I think that this is the main issue. It is my opinion that this problem stems from the business and finance minded dogma of pushing efficiency, regardless of the long-term damage done to a brand/product/service, simply because in the short term it is _cheaper_ to do so. The long term damage is traded for short term gains.... kicking the bucket down the road if you will but doing long term damage to the business or institution overall.

In this particular context, lets take the example of Disney cutting/splicing/editing certain scenes from their films and shows in order to gain release approval in China. Instead of having one film product with a certain edit in the US, then another for China, then another for India, and so on, it is just _cheaper_ to have a single version edit of the film to release "everywhere". So in order to do this Disney has to appease a variety of censors and overview boards and make all changes in order to make a single film product where every governmental review board is happy. The pros is that you have a single version of the film thus making overall production costs cheaper. However the main con is that you may have specific ideological influence added to the product where it should or shouldn't be, or the tone or message of the film product might fundamentally change which breaks the premise/lesson, or the story is watered down essentially making the product meaningless, or the entertainment product might not be entertaining! The only real benefit in this case is that Disney still gets to release the film in as many markets as possible (thus meeting the rule of numbers for possible profit) but the customer starts to feel less connected to the brand so they start to lose interest and eventually abandon it. There are better examples of course. This is just one.

Fair enough. Would note that the death penalty, alongside torture and chemical castration, are sanctioned punishments for being gay in the UAE [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Ar...

Boycotts work when they’re deep, acute and with agreement on the solution that will lift it. Boycotts won’t do anything here. This requires legislation.

Which, come to think of it, is itself a distinct value: compromise of free expression for money.

You have a good point here.

sure, there's a social stigma. but if google/youtube/alphabet wanted to (as in they think there's enough money to be made in that sector) they would do it.

US conservatism does interfere with a lot of personal things (cough), but at least the current status quo is that it does not want to restrict selling data. (though there's a big think-of-the-children scare, and with the same sustained push for banning this or that this could change eventually)

There are a couple camps:

Do business but censor, in the hopes that the users become aware and become promoters of your views

Don't do business as to not enable the regime to succeed and hope the potential users notice and become promoters of your views.

I think that for the most part, even companies like Google or Facebook will not be able to change a country, similar to how the US was not able to change Cuba or North Korea.

I think that there is a lack of understanding in Western society that other societies view their government/societal structure not as vehicles for increased personal freedom but as a structure to promote social stability over long periods of time(1000 of years. Something I think China is particularly proud of, for good reason).

That's how censorship works. The people inside the bubble don't know, by design, what information has been omitted, and therefore can't care.

Choosing an MBS-free activity is all fine and good for personal moral growth. However, in general, I've observed a lot of gloating about moral highground once someone does a few of these choices. Without realizing that the people they're trying to describe as morally corrupt might actually be less corrupt just because they shop less.

It might be the case that you driving less, and trying to be careful about sourcing necessities. But you are contributing more, rather than less, to the benefit of nations/ people you don't like.

The original discussion was you making the claim that working directly under MBS management is morally the same as working in one of the thousands companies that have to obey the request of Saudi Arabia, and I'm asking you to elaborate how to draw the line.

So, unless you are putting up serious personal sacrifice in real world for your beliefs, this is pure and unadulterated virtue signaling.

Tough question, it's always hard to be honest about one's definitions. I will try to formalize wokism in a way that will make it clear why I despise it to people who see nothing obviously wrong with it apriori.

- It's an ideology characterized by outsized obsession with and the veneration of a few identities, chief among which are women, queers, and varying subsets of non-white ethnic groups.

- It's an ideology characterized by outsized hatred\bias\dismissal against the "opposite" of the above venerated groups, namely straights and\or whites and\or men, among others.

- It's an ideology that is utterly convinced of the morality of every single one of its positions, and sees 0 utility in debating, compromising with, co-existing, or even ignoring in peace any of its myriad opponents.

- It's an ideology that is uniformly in power across Western (== USA, Canada, Australia, and north-western Europe until the border defined by Russia, Poland, Hungary and the Balkans) institutions, chief among which are media, PR/HR departments of any corporation, law, secular universities, non profit organizations and think tanks, any left of center political organization, and, of course, mainstream social media.

Solve this system of constraints to whatever degree of accuracy you desire, and whatever the solver spits out is a wokism.

As to why someone would hate wokism, several reasons.

- They belong to a group mentioned in #2, or adjacent\similar to one.

- #3 makes sure that any single opposition or push back to wokism is a declaration of war against all of wokism. For instance, I'm atheist, vegetarian, non-white, left-leaning on economic matters, and very moderately progressive (== A lot of tradition is stupid, but we don't know which, and so one must be always very careful overriding it) on social matters. All of this isn't enough to offset the fact that I'm a straight man who is pro free speech.

- #4 makes wokism pattern-match to patterns that describe other authoritarian ideologies. Wokism is extremely similar in rhetoric and actions to religious fundamentalists in my country for example (which is why I call them a religion, they tick all the boxes except having a prophet, a god, and a path to forgiveness), other people who witnessed communist dictatorships often compare wokism to one. Regardless of whether those comparisons are in fact valid, wokism reminds (and promises) some of its opponents of much uglier things.

>Dictionary tells me it is "alert to injustice in society, especially racism"

Dictionary was right till about 2018-2019. The word 'Woke' dates back to the 1930s, originally meaning literal awareness and coined in AAVE, as in "Those cops appear to be looking for trouble, stay woke". By the 1960s the term refered to more abstract awareness of cultural\political matters, and by the 2000s the term reached wider English usage and had primarily positive connotations. See Wikipedia and linguist John McWhorter for more details about the history of the word.

