大技术 (Big Technology)
OneZero is partnering with Big Technology, a newsletter and podcast by Alex Kantrowitz, to bring readers exclusive access to interviews with notable figures in and around the tech industry.
OneZero 与 Alex Kantrowitz的时事通讯和播客 Big Technology 合作 ，使读者可以独家访问科技行业内外的知名人物。
This week, Kantrowitz sits down with writer and researcher Zeynep Tufekci to discuss the evolution of social media-driven movements, from Gezi Park in Istanbul to Black Lives Matter today. This writeup of their discussion has been edited for length and clarity.
本周，坎特罗维兹与作家兼研究员Zeynep Tufekci坐下来，讨论了社交媒体驱动的运动的演变，从伊斯坦布尔的盖兹公园到今天的黑人生活。 他们的讨论写作已经过编辑，以保持篇幅和清晰。
To subscribe to the podcast and hear the interview for yourself, you can check it out on iTunes, Spotify, and Overcast.
要订阅播客并亲自收听采访，您可以在 iTunes ， Spotify 和 Overcast 上签出 。
In 2013, writer and researcher Zeynep Tufekci and I showed up to Gezi Park in Istanbul, Turkey. The park was a site of a social media-driven networked protest, where people from all walks of Turkish life came out to protest overreaches by the Turkish government. We were at the protest separately, but both interested in seeing it up close as movements of its nature took off across the globe.
2013年，W riter和研究员Zeynep相识Tufekci，我出现了以盖齐公园在土耳其的伊斯坦布尔。 该公园是社交媒体驱动的网络抗议活动的现场，来自土耳其各行各业的人们出来抗议土耳其政府的过度干预。 我们分别参加了抗议活动，但他们都希望在全球范围内随着其性质的发展而近距离观看它。
Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, Gezi Park, and today’s massive Black Lives Matter protests all use social media as a common fuel. And by thinking about the role social media plays in these movements, we can get a sense of where the current one is heading.
占领华尔街，阿拉伯之春，Gezi公园和当今大规模的“黑人生活问题”抗议都使用社交媒体作为共同的动力。 通过思考社交媒体在这些运动中的作用，我们可以了解当前的趋势。
在歌仔公园和社交媒体抗议 (On Gezi Park, and Social Media-Fueled Protest)
Alex Kantrowitz: I think we can learn a lot about the place our country is in today by studying what happened in Gezi Park, which I think is emblematic of some of the networked social protests we’ve seen over the past decade or so, starting with the Arab Spring, moving into the Black Lives Matter movement. It would be great to trace their evolution and hear your perspective of what happened in Gezi Park, and what it says about the way that protest happens today.
Alex Kantrowitz：我认为我们可以通过研究Gezi公园中发生的事情来了解当今国家的很多情况，我认为这是过去十年左右我们看到的一些网络社会抗议活动的象征与“阿拉伯之春”(Arab Spring)一起，进入了“黑人生活”运动。 追踪他们的演变，并听听您对盖子公园发生的事情以及它对今天抗议活动发生方式的看法，真是太好了。
Zeynep Tufekci: For me, of course, it was a turning point in my analysis. As you said, I already had been working on understanding the social media field protest life that had started with Occupy arguably and included the ones we call the Arab Spring. And at first, I did a lot of primary research, I went to Cairo, I attended protests in Tahrir Square, I was in Tunisia talking to people. So, I had been cautiously watching the wave. On the one hand, it was definitely true that the tools played a role in how they unfolded. At the time, there was a really unproductive discussion asking if it was driven by technology, [or] is it the people, and I just find the question isn’t even coherent to answer. Of course, it’s the people, but the technology changes how things play out and having these tools available had been very useful to the dissidents in Egypt and Tunisia, around North Africa to try to get attention, to organize, to try to mobilize and there’s a lot of hopeful analysis of their long-term potential.
Zeynep Tufekci：当然，对我而言，这是我分析的一个转折点。 正如您所说，我已经在努力理解社交媒体领域的抗议活动，这种生活可以说是从占领开始的，其中包括我们称为“阿拉伯之春”的日子。 首先，我做了很多基础研究，去了开罗，参加了在解放广场(Tahrir Square)的抗议活动，在突尼斯与人们交谈。 因此，我一直在谨慎地观察海浪。 一方面，这些工具在其开发过程中发挥了一定作用，这的确是事实。 当时，进行了一场毫无意义的讨论，询问它是由技术驱动还是由人们驱动，我只是发现这个问题甚至连回答都不连贯。 当然是人了，但是技术改变了事情的发展方式，并且提供了这些工具对于埃及和突尼斯，北非各地的持不同政见者来说非常有用，它们可以吸引注意力，组织起来，动员起来，并且他们的长期潜力有很多希望。
And it’s not that I didn’t share those analyses, but these things are very complicated, you can have a lot of things happening at once. And after a couple of years of sort of trying to understand what was happening, the Gezi Park protest happened, I was already seeing the authoritarian wave successfully push back already in the original countries. The initial success of these movements where the people in power really did not understand social media, did not understand how the public sphere had changed, they kind of acted like it was this little irrelevant thing and tried to ignore it and dismiss it rather than actively fight on that front. That era had ended and they had really moved to aggressively control through a variety of means and pushback. And also, of course, massive repression, because those things go hand in hand. For me personally, it was a big turning point because not only had I moved to [a] more realistic analysis of the different dynamics, [but] it was now happening in a place that was couple of blocks from where I was born. So, I jumped on a plane and went there and carried out systematic interviews, participant observation, just on the ground ethnography and all of that.
并不是我没有分享这些分析，而是这些事情非常复杂，您可以同时发生很多事情。 在经过几年的尝试以了解发生了什么之后，Gezi Park抗议活动发生了，我已经看到威权主义浪潮已经成功地将其推回了原先的国家。 这些运动的最初成功是，当权者真的不了解社交媒体，不了解公共领域是如何变化的，他们的举动就像是这无关紧要的事情，并试图忽略它，而不是积极地予以拒绝。在那边战斗。 那个时代已经结束，他们真正地通过各种手段和推倒行动积极地进行控制。 当然，还有大规模的镇压，因为这些事情是齐头并进的。 对我个人而言，这是一个很大的转折点，因为不仅我转向了对不同动力的更现实的分析，而且现在这种情况发生在离我出生几步之遥的地方。 因此，我跳上飞机，去了那里，进行了系统的访谈，参与者观察，只是在民族志方面，还是在所有其他方面。
“Until social media, the police and the government forces with their radio, with their training, with their existing infrastructure, always could ‘out-logistics’ the movement.”
“直到社交媒体，警察和政府军通过广播，培训，现有基础设施，始终可以对运动进行'后勤'。”
The way I had been starting to think about it is like startups: If you’re doing it right, you go from zero to 100 mph as fast as you can. You want to sort of get to a viable place and you want to use what people call network effects — you get big enough that other people are using it and finding it useful, but that kind of speed leaves you in debt.
我一直在思考的方式就像是初创公司：如果做得对，您可以从零加速到100 mph。 您想要某种可行的方法，并且想要使用人们所谓的网络效应-您变得足够大，以至于其他人正在使用它并发现它有用，但是这种速度使您背上了债务。
So, in the coding world, we would call that technical debt. You’re just coding as fast as you can, you’re not commenting, you’re taking a lot of shortcuts, you’re doing things that aren’t really stable infrastructure, but they work for the moment and you’re duct-taping a lot of things. And modern tools, modern social media allows movements to do just that. They can go from basically no organizational infrastructure to massive street movements within days or weeks. In the Egyptian revolution, there was a Facebook page inviting people to the January 25th saying, “Are you going to attend the revolution?” And you could just click and say, “Yes.”
