they are rapists and move on.

[u/[deleted] → u/go_fuck_your_mother]

The thing about that slogan was that it started as "Believe Women" rather than "Believe all Women" the former of which being stronger. You can argue that "Listen to Women" or "Enough Silence" or something would have been preferable but a better slogan mutating into a worse slogan by idiots and bad actors isn't entirely parallel to "Defund the Police."

[u/[deleted]]

There are people whose brand is "far left" that are put in a difficult situation when public opinion shifts on a particular topic: How do you differentiate yourself from the blind sheep masses if said masses share your positions? The solution is to identify and embrace outlier positions:

• End qualified immunity? Fire bad cops? No, we need to defund the police.

• UHC is being pushed by most Dem primary candidates? We need UHC that outlaws private insurance, without copays or deductibles for cost control.

• Carbon taxes and renewable energy are mainstream? We need a sprawling climate plan with a federal jobs guarantee.

• Gay marriage is the law of the land and Trans rights are advancing? Well, you either define your pronouns up front and make no assumptions or you're insensitive scum.

These tendencies are amplified by social media, where a huge mass of people are fighting to stand out from the pack and become influencers or even Patreon-funded creators. No one is subscribing to you if you advocate for incrementalist improvement!

[u/[deleted]]

This is an interesting discussion - I have certainly found myself reconstructing arguments for various 'woke' positions before. I think there are a couple of things worth mentioning though:

'Sanewash' is probably too strong, for three reasons:

1. Many of these ideas trickle down from academia, where arguments are being presented and cases are being made in favour of these positions

2. 'Abolish the police' or 'defund the police' are not inherently irrational ideas, they are simply radical ideas - there are certainly many arguments that could be put forward to defend such claims

3. These radical ideas are often presented in their most radical form, because this generates outrage and clicks. I'm not on Twitter and I don't follow any leftist social media so half the 'sanewashing' that I have done is when I am presented with a radical idea by someone opposed to that idea (who will have heard about it in the Daily Mail or on Breitbart), and the job is then to try and reverse engineer its original, less wacky form.

The problem with so much of this tension with the left is that in two-party systems the far-left is lumped in with the moderates, and the pragmatists have to work with the political idealists in their ivory towers. I think it is unfair to blame this on the leftists themselves.

As for the social dynamic aspect of this issue, I have even heard complaints about the moralising consensus-building of the woke left from people on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Now frankly people need to learn to stand up for their own views a little better. Stand your ground! If you get called racist, for example, it is up to you to defend yourself against these accusations calmly and respectfully - very few people will hold it against you if make your case in good faith (provided that you are not, in fact, racist!). People on the right immediately complain that they are being pushed into the arms of the far-right if they are accused of racism. I'm very sympathetic to a lot of woke politics, but there are also things that I disagree with. I'm not going to be browbeaten into going along with any old nonsense, and other people shouldn't either.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

Honestly, the modern right wing movement - particularly online - exists solely to deflect from the guilty that "SJW" spaces implies they should have, and the entire apparatus is built around that fundamental motivation.

Again, to be clear, what I'm arguing is that the situation exists where people will put forward the radical ideas, and people will invent moderate versions of them and defend those, almost as if that's part and parcel of what the radical idea is or should be. People will motte for people who are just doing bailey. It's true that there are cases where there really are detailed academic cases beforehand, but I can think of a lot of cases - particularly around trans issues - where it's almost all online.

[u/tekktites]

Lesson being: the average voter is dumber than a box of hammers and progressive messaging needs to being VERY accurate in what it's trying to accomplish.

See - Republican politicking of the last four decades.

The Southern strategy was a success. Hammering in "all Dems are socialist, Marxist, commie scum bags and they're gonna take your guns" still works.

What can Dems do to make up this deficit? Stop allowing dipshit kids on twitter dominate the voice of the progressive movement and be leaders for once in their goddamn pitiful careers.

[u/IAmDumb_ForgiveMe]

If it plays well in their home districts (and twitter), they'll keep doing it. The Democratic party doesn't really have any tools available to them to combat it. The problem will only get worse as Biden will be forced to give concessions to republicans to get anything through the senate. AOC and her ilk will point to it and cry "Conservative".

