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Comment by wakawaka28 | Hacker News Reader

Hollywood up until about 10 years ago used to promote social cohesion and actual tolerance, and fair treatment of all. It would fight stereotypes and raise awareness of important issues affecting minorities, without being overly preachy and antagonistic. What we have now is the opposite. We get preachy and exclusionary politics pushed from the top in almost every facet of media and corporate life. In Hollywood they are writing movies and shows with lame plots, often produced by inept diversity hires, and if you don't like their garbage products then you're called a racist or a homophobe. I for one am not deliberately paying money to be insulted by my entertainment at every turn. Big firms like Disney have killed all the golden geese they had by disrespecting fans and producing racist/sexist propaganda to appease misanthropic investors, and they may be forced to accept that people don't want their bullshit.

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Again, for as long as Hollywood has existed, it has been excoriated by conservatives as a din of leftist libertines (and not without at least a bit of reason on occasion). Before that, theater performers were seen in much the same light. The moral panics stretch back time immemorial I’ve no doubt, but I can at least remember 10 years ago and there was no lack of controversy then.

That is true, but the modern leftist is against liberal values like free speech and egalitarianism. The leftists have taken up a divisive stance that puts people in a contest to be the most victimized, to get points. They literally argue that math and science are racist/sexist/whatever, want to bring back segregation, and be actively racist against people who look like a handful of bad actors in the past. They're ruining many different aspects of society, and if people don't put them in check we will be going off the rails soon.

You see, this even has echos of Red Scare era hysteria. It's hardly anything novel.

First of all, the Red Scare had some well-known innocent casualties. But it was a legitimate response to wannabe revolutionary/authoritarian forces operating in the US. Lenin's tactics, which many communists subscribe to, are violent and toxic, and communism is at odds with the basic principles that make our society successful. Compared to the tremendous political persecution typically ommitted by various communist regimes, the Red Scare was nothing.

Second of all, what we see now is more like Mao's China. People who disagree with the woke agenda are targetted for harassement and violence. Too many of the woke don't want their detractors simply chastised or fired, they want them dead or exiled.

The big difference between "moral panics" of the past and this stuff is that the so-called victims are the ones moralizing and attacking everyone who disagrees, calling normies "ultra far-right extremists" or whatever scary sounding names they can muster. Am I attacking them by calling them out or moralizing? That's for you to decide. But it doesn't matter. I won't be gaslit into thinking that their hostile actions are simply misunderstood. I see it as a power grab and I'm not having it.

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