Spez1alEd
1mo ago
It may be cancel culture but honestly, I don't really care. Ultimately if it had been some left-wing pundit that had been assassinated like Contrapoints or Destiny or Hasan, and right-wingers were getting fired for celebrating, I don't believe for a second hardly any lefties would be sticking up for them and really, nor would I. I didn't make a stink when that guy got fired for outing himself as a literal fascist on Jubilee, I'm not going to make a stink when people get fired for supporting political assassinations of pundits they dislike. I'm perfectly fine with a norm of "don't celebrate assassinations of mainstream political pundits" existing, or not existing, it just needs to be applied symmetrically to left and right.
I absolutely would be against people facing legal consequences for it, but to my knowledge that hasn't happened thus far. I suppose I don't agree with the calls to deport non-US citizens who have celebrated the assassination, and I don't think people should be fired for making jokes or just saying they don't care, either. Nor should they be if someone dies in an accident or of natural causes, and they say he/she had it coming. But supporting outright murder of a pundit because you didn't like their mainstream, milquetoast political opinions goes much further than that in my view, and it's really not that unreasonable for somebody to get you fired over it. That's what it comes down to for me, the real transgression isn't "I don't have sympathy for him" or even "I'm happy he's dead" but "I think it's good he was murdered for saying things I disagree with."
Spez1alEd
2mo ago
What gets me about it is that all of this, this entire culture war, just seems like such an utterly trivial thing to escalate into a shooting war. What are the issues really when you boil it down? Whether trans women should have access to female-only spaces or not? Whether immigration law should be enforced, and how much immigration should occur and how difficult it should be? What the limits of free speech are? How tough on crime people should be? These aren't issues that should be tearing nations apart. These should be normal political issues people can discuss civily and disagree on without thinking of themselves as soldiers in an apocalyptic all-consuming war for the soul of the West. If people could politely disagree on gay marriage they could certainly do it for any kind of trans issue, or so you'd think.
Maybe I'm naive, I don't know. I suppose the right-wing partisans would speak of this being an issue of whether their people have a right to continued existence, their children a right not to be brainwashed and subjected to horrifying medical procedures akin to lobotomies, while left-wingers would claim they're seeing the rise of out-and-out white supremacy and antisemitism. There are certainly actors out there amplifying the most extreme positions and escalating things as much as they can, but most people I'd have to imagine don't agree with them. Most people, I'm told, don't like woke and are a little conservative on trans issues and immigration, but I'd have to assume they're not raring to vote in theocrats or fascists either. Yet we never seem to hear from them, it's just endless escalation by zealous partisans on either side ready to literally murder each other, or at least cheer when it happens.
It didn't feel like this to me a decade ago, back then these people felt marginal and broadly mocked. It just doesn't feel like these issues have to be discussed this way, but maybe it's too late now. Even if both sides moderated, conservatives dropped the conspiracy theories and accusing every trans person of being a groomer, liberals reaffirmed a commitment to free expression and pulled back a little on trans and immigration, even just conceded not every dissenting opinion is beyond the pale, too much of the base is radicalised now on both ends. I'm sure many people here would say it would be useless even if it could be accomplished, certainly. You have to wonder though, if just a few things had gone differently, Trump not being elected, liberals moderating even a little, Pizzagate not being a thing, Sherrod DeGrippo not deleting Encyclopedia Dramatica, maybe we wouldn't be in this situation.
Spez1alEd
3mo ago
Not necessarily The Motte specifically, but I'm talking about the phenomenon in general, wherever it might appear. I do think that the tendency of hard-right posters on places like /pol/ to casually and unironically refer to groups with names like mudslimes, shitskins, and so on contributes to the gradual dehumanisation of those groups in the users' minds, such that it becomes easier to justify indiscriminate violence against them. Obviously that also has to be combined with factors like anger at terror attacks or crime committed by members of the group, dismissal of concerns over it in the MSM and so on to produce that result.
Spez1alEd
3mo ago
It seems obvious to me that even assuming WhiningCoil's claim is "true," in the sense that young black men commit more crime, and this is inherent to their biology, and we have countless studies to prove it, it is still perfectly valid to strongly object to describing them as an invasive species. To do so is a blatantly dehumanising use of language that I believe could easily prime those who engage in it to see such a group as less than human, and therefore to be dealt with in the manner you would deal with non-human pests. This isn't complicated, it would be clear to everyone if he were describing Jews in a manner that compared them to vermin. So it is with blacks or any other ethnic group.
To be clear, I'm not accusing him of personally wanting to genocide or start a race war against blacks or anything, nor is this about being squeamish and finding the language offensive. But I think when you normalise referring to groups in such blatantly dehumanising and contemptuous terms, there is a clear risk of it contributing to a culture that views violence against them as legitimate.
There is nothing about acknowledging HBD or even arguing for explicitly racist policy that requires you to engage in this sort of thing, and the only thing it accomplishes is to potentially egg on the next mass shooter and to turn the public against you because whatever points you may or may not have, they can clearly see that your position is rooted in seething hatred and malice.