因此，在编码世界中，我们将其称为技术债务。 您只是在以尽可能快的速度进行编码，没有在评论，没有采取很多捷径，正在做的工作并不是真正稳定的基础架构，但它们暂时有效，而且您很累-整理很多东西。 使用现代工具和现代社交媒体，运动就可以做到这一点。 他们可以在几天或几周内从基本上没有组织的基础设施发展成大规模的街头活动。 在埃及革命中，有一个Facebook页面邀请人们参加1月25日的活动，说：“你要参加革命吗？” 然后您可以单击说“是”。
And that demonstrated to your friends and neighbors and acquaintances that you too were on board, so people felt more comfortable because it revealed people’s preferences very quickly… So, that part was already there, and that’s the powerful part we were seeing. This power of social media to scale up something very quickly.
这向您的朋友，邻居和熟人表明您也在船上，因此人们感到更加自在，因为它可以很快显示人们的喜好……因此，该部分已经存在，而这正是我们所看到的强大部分。 社交媒体的这种力量可以非常Swift地扩大规模。
Just to give people some context: we’re talking about Gezi Park in Istanbul, where it seemed like all walks of Turkish society converged on this park next to Taksim Square to protest the overreaches of what was happening with the central government.
只是为了给人们一些背景信息：我们正在谈论的是伊斯坦布尔的盖子公园(Gezi Park)，似乎各行各业的土耳其社会都聚集在塔克西姆广场(Taksim Square)旁边的这个公园内，以抗议中央政府所发生的事情的过分伸张。
Yeah. And it was very quick. Yeah.
是的 而且很快。 是的
And it happened lightning-fast after someone got pepper-sprayed by police in the park.
当有人在公园里被警察喷洒胡椒后，事情发生了。
I was in a conference in Philly about big data and elections. In fact, in 2013, I had been arguing that this really isn’t good for democracy, Facebook has a lot of potential for misinformation. I was just saying the things that have now become fairly commonplace, and I was getting a lot of pushback. I have a very distinct memory of trying to argue about the downsides of this kind of targeted advertising that wasn’t public, there was no transparency. So, it was a very optimistic mood, which is what I’m sort of trying to contextualize. Whenever I tried to point out the downsides in that conference, I was getting an enormous amount of pushback there.
我当时在费城举行的有关大数据和选举的会议上。 实际上，在2013年，我一直在争辩说，这确实不利于民主，Facebook可能存在很多错误信息。 我只是说现在已经变得很普遍的事情，而我得到了很多回击。 我有一个非常独特的记忆，试图争论这种有针对性的广告的弊端，因为它不是公开的，没有透明度。 因此，这是一种非常乐观的情绪，这就是我要尝试进行情境化的一种方式。 每当我试图指出那次会议的弊端时，我都会受到极大的挫折。
Totally, because during the Arab Spring, people were painting things from Facebook on the walls, things from Twitter.
总的来说，因为在阿拉伯之春期间，人们在墙上画来自Facebook的东西，来自Twitter的东西。
Which wasn’t false. It is not false to say these tools are also very useful to dissidents. What’s important to realize is that there are multiple dynamics at the same time, which make, is this good or bad kind of analysis? [That’s] really shallow, because it’s not a math problem where you add three plus two and then get a number. It’s more a physics problem with a bunch of vectors pushing in different directions. Of course, you get a consequent result. You do get good or bad in the sense that you get one particular result, but it’s not because it’s simple additive or substantive, it’s because there’s a lot of things pushing in different directions, and it’s not clear at the time, which one might or might not win.
这不是假的。 可以肯定地说这些工具对持不同政见者也非常有用。 重要的是要认识到，同时存在多个动力学，这是一种好还是坏的分析？ [那]真的很浅，因为这不是数学问题，您可以先加3加2然后得到一个数字。 一堆矢量朝着不同的方向推进，这更是一个物理问题。 当然，您会得到结果。 从某种意义上来说，您确实会取得好坏，但这并不是因为它是简单的累加或实质性结果，而是因为有很多事情在朝着不同的方向发展，而当时尚不清楚，可能是哪个还是哪个可能不会赢。
And then I was in Philly, I’m just sort of scrolling a little bit on, sitting in the back, and I started seeing these protests sort of inklings on social media on Turkish Twitter, I’m like, “Oh, what’s going on?” And before I know it, there’s hundreds of thousands in the street, it was literally that fast. And if it had been some other country, I might’ve been tempted to say, maybe there’s some dynamic organization, something I’m missing that I’m not seeing.
然后我在费城，只是稍微滚动一下，坐在后面，然后我开始在土耳其Twitter的社交媒体上看到这些抗议活动，就像是在闪闪发光，我想，“哦，怎么回事上？” 在我不知不觉中，这条街上有成千上万的路，速度确实如此之快。 如果是其他国家，也许我会很想说，也许是有一些活跃的组织，但我却没有看到我所没有的东西。
But you knew Turkey.
但是你知道土耳其。
Of course. And not only did I know Turkey, Turkey has no Turkish dissidents and Turkish left, and this was a movement more on the left, although it’s complicated, those things don’t really work either. There is no tradition of spontaneous mass movements like that. I remember being in Barcelona as a programmer back when I was doing technical work one year and one day everything was normal, I went and was working on my coding project, the next day the streets erupted into this apparent chaos. I’m like, “What’s going on?” And I was told that it’s Catalonia independence day. I was like, “Whoa, is this such a big deal?” Because I come from, Turkey, to me, if there’s that bigger thing, it’s a big deal, and the day after it just went back to normal, almost. They do this apparently every year.
当然。 而且我不仅知道土耳其，土耳其没有土耳其持不同政见者，而土耳其人也离开了，这是一个左翼运动，尽管它很复杂，但是这些事情也不起作用。 没有这样的自发群众运动的传统。 我记得当我一年零一天从事技术工作时在巴塞罗那时是一名程序员，当时一切都很正常，我去了并正在从事我的编码项目，第二天大街上出现了这种明显的混乱。 我想，“这是怎么回事？” 有人告诉我，这是加泰罗尼亚独立日。 我当时想，“哇，这有什么大不了的？” 因为我来自土耳其，对我来说，如果有那么大的事情，那将是一件大事，第二天它几乎恢复了正常。 他们显然每年都会这样做。
So, Turkey had no such tradition either. You had either top-down very heavily organized infrastructure kind of movements, or you didn’t really have big spontaneous movements. So, I knew this wasn’t the tradition either, but all of a sudden I’m seeing this big spontaneous looking, scaling up very fast, just sort of accelerating zero to 100 miles through social media movement. I jumped on a plane, I went there. It was a very important moment. And I had this sort of dual mindset there, it was also the week Snowden’s revelations were coming out about the surveillance and all of those things, which were okay. So, we had kind of guessed something like this was happening, but we were getting confirmation now that it was happening, we’re trying to understand that.
因此，土耳其也没有这种传统。 您要么是自上而下的，非常有组织的基础架构之类的运动，要么是您并没有真正的大自发运动。 因此，我知道这也不是传统，但是突然之间，我看到了这种自发的外观，扩展非常快，通过社交媒体的移动，加速了0到100英里。 我跳上飞机，去了那里。 这是非常重要的时刻。 我在那里有这种双重心态，也是在斯诺登关于监视和所有这些事情的启示出来的那一周，这还可以。 因此，我们有点猜测正在发生这种情况，但是现在我们已经得到确认，我们正在尝试了解这一点。
So, I was in the middle of the park, which you might remember was this exuberant place, people were thrilled. Such places, these occupation camps, I think it’s hard to describe, they’re life-changing, they’re existentially different than anything people have lived through. The collective experience, the way people bend together to sort of… It’s a very utopian place. So, everybody sees the tear gas and all the sort of negative stuff, and doesn’t realize how exhilarating they are for the participants.
所以，我在公园的中间，您可能还记得这是一个茂盛的地方，人们都很兴奋。 这些地方，这些职业营地，我认为很难描述，它们正在改变生活，它们与人们生活过的任何事物在本质上都不同。 集体经验，人们弯腰的方式……这是一个非常乌托邦的地方。 因此，每个人都看到了催泪瓦斯和各种负面的东西，却没有意识到它们对参与者有多令人兴奋。
Right, because it was both a protest camp, but also like you mentioned, a collective experience where there were group kitchens that were being organized and free haircuts being given out. And it seemed funny in this world devoid of community really, where the community structures have been crumbling. It seemed like a real community inside the middle of that park.
