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OliveTapenade


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I always find the comments like this interesting because they do seem to show that the woke progressive and the white supremacist share a very similar worldview. When this is pointed out it's usually to criticise the progressive ("don't you realise how racist your position is?"), but the same also applies in reverse, where I'm inclined to say to the white supremacist, "don't you realise how progressive you are?"


The funny part is that both sides can accuse the other of a hypocrisy while ignoring the fact that their own position entails the same hypocrisy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I just think it's absurd to try to split hairs to draw some sort of 'victory' out of a national project that clearly failed to achieve its goal. All military action occurs within political constraints and for the sake of political goals - if a military force was unable to achieve its goals within the political constraints it inhabited, then that's a failure. The most famous example, the Tet Offensive, was a failure for North Vietnam in the sense of taking territory or inflicting casualties, but it was a success in the sense that it meaningfully contributed to and helped achieve the political aims of North Vietnam.


This is, I suppose, a semantic dispute. We use phrases like, 'military defeat and political victory', or 'tactical defeat and strategic victory', or the like, to try to communicate that. We would all agree, for instance, that in Afghanistan, American troops generally defeated Taliban (and other) troops when engaging them directly, but also that, overall, America failed to achieve its goals and the Taliban did achieve theirs. Of course differing levels of political will or commitment to the fight are key in explaining why the Americans withdrew and the Taliban kept fighting, and I think that's just part of war. Level of political support or commitment is part of the mission profile, and it's something that each combatant has to manage, shoring up their own suppport as well as degrading the opposition's commitment.


At any rate, it doesn't sound like we disagree about any specific facts on the ground. I just get grouchy about this sometimes because I am mildly annoyed by Americans saying things like "the United States has never lost a war", a claim which is only possible to sustain by redefining the concept of 'losing a war.'


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
These distinctions have always been cope. The purpose of military action is to achieve a political goal.


There's a sense in which one can identify immediate or battlefield success even while acknowledging that it may not have successfully contributed to a larger goal. We say that Hannibal was a brilliant general even though he did not achieve any of Carthage's political goals.


Nonetheless I think we understand that it would be absurd to say that the Second Punic War was a military victory and political loss for Carthage (even notwithstanding Zama). It doesn't matter how many battlefield victories you can list if you cannot achieve your overall political goals. Local military victories are possible, but a war is, ultimately, a project whereby a state attempts to use military force in order to accomplish particular goals, and if the application of military force does not accomplish those goals, then it failed.


The United States was defeated in Vietnam. The United States was defeated in Afghanistan. It looks like it may well have been defeated in Iran. Whining along the lines of "we beat them every time we met them in battle!" is absurd.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for October 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Clearly my lack of political vision and ambition. I need to nurture the Slytherin inside myself and dream larger.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Midterms Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If we’re not getting Hitler 2.0 then let’s just do managed decline




As opposed to...


Presumably Hitler 2.0 would be immediate and catastrophic decline that leaves the country a bombed-out ruin?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Midterms Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my experience, restrict-voting-to-the-educated proposals mostly come from right-wingers, though I would be unsurprised myself if the effects of such a proposal would end up favouring Democrats.


It is, of course, possible that someone might sincerely, for principled reasons, support a reform that would harm their own side.


(My opinion is that these proposals are misguided - they inevitably hand a huge amount of power over to whoever it is who gets to decide the criteria for voting. I can understand the intuitive appeal of the idea that you should understand the political system and have a basic ability to analyse problems before you can make a choice about it, but in practice I don't think it can be fairly implemented. Moreover, I also tend to think that interests often matter in voting more than intelligence does. I don't expect insert-stupid-demographic-here to be more capable of analysing problems than insert-smart-demographic-here. I do expect, however, the stupid demographic to be more motivated to vote for their own interests than people outside that demographic, and so their voting forces politicians to take that demographic's interests seriously. There is a cut-off below which people are too intellectually handicapped to vote (e.g. someone with dementia, someone with severe development retardation, etc.), and I'd agree with excluding those people, but I don't think that illiteracy, lack of English proficiency, an IQ of 80, etc., should be disqualifiers.)


(In this particular case I think it's interesting that IntoTheWind's screening test is about English language proficiency. I assume he intends it as a proxy for mental acuity in general, but I think its main effects would be to exclude people with low English ability and people with small vocabularies. I might suggest that verbal agility, though, is a skill that one associates more with educated demographics that skew left, so it might not have the effect he wants.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You can’t say both “a lot of people libertarian by nature” and welfare is broadly popular.




He didn't. He said that conservatives are like libertarians-by-nature, i.e. very rare.




If I had to guess 95% of voters are conservative by nature but differ on what they want to conserve.




