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 -
Suppose communism is bad (if you think it's good this isn't addressed to you but sure feel free to chime in). How do you teach normies this?
I mean the kind of normie who lives in a world where powers far beyond them do incomprehensible things like set the prices of stuff in the store, so that some of the stuff they really want is too expensive for them, but look, the store is full of that stuff, so somebody has all this stuff but they're not letting them have it except for way too high a price, those greedy assholes.
And then you try to explain to them how markets work and how prices come to be and it all just comes across to them as some weird bootlicking apologism because they're simply not on that level.
Is there a more "down to earth" approach that is needed? Normies who have deeply internalized rules of decency and ideas of "thou shalt not steal" (often normies with religious backgrounds) seem to naturally be anti-communist.
Now I'm sure some of y'all here (you know who you are) will say these people basically just need to be oppressed because if they have their way civilization is destroyed and everything is shitty for everybody, but if you oppress them then they complain but otherwise you have a civilization that hums along. But I hate this, I feel like there has to be a way to make society work that doesn't require telling a huge segment of the population "stfu and get in line or we're putting you in a cage". And I mean obviously violent (as needed) enforcement of civilized norms is necessary, but I notice there are a lot more people who are sympathetic to communist ideas than are actual active criminals. My point is more about these people, not the active criminals (who I support putting in cages)
Is there really no way to get through to people other than to just tell them shut up and take it because we're trying to run a civilization here
You could look at early Cold War anti-communist education to get an idea of what worked, I think?
Unfortunately a lot of what worked probably isn't going to strike you as all that rational. "Communism is atheist" is a popular argument that was very influential, even though it's technically fallacious. Something like this sounds a lot like complaints about woke indoctrination today, except it emphasises atheism more.
Likewise they hate our freedom, they're all sketchy conformist drones, they conquered eastern Europe and massacred people, and so on. Images are often more powerful than words - the argument that communism is bad for economic growth and development sounds very dry, but this 1909 poster makes that argument in the form of a hideous ape-monster strangling attractive virginal Britannia, and that's the sort of thing that gets lodged in your head. The spectre of attacks on women is popular.
If you want a substantive argument you'll need more than that, of course, but in general the masses are convinced not so much with reason, but with emotion. You can overdo it, and lurid imagery like some of the above posters can get too absurd to work, but in general what you want to do is clearly link, in people's heads, the idea of communism and the idea of poverty or misery. A modern equivalent of this is probably people talking about Venezuela. "Those communist ideas sound appealing but this is what they lead to" followed by Venezuela is a sensible strategy, even if it might also be getting a bit too cliché to work.
I'd also suggest that the contrast can be effectively heightened the more that capitalism is seen to be working and delivering on promises of prosperity. Anti-communist propaganda in the Cold War went hand-in-hand with a positive message of American prosperity. That's much easier to push if the economy is actually doing well and people feel that their quality of life is improving. So having something positive to point to is a big help too - for every "evil empire" to scare you, a "morning in America" to console and inspire you.
I think you have to be careful with some of the early Cold War material because the McCarthy era anti-communists were anti-communist in much the same way that modern anti-racists are anti-racist - while they did oppose communism, they were far more interested in using it as a stick to beat their domestic political opponents with than actually defeating it.
In particular, the Canadair advert makes far more sense if you read it as using the spectre of communism to oppose secular education (which was a live political issue in several Canadian provinces at the time) rather than using the spectre of secular education to oppose communism. The same could be said about propaganda linking Communism to a wide range of centre-left causes including civil rights, unions, feminism, and water flouridation.
During the Cold War, "Communism is the ideology of the people who are pointing nukes at us and invading our allies" was probably the best argument against it from a normie perspective. In the early Cold War UK, "Remember the Nazi-Soviet Pact" was also a powerful argument. This was particularly important because "We were the people who opposed fascism first and most consistently, including through being the base of the Resistance" was the best argument made for Communism by the western European Communist parties post-WW2.
I wouldn't recommend doing the exact same thing, no. One theme I was surprised to find when I looked up a lot of early anti-communist material was the regular return to the idea of a threat to our women (Marx himself tries to dispute this in The Communist Manifesto - it seems like "they will socialise your wife!" was an accusation with some traction), and I'd guess messaging that invokes a kind of male chivalry is an adaptation to a male-only electorate. If the demographic I'm trying to convince includes women, I would probably take a different tack.
In other words, you're right that it's highly contextual - in general it seems like the strategy for anti-communists is to associate communism with other bad things as much as possible (atheism, envy, rapaciousness, poverty, lack of patriotism, etc.), and for communists is to associate communism with good things (equality, fairness, economic growth, anti-fascism, etc.). The objective merits of communist policies is rather beside the point. The key question is what you can plausibly tie communism to in the minds of the public.
The brief period of "abolish the family, socialize sexual access for all!" after the Russian revolution is really understudied. Lenin cracked down on it alongside the counter-revolution of "he who does not work shall not eat", but just like in Spain there was a brief but real complete social takeover by that faction of the left I'd probably get modded for naming and linking to
Get modded on the Motte? I think you can plainly name groups you think do bad things around here. The bar is apparently at or below SecureSignals, so reddit-forbidden levels of wrongthink seem to be allowed.
Short list of some modern ones: Noah berlatsky, Sophie Lewis, jacob breslow, Katie Cruz, Allyn Walker, Randy Wicker, etc.
I've ragged on the pedophiles there more than the family abolitionists, but mostly because there's so many of the latter in academia that it's impossible to keep track: it's basically the default position now. Didn't include obvious examples like Vaush and "Ana Valens" because that would of course be called nutpucking or whatever.
Also despite their irl relevance in destroying communities, I didn't include any of the revcom Antifa lumpenprole "spiteful mutant" demographic, because most don't have any coherent policy statements.
The general theme is "after the revolution we can destroy the last of existing society and rebuild it to satisfy our fetishes." They make up a big chunk of the low level propagandists in communist revolutions for the usual party loyalty reasons, but inevitably get purged once the state has to deal with the consequences (in the Soviet case, an unmanageable number of orphans from post-war free-love couplings)
The west is in an usual situation where these types get to run a permanent social revolution because the real one never happens, and the damage they do is (currently) being absorbed by the surplus produced by capitalism.
For example, you are all paying every gay men tens of thousands of dollars a year to take AIDs prevention drugs, and that's why your "health insurance" is so high. Whereas Cuba's public health system doesn't do that because there is no surplus.
Thanks for this explanation.
Incidentally, have you actually been modded on reddit for accusing pedophiles from a century ago? Or I suppose modern youtubers on the infamous recent tack of "I thought they were very short sexy goblins".
So leftist pedo history doesn't repeat but it often rhymes?
The usual pattern is "that's a crazy conspiracy theory, all good leftists want to throw pedos into a woodchipper!", and then they get very angry when you show them evidence that the official John Hopkins position is now "destigmatize and accept this oppressed queer sexuality"
Bit too early for them to do "that's not happening and it's good that it is," so the programming defaults to the basic abuse routine. Same reaction as you used to get posting proof they genital surgery on kids was happening when the official position hadn't updated to "it's rare and also why do you care"
It's how you know you've hit a nerve of the blob.
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
More options
Context Copy link