是的，因为它既是抗议营地，又像您提到的那样，是集体经验，那里正在组织集体厨房，并免费理发。 在这个真正缺乏社区的世界上，这似乎很可笑，社区结构已经崩溃了。 在公园中间似乎是一个真正的社区。
And it’s always like that —
而且总是这样-
I mean, that’s a common feature.
我的意思是，这是一个共同的特征。
Yeah, it is a common feature. Tahrir Square was like that too, they had 17 days of that occupation. And I know there was a lot of suffering, I’m not downplaying the suffering, especially in Tahrir, during that period, there were hundreds of people who died, this is not some minor thing. Yeah, lots of people were killed. In the Gezi Park, there’s lots of people who got very seriously injured, and in the protests around the country during that time people died. Various things happened, everything from getting hit with a tear gas canister, to being beaten to death, to just falling from a bridge during the chaos.
是的，这是一个共同的特征。 解放广场(Tahrir Square)也是如此，他们有17天的职业生涯。 而且我知道有很多苦难，我并没有轻描淡写地讲苦难，特别是在塔里尔(Tahrir)时期，有数百人死亡，这不是一件小事。 是的，很多人被杀。 在盖子公园，有很多人受了重伤，在那段时间，全国各地的抗议活动中，人们都死了。 发生了各种各样的事情，从被催泪瓦斯罐击中到被殴打致死，甚至在混乱中从桥上掉下来，无所不包。
So, it’s not like there’s no suffering, but on the other hand, that collective experience really is life-changing. And I was interviewing people who were waving their phone at me and saying, “This is everything,” because they thought of it as bringing them together, allowing them to bypass the censorship, allowing them to unite. And even when they went home, if they went to home, if they didn’t camp, they would get on the phone and try to organize things. There [was] so much organizational stuff, logistics that happened through the phone that probably… The way I think about it is, if you know any history, you know the military people just pay so much attention to logistics because it seems like an afterthought and a minor thing, but it’s also why Napoleon did not manage to conquer Moscow besides the winter, right?
因此，这并不意味着没有痛苦，但另一方面，集体经验的确改变了生活。 我正在采访正在向我挥手的人，说：“这就是一切”，因为他们认为这是将他们召集在一起，让他们绕过审查制度，让他们团结起来。 即使他们回家了，如果他们回家了，如果他们没有扎营，他们也会打电话并尝试组织事情。 电话中发生了太多的组织工作，后勤工作……我的想法是，如果您知道任何历史，您知道军人只是非常重视后勤工作，因为这似乎是事后的事这是小事，但这也是为什么拿破仑在冬天之外没有征服莫斯科的原因，对吗？
That’s right.
那就对了。
Yeah, that’s what an army runs on. If you don’t have your logistics straight, you cannot pull off big things. And until social media, the police and the government forces with their radio, with their training, with their existing infrastructure, always could “out-logistics” the movement. It was very, very hard for the movement to sort of have that kind of infrastructure. But all of a sudden… You want to organize food? Create Excel spreadsheets… They could organize the camp in a way that just would’ve been unthinkable without social media. People were exhilarated, they were thrilled, but on the other hand, I remember just sitting there interviewing people and I’m a social scientist, I’m neutrally listening to them and they would always ask me, “How do you think this is going to go?”
是的，这就是军队的前进方向。 如果您的物流不够顺畅，那么您就无法完成重大任务。 直到社交媒体，警察和政府部队通过广播，培训和现有基础设施，始终可以使运动“脱离后勤”。 运动要拥有这样的基础设施非常非常困难。 但是突然之间……您想组织食物吗？ 创建Excel电子表格…他们可以通过没有社交媒体无法想象的方式来组织营地。 人们很高兴，他们很兴奋，但是，另一方面，我记得我坐在那里采访人，我是一名社会科学家，我在中立地倾听他们的声音，他们总是问我：“您怎么看这是要去吗？”
Because they would hear, I would say, “Blah, blah, blah.” I was at Princeton at the time, I’m a researcher, Princeton University, this is what I’m working on and this is what I worked on before. They would ask me, “How do you think it’s going to go?” And I would kind of say, “Well, I can’t predict the future.” I would just pass on the question because one, it’s not my place and two, I felt if I had to take a guess, I would have said, “Well, you scaled up very fast and you’re going 100 miles an hour in this car that’s just gotten so big so quickly, but you don’t have a steering wheel or infrastructure. You do not have the technical capacity to try to make quick decisions because of the way it’s come together.” And we’ve seen this since, social media is not a place where we come to consensus.
因为他们会听到，所以我会说：“等等，等等，等等。” 当时我在普林斯顿大学，我是普林斯顿大学的研究员，这是我正在从事的工作，也是我以前的工作。 他们会问我：“您认为情况如何？” 我会说，“好吧，我无法预测未来。” 我只想回答这个问题，因为一个，不是我的地方，另外两个，我觉得如果我不得不猜测的话，我会说：“好吧，您扩展得非常快，并且您每小时要走100英里这么快就这么大的汽车，但是您没有方向盘或基础设施。 由于它的组合方式，您没有技术能力来做出快速决策。” 从那以后，我们就已经看到了这一点，社交媒体不是我们达成共识的地方。
I think you’re getting toward the definition of what a networked protest is. Can you quickly define it?
我认为您正在走向网络抗议的定义。 您可以快速定义它吗？
We need a name for what’s going on. It’s the social media field protest that happens without necessarily one or two maybe, or a coalition of organizations with long-standing infrastructure calling it and saying, this is what we’re going to do and kind of acting as their strategic or tactical leadership.
我们需要一个名称来表示正在发生的事情。 这是社交媒体现场抗议活动，可能不一定会发生一两个事件，或者是具有长期基础设施的组织联盟称这是在说，这就是我们将要做的，并且将其作为其战略或战术领导。
Right, it just sort of explodes out of social media.
是的，它只是从社交媒体中爆炸出来。
Right. Hashtag WeAreAngry, Facebook page, let’s all meet here, a million protests everywhere. We’ve seen this a lot. We kind of know this now and for your younger listeners, they might be like, “Is there any other way to do this?” Because this is all they’ve known—
对。 Hashtag WeAreAngry，Facebook页面，让我们所有人在这里见面，到处都有百万抗议。 我们已经看到了很多。 我们现在已经知道了这一点，对于您的年轻听众来说，他们可能会说：“还有其他方法可以做到这一点吗？” 因为这就是他们所知道的一切-
Right.
对。
But this is not how we used to do this. This is really—
但这不是我们过去这样做的方式。 这真的是-
This was pretty novel.
这是很新颖的。
This was at the time pretty novel and you cannot do this if you do not have these distributed communication tools, the social media of the world in one form or another. It doesn’t have to be the Facebook, Twitter form, it could have been some other form, but it has to be some form of this.
这在当时是很新奇的，如果您没有这些分布式通信工具，一种或另一种形式的世界社交媒体，则无法执行此操作。 它不必是Facebook，Twitter形式，也可以是其他形式，但必须是某种形式。
Yeah. It’s something that just gets all these people out very quickly with somewhat loose infrastructure. And I think that we can go back to what you were saying or if you want to continue on, but one thing I remember when I was there, I was asking people, “Where do you think this is going to go?” And they said, “We’re never going to stop, and this will be forever.” And obviously, that’s not what ended up happening —
是的 有了一些松散的基础架构，所有这些人都可以很快离开。 我认为我们可以回到您所说的内容，或者您想继续，但是我记得当时我在问的一件事是，我问人们：“您认为这将去哪里？” 他们说：“我们永远不会停止，这将是永远的。” 显然，这不是最终发生的事情-
Right.
对。
So, one of the things that I think we can talk about as we sort of finish up this Gezi thread, but why do these movements have so much trouble being effective? It seems they can sort of explode onto the scene, show of force like you haven’t seen before these things, but then when it comes to actually pushing a policy agenda, and I know you might dispute this, but I like to hear your thought, it seems, at least from the outside that they struggled to see their goals through.
