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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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a country with a fundamentalist religious tradition experiences a mass movement around a figure

fear of immigrants and immigration

contempt for journalists and journalism

violence

but when the people said: this is fascism

there were always those who said, no it isn't!

if it were fascism, he would be glorifying war!

he's the anti-war candidate!

now

he's been elected to deploy the military domestically

and he indicates he will expand the borders using the military

this is fascism

... duh.

  • -76

@FCfromSSC already warned you downthread, but you're still filling up the mod queue with reports on your posts, so consider this me underlining what FC said and highlighting a few more things.

Your username is suggestive and seems calculated to provoke, but that's fine - if someone was genuinely a member of the "antifa" movement or sympathetic to them, they would be as welcome to post here as anyone else (and it would be interesting to have their perspective). I don't know if you are sincere or trolling, but either way, you need to understand a couple of things: first, you're going to encounter a lot of hostility. We (mods) factor that in, so when you're being reported just for posting leftist opinions, we aren't generally swayed by that. However, you are following into an unfortunately familiar pattern that many hardcore lefties do when "arriving" here. (I put "arriving" in quotes because you created this account today, and you're clearly not new here, and I have a pretty good suspicion about who you are.) And that is being preemptively rude, condescending, and belligerent, with an attitude of "I am here to set you fascists straight."

Not only is that not going to be received well (or generate any decent discussion), it's against the rules requiring everyone to interact with charity and good faith. No matter how much you don't want to because you think of yourself as doing battle against the forces of evil fascism wokeism Jews the mods.

this is fascism

... duh.

you're afraid, aren't you? you're afraid that you missed the fascism

so your correction is that because some leftists were total psychopaths that makes it better that you failed to notice the fascism and were rude to leftists? wow

This is all condescending, belligerent, and just reads as bad faith.

I see no reason to let you continue to participate with a newly rolled alt if you are going to do so in bad faith. So if you continue in this manner, I'm going to move to go straight to permaban rather than letting you progress through the usual tedious cycle of increasingly longer bans just so you can come back every few weeks to play again.

I wish that you would recognize the reason “leftists” come in hot “arriving” here is because, I believe, you allow a hilarious amount of boo-outgrouping from “the other side” on here without the same vigor. One of the “quality contributions” literally goes on about how leftists don’t care about raped children, and somewhere down that line someone declares proudly that prep is a drug for gay people to attend orgies. Exactly where is the charity and good faith in declaring such things? Would I really be received with such neutral attention if I said such things about other outgroups? I think the answer is no. Therefore, I hazard most leftists look at your “be charitable” rule and laugh at it because they think you seem to define “chartiable” as “don’t say bad things about conservatives at all but feel free to dunk leftists” and therefore disregard the etiquette since to them you are disregarding it as well.

I don't find either of your examples to be anywhere near the level of dunking or the vitriol that's displayed by antifa here. Wording meaningful claims about truth in a way that's meant to sound controversial isn't good, but it's a whole other world away from content-less naked loosely connected declarations that amount to booing the outgroup. Like, the question of whether or not leftists care about child rape isn't pleasant, nor is it nice, but it's a real question that can be honestly, in good faith, answered as No given the political issue being discussed (as a leftist myself, I'm perfectly okay with saying that when I was a younger, more naive leftist, I genuinely didn't care about child rape or other potential negative consequences of unmitigated immigration, such as lower wages or suicide bombings; such things were the cost I would gladly have me and my fellow citizens pay for giving more poor people the opportunity to thrive in a first world nation like the USA. My opinion on that has changed since; I think I've gained greater empathy than I used to have for certain groups of people). And characterizing a drug as for aiding gay men in going to orgies isn't nice, but IIRC that was just one off-hand line in a comment that otherwise had some meaningful thing to say about different ways different drugs are covered by insurance. There's actually meat to the bones, along with all that shit.

The comment here by antifa, and IME the occasional leftists who come in "hot" here, are basically pure shit with perhaps some bones and ligaments there. That difference matters to people who care about the meat on the bones, i.e. the actual content of the arguments, but that difference matters little to people who care primarily about getting their views lauded and their outgroup's views booed. This is one reason why, even as a leftist, I find the quality of conversation and discussion here, where it's predominantly populated by people well to the right of the most right-leaning person I might meet IRL. Who cares if they'll drop in little - or big - digs at me and my ingroup here and there or all the time? Their actual substantive criticisms are actually interesting and valuable and the wording and the digs don't affect the level of charity or quality of arguments.