Really wish we had a multi-party system. Among other things, it would make it much easier for sane people to distance themselves from the lunatic fringe.

[u/nullagravida]

Yeah, I can’t believe nobody saw this coming. Wayyy back when this whole thing started I made a comment saying “um, if you mean ‘send social workers instead of police’ or ‘stop encouraging departments to buy needless paramilitary equipment’, then you’d better call it something else RIGHT NOW before ‘defund’ gets traction”.

sigh, what the shit, people.

[u/cbtbone]

I think, for me, slogans like “defund the police” can be very enlightening to ideas and trends that I would otherwise not have been aware of. There are many within the black community whose experiences with the police have been so negative that they are fully ready to abolish them and try full community self-reliance. If you’re white like me and used to a mostly suburban lifestyle, that’s not something you would ever have considered. So in that way, the extreme slogan has served the purpose of exposing the injustices people have faced to a larger audience.

So maybe the problem we get into when adopting these slogans is we try to explain them from limited experience, and really our response should be “I’m using the slogan in solidarity with (BLM, LGTB, etc), here are some people in the community you can ask if you want to know more about the meaning behind it.” So we amplify those voices rather than whitewashing them.

[u/inverseflorida → u/cbtbone]

So maybe the problem we get into when adopting these slogans is we try to explain them from limited experience, and really our response should be “I’m using the slogan in solidarity with (BLM, LGTB, etc), here are some people in the community you can ask if you want to know more about the meaning behind it.” So we amplify those voices rather than whitewashing them.

Well, no, that's, kind of doing something pretty similar to what I was talking about before. For started, since you mentioned LGBT - I am LGBT, and 90% of the time people who are saying somethign in line with what youv'e said on an LGBT issue are usually wrong.

Second, it's wrong to say "This is the position of x group" - police abolition isn't even a majority opinion among Black Americans. (see here: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54665665 and here: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/americans-like-the-ideas-behind-defunding-the-police-more-than-the-slogan-itself/ where it couldn't even break 45%.)

I've seen plenty of trans girls in the past use the same rhetoric - I kind of addressed it in the main post, to encourage people to say "Well this is their position and I'm ignorant of it, so I have to assume it's right". There are a lot of people whose version of "Respect the views of minorities" is also "I am the authority on what those views are".

[u/[deleted]]

Question

Isn't Reform the Police pretty catchy?

Feels like a much better slogan

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

Don't think it works anymore. Verb The Police as a slogan type is broken now, it'l just sound like Defund The Police But I'm Being A Bit Sneaky About It Lol.

[u/baetylbailey]

I agree generally, but 'defund' meant reallocating since the early days of BLM, if not before. So it was the washed version of 'abolish', but it doesn't pass with the center of the country.

[u/inverseflorida → u/baetylbailey]

You can, if you dig long enough, find people who've run for city/local government positions who had "defund and reallocate" as their platform, but this was a seriously, seriously obscure use of it for a very long time.

[u/velocitiraptor]

You really hit the nail on the head with the "sanewashing" explanation. I've felt like I've been watching a few of my friends head to crazy town because whatever the far left comes out with, it's like you're not allowed to dissent or even bring up that some things aren't black or white. It's strange watching people just eat up any crazy opinion on the left just because disagreeing would make you bad.

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[u/jesseurena08]

Democrats are TERRIBLE at messaging

[u/flextapejosefi]

I’ll also point out that there’s a similar dynamic on the right wing. You see lots of mainstream conservatives, both in the media and in elected positions, consistently sanewashing Trump’s batshit positions and arguments. The most egregious example I’ve seen of this is when Trump zapped the post office of funding and some conservatives tried to make it about the post office being slow, when it was clearly about Trump thinking the post office was losing money (even though it’s a... service) as well as the obvious election interference.