所以，我认为在完成这个Gezi线程时我们可以谈论的一件事，但是为什么这些运动在有效方面有这么多麻烦呢？ 看来他们可以像爆炸般出现在现场，像您以前从未见过的那样显示武力，但是当涉及到实际推动政策议程时，我知道您可能对此表示怀疑，但是我喜欢听到您的声音至少从外面看来，他们似乎在努力实现自己的目标。
They do, but I wouldn’t also say they’re not effective. What I would say is that because they go from zero to 100 miles in just a day or week or month, when they hit a tactical moment where they have to change tactics or where the government kind of wakes up and says, “Okay,” and starts pushing back and realizes… Especially a government that’s not something archaic like the Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, the autocrat, he didn’t understand a thing about what was going on. So, the next generation wasn’t going to be like this. Governments learn and catch up. So, when the pushback comes, you’re going very fast, but you don’t have decision-making tools, you do not have tactical infrastructure, you do not have that kind of flexibility. All you have is a shared grievance that brought a lot of people together and you’re trying to hash out your differences on Twitter. And it’s 2020, I don’t think I need to explain to people anymore that Twitter is not a good place for building consensus —
他们做到了，但我也不会说他们没有效果。 我要说的是，因为它们在一天，几周或一个月内从零行驶到100英里，当他们遇到战术时刻时，他们必须改变策略或政府醒来时说：“好吧，”并开始退缩并意识到……尤其是像埃及独裁者胡斯尼·穆巴拉克(Hosni Mubarak)那样的古国政府，他对所发生的事情一无所知。 因此，下一代不会像这样。 政府学习和追赶。 因此，当出现压力时，您的发展很快，但是您没有决策工具，没有战术基础设施，也没有这种灵活性。 您所拥有的只是共同的不满，这使很多人聚集在一起，并且您正在尝试在Twitter上散布您的分歧。 现在是2020年，我认为我不再需要向人们解释Twitter不是建立共识的好地方-
It’s not a great forum for that.
这不是一个很好的论坛。
But in 2013, if we had to explain to people saying, “You can build the consensus…”
但是在2013年，如果我们不得不向人们解释说：“您可以建立共识……”
It’s impossible.
不可能。
Yeah, it’s not built for it. If anything, it’s built for tribalization, which is part of the problem, then that’s a long discussion to have. So, what happens is, in the past, if you had such a big protest like say the March on Washington, it took 10 years to just get it from idea to reality and it took six months just to organize the logistics. So, by the time you had the march, it was a strong infrastructure that was flexing a muscle, whereas, in 2020 or 2013 even, when you have the march, it’s not a strong infrastructure flexing its muscle, it is something that is springing with the aid of social media. So, the way I sort of have a biology metaphor for this is that in biology, some gazelles will just jump up very high in the presence of predators and what they’re doing is, look how high I can jump, I can really run, you’re signaling your muscles. And if you’re a predator and you look at it and say, “Oh, yeah, that one is jumping really high,” because otherwise, why on earth are they jumping? It looks like a stupid move, but it’s signaling strength. So, that’s your old era protest, it’s jumping up and saying, “Look at me, look at what I can do.”
是的，它不是为此而建的。 如果有的话，它是为部落化而构建的，这是问题的一部分，那么这是一个漫长的讨论。 因此，发生的事情是，在过去，如果发生像华盛顿游行这样的大抗议活动，则要花10年的时间才能将其从构思变为现实，而花了6个月才组织后勤工作。 因此，在您进行游行时，它是一个强大的基础结构正在弯曲肌肉，而即使在2020或2013年，当您进行游行时，它也不是一个强大的基础结构正在弯曲肌肉，这是不断涌现的东西。借助社交媒体。 因此，我对此有一个生物学隐喻的方式是，在生物学中，一些瞪羚在掠食者面前会跳得很高，而他们正在做的是，看看我能跳多高，我真的可以奔跑，您正在发出肌肉信号。 如果您是捕食者，然后看着它说：“哦，是的，那人跳得很高”，因为否则，它们为什么会跳？ 这看起来像是一个愚蠢的举动，但却是信号的力量。 因此，这是您的旧时代抗议活动，它跳了起来说：“看着我，看看我能做什么。”
Whereas in 2013, 2020, if you just came together in a week using social media, it’s kind of like the gazelle has springs under its feet, it’s jumping up very high, but it’s not necessarily because it built up those muscles, it’s because it’s got this artificial aid and the question is, will it then build the muscles before the predator eats it? And the predator being the government trying to push back. And so it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be ineffective, but it’s if you’re going to go back to your startup, it’s going to be, can you pay your technical debt in time to keep the… So, you scaled up very fast, coding duct tape, can you fix your infrastructure, so when you do get big, you can have a sustainable product? It’s the same question. So, are they ineffective? No. They change minds, they change culture, they change everything, but they don’t necessarily manage to push through with the kind of power you might’ve expected them to have if you were comparing them to the past. You just have to understand, it looks the same, it looks like a protest like 1965, ’63, it’s not the same creature.
而在2013年，2020年，如果您只是一周之内使用社交媒体走到一起，那就像瞪羚的脚下有泉水一样，它跳得很高，但这不一定是因为它增强了这些肌肉，那是因为得到了这种人工帮助，问题是，它会在捕食者吃掉它之前先建立肌肉吗？ 掠夺者是试图回击的政府。 因此，这并不一定意味着它们会失效，而是如果您要回到初创企业，那就是，您是否可以及时偿还技术债务以保持……快速扩展，编码管道胶带，您可以修复基础架构，因此当规模变大时，便可以拥有可持续的产品？ 这是同样的问题。 那么，它们无效吗？ 不。他们改变主意，改变文化，改变一切，但是如果您将它们与过去进行比较，它们并不一定能发挥您可能期望他们拥有的那种力量。 您只需要了解，它看起来是一样的，看起来像是1965年抗议活动，例如'63，它不是同一个人。
That’s right. The police eventually cleared the park and a lot of these protesters, if you ask them, did it accomplish what you were looking for? I think many of them would have said, no.
那就对了。 警察最终清除了公园，如果您向他们抗议，其中许多抗议者是否达到了您的期望？ 我想其中许多人会说，不。
在黑生命问题上 (On Black Lives Matter)
In the middle of this pandemic, we’ve seen a massive network protest with the Black Lives Matter movement. And there has been this tension between the infrastructure that you have because they have had it because they have been around since Trayvon Martin’s killing years ago. But they also have these elements of networked protests where people are coming out just by seeing the social media momentum and agreeing with the term “Black Lives Matter.” So, Zeynep I’d like to ask you just to kick off, how have these protests, the Black Lives Matter protests around George Floyd been different from the network protests we’ve seen in the past if at all?
在这种大流行中，我们看到了有关“黑住事”运动的大规模网络抗议。 您拥有的基础架构之间一直存在这种紧张关系，因为他们拥有它是因为自从Trayvon Martin几年前被杀以来一直存在。 但是，他们也具有网络抗议的这些要素，人们只是通过看到社交媒体的势头并同意“黑人的生活”一词就出来了。 所以，Zeynep我想问您，这些抗议，乔治·弗洛伊德周围的“黑人生活问题”抗议与我们过去看到的网络抗议有何不同？
So, I think one thing that’s important to emphasize is that it was never that they were ineffective, it’s just again, it’s a different creature, so it’s starting and the big protests are the start. So, the Ferguson protests in 2014 were arguably the start of the movement. It had been building up with the Trayvon Martin’s murder, [and] people had been talking about it in social media and getting national attention to it. With Ferguson, it kind of broke through as a nationwide movement. And here we are, six years later and we had George Floyd’s killing breakthrough in a way that the previous ones had not, but it’s building on that.
