Okay, there's two things now that should be addressed. I'm going to tackle them in reverse order.
Firstly - help me understand your usage of "non-partisan". Why are we using this word? How do we know this is non-partisan? I'd argue it's as important to verify that non-partisan ads are non-partisan as it is to identify that partisan ads are partisan. Perhaps even more so. Maybe I didn't lay it out so explicitly beforehand because I thought it was a given, but you stated it "seems to be a non-partisan neighborhood cause", and yet it's decidedly not. It's funded by
Peter Wall - exactly the source of anonymous public money you're against. ABC said in 2022 that they had never heard of it before, but that doesn't change the intended effect of endorsement. What word other than "partisan" would you use to describe a group that says they want to "hold politicians to account" but post content explicitly criticizing an incumbent and endorsing a opposing party for solving perceived problems in municipal governance? How is this not partisan?
Which brings me to my original point that I wanted to make. I agree that speech should not be so curtailed that I, a private individual, can't spend my own funds to pay for my own opinions to be spread across social media, beyond what spreads normally through my own free posts. There should be nothing wrong with a
genuine grassroots organization from spending its own pooled money to communicate issues important to that organization, yes? This is what I've taken from your replies, and I'd readily agree, regardless of how much I like their political beliefs.
The crux of the issue is this: I realized it's not the anonymity itself that bothers me. It's the sleight-of-hand substitution of one entity for another. You asked "What makes the CTF a substantive group but not Views of Vancouver?" Here's my answer:
the CTF represents itself as the CTF. Views of Vancouver represents itself as a group of concerned citizens, despite the fact that it is objectively not that. Substantive groups are groups that stand behind their expressed values and beliefs by engaging in some degree of good faith transparency about the nature of said group. An entity that pretends to be a group, that explicitly trades in the language of ones neighbors and peers, in order to persuade others based on primal needs for social inclusion and emotional validation, is not a substantive group and in its present form has no place in democratic public discourse, as it is a figment by its very design.
The description from VoV's website (note the "we" usage here):
Quote:
Views of Vancouver is a platform to engage with citizens and promote dialogue around these important issues. We believe in Vancouver but also believe our local politicians need to be held to account to ensure they represent the best interests of Vancouver and the people who want to live here. We believe it is important to promote the great things about our community and keep Vancouverites up-to-date on important issues.
Together, we can make a difference. Join our movement to help our city to continue to be a vibrant and interesting place to live, work, explore and bring up our families!
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Populists - mostly on the right, but not always - have discovered that the best way to shift how someone feels about an issue is to convince them that the issue matters to their peers. This is grounded in social psychology research going back decades but the politicians got ahold of this in the mid-2010s and haven't looked back. Donald Trump cracked this code in 2016, even as his popularity plummets now: there is no drug more powerful than a member of the in-group breaking the fourth wall of the system, turning to the the everyman with a smirk and saying "get a load of this guy, huh?", as he jabs his thumb at the elite.
I simply don't have the space here (and I wouldn't expect you to have the patience with me) to talk at the length I'd like to about how frustrating I find this. My occupation keeps me thinking a LOT about relationships in all their forms, and in particular the way in which our awareness of our own emotional susceptibility is profoundly clouded. My university days were spent absorbing research on how individuals and groups can experience profound shifts in their values and beliefs with the most subtle of provocations in their environment. My interest in and sensitivity to this, for better or worse, was fomented long before "woke", "disinfo", or "fake news" was at all a part of our political lexicon. So this has been really disheartening to watch play out in real time over the course of 10+ years. What's scary is that the only way we can identify these things is when, ironically, there's enough evidence to point to antidemocratic processes at play. Without this Vancouver Sun article (including Peter Wall's confirmation that he was behind the page), how would we have any clue who the identity of the operator was? Meta certainly isn't going to help us in that respect.
So, I'm going to ask a slightly modified version of the question I asked before, and this time I'd love to hear your answer: if Peter Wall (
or as ChangingCity jogged my memory below, Peter's successors) wants to spend $20,000 to tell you about why a drug consumption site proposal is bad, why does Peter Wall want you to believe that it's your neighbor who dislikes Solterra's project at 900 Helmecken, rather than Peter Wall?
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You don't have to like it but advertising has always been part of the election process. Do you get mad when the nurse's union runs ads saying politicians need to pay them more?
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