Spez1alEd
9mo ago
I remember thinking all those years ago during the 'controversy' around KCD1 that they could've had a secretive, stigmatised gay option and a fish-out-of-water non-white character actually, and that would've been a means to include diversity and head off the complaints in a way that wouldn't have been obnoxious or out-of-place, although the developers certainly shouldn't be seen as obligated to include diversity or suspicious just for not doing so. So I'm not really against any of this in theory, but I don't like the idea they bowed to pressure and what I've seen of Musa's dialogue does suggest they didn't exactly handle it very carefully. But at the end of the day I guess the truth is I just find the people gloating about it a million times more insufferable than the chuds complaining, whatever disagreements I have with them.
Spez1alEd
10mo ago
Does Twitter even really lean right? Every left-leaning tweet I see gets an order of magnitude more likes than any right-leaning counterpart. People have claimed these are botted likes but that can't be the case for all of them.
Spez1alEd
11mo ago
I wasn't accusing you of saying all atrocities are committed by non-whites. Anyway, fair, there is a distinction in how white/Western countries respond to accusations of having committed atrocities and how non-white/Western countries do, whether that be due to the influence of the Enlightenment or Christianity or post-WWII guilt or whatever it may be, and it does have important implications for culture and politics.
I still think the distinction isn't a result of non-whites not feeling guilty over their actions, though, it's just a different and more covert way of dealing with guilt. Rather than accept the framing of these actions as evil and apologise, sometimes to the point of exaggerating the harm or self-flagellating, non-white countries engage in downplaying and denials, and the fact they do this indicates they do feel their actions are difficult to morally defend. If Japan for example said the Rape of Nanjing did happen and comfort women were coerced and abused, just the way Western or Chinese historians claim, but that it was either good or at least justified in service to the larger national wartime goals, this would indicate a genuine lack of guilt and shame.
When they instead deflect and say Nanjing was exaggerated, or the atrocities weren't authorised, and anyway the other armies were just as bad, and the comfort women were mostly just normal prostitutes, it shows they know they can't convincingly claim those events as described by mainstream historians were morally acceptable, so they have to twist and distort the facts. Unless it were the case that the Japanese accounts were actually more accurate, I suppose.
Spez1alEd
11mo ago
Turks take the attitude of 'it never happened and it was good that it did, Armenians are scum' when it comes to their misdeeds.
If you have to claim it never happened I think it does demonstrate that on some level you're either aware it's morally indefensible and do feel guilty over it, or you at least know it would look really bad if you tried to defend it as justified. Even if in the next breath you go on to imply the targeted group were scum who would've deserved it anyway, people are quite capable of this sort of doublethink. I definitely think this is what's happening in most cases of people denying atrocities, whether it be the Holocaust, Holodomor, Armenian genocide or Japanese war crimes: they know they can't defend those things so they deny or downplay them instead. Obviously you have some non-white/Western examples there.
So, I don't think it's true that non-white people just don't care about whether they're morally culpable for various atrocities groups they identify with have committed, because if they didn't care they wouldn't feel the need to deny or downplay them. They would either defend them or simply shrug.
Spez1alEd
11mo ago
The male/female dynamic to me appears to very closely mirror the adult/child dynamic and I'm not sure why more people don't frame it this way. Most norms or policies that are criticised as misogynistic are really more paternalistic in my estimation, based on the intuition that women aren't as strong, capable or accountable and so are in need of special protection and consideration from men, who might even be asked to sacrifice their lives, but on the flip side people traditionally see men as much more capable and agentic and independent and generally worth taking seriously.
Women benefit a lot from this dynamic obviously and it's even embedded in a lot of progressive ideas and campaigns if unwittingly, but you can see how it's not exactly as flattering to them as it might first appear, framing them as more of a beloved subordinate than a respected equal.
I don't think it's directly downstream of progressive ideology, and is instead actually a consequence of the honour culture that many lower class black people seem to have grown up with in the hood. Honour cultures form in places where a strong central authority either doesn't exist, is unwiling or unable to enforce order, or is so resented by those subject to it that they're reluctant to call upon it and will punish any of their peers who do. This situation has occurred in many times and places historically, but today it often shows up in prisons, and everyone has experienced a kiddie version of it on the playground. It also seems to be common in black American ghettos.
Since people in these environments can't call upon a central authority to defend them, they have to defend themselves, and one method they use is to dissuade aggressors by signalling that they'll strongly retaliate against any attack. This is why they escalate to confrontations, threats or violence in response to minor, even unintentional slights. If they didn't they might look soft and be intentionally targeted for abuse or exploitation.
This is a potentially adaptive behaviour for people in such environments when dealing with their peers, but is at times maladaptive when dealing with authority figures. However, they can't simply choose not to behave this way towards authority figures like cops, because if they did then they would look like a bitch and a collaborator and be subject to ostracisation by their community, which would again endanger them. Besides, it's not as if this is necessarily a rational strategy they knowingly apply, it's often just a subconscious attitude they've learned and cannot simply unlearn at will.
TL;DR they fight the police because they fight everyone who challenges them to preserve their honour and reputation, even when it might have negative immediate consequences for their physical health or legal standing, and because they really don't want to look like a collaborator any more than a prisoner, a concentration camp detainee, or a middle schooler does.
More options
Context Copy link