This is not a meaningful category of voters. Yes, pretty much everybody is 'conservative' in a strictly etymological sense. Everybody has something they want to conserve or protect. In the same way pretty much everybody is 'progressive' in the etymological sense, i.e. having something they want to progress or advance. But 'people who want to conserve something' and 'people who want to progress something' are not demographic you can appeal to.


In practice we understand that when we use the words 'conservative' or 'progressive' in a political context, we refer to groups of people with particular ideological visions.


When SophisticatedHillbilly says that 'conservatives' are a small group, well, I think there's room for some debate around what the word 'conservative' specifically refers to, but in broad strokes I think he's undoubtedly right. Whether we're talking about movement conservatives, social conservatives, economic conservatives, national conservatives, or any other term, it's clear that these are small tribes that can win only by finding a place for themselves within a larger coalition. That coalition then tends to limit what they can do.


2rafa is correct that there is a kind of left-leaning civil infrastructure in Western countries that shapes and defines what's politically possible, but notwithstanding, Hillbilly is correct on the larger point. The reason that 'Western conservatives' in 2rafa's top-level post are unable to achieve lasting transformations of the country is because they really don't have that much support. They can join winning coalitions, but if they try to pursue transformative agendas, they run into not only institutional but popular backlash, because their goals are genuinely unpopular.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
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Enough to impeach him? What's the process there?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
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What do you think might happen? I doubt they'd get enough Republicans to vote to impeach and remove him from office - not without some significantly greater disaster than this down the line - and he's not going to be 25thed. Nor do I think anyone's going to be able to convince him to resign.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
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I thought we all knew it was going to be a strong night for Democrats, and the only question was how strong?


It seems like it has been a very strong night indeed, which is certainly good news for them, but within my range of expected outcomes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
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I still find the 'thank you for your attention to this matter' sign-off hilarious.


What does he expect the reader to do? Go and inform people that the drubbing wasn't his fault?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for October 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't know whether you've read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but this is basically where Yudkowsky arrives on the matter.




I have never done more than give it a brief glance. I can't stand Yudkowsky's prose style in general, so even if MoR were telling a story I were interested in, I think that would be an insuperable obstacle to me.




That's the "love" the OP suggests Malfoid (at least potentially) brings to the source material: the love for one's children that is expressed by giving them the best available start, by choosing a high quality reproductive partner. Slytherin need not be bigots to be both proud of what they have (magic is cool!) and anxious to share that inheritance with their own children.




I don't think the Harry Potter comparison adds anything here, though?


The hypothetical you bring up is basically the Gattaca argument - a loving parent should want to give his/her children the best possible shot at life, that should involve the best possible genes, so therefore eugenics.


Harry Potter adds nothing to this because, as it sounds like we agree, magical talent in the Potterverse doesn't seem to work that way. Are pureblood/half-blood families particularly less likely to have wizarding children than pureblood/pureblood families? There's no specific textual evidence suggesting that, as far as I'm aware? Magical ability is a simple switch, and squibs appear to be very rare from two wizarding parents, regardless of whether the wizarding parents are from long-established magical families or not.


I suspect I'm on a different page to many on the Motte here, because I do in fact think it's immoral to abort a child due to Down Syndrome or other recognisable disabilities. If a wizarding couple proposed to identify squibs in utero and pre-emptively terminate them, I would say that couple is behaving grossly immorally. As far as canon Potter goes, I think the general direction of the text would be on my side there. Rowling is a liberal feminist and in favour of abortion rights, but the published text of Harry Potter seems like it would be against any notion that squibs are not worthy of life, and anti-squib sentiment is presented as a bigotry, albeit a common one in the wizarding world. For me I think all we need to recognise is that squibs are, like any muggle, clearly capable of living full, satisfying lives. A parent who would rather terminate a squib/muggle child and replace him/her with another one seems worthy of moral condemnation, at the very least.




You have suggested that the discourse is tainted by the real-world implications that the OP probably intended for at least some readers to draw vis-a-vis race mixing or the like.




Right, here. I think I stand by the idea that while it is possible to have a good conversation about reproductive ethics, it's not possible in this particular context because of the original poster. One could have a reasonable discussion of eugenics, but I think it's fair to say that if someone with a known malicious agenda brings the subject up, and sets the tone accordingly, that would make a reasonable discussion much harder to have.


Death of the Author is a good principle for literary analysis, and I think I invoked it a little myself (that is, Rowling's own views may be different to the views logically implied by texts she authored), but I don't think Death of the Author applies in every discursive context. If a person says something to invite a conversation, but through that person's identity, reputation, known other positions, visible agenda, etc., that conversation would be unlikely to be productive, I think it's fair enough to act accordingly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
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I suppose the way it's portrayed is that magic appears to run in families, and therefore must have a strong genetic component, but that this is just magic Y/N. Two wizarding parents will reliably produce wizarding children, and every now and then two muggle parents will throw up a wizard child, but there doesn't seem to be a difference between the overall magical potential of purebloods and muggleborn.