Okay see this is what I am trying to illustrate as bad debating. The question of “whether or not leftists care about child rape” isn't a real question that can be honestly, in good faith, answered as “No.” solely because of your anecdotal experience of not caring about certain potential negative consequences of unmitigated immigration when you identified as a liberal. Anecdotal evidence isn’t enough to make declarations like that, because, uh, I’m so liberal I sat under the Democrat tent on election day and advertised Harris yardsigns and I care about child rape lmao. Does my experience trump yours? Does yours trump mine? Like how am I supposed to argue with that? That’s why I believe in the spirit of debate anecdotal evidence holds little weight compared to objective evidence and I would like to see if you have other data pools to prove that “leftists don’t care about child rape” otherwise…I dunno what to tell you other than we’re not debating anymore lol.

No one who says "[x] do/don't care about [y]" mean that "literally every individual within the group [x] do/don't care about [y]." This is common sense and shouldn't need to be explicitly stated in a discussion like this. In this situation, the question is relating to how "policies that leftists prioritize/champion have predictable outcomes on child rape such that their level of caring about it is necessarily below others and below some meaningful threshold in order to prioritize such policies." And, again, as a leftist who used to champion such policies, I was by no means unusual as someone who openly said that, if allowing in poor people that Republicans dislike into our country also means that some of those poor people will do things like rape more children in the USA, then so be it. But more common were people who would outright deny that such policies would lead to bad outcomes without doing the very very hard work of actually checking with multiple adversarial sources that disagree heavily with oneself, which is the ultimate form of not caring about those bad outcomes, i.e. child rape in this case. I am perfectly comfortable saying that those leftists would absolutely, 100%, honestly, in good faith believe they care about it, but their lack of curiosity in actually checking if their beliefs about reality are correct shows that their belief about what they care about is incorrect.

No one who says "[x] do/don't care about [y]" mean that "literally every individual within the group [x] do/don't care about [y]." This is common sense and shouldn't need to be explicitly stated in a discussion like this.

Especially on the Internet, "common sense" isn't so common that relying on it to avoid conflict is wise.

I will quote the literal text of the rules here:

Sometimes this means that you'll feel very silly by adding a bunch of qualifiers (popular ones include "I think", "I believe", and "in my experience") and couching everything in unnecessarily elaborate language. That's OK! Remember, the goal is for people with differing opinions to discuss things; if padding a statement with words helps someone not take it personally, then that's what you should do!

Okay, but we’re trying to debate and your response was “I think that leftists don’t care about child rape because of my anecdotal experience of being a leftist” and I responded with “anecdotal evidence isn’t enough, do you have evidence outside of that”, and not only have you not responded to my claim about anecdotal evidence you have not responded about providing said evidence. I’m not saying you need to agree to those points or some type of action or whatever, but you have to acknowledge those points so we can move on to the next point of debate or we are literally talking over eachother.

This is, again, illustrating the problem with the Motte. It is not that you’re a right winger insulting me a left-winger; you’re being a bad debater. Part of the rules of this site are “speak clearly”, so yes, you DO have to clarify that when you say “leftists don’t care about child rape”, you SHOULD say “policies that leftists champion lead to child rape and so on” or that “leftists believe in stopping child rape but don’t take action”.

It is sincerely a gigantic waste of time for everyone if we can’t agree on debate rules and you keep making me feel like you’re not even reading what I’m saying until I quit the conversation, which I am really close to doing. If you cannot provide evidence outside of anecdotal evidence for your claim so we can properly debate it or even just respond to my request for such I’m going to assume you’re not interested in a conversation.

This is, again, illustrating the problem with the Motte. It is not that you’re a right winger insulting me a left-winger; you’re being a bad debater. Part of the rules of this site are “speak clearly”, so yes, you DO have to clarify that when you say “leftists don’t care about child rape”, you SHOULD say “policies that leftists champion lead to child rape and so on” or that “leftists believe in stopping child rape but don’t take action”.

No. One of the rules of this place is to be charitable, and I believe that an obvious charitable reading of “leftists don’t care about child rape” is something akin to “policies that leftists champion lead to child rape and so on.” I would agree that wording it this way is not nice, and certainly something that I would prefer to see less of in this space, but it's a world away from the type of crap that the likes of antifa posted.

