Episode 145 · 2022-07-10 · 01:00:02 · Original in Finnish
Peak Woke | Matti H. Virtanen and Onni Rostila | Negotiator 145
Originally published as “Peak Woke | Matti H. Virtanen Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 145”
Has peak woke already passed, or are both extremes strengthening at once? The freelance journalist Matti H. Virtanen, author of the book Ääripäät, and Onni Rostila, Master of Laws, take up the United States Supreme Court's abortion ruling, the rise of ultra-conservatism, and the part identity politics plays in Russian war propaganda. The conversation works through the mechanisms of polarisation from schismogenesis to the Overton window, and through the independence of Finland's prosecution service and courts. It closes by asking whether a heterodox sensible centre can rescue public debate.
Core theses
- The question is badly posed as a peak: the evidence in the episode is of both poles strengthening, which is a different process from one cresting.
- Schismogenesis explains why each side's position is partly determined by the other's, which makes polarisation self-sustaining without anyone intending it.
- Russian war propaganda uses Western identity politics as material, which is an argument about instrumentation rather than about the politics itself.
- The proposed remedy — a heterodox centre — is the weakest part of the case, because it names a disposition rather than an institution.
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Summary
Has peak woke already passed, or are both extremes strengthening at once? The freelance journalist Matti H. Virtanen, author of the book Ääripäät, and Onni Rostila, Master of Laws, take up the United States Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, the rise of ultra-conservatism, and the part identity politics plays in Russian war propaganda. The conversation works through the mechanisms of polarisation from schismogenesis to the Overton window, and through the independence of Finland’s prosecution service and courts. It closes by asking whether a heterodox sensible centre can rescue public debate.
Not a peak, a widening
The title asks whether the wave has crested; what the conversation actually describes is both ends of the spectrum gaining at once. Those are different phenomena with different predictions, and separating them is the most useful thing the episode does, even though it does not quite acknowledge that it has done it.
Schismogenesis
The borrowed anthropological term does real work here: it names the process by which each camp defines itself against the other and so hands the other the power to move it. It explains why polarisation continues without anyone choosing it, and why exhortations to moderation have so little purchase.
The weakest link
The closing hope is a heterodox sensible centre. It is a disposition, not an institution, and nothing in the preceding hour explains what would give it the staying power the two poles have. The diagnosis is stronger than the prescription.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Peak Woke | Matti H. Virtanen Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 145. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
In depth
The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.
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People and topics
Guests: Matti H. Virtanen, Onni Rostila
Topics: Free Speech & Society