因此，我认为需要强调的一件事是，从来没有它们没有效果，只是再一次，它是一种不同的生物，因此它是开始的，而大规模的抗议活动是开始的。 因此，2014年的弗格森抗议活动可以说是运动的开始。 它是在特雷冯·马丁(Trayvon Martin)被谋杀后积累的，[人们]在社交媒体上一直在谈论它，并引起了全国的关注。 对于弗格森(Ferguson)，它在全国范围内都取得了突破。 六年后的今天，我们在这里有了乔治·弗洛伊德(George Floyd)的致命突破，而以前的方式则没有，但这是在此基础上发展的。
And so we talked about the weaknesses of these movements. Here’s one big strength, they can change people’s minds because you have social media, plus you have the protests and so many Americans because of social media and because of the phones everywhere have witnessed what Black people had been telling us for years, but we’re not getting… Sometimes they weren’t getting believed of course, but even if we believe the particular person’s testimony, there was this idea that these things were just isolated, a few bad apples. But when you see that George Floyd that […] see horrific video… I mean, it’s not just that they’re torturing a man to death, the casualness with which they’re doing it while being filmed and while being sort of pleaded with to stop. I mean, it’s blood-chilling, it’s just shocking. So, it just tells you that everything that we’ve been seeing. I think [it] sort of tipped over… And if you look at the polls, in the United States for the first time, you have a plurality of white people who want the Confederate monuments removed, they want something.
因此，我们谈到了这些运动的弱点。 这是一大优势，他们可以改变人们的想法，因为您拥有社交媒体，再加上抗议活动，以及如此之多的美国人，因为社交媒体和无处不在的电话见证了黑人多年来一直在告诉我们的事情，但是我们没得到……有时他们当然不被相信，但是即使我们相信特定人的证词，也有这样的想法，即这些东西只是孤立的，一些坏苹果。 但是，当您看到乔治·弗洛伊德([...])看到恐怖的录像……我的意思是，不仅仅是因为他们在折磨一个人致死，还包括他们在拍摄和被恳求时所采取的随便行动停止。 我的意思是，这真令人毛骨悚然。 因此，它只是告诉您我们所看到的一切。 我认为这是个小问题……如果您第一次看民意测验，在美国，就有许多白人想要删除同盟国纪念碑，他们想要一些东西。
There’s a variety of sort of slogans, everything from reform to abolish to defund, it doesn’t terribly matter exactly which slogan call. It just means that there’s a large number or even a plurality of white people who have come around to the idea that there’s something wrong here, there’s something deeply wrong here, and it took all this time and all this sort of both social media and protest movement and all these things. And this is really important because changing minds is how you change politics in the long run. So, in places like when we talk about say, the Arab Spring countries, or we talk about the Gezi Park movement, Egypt has never had a solid democracy, so you can change people’s minds, but the repression is always going win out.
标语种类繁多，从改革到废除再到退款，无所不包，确切地说是哪个标语并不重要。 这只是意味着，有很多甚至什至很多白人来到这里，以为这里有问题，这里有很多问题，这花了所有的时间以及所有此类社交媒体和抗议活动运动和所有这些东西。 这真的很重要，因为从长远来看，改变思想是您改变政治的方式。 因此，在诸如我们所说的“阿拉伯之春”国家或我们所说的“盖子公园”运动之类的地方，埃及从未有过牢固的民主，因此您可以改变人们的想法，但镇压总是会取得胜利。
“I think I’ve counted at least eight people who lost an eye in the last round of George Floyd protests, which is… I mean, this is the United States, this is where we are.”
“我认为在上一轮乔治·弗洛伊德(George Floyd)抗议活动中，至少有八个人失去了视线，这就是……我的意思是，这就是美国，这就是我们的位置。”
In a country like the United States, we’re seeing no doubt increased repression. I mean, my social media feed [is full of] people losing eyes, tear gas canisters sitting people. I think I’ve counted at least eight people who lost an eye in the last round of George Floyd protests, which is… I mean, this is the United States, this is where we are.
在像美国这样的国家，我们无疑看到了越来越多的镇压。 我的意思是，我的社交媒体喂饱了(很多人)失去视力，坐着人们的催泪瓦斯罐。 我想我已经统计了至少八个人在上一轮乔治·弗洛伊德(George Floyd)抗议活动中视而不见，这是……我的意思是，这是美国，这就是我们的位置。
There’s been a lot.
有很多
Yeah, there’s a lot of repression that feels like all these other places in the world that we just sort of looked at as far away, but on the other hand, presumably, we still have elections.
是的，有很多压抑，就像我们在遥远的地方看着世界上所有其他地方一样，但另一方面，想必我们仍有选举。
Fingers crossed.
手指交叉。
Yeah, fingers crossed. Yeah, it’s not a perfect system, you have the Electoral College… and it’s also, the government is set up as a minority government in some ways, just the senate historically, it’s a big country, and it’s been set up like that from the beginning. But putting all that aside, there’s really no solid way for a completely unpopular government to lose elections by too much and remain in power. They can, as we saw with the popular vote issue and we see with the Senate, they can lose the plurality a little bit, but at some point that tips over. And so they’ve changed, this Black Lives Matter movement has really convinced Americans, a large number of them. And it’s at that point where I’m just looking at it in the National Review, which is a very leading sort of conservative outlet is publishing articles saying, “No, no reform the police, not defund it.” And if that’s your sort of concern —
是的，手指交叉。 是的，这不是一个完美的系统，您拥有选举学院……而且，在某些方面，政府是作为少数派政府成立的，就历史而言，这是参议院，这是一个大国，而且是从开始。 但是，撇开所有这些，真正不存在一个完全不受欢迎的政府失去太多选举并保持执政的坚实方法。 正如我们在大众投票中看到的那样，在参议院中看到的那样，他们可能会失去一点点复数，但在某些时候会结束。 因此，他们发生了变化，这一“黑人生活问题”运动确实说服了很多美国人。 正是在这一点上，我只是在《 国家评论》中查看它 ，这是一种非常领先的保守派机构正在发表文章，说：“不，不要对警察进行改革，不要对它进行退款。” 如果那是您的关注点-
Yeah, that’s a big step.
是的，那是一大步。
That’s an Overton window shifting. That is what Trump did in 2016 too, and that’s what social media does. You can change the acceptable parameters of the conversation. So, if you’ve got the conservatives arguing, “Yes, let’s reform it, not just defund it, defund is too radical.” Yeah, that’s a movement that’s made a lot of progress and it’s going to… Depending on, fingers crossed, we have elections, who knows how it will go because these things are multifactorial, I just think it’s showing you that network movements aren’t necessarily effective or ineffective, but they’re really different than how they play out.
这是一个Overton窗口移动。 这也是特朗普在2016年所做的，也是社交媒体所做的。 您可以更改对话的可接受参数。 因此，如果保守派争论说：“是的，让我们对其进行改革，而不仅是对其进行退票，退票就太激进了。” 是的，这是一个进步很大的运动，它将会……根据手指交叉的情况，我们进行选举，因为这些事情是多因素的，所以我们知道选举将如何进行，我只是认为这表明您的网络运动并不是肯定有效或无效，但它们与发挥方式确实不同。
They have an influence.
他们有影响。
And in the long run, they can have an enormous influence if they’re not pushed back by massive repression or all those other things that we talk about.
从长远来看，如果他们不被大规模镇压或我们谈论的所有其他事情所压倒，它们将产生巨大的影响。
We see the influence that the protests have had, but then unlike most of these network protests, there is an infrastructure, there is leadership that’s been in place for years of the Black Lives Matter organization. So, who leads the change? Is it the protest influencing the mainstream or is it the organizers at the core?
我们看到了抗议活动的影响，但是与大多数网络抗议活动不同的是，这里有一个基础设施，而且在“黑生命问题”组织已有多年的领导才能。 那么，谁来领导变革？ 是抗议活动影响了主流还是组织者是核心？
So, without commenting on that organization, I’m not saying good or bad, I don’t think they’re very influential in shaping the movement, to be honest. I mean, because if you just sort of speak to regular protesters, they’ve barely heard that there’s an organization. They’re not getting their information from the organization, they’re not getting their talking points from the organization. I’m not saying the organization is great or it’s terrible, I think, largely speaking, if the organization’s leaders tomorrow said we’re now all going to do this or that, they don’t have that much more influence than some other person with a lot of social media following. You see what I’m saying?