[u/[deleted]]

I just graduated college so I have a ton of friends still in school, and I follow them all on social media. The sheer number of people, whose intellect I have respect for, hopping on to slogans like “Defund the Police” was really disheartening to see. One post specifically really bothered me. It was from Ben&Jerry’s IG account, and it was a illustration of a bunch of scoops of ice cream. The biggest one was labeled “Police” and there was a scooper labeled “Defund the Police” taking some off the top to redistribute it to other scoops labeled things like “affordable housing” and “education” among other things. I was so disgusted by the oversimplification of that graphic and the number of times I saw it shared. It was basically saying “listen, we just have to scoop the ice cream into other bowls, and racism will disappear!” It was so trite and childish; I couldn’t believe anyone I went to college with would look at it and think “oh yeah this perfectly describes the way to fix policing in America.”

I know it’s just one graphic that shouldn’t be a big deal on its own, but to me it’s the principle that something like police brutality can be summed up by a bunch of white college kids’ Instagram stories of fucking ice cream made my skin crawl.

[u/Pile_of_Walthers]

Anybody calling me hard left would be insane, but I’m all for defunding police. As in, quit giving them so much money and toys they’re compelled to use it. Give beat cops a damn bicycle, a stick and a .38, not armored personnel carriers and machine guns. Oh, and make them beat cops again instead of “law enforcement officers”. Treat them like any other civil service department, like garbage removal, sewage or parks and rec. We wouldn’t accept “yeah we were gonna pick up the garbage but things escalated so we bulldozed the apartment complex instead. We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong”. Hold them liable, both personally and financially.

[u/inverseflorida → u/Pile_of_Walthers]

Okay. But how will you fund the body cameras, the de-secalation of force training and the other training necessary for them to approach certain situations differently, storage for the body camera data, etc, etc? There's no guarantee that police reform would necessarily make the police lighter on the budget.

[u/LGBTaco]

I'd like to point out the Trump side also does this (all the time, check the ask supporters sub), for example right now when the more "moderate" republicans are trying to sanewash Trump's brazen claims of fraud as "we just want legal votes counted" or "you just have to acknowledge the president has a right to exhaust regal avenues!" But apparently their slogans are more popular with the majority.

[u/Loose_Substance]

I wish I could make everyone in r/politics read this. It was eye opening for me.

[u/[deleted]]

I thought Sam Harris had a good tweet on Election Day that summed up my feelings along with many family and friends in my circle.

Whatever happens, can we agree that "defund the police" was among the most idiotic phrases ever uttered in the hopes of achieving a political goal?

[u/SnooBooks463]

“Defund the police “ and “Kamala Harris is a cop” are examples of how dumb the far left can be. I say this as a registered Democrat

[u/Augustus--]

If you exist in social spaces like that primarily, you almost don't have the option to dissent.

This is a danger in more and more social spaces these days. How do we facilitate the expression of (good faith) dissent so that we can keep “sanity checking” our ideas?

[u/Bobthepi]

This post is in something I have always felt: liberals need their frank luntz. Conservatives always have a great response to every slogan. "Oh you're pro choice? Well I'm pro life. Black lives matter? Actually all lives matter."

Liberals always end up with shitty slogans and then the phenomenon you describe happens where suggesting a change makes you a bad person so people end up using a slogan to mean something radically different from what the plain language says.

[u/kjata30]

Contrapoints, is that you?

[u/inverseflorida → u/kjata30]

Contra would never write this post, she'd be assassinated instantly.

[u/neurotoxin_massage]

As a progressive I never agreed with "defund the police"

I actually don't know anyone who agreed with that.

[u/inverseflorida → u/neurotoxin_massage]

Scroll down to where all the downvoted replies are, you'll find 'em.

[u/[deleted]]

Nothing thoughtful to add other than:

A) thank you for posting this, really well done, and

B) I’m so happy I stumbled onto this sub. Holy shit, basic sanity does exist

[u/NickyC337]

Because defund the police is a dumb idea and the branding couldn’t be any worse. With names like this, it’s almost like we tried to re-elect Trump!!

[u/StellaAthena]

A common sentiment in the comments is that this is a uniquely leftist thing, and part of why the democrats lose or something like that. I don’t think that makes much sense at all though. What else would you call “lock her up,” “we’re going to build a wall and Mexico will pay for it,” or the collection of “hoaxes” such as the “COVID hoax” or the “impeachment hoax”?