Okay, but we’re trying to debate and your response was “I think that leftists don’t care about child rape because of my anecdotal experience of being a leftist” and I responded with “anecdotal evidence isn’t enough, do you have evidence outside of that”, and not only have you not responded to my claim about anecdotal evidence you have not responded about providing said evidence. I’m not saying you need to agree to those points or some type of action or whatever, but you have to acknowledge those points so we can move on to the next point of debate or we are literally talking over eachother.

If we're having a debate here, it's certainly not about whether or not leftists care about child rape. Commentary on the truth-value of that was something I put in a parenthetical to point out that the answer of "No" is one that I agree with. You don't have to agree with it, and I don't care if you do.

My actual point, the point surrounding whatever debate we're having, is that this is a perfectly reasonable question to ask and to answer with a "No" given the topic at hand. It's not a particularly productive question, nor is it a nice question (though personally, I'd say it's a productive question for a leftist - or really anyone - to ask himself, based on my own personal experience as a leftist who did, but not productive for someone to ask about others). But given the topic and underlying reality at hand, it's a question that makes sense both to wonder about and to answer with "No."

One of the rules of this place is to be charitable, and I believe that an obvious charitable reading of “leftists don’t care about child rape” is something akin to “policies that leftists champion lead to child rape and so on.”

In this sentence you don't even try to prove you have been charitable, you are just asking others to be charitable with you. Basically "I don't really follow the rules, but I think no one can tell it because it would also break the rules".

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Okay, well I think you're wrong in thinking that the charity rule means posting baileys (leftists don't care about child rape) instead of mottes (policies that leftists champion lead to child rape) is acceptable. This site is...literally called the Motte. "It's obvious this is what I'm saying" is literally the shady thinking we are trying to avoid. It's the exact same poor debating as what antifa is doing.

I mean, this debate started because you said "I don't find either of your examples to be anywhere near the level of dunking or the vitriol that's displayed by antifa here because the question of whether or not leftists care about child rape isn't pleasant, nor is it nice, but it's a real question that can be honestly, in good faith, answered as "No." because when I was a younger, more naive leftist, I genuinely didn't care about child rape or other potential negative consequences of unmitigated immigration." therefore the comment here by antifa, and IME the occasional leftists who come in "hot" here, are basically pure shit with perhaps some bones and ligaments there, whereas the comments left by right-wingers are not."

I responded with, "I don't think you can answer "do leftists care about child rape" with your own anecdotal evidence, because anecdotal evidence is bad on its own. Do you agree that anecdotal evidence is bad on its own, and do you have other evidence that "leftists don't care about child rape" other than anecdotal?"

You responded with "I'm not saying every leftist doesn't care about child rape, I'm saying leftists would absolutely, 100%, honestly, in good faith believe they care about it, but their lack of curiosity in actually checking if their beliefs about reality are correct shows that their belief about what they care about is incorrect. And, additionally, my anecdotal evidence stands because I was no means being an unusual leftist as someone who openly said that, if allowing in poor people that Republicans dislike into our country also means that some of those poor people will do things like rape more children in the USA, then so be it."

I responded with, "Okay, but why are you not saying what you think then? There is a world of difference between "leftists don't care about child rape" and "leftists are unwilling to look at the true ramifications of their policies and therefore don't actually care about the results". Additionally, you haven't responded to my claim anecdotal evidence on its own isn't valid, much less my question if you have any other evidence than that, you just repeated your anecdote, which I assume means you think that type of data is valid and you don't have that evidence, but then can you say that out loud so we can move on?"

And now it seems you don't know what we are debating about, as you said "whatever debate we're having". This is what I mean. I believe your bad debating habits have derailed the conversation. Your actual point was not "saying leftists don't care about child rape is valid", it was "I don't find either of your examples to be anywhere near the level of dunking or the vitriol that's displayed by antifa here." I think my examples do support my claim which wasn't and isn't even that there is too much vitrol and dunking on leftists but that debate fallacies were derailing conversations and driving away leftists because the mods have an unrecognized bias towards these debate fallacies.

This is where I would like some type of mod action that is similar to debate moderators, in which a clear direction of, "07mk, you are talking about this, and justawoman, you are talking about that. Respond to eachother so this debate can be productive instead of a bunch of hot air."

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