It does make me wonder a bit about mixed pairings. The prevalence of half-blood wizards in the series seems to suggest that wizard/muggle pairings frequently (usually?) produce wizards. I can't off the top of my head think of cases of, for example, a wizard/muggle pairing produce some wizard and some muggle children.


We are told that squibs are relatively rare. They may not actually be any more rare than muggle-borns proportionally (after all, vastly more people are born to muggle parents than to wizarding parents), though. I do wonder about the statistics, and how likely wizards/muggles are to be born to mixed marriages... wiki tells me that a muggle born to one muggle parent and one wizarding parent is considered a squib, which suggests to me that wizard/muggle pairings usually produce wizarding children, but I would love better data than that.


This is getting more into worldbuilding and fanon now, but I could see a case that wizards ought to have a strong bias toward endogamy. If two wizards generally produce wizard children, but wizard/muggle pairings only sometimes produce wizard children, and the muggle population is vastly larger than the wizard population, then arguably there's a risk of wizards breeding themselves out of existence through intermarriage. Wizards might be like some minority ethnic or religious communities in prioritising endogamy, to try to preserve their own existence.


As far as I'm aware pureblood defenders in the setting don't make that argument, though. Salazar Slytherin, for example, seems to have taken the view that only purebloods are worthy of magic. If he were just concerned for maintaining the existence of the wizard population, then adopting muggle-born and convincing them to exclusively marry other wizards would seem like a higher priority than excluding them. The pureblood supremacist view is that purebloods are individually superior, and that, at least, is clearly indicated to be false.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for October 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think one can distinguish vaguely right-coded from outright culture war? By comparison, consider, say, Korrasami is obviously left-coded, but I don't think it was held up primarily as culture war.


Take this:




Right-wingers didn't jump onto the meme for its 'racism and ethno-nationalism' — the majority of the appeal for them was about romance, love, yearning, gender dynamics, and flag planting. Malfoid as a trend led to lots of people discussing what was lacking in modern-day courtship, or in modern western media.




I don't think that's culture war, as such. That's just a lot of people genuinely enjoying something that speaks to their values. That is itself the good thing that I want to encourage, and which I don't want to be hijacked by opportunists.


I suppose the content-neutral way to express this is that every popular trend like this starts with people who genuinely enjoy it on its own terms, for what it is in itself, and then later there are opportunists who want to convert it into propaganda for some other cause. I have no objection to the former, and indeed I commend the former. The latter are the ones who make me see red.




Adding onto all of this is the use of AI fanart and animations in this trend.




I've thankfully been able to avoid most of that by using more traditional art and fiction aggregators.


There is definitely a culture war story to have around bot-generated content, and I'm pro-Malfoid while still furiously against that garbage, but in this case I think Malfoid is just the occasion, not the cause. Any popular media trend is going to attract bandwagoners, and unfortunately bots have made it easy for people to try to bandwagon with slop. I wish they wouldn't, but the issue is the bots, not the art trend itself.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would think the natural comparison for Israel should be the most similar countries available, especially if the factor we're trying to control for is Judaism. What's the most Israel-like country that's not Israel?


My thought would be Saudi Arabia. That's another wealthy Middle Eastern country that serves as a US proxy and ally. Heck, it even, like Israel, contains/controls some of the major holy places of a world religion. How does US spending on Israel compare to US spending on Saudi Arabia?


Googling tells me that the US spends 843 million on aid to Saudi Arabia, which according to this site is... about the same as they spend on Israel. Huh. That works out to a lot less per capita because Saudi Arabia has about three and a half times the population of Israel, but even so, if what the US is doing is buying allies in the Middle East, both the Israelis and the Saudis seem to be worth about the same.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think hanikrummihundursvin is describing a real phenomenon - it's just not as broad or universal as he describes.


The far left does use labels for itself. It loves labels. The sort of people who insist very strongly that there's a difference between 'leftists' and 'liberals' and that they are the former, for instance, do care a lot about adopting names like brands, and will then go on to merrily fight about the difference between democratic socialists and social democrats, and then call themselves Marxists, or socialists, or anarcho-syndicalists, or anarcha-feminists, or womynists, or whatever it might be.


There is, however, a broader kind of left-of-centre values nexus that is imbibed invisibly, and is felt rather than named.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll just register my prediction early - nothing is going to happen and nothing will change in the US relationship with Israel. Trump is just blustering on election day.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
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That sounds about as likely as Edward Cullen knocking on my sister's door and offering her immortality and sprinkles.