因此，老实说，在不评论该组织的情况下，我并不是说好是坏，我认为他们在塑造这一运动方面没有很大的影响力。 我的意思是，因为如果您只是与定期的抗议者交谈，他们几乎不会听说有组织。 他们没有从组织那里获得信息，他们没有从组织那里得到他们的谈话要点。 我并不是说这个组织很棒或很糟糕，我认为，基本上，如果明天该组织的领导人说我们现在都要做这个或那个，那么他们没有比其他人更大的影响力了有大量的社交媒体关注。 你明白我在说什么吗？
Right.
对。
We lost John Lewis recently and it’s something I’ve written about in my book. In the 1963 March on Washington, he was supposed to give a speech and he did give a speech and some parts of it were deemed as too radical by the movement establishment. Which of course, when I say establishment, I don’t mean privileged people — we’re talking about the Black people’s movement in the ’60s — but people who he’d been working with and they thought they were close to getting the civil rights legislation. Some of the things they thought [were] too sharp, and then there was a sit-down and John Lewis changed a few of his sentences and he had great respect, he had also great respect for these people who had worked their whole lives on their great difficulty in threat.
我们最近失去了约翰·刘易斯(John Lewis)，这是我在书中写的。 在1963年3月的华盛顿会议上，他本来应该发表演讲，但他的确发表了演讲，该运动的某些部分被激进派认为过于激进。 当然，当我说建立时，我指的不是特权人士(我们在谈论60年代的黑人运动)，而是他一直在与之合作的人们，他们认为他们快要获得公民身份了。权利立法。 他们认为有些事情太过尖锐，然后坐下来，约翰·刘易斯改变了一些句子，他非常敬重，他也非常敬重那些毕生致力于的人他们在威胁方面的巨大困难。
So, there was this way in which the message was hashed out between the young, more sort of radical… faction and the older kind of the ones that they saw were close to a deal with the administration. There is no such process right now. The Black Lives Matter organization, quote, unquote, could decide that from now on, we’re going to say Black Lives Matter and we’re going to add a “Too” for clarification, and that would have no more weight than some prominent social media person in the movement saying that. It would catch on or not based on that. So, it’s still a network movement. It still doesn’t have a spokesperson. Yeah.
因此，这种方式是在年轻的，更激进的……派系和较老的派系之间散发出信息，他们看到的派系与政府关系密切。 目前没有这样的过程。 Black Lives Matter组织可以用引号，无引号引起来的决定，从现在开始，我们将说Black Lives Matter，我们将添加一个“ Too”以进行澄清，并且其重要性不超过某些重要内容。社交媒体运动人士说。 它会因此而流行。 因此，它仍然是网络运动。 它仍然没有发言人。 是的
The thing I get is people are coming out because they see the message, Black Lives Matter and they agree with it. But the people that are attacking the movement have labeled it a Marxist movement.
我得到的是，人们之所以走出来是因为他们看到了“ Black Lives Matter”这个消息，并且他们同意这一点。 但是，攻击该运动的人们将其称为马克思主义运动。
Yeah. It’s really weird because the thing is… What I’m saying is that it almost doesn’t matter if they say they’re Marxist, or they’re Maoists, or they’re… I don’t know. Because the thing is I’m trying to imagine interviewing a regular protester here and say, “What do you think about the labor of theory of value?” And them having even heard of it? I’m serious. That organization has a name that they registered legally… If they decided they were going to take the movement this way or that way, they literally have no more influence on the movement than their social media follower numbers, and as far as I can tell, that’s not even large, there’s lots of people with a much larger following. I mean, I’m not sure they have more influence on what Black Lives Matter as a network movement will do than a TikTok persona that has some established space on TikTok and is doing well.
是的 这真的很奇怪，因为事情是……我要说的是，无论他们说自己是马克思主义者还是毛主义者，还是……我都不知道。 因为问题是我想想象在这里采访一名正规的抗议者，然后说：“您对价值理论的作用有何看法？” 他们甚至听说过吗？ 我是认真的。 该组织的名称是他们合法注册的名称……如果他们决定要以这种方式进行运动，那么他们对运动的影响实际上不会超过其社交媒体关注者人数，据我所知，甚至还不大，很多人的追随者更多。 我的意思是，我不确定他们是否会对网络生活中的Black Lives Matter产生更大的影响，而不是在TikTok上拥有一定空间并且表现良好的TikTok角色。
So, sometimes people, because they don’t understand network movements, they could get focused an organization like that. And when you look at what’s actually happening on the ground, that organization is not NAACP of the civil rights movement, let me put it this way. It does not have that kind of leadership role and that’s why, are they trained Marxist or not? To me as a social movement researcher—
因此，有时人们由于不了解网络的移动，因此可以将注意力集中在这样的组织上。 当您查看实际情况时，该组织不是民权运动的NAACP，让我这样说。 它没有那种领导作用，这就是为什么他们是否训练过马克思主义者？ 对于我作为社会运动研究者而言，
It doesn’t matter.
没关系
It’s irrelevant. Yeah.
没关系 是的
This is one of the main points I wanted to get at. Which is that you look at Black Lives Matter today and the detractors will be like, “I don’t want to get involved with it because it has been painted in this light as being a Marxist movement.” But the thing is in this day and age, when you have a protest movement that’s sparked by social media, the core beliefs of what’s going on inside the organization matter a lot less than the fact that everybody’s showing up in support of one simple message, which is Black Lives Matter. And it’s interesting to see some of the critics harp on this whole Marxist ideology inside the organization where if they really understood what was going on, they would know that the people inside that organization aren’t going to be the ones that are pushing the policy change, but rather it’s going to be as you mentioned, the people who show up and show up with the influence.
这是我想了解的要点之一。 就是说，您今天看《 Black Lives Matter》，反对者会说：“我不想参与其中，因为它被视作是马克思主义运动。” 但是，在当今时代，当社交媒体引发抗议运动时，组织内部发生的事情的核心信念远不如每个人都在支持一个简单的消息而出现的事实重要，这是“黑色生活”。 有趣的是，一些批评家对组织内部的整个马克思主义意识形态抱有竖琴，如果他们真的了解正在发生的事情，他们会知道该组织内部的人不会成为推动政策的人变化，但是就像您提到的那样，人们将出现并受到影响。
I’m not even sure what it means for them. I mean, Marxism is not a political system that has had a lot of things to say about race, if anything. So, I’m just kind of—
我什至不确定这对他们意味着什么。 我的意思是，马克思主义不是一个关于种族有很多话要说的政治制度，如果有的话。 所以，我只是-
Totally.
完全。
It’s almost weird, it’s kind of.
这几乎很奇怪，有点。
Yeah, it’s just a strange attack.
是的，这只是一次奇怪的攻击。
Not only is it a strange attack, it’s kind of a strange thing for the organizers to say, “We’re trained Marxists,” because I’m thinking, I mean, Marxism means something. It’s a political ideology and it is almost silent on questions of race. It’s about capitalism and class structure, and labor theory of value and all those things. Let me put it this way, if somebody had come and said the Trump movement, which I’ve called ethnonationalism or Heron Fork democracy, which I think is the correct term for what he’s done is ethnonationalism. And if somebody had said, “I am Trump.org and I’m trained as a chef,” it would almost be as relevant. It’s kind of what is the point of this? I’m like, “You can have the name and you can have the trademark, you can say this, but it is orthogonal to any actual dynamic on the ground.”