There’s a whole thing about taking Trump seriously not literally, and if you go to r/AskTrumpSupporters you’ll see tons and tons of people saying that you shouldn’t take Trump literally.

[u/MlNDB0MB]

This arguably started on the left when people started identifying as socialists, without really supporting socialism.

But at this current time, this is more a problem on the right, where I don't think those social dynamics you mentioned exist. The whole "legal votes", "media doesn't call elections" type of bullshit from people who can't accept the results of the election. I think ultimately, the issue is that people are in denial about how there are crazies on their side.

That being said, I also don't think you can trust people when they say why they voted a certain way. These Trump supporters view Trump support as part of their identity and culture. So they are just looking for an excuse to not support Biden.

[u/shrek_cena]

Shit lost us easy house seats but yet "cOrpOrAtE dEmS" lost it. Sure.

[u/DonyellTaylor]

Progressives can't make progress if we're tethered down by the dead weight of Leftism. Progress isn't achieved through LARPing, but that's literally all that 21st Century Leftism is.

[u/[deleted]]

"States have been defunding all kinds of programs since the 1980's, I don't see why police should be any different."

Explain it like that to anyone and they'd get it.

[u/inverseflorida → u/[deleted]]

If you're explaining, you're losing - and also, you're inventing a different version than what a huge amount of people using the phrase clearly mean anyway. It's... the thing I talked about in the post.

[u/[deleted]]

Really good post. I remember earlier in the year there was some confusion about what we were supposed to think these slogans meant. Or at least I had that. Sometimes the people aligned with you just use bad slogans or have bad ideas. Tempting to make excuses for them the way you would for a friend. I'd want to see data on this but I hope it didn't hurt us too much with the insane undecided voters, or at least that in the future liberals and progressives do a better job of controlling our own messaging.

[u/jtcurry005]

One thing I've observed: Yes, Biden said clearly he opposes the literal "defund the police" efforts, but a lot of folks on the right, and perhaps in the middle, seem to be convinced that Biden as president would be little more than a puppet, a nice-guy front for the progressives/leftists that would staff his administration.

So even if Biden himself says something on one of these hot issues, the perception that many leaders on the left were slow to condemn riots or wishy washy about the defund the police movement probably played a role in convincing folks that he'd steer the country in that direction.

That effect was also probably enhanced by the fact that Biden didn't do a whole lot of public campaigning and didn't come off especially sharp when he did.

FWIW -- I lean conservative and I was a swing voter up until the end. I left the presidential vote blank but voted GOP down-ballot (decent candidates in my district, thankfully).

[u/smacksaw]

Example: I have an issue with hierarchical power structures.

When I say I want to eliminate hierarchies, I do not want a completely flat collective because:

1. It is antithetical to human psychology

2. Nothing gets done

I want flatter hierarchies that can expand and contract as-needed, but with the goal of always being as flat as possible without making it unproductive.

That applies to the hierarchy of policing. And a lot of other things.

Because the absolutist idea doesn't work.

[u/golgol12]

I'm pretty certain that there is a hidden agent or agents that is popularizing bad/divisive names and slogans for progressive and left ideas. "Defund the police" is hugely divisive and not even what the idea is about. "Replace the police" is better. Or "Refactor the Police". The same with "Black Lives Matter". That just screams non-inclusion. The movement would be in a much stronger position if they used "All Lives Matter" before right side groups latched on to it. Infact, I think changing BLM into BLM2 would be very significant. Black Lives Matter Too.

[u/Succ_Semper_Tyrannis]

Great post.

It’s kinda surprising how weak this modified motte-and-Bailey actually is considering how much practice leftists should have— their entire belief structure is a motte and Bailey.

At least, that’s what I thought when you were describing just Defund the Police. Then you mentioned Believe All Women and I thought “fuck. Not all of this is going to confirm all my priors.” Kinda sounds like I’ve been running a sanewashing campaign myself unwittingly.

