This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
UK, are you OK?
Labour councillor calls for people to 'cut the throats' of 'Nazis and fascists'
Suspended Labour councillor arrested over video ‘urging people to cut throats’
Probably anyone reading this is familiar with the story so far: three gradeschool children in Southport were knifed to death, and ten others injured, on July 29th at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club. The alleged perpetrator, Axel Rudakubana, is reportedly the son of Rwandan immigrants and was 17 years old at the time of the incident, but has apparently since passed his 18th birthday. The events, allegedly in part as the result of some false reporting concerning Axel's identity, led to a number of protests, which led to a number of counterprotests.
Why would you counterprotest a protest against the knifing of schoolgirls? Well, apparently the original protests were racist. It's pretty important to not be racist. Sufficiently important, I suppose, that people would rather talk about that, than about the dead schoolchildren who, but for recent immigration from Africa, would likely still be alive. Not that Axel is an immigrant, of course. He was born on the magic soil of the UK, so it's apparently racist to notice that his parents weren't. I saw one article suggesting he might be autistic? Good sources are hard to find.
That brings us to the current events! Labour councillor Ricky Jones apparently found some inspiration in Axel's extracurricular activities, as he is very clearly articulating additional knife violence as the proper response to people protesting the murder of little girls. I actually had a surprisingly difficult time finding the original video; most of the articles throwing around the word "alleged" did not judge me fit to judge for myself. I assume Ricky was born tone deaf because throat cutting seems like an especially poor choice of words given the circumstances--though I guess I don't know for certain that Axel managed any literal throat cutting in the process of (EDIT: ALLEGEDLY) butchering schoolchildren. The UK does not have any particularly meaningful or toothy Free Speech legislation, either, though in this particular case I can imagine Mr. Jones facing consequences even here in the United States. Remind me, is it still okay to call for the punching of U.S. Nazis? Was it ever? I seem to have lost track.
Axel's knifework is not being treated as a terrorist attack (yet?), but here's where things get weird.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:
Taylor Swift shows in Vienna canceled over alleged planned terrorist attack
Suspects in foiled attack on Taylor Swift shows were inspired by Islamic State group, officials say
Will we hear more about Axel's motivations? I suppose Taylor Swift is just so famous that at this point any plot to kill large numbers of people would, statistically, run into Taylor Swift events eventually. But now I'm wondering if Axel was just, you know, reading the same weird terrorist handbook as the Austrian terrorists. They were even the same age--the two arrested in Vienna are 19 years old and 17 years old. If I had a nickel for every time a 17 year old boy tried to murder Swifties en masse, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice!
I'm sure much smarter and well-connected analysts out there are way ahead of me on this one. And probably it's nothing! And it wouldn't really matter if it was something, beyond maybe bankrupting a handful of Taylor Swift event ticket scalpers in the near future. But it's all very weird.
Especially the part where counterprotesters started literally calling for and cheering on more knifings.
The anti-immigration argument expressed in this post seems too strong. It seems to be along the lines of if there is any kind of downside from immigration then immigration is bad. But I don't think this is a realistic benchmark for any government policy. The positives have to be weighed against the negatives. Maybe certain classes of immigrants are net-negative and a better immigration policy would be able to discriminate against these people but I don't think the UK is at the point where all immigration is net-negative.
Okay.
What positive does the average Brit see from mass migration into the UK?
Is it their wages being pushed down? Is it the difficulty in unionising when infinite scabs are on the table? Is it the pressure on housing? The NHS? The welfare state? Is it the vibrant sectarian conflict we now have on our streets?
The usual answers given revolve around economic prosperity, which doesn't exactly seem to have materialized.
The other argument is around caregivers for the NHS and the aging population. Which doesn't have to map well to prosperity.
But I'm not sure just how many of the migrants are selected for that specifically.
I will speak specifically to Singapore, though to be honest the USA had a version of this previously: guest workers are a fantastic deal for everyone involved.
Short term migrant workers for the most part do not want to live in the new land they are working in. Earning 3x their home salary is still 1/2 the required salary in their work country, so they prefer to suffer temporarily then go home to their families and live like kings there. It is the surplus of exploitable social resources that incentivizes staying on and bringing the family over. Guest workers certainly are exploited relative to local standards, but willing buyer willing seller. Even the UAE kafala has improved significantly since 2016, and for all the complaints of slavery there is still no shortage of applicants for construction and care jobs in these places.
Except displaced citizens. If there are citizens who would do the job the guest workers did, but would charge more for it (because their cost of living was necessarily higher), they're going to lose out from a guest worker program. Sometimes this isn't true because the if you had to hire people at citizen prices, the job just wouldn't get done, but it's hard to tell in many cases.
That certainly is true for the PMC here, where we are constantly reminded of our inferiority by an endlessly imported class of Chinese and Indians and Malaysians, but the cultural dissonance is only moderate, with no welfare resources to be exploited by foreigners and lead to local resentments.
Guest workers here are primarily in the construction and domestic worker segments, where there was never sufficient local population that existed to service that demand. Singapores status as an entrepot colony meant that most civil construction works were conducted by Chinese and Indian (by nationality) labourers, with little local populations that were displaced economically. This continued into the modern era, where rapid industrialisation saw most labourers (Chinese and Indians stuck here after the chaos of the Civil War and Partition) in post-independence Singapore prefer to work in sheltered factories instead of outdoor construction. We had Malaysians and Taiwanese imports at first, then now it is Indians, Thais and Burmese, with Filipinos preferring to work in middle office roles. Locals certainly bemoan the presence of foreigners, but even with outsize pay for locals they still leave some jobs unfulfilled, so the companies appeal the Ministry of Manpower for more foreign worker allotments and said allotments are granted.
To extend this scenario to the west, the main example I would use is farmhands. These men were never the locals of the farm area who want to work in backbreaking outdoor work, and instead have historically been displaced itinerants seeking shelter and employment. Farm owners certainly bitch about having to rely on foreigners now, but in olden days a drifter from Oklahoma is as much a foreigner in California as a Mexican was, and doubtless similar disparaging would occur for Buffalo vs White Plains New Yorkers. Hell, even the family the next farm over with one too many hands to work their own plot might as well be barbarians as far as a homeowner is concerned.
My point is that guest workers are a historically tested solution to the problem of 'I need cheap labor but I want to kick them out when I do not want them anymore.' Some domestic populations would lose out, but compared with 'bring them in and they will also bring in their family and we give them citizenship in 20 years time' guest workers are a clear winner.
You could just have 0 immigration as well, and I think we can look to Japan and Chinas eager embrace of gynoids for a model on how that would pan out, but we are still a few years away from that. More research is going into making human form factor robots fuckable instead of workable, and what that says about humanity is for a different thread
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link