这不仅是一次奇怪的袭击，对于组织者来说，“我们是训练有素的马克思主义者”，这是一种奇怪的事情，因为我在想，我的意思是，马克思主义意味着某种意义。 这是一种政治意识形态，几乎没有种族问题。 这与资本主义和阶级结构，劳动价值论以及所有这些有关。 让我这样说，如果有人来说特朗普运动，我称之为民族主义或苍鹭叉车民主，我认为这是他所做的正确的说法是民族主义。 而且，如果有人说：“我是Trump.org，并且接受过厨师培训”，那么它几乎同样重要。 这有什么意义？ 我想，“您可以说出名字，也可以有商标，可以这样说，但是它与地面上的任何实际动态正交。”
Before we end here, let’s talk about the possible influence these mass protests can have. We’ve definitely seen a lot of brands rethinking the way that they operate. We’ve seen the Woodrow Wilson School is going to rename itself. But what do you think in terms of concrete political action, from a policy level, from electoral level, do you think we’ll see beyond the symbolism?
在我们结束之前，让我们谈谈这些大规模抗议活动可能产生的影响。 我们肯定已经看到很多品牌都在重新思考他们的经营方式。 我们已经看到伍德罗·威尔逊学校即将重命名。 But what do you think in terms of concrete political action, from a policy level, from electoral level, do you think we'll see beyond the symbolism?
So, here’s the thing, a lot of people sometimes will say these brands are kind of changing, giving these statements, and all of that it’s performative. Of course it’s performative, but you know what? It’s a better world if brands feel they have to be performative and make statements committing to anti-racism. Just the fact that they feel that pressure to me is a symptom of something important. So, sometimes it’s kind of like, “Really? Does everybody have to?” Yes, it’s a good thing because—
So, here's the thing, a lot of people sometimes will say these brands are kind of changing, giving these statements, and all of that it's performative. Of course it's performative, but you know what? It's a better world if brands feel they have to be performative and make statements committing to anti-racism. Just the fact that they feel that pressure to me is a symptom of something important. So, sometimes it's kind of like, “Really? Does everybody have to?” Yes, it's a good thing because—
It signals.
It signals.
It signals something and it is much better than them not signaling something, which was kind of saying, “Yeah, the way things are okay.” That’s what you’re signaling when you’re silent. So, I like that even though I don’t think it by itself… I like that as a symptom. So, that’s one important thing. In terms of what change would mean, as someone who studies authoritarian governments, one of the things that we always look at when, say with authoritarian governments, the most important thing is not what they say but what they do.
It signals something and it is much better than them not signaling something, which was kind of saying, “Yeah, the way things are okay.” That's what you're signaling when you're silent. So, I like that even though I don't think it by itself… I like that as a symptom. So, that's one important thing. In terms of what change would mean, as someone who studies authoritarian governments, one of the things that we always look at when, say with authoritarian governments, the most important thing is not what they say but what they do.
“Of course it’s performative, but you know what? It’s a better world if brands feel they have to be performative and make statements committing to anti-racism”
“Of course it's performative, but you know what? It's a better world if brands feel they have to be performative and make statements committing to anti-racism”
You know that I did a lot of work on the pandemic recently, and the day I got on high alert about it was when China shut down Wuhan, 11 million people, I thought, this is serious, because I mean, they may be authoritarian, but they’re not stupid. If they are going to shut down that major city, that signals there is something major going on here… At the time the World Health Organization was saying, “We can get this under control, China was making all these—”
You know that I did a lot of work on the pandemic recently, and the day I got on high alert about it was when China shut down Wuhan, 11 million people, I thought, this is serious, because I mean, they may be authoritarian, but they're not stupid. If they are going to shut down that major city, that signals there is something major going on here… At the time the World Health Organization was saying, “We can get this under control, China was making all these—”
“Not a big deal.”
“Not a big deal.”
Yeah, there was a lot of sort of optimistic messaging, but when Wuhan was shut down, I remember just going, “Whoa!” I started immediately changing all my plans for the rest of the year. I literally sat down, it was the first time I started publicly tweeting, and I just went and I told everybody, “Everybody change your plans, this is it, it’s for real. It’s showtime.” So, that was kind of the same thing for my theory of change with very important things like the sort of racism in this country —
Yeah, there was a lot of sort of optimistic messaging, but when Wuhan was shut down, I remember just going, “Whoa!” I started immediately changing all my plans for the rest of the year. I literally sat down, it was the first time I started publicly tweeting, and I just went and I told everybody, “Everybody change your plans, this is it, it's for real. It's showtime.” So, that was kind of the same thing for my theory of change with very important things like the sort of racism in this country —
Real change in this is going to come when we see changes in budgets, when we see changes in investment, when we see changes in accountability, when we see changes in how law enforcement is done, and what the accountability structures look like, all those things. So, that’s kind of… But the things that people consider performative are not blocked to it. A lot of people think the performative of stuff displace reelection, they do not. Performative stuff creates the condition under which you can push for more. It changes the conversation, it changes when you’re in the workplace or the boardroom, it changes the accountability you can build.
Real change in this is going to come when we see changes in budgets, when we see changes in investment, when we see changes in accountability, when we see changes in how law enforcement is done, and what the accountability structures look like, all those things. So, that's kind of… But the things that people consider performative are not blocked to it. A lot of people think the performative of stuff displace reelection, they do not. Performative stuff creates the condition under which you can push for more. It changes the conversation, it changes when you're in the workplace or the boardroom, it changes the accountability you can build.
So, it’s not a bad thing by itself, and there’s no reason to think that it’s going to block actual change if people keep pushing for it. So, the actual change part in terms of people’s day to day lives… Let me also put it this way: Sometimes an argument against political correctness is that people think it anyway, and they don’t say it. I’m kind of like, “Yeah, let them think it and not say it, that’s better than them saying it.” I realize making people not use offensive terms does not necessarily change their mind, but you know what? It’s actually good for Black people not to have heard that, even if they know it hasn’t changed that other person’s heart necessarily. Just the fact of not letting that kind of language be okay is important.
So, it's not a bad thing by itself, and there's no reason to think that it's going to block actual change if people keep pushing for it. So, the actual change part in terms of people's day to day lives… Let me also put it this way: Sometimes an argument against political correctness is that people think it anyway, and they don't say it. I'm kind of like, “Yeah, let them think it and not say it, that's better than them saying it.” I realize making people not use offensive terms does not necessarily change their mind, but you know what? It's actually good for Black people not to have heard that, even if they know it hasn't changed that other person's heart necessarily. Just the fact of not letting that kind of language be okay is important.
The environment matters.
The environment matters.
The environment matters, and in the long run children not hearing that kind of language or a generation thinking this is not okay, that’s how you get changed. So, I feel it’s an important step. Now, where will this go with history, with so many things like pushing in so many directions? I think prediction is a fool’s game, but what you can do correctly is identify the dynamics. What you do is you can analyze what are the things that are pushing in different directions and have some idea of what is actually going on. So, will this leak tomorrow? There’s an election coming up, it’s a turning point, the pandemic, the election, all of that. For the United States, 2020 will have a huge chapter in history books, there’s no question about it, but it hasn’t played out.
The environment matters, and in the long run children not hearing that kind of language or a generation thinking this is not okay, that's how you get changed. So, I feel it's an important step. Now, where will this go with history, with so many things like pushing in so many directions? I think prediction is a fool's game, but what you can do correctly is identify the dynamics. What you do is you can analyze what are the things that are pushing in different directions and have some idea of what is actually going on. So, will this leak tomorrow? There's an election coming up, it's a turning point, the pandemic, the election, all of that. For the United States, 2020 will have a huge chapter in history books, there's no question about it, but it hasn't played out.
On masks (On masks)
Are people going to start wearing masks? I know you’ve been writing a lot about the need to wear masks since March, and I think people might be coming around. What’s happening with it, and why do you think people are still so against it?
Are people going to start wearing masks? I know you've been writing a lot about the need to wear masks since March, and I think people might be coming around. What's happening with it, and why do you think people are still so against it?
Well, it’s actually interesting because when I wrote about masks in mid-March, I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, and it was really the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] wasn’t advising masks, the World Health Organization wasn’t advising masks. Not only that, they were saying masks might be harmful. There’s all this messaging that was wrong and partially driven by trying to preserve masks for health care workers, which again, still was wrong. If that’s the idea, you have to tell people, you have to treat the public, just —
Well, it's actually interesting because when I wrote about masks in mid-March, I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times , and it was really the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] wasn't advising masks, the World Health Organization wasn't advising masks. Not only that, they were saying masks might be harmful. There's all this messaging that was wrong and partially driven by trying to preserve masks for health care workers, which again, still was wrong. If that's the idea, you have to tell people, you have to treat the public, just —
Just be honest.