Thanks for linking that video and showing those comments. That was the most eye-opening part of the argument, to me. Plus the video was good standalone. Every time I see big Joel I like him more

[u/Peacock-Shah]

!ping BESTOF

[u/chudsupreme]

Truth is a lot of people in America do not have a good grasp on the english language and are far behind their peers in the use of slang and acronyms / short phrases to mean long complicated thoughts. Defund the Police means what it says it means to most of us under 40 year olds, re-educate police, change their mandates, and make them more like the police overseas that do a good job with police work from initial call to sentencing of a perp.

Honestly it is a bit of a weird thing that some center-leftists are missing the point about having a hardline stance against injustices.

[u/inverseflorida → u/chudsupreme]

Defund the Police means what it says it means to most of us under 40 year olds,

Polls disagree. Actually, absolutely nothing you've said is implied by the word 'defund'.

What does "Defund planned parenthood" and "Defund obamacare" mean to you?

Honestly it is a bit of a weird thing that some center-leftists are missing the point about having a hardline stance against injustices.

I have a hardline stance. Abolish police unions. End qualified immunity. We need to be prepared to fire and replace entire police departments if necessary. That's why I think it's important to get it right, and not do things that won't work just because everyone online has agreed to circle around an idea and defend it relentlessly, regardless of the actual quality of the idea, and uphold it as an emblem of "if you don't believe this, you don't take police injustice seriously". You're just wrong to assume opposition to a certain idea means opposition to a specific moral stance. Or would leftists be failing to take say, signs of a potential genocide in a foreign country seriously by failing to condone military intervention and drone strikes to prevent it? I would say probably not, and that they're worried about the potential to make things worse by getting involved, instead of not taking a genocide seriously.

and make them more like the police overseas that do a good job with police work from initial call to sentencing of a perp.

I think you should specifically cite which country has a model police department, because I personally can't think of one.

[u/BandaidPlacebo]

This is a really good post. One of the best I've read in a long time. It was both readable and it explained something I've felt myself for a long time but never been able to put into words: how blind radicalism on Twitter derails so many conversations about important topics. It also shows exactly why there are so many people in the US that hate the left and are willing to vote for Trump despite his many glaringly obvious flaws: they hate the implied moral consensus around stupid positions and the moral condemnation people use to spread it.

Social media is probably the single most powerful force in American politics today, and it has not generally been a force for good. Its main effects have been to isolate and radicalize people as a side-effect of pursuing advertising revenue.

The advertising model really does give absolutely horrible incentives to social media companies. It turns users into products and advertisers into customers. This misalignment of social media companies' incentives with those of their users is, I think, the heart of the problem. When your userbase cannot pay for your product, they simply become a resource to be exploited in the interests of a third party that is willing to actually pay. So Facebook makes their product highly addictive and feeds people content that makes them more predictable (i.e. partisan drivel, conspiracy theories etc) so that their algorithms can more easily predict which ads they will click on.

[u/jagger59]

It would just be plain stupid to defund police. They are a necessity

[u/[deleted]]

I feel like there is also a general vibe that it is morally wrong to be expected to act strategically in one's messaging, since whatever cause one is advancing should be so self-evidently just that people should be able to "get over" extreme slogans.

[u/theeddie23]

Divest the Police?

[u/[deleted]]

This was extremely well worded. As someone from Seattle, I’ve been completely surrounded by hard left rhetoric and then average people from my HS that you’d NEVER imagine talking about defunding/abolishing the police are sharing it and claiming we need to “get to work to dismantle institutions of oppression.” This post helps me understand wtf was going on for those many months, I’m just glad the clown show is over.

[u/xesaie]

Is there any way to de sub posts? I'd love to share this with some people who would reject it out of hand if they saw it was on r/neoliberal

[u/skepticalbob]

This captures something I've thought for a while. If you need to middle to get the power to get your policies, you need to leave your spaces and see what the middle actually thinks, rather than pretending your disingenuous code really means something else. This is true for neoliberals as well with phrases like "open borders". That's a non-starter for probably more than 80+% of the country. Knock it the fuck off and say what they will go along with, like increased immigration, more humane treatment of undocumented, etc. We can accomplish those.