COVID Face Masks and Middle East Politics

Below is a recent photo from Washington University posted on Facebook.

Notice all the participants wearing COVID face masks. The COVID pandemic is long over and more than a year ago, the Cochran study found no evidence that face masks are effective to prevent spread of COVID.

What do these face masks have to do with Middle East politics? Nothing. What do totally unnecessary post-pandemic face masks have to do with tribalism? Everything. The masks serve as badges of in-group membership. They function the same way that fancy suits do for trial lawyers and executives. The same way that buying pre-torn jeans serve for young women or that wearing ashes on foreheads serve as badges of group belonging to Catholics. For more than 100 posts on Ingroup-Outgroup dynamics at this website, click here.

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Toolkit in Case You are Cancelled

At City Journal, Ilya Shapiro offers this toolkit in case you are cancelled:

As the writer Jonathan Rauch has observed, criticism, or “expressing an argument or opinion with the idea of rationally influencing public opinion through public persuasion,” can be distinguished from canceling, which is “organizing or manipulating a social environment or a media environment with a goal or predictable effect of isolating, deplatforming, or intimidating an ideological opponent.” . . . What follows is a guide for what to do if it happens to you.

The most important task when facing a cancellation campaign is to define your goals. Obviously, you want the mobbing to stop and for things to return to “normal.” But ask yourself what, specifically, that means. Do you want to keep your job? Get the position on the law review that you deserve? Become famous? Deter further publicity? Make money off an unexpected opportunity? Retain your reputation for integrity, intelligence, and friendliness? Your strategy will follow from your ultimate aim.

Locking down your message means articulating a cohesive and consistent response to the charges against you and providing the context that the mob maliciously ignores. Once you know your goals, you can form a plan for achieving them and think through contingencies based on different ways in which the cancellation attempt unfolds. Those aims will also determine the answer to such key questions as, “Should I apologize?” Any strategy needs to adapt as events develop, but an anti-cancellation plan should always maintain a focus on your goals.

Full article at City Journal.

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