Just be honest.
Treat the public as a partner. So, that was all that. And when I wrote that, I thought one, it would get a lot more pushback from people which it did not, it was kind of time for it. Second, I thought that this was likely a more favorable message for the Republican ideology in some ways because there’s a lot more to do besides mask: the testing, the ventilation, the sort of closing the indoor gatherings for a while. So, there’s all these other things that are very important and some of which are in the government’s purview. And masks is an individual responsibility telling people you have to step up and do your part, and I think both of those true and historically speaking that is more of a Republican ideology thing in that pushing the responsibility for public health on people’s individual behavior. It’s not wrong, but it’s very compatible with that side of the political spectrum —
Treat the public as a partner. So, that was all that. And when I wrote that, I thought one, it would get a lot more pushback from people which it did not, it was kind of time for it. Second, I thought that this was likely a more favorable message for the Republican ideology in some ways because there's a lot more to do besides mask: the testing, the ventilation, the sort of closing the indoor gatherings for a while. So, there's all these other things that are very important and some of which are in the government's purview. And masks is an individual responsibility telling people you have to step up and do your part, and I think both of those true and historically speaking that is more of a Republican ideology thing in that pushing the responsibility for public health on people's individual behavior. It's not wrong, but it's very compatible with that side of the political spectrum —
Sure.
Sure.
I think the first senator to put a video on masks, it was a Republican senator and it got taken up somewhat quickly, and then, of course, Trump came in, which kind of tells you… Which goes back to what we were talking about, the political realignment. The Republican Party is no longer the traditional Republican Party, it was Trump’s party, and that is not the traditional conservative ideology that the Republican establishment thought was the ideology of the party. This is the ideology of the party. It’s a different ideology and it’s based on tribalism and hostility. And for whatever psychological reasons, he did not like the message, he did not want to wear a mask himself.
I think the first senator to put a video on masks, it was a Republican senator and it got taken up somewhat quickly, and then, of course, Trump came in, which kind of tells you… Which goes back to what we were talking about, the political realignment. The Republican Party is no longer the traditional Republican Party, it was Trump's party, and that is not the traditional conservative ideology that the Republican establishment thought was the ideology of the party. This is the ideology of the party. It's a different ideology and it's based on tribalism and hostility. And for whatever psychological reasons, he did not like the message, he did not want to wear a mask himself.
And after that, you saw it become completely polarized, which you’ve seen with school question too, people had lots of different views on it and then Trump waited and then you saw it polarized by political party. He comes and almost shakes… I don’t know, like there’s a sort of a jar full of marbles, it’s kind of floating around mix and he comes and shakes it and then everybody separates to each side. That’s his effect on the political discussion. So, after he shook the masks marble, all of a sudden, we started having this sort of pushback, which if you look up the early polls, people were wanting to do something. And mask was, yes, there’s something we can do.
And after that, you saw it become completely polarized, which you've seen with school question too, people had lots of different views on it and then Trump waited and then you saw it polarized by political party. He comes and almost shakes… I don't know, like there's a sort of a jar full of marbles, it's kind of floating around mix and he comes and shakes it and then everybody separates to each side. That's his effect on the political discussion. So, after he shook the masks marble, all of a sudden, we started having this sort of pushback, which if you look up the early polls, people were wanting to do something. And mask was, yes, there's something we can do.
It’s pretty easy.
It's pretty easy.
It’s easy and it turns out they’re probably a lot more effective than we even thought at first because they don’t just protect source control, there’s increasing evidence that they’re somewhat protective for the wearer as well. So, they might be unspeculating, but there’s really suggestive evidence that it might help why we’re seeing so much less severe cases is that because the dose matters. So, even if they don’t completely eliminate the virus from the air, they stop people from spreading it and they protect people somewhat from inhaling more. So, you’re just lowering the dose, which is acting more to sort of limit the severity. So, they might be helping all sorts of ways and people were roaring to go, and then Trump came. So, I do also want to say one thing, while there’s still some resistance, this is a thing in which social media is playing a bad role because every time some person throws a stupid tantrum somewhere, it goes viral, right?
It's easy and it turns out they're probably a lot more effective than we even thought at first because they don't just protect source control, there's increasing evidence that they're somewhat protective for the wearer as well. So, they might be unspeculating, but there's really suggestive evidence that it might help why we're seeing so much less severe cases is that because the dose matters. So, even if they don't completely eliminate the virus from the air, they stop people from spreading it and they protect people somewhat from inhaling more. So, you're just lowering the dose, which is acting more to sort of limit the severity. So, they might be helping all sorts of ways and people were roaring to go, and then Trump came. So, I do also want to say one thing, while there's still some resistance, this is a thing in which social media is playing a bad role because every time some person throws a stupid tantrum somewhere, it goes viral, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it’s not the same thing, but I kind of liken it to social contagion in the mass shooting world in which amplifying the killers’ manifest on social media actually helps create copycats rather than make an example of it and dampen it because you just need a few people to sort of say, “Oh, this is terrible, but look at all the attention.” So, I think what we’re doing with the mask-shaming is absolutely backfiring because—
And it's not the same thing, but I kind of liken it to social contagion in the mass shooting world in which amplifying the killers' manifest on social media actually helps create copycats rather than make an example of it and dampen it because you just need a few people to sort of say, “Oh, this is terrible, but look at all the attention.” So, I think what we're doing with the mask-shaming is absolutely backfiring because—
Yeah, it’s ridiculous. If mass-shaming worked then people would be wearing masks, it hasn’t worked.
Yeah, it's ridiculous. If mass-shaming worked then people would be wearing masks, it hasn't worked.
Not only that, when we sort of amplify the tantrum, and we all point at that person… And I’m not saying the tantrums are terrible, the tantrums are stupid and terrible, but they’re super rare.
Not only that, when we sort of amplify the tantrum, and we all point at that person… And I'm not saying the tantrums are terrible, the tantrums are stupid and terrible, but they're super rare.
Being moralized to on social media—a segment of the population will never accept that and indeed do the opposite.
Being moralized to on social media—a segment of the population will never accept that and indeed do the opposite.
And also it makes people think that tantrums are a lot more common than they are. They happen, but they’re getting a zillion views. Like one random person in one supermarket and millions of people are thinking, looking at that and saying, “This is the country,” whereas this is not the country. The country is begging to be led by competent public officials and to be given the proper consistent message and to show up and do something. People want to, and that we’re kind of pushing the irresponsible crazies’ message, almost making them stronger than they are by making it look a lot more common than it actually is because the way social media kind of loves those tantrum videos.
And also it makes people think that tantrums are a lot more common than they are. They happen, but they're getting a zillion views. Like one random person in one supermarket and millions of people are thinking, looking at that and saying, “This is the country,” whereas this is not the country. The country is begging to be led by competent public officials and to be given the proper consistent message and to show up and do something. People want to, and that we're kind of pushing the irresponsible crazies' message, almost making them stronger than they are by making it look a lot more common than it actually is because the way social media kind of loves those tantrum videos.
Thank you, Zeynep. Where can people find you if they’re looking to follow your work?
Thank you, Zeynep. Where can people find you if they're looking to follow your work?
Well, I’m on social media, I am on the usual Twitter and I’m a writer at The Atlantic and the New York Times. This year, I’m writing more at The Atlantic, I have my work more there. I have a newsletter—I should be writing more there. I’ve been writing a lot everywhere. Usually not hard to find. Talks too much, writes too much.
Well, I'm on social media, I am on the usual Twitter and I'm a writer at The Atlantic and the New York Times . This year, I'm writing more at The Atlantic , I have my work more there. I have a newsletter—I should be writing more there. I've been writing a lot everywhere. Usually not hard to find. Talks too much, writes too much.
No, no, just the right amount.
No, no, just the right amount.