The negative connotations of the word appears to have started roughly in early to mid 2020, replacing 'SJWs' or 'Social Justice Warriors' (itself an originally positive term, originally coined by the ideology itself and later used as an insult by roughly 2013-2014). Now it's the dominant word used to refer to the ideology described above and its adherents.

This can be used to justify anything. Muslims and Jews used to be persecuted in catholic spain for a very long time since the 1400s, should muslims make periodic month-long parades where they play the quran loudly and cosplay as 14th century muslim warriors ? should Spain be forced to host them ?

"I was harmed in the past" is suspiciously similar to what a lot of abusers and opportunistic psychopaths say to justify their actions and get their way.

>with the expected goal being to ward off further persecution in the future.

How does that work ? Some people despise your existence, so you... shove your existence in their faces and in their streets even more ? To what end ? own them ? stick your tongue out ? rub your legal or social victory in their face ? This is just plain revenge, you can just call it "owning the haters", no need to add any kind of moral decorations on top that isn't there.

This would make you more honest, and also open your eyes to some effects you're not currently seeing with the overly moralistic framework, such as that the "owning" might be overly broad and end up making people who previously had no problem with the group in question gradually resent it more and more as it intrude further into their life year after year.

Regardless of its purpose or morality, is this strategy even successful ? was it used in the past by any minority that successfully evaded the majority's wrath because of it ? if anything, majorities hate proud minorities even more. Is there any coherent defense of it that lays out how exactly is obnoxiously marching in the streets supposed to make people accept you more than they currently do ?

Secondly, who gave the right to non-Muslim countries to enforce what they think onto conservative Muslim societies? This is literally continued colonization.

There are no laws indicted that dictates you can't work if you are LGBTQ, there are no LGBTQ only water fountains and they are not forced to wear an identifying symbol on their arm for their camps.

LGBTQ loves to lump religion, race and their own decision to change "gender" together so that they can use it as a trojan horse to push their agenda.

Should we care for them? Yes. Should we love them? Yes and I believe that they must have access to all the therapy and treatments that they need when diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Should they be able to have an entire "month" dedicated to them and parade it in front of our children? No, I don't think so. Nor do I think it's wise to subject our children to these at the age of 5 and then encourage them to take puberty blockers and have life altering surgeries as soon as they are 16 to feel at "ease" with their chosen gender.

If we are even not even willing to have a conversation about this without one side immediately jumping into calling the other "transphobic", then we may have a problem.

Why can't we have an honest conversation about this issue for once with being attacked?

In other words, sharing what they do in their bedrooms.

In many times, the Wisdom behind such orders is made apparent to us. As we see here (and historically, as per the accounts in the Quran about Prophet Lot Peace be upon him), these groups will not stop at just what's in the bedroom. Today we see indoctrination and outright hostility toward anyone who disagrees with them, causing societal instability.

Obviously bad faith, GP never mentioned the arab countries, they were talking about how western countries screaming about "bowing down" is hypocrisy, since they themselves do an aweful lot of making people, most of the time their own citizens, bow down when they could leave them alone. So if your house is made of glass, keep away from the stones. UAE is threatening a corporation to enforce an ideology, that is aweful, Oh gee, I wonder what that style reminds me of.

Preach only what you would do for others if the positions were reversed. Do not ask what you don't give.

>I don't think this is the difficult stuff at all.

I also think all my opinions are extremly based and uncontroversial in the slightest, all my enemies are just dumb and evil, they are making it up, they are not genuinely disagreeing.

Come on. This is the oldest trick in the book.

What good is free speeach if you're just going to relegate it to 'the difficult stuff', defined as whatever you say is the difficult stuff ? This is just like how authoritarian regimes say they are not impriosning 'genuine opposition', just the bad people who pretend to be dissidents but actually want to destabilize the country. But, mystery of mysteries, there never seems to be any 'genuine opposition' who are not harrased and imprisoned, it always turns out that all oppositions in those countries are of the bad kind. Almost as if selectiely defining exceptions to free speech is some tool authoritarians use to silence people without giving up the moral high ground.

The GP said, "in a way that doesn't assume your worldview is the universal position ... everyone must adhere to". Your response still assumes that universality.

Anti gay muslims in the UAE (and beyond) have the same exact attitude, so that reduces the whole problem to who has the bigger money\stick\media horn, and they happen to be the ones who have on their territory.

Are you above them? You both have humility when faced with whoever you consider inferior - LGBT people that are so oppressed people think Amazon should consider them in their decisions, and presumption against your superiors: UAE asserted themselves and you can't even admit you'd change them by force if you could. But you can't.

Cry more.

"There is no monopoly of common sense, on either side of the political fence."

I asked for the attack that one would make against Amazon. And you don't even dare to state that, yes, your worldview excludes UAE ahahahah should they be fixed?

> Because that is the world-view of the UAE.

Below certain paygrade of people taking those decisions, a kind of mental "Nuremberg defense"(1) rule applies.

People should learn that companies milk these kind of feelings just because they profit from them; it's good for business. The top earners (investors and managers) that probably are, in this very moment, partying in a Singapore KTV, they don't really care.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

Yes, people who work at the corporation, the people who will be fired from the corporation if they do not comply. Everyone who works at the Amazon earns money from the profit they make and they will pay the most to people who will make these sociopathic choices.

- those who lack empathy?

- those who declare some lives less valuable than others?

- those who don’t care enough to stick their necks out to stand up for what’s right unless it affects them very directly?

From my observation of the present: plenty of that still going around.

What makes suffrage or abolitionism any more or less worthy a case than the LGBT “craze”?

Seems to me all this prejudice is fucking unhappy shit.

And if we were to simply go by official laws instead of what the reality on the ground is, abortion in germany (and some other EU countries) is still technically illegal except for medical emergencies so surely Afghanistan and the UAE are actually just more progressive than the west!