I freely confess that my political programme will not create cute ojou-samas for the masses. That is a limitation that you and I are just going to have to live with.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for October 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is true, but something that I think fandom has had a very hard time accepting? Textually, it is extremely obvious in the Potter series that there is absolutely zero relationship between blood status and magical ability. Being pureblood, halfblood, or Muggleborn has nothing to do with your magical talent whatsoever, and the believe that it does is indicated to be irrational bigotry. Most of the most powerful wizards in the series are actually not pureblood (both Dumbledore and Voldemort are half-blood, for instance), after all.


Despite an American tendency to interpret it as a metaphor for race, in its original context I think blood status is a metaphor for class. Hogwarts is an exclusive British boarding school - purebloods are aristocratic families who've been going to Harrow Hogwarts for centuries, and muggleborns are lowborn or common people who aced their admissions tests and made it in, and are now rubbing shoulders with people who considered themselves their betters. Hermione, the most prominent Muggle-born character in the books, is a picture of an aspirational lower or middle-class student who has earned her way into an elite school through sheer swottery. Just watch her cringe when asked what her family does!


Anyway, that said, I think there was a fandom tendency to assume that pureblood status means something practical, and I don't think it was just far-right people. Back in the 2000s there was a noticeable trend of stories where Hermione discovers she's secretly pureblood, for instance. My guess would be that because Potter is already a series where firstly magic runs in families, and secondly people discover that they were secretly special and important all along, it's pretty intuitive to apply that same system within wizards themselves. The start of the very first book, after all, is Harry discovering that he's really a foundling prince, a special person revered in this secret world because of who his parents were. If you want to use that trope again, and the character is already a wizard, well, she-was-a-pureblood-all-along is the easiest way to do it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
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I don't think that there's anything neo-Nazi about J. K. Rowling or about Malfoid. I think both of them are quite innocent of that. I was making meta-commentary on the state of the Motte.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for October 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What does it even mean for Malfoid to be 'real'?


Presumably it would be the same thing it would be for classic-flavour Drarry to be real, or Dramione, or for Bowsette to be real, or for any of its obvious precursors, but... what would that be? Malfoid is a topic for fan fiction and fan art. In what way could it be real that it's not already?


You'd have better luck making anime real.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Obligatory Sarah Haider reference, I suppose? What Islam as a tradition and a body of doctrine teaches is less important than what specific Muslim-identifying people hold to be important - and in a case like Abdul El-Sayed, it's pretty clear that opposition to Israel is central to his worldview and his political advocacy whereas opposition to gender ideology is pretty clearly not.


The fact that Islam as a body of doctrine takes no special position on the existence of a state of Israel (that is, from an orthodox Islamic perspective, there is nothing special or interesting about Judaism qua Judaism, nor Israel qua Israel), and takes a much stronger position on gender, is not consequential. 'Islam', in El-Sayed's case, is an ethnic and a cultural background that informs his identity, rather than a set of propositions to be affirmed or rejected.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Quality Contributions Report for October 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm a bit ambivalent here. On the one hand, as a fellow moderate, I agree that there is some merit in the idea of siding with whoever's currently out of power in the hopes of dragging the polity back toward the centre...


But on the other, I'm not sure it's as linear as that. I think it's possible for far-left to flip to far-right, and vice versa, without ever passing through the sane middle, and that it's therefore better for the cause of moderation to stand up for moderation regardless, even if that means criticising the extremists who are currently out of power. If Team Open Borders is in power, then I'm not actually convinced that siding with Team Let's Eat Immigrants is a route back to sanity. I suspect it is better to continue to disavow Team Eat Immigrants while still fighting against Team Open Borders.


Prioritisation is important, you're right, and I'm potentially vulnerable to being suckered by whichever lunatics are currently in power, but at the same time, you might be vulnerable to being suckered by whichever lunatics aren't currently in power.


At any rate, in this particular context I am anonymously whining on the internet. I feel more license, on the Motte, to just say what I genuinely feel without consideration for how it might affect the wider political landscape.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
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That's probablt a fair point to make, but it is highly contingent on the present terrain, that is to say, the left dominates the culture industries, and the right doesn't. I don't view the right as morally superior to the left when it comes to opportunistically parasitising media like this, because the right's abstinence is not coming from any kind of virtue. It's just coming from a lack of power.


The active ingredients here are not 'left' and 'right'. The active ingredient is power, and nothing else.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm sympathetic to Jonah Goldberg's argument in this podcast, that is, that El-Sayed wants the Democrats to be a straightforward anti-Israel party.


I don't think El-Sayed supports the full Muslim Brotherhood agenda. The social democrat positions that he holds are honest. He is not, I think, secretly an MB supporter in the sense of everything they stand for. But he is, I think, basically a middle-class western Muslim who attributes a disproportionate level of importance of Israel, and it has become organising for his thoughts in a way that it is not for other people.