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 -
On the weaponisation of the FBI.
I was reading an old article about the bureau's track record of abuses and the part about COINTELPRO interests me the most; the Hoover-era FBI is seen as mainly targeting leftist subversives because they were identified with (legitimately or not) communism and of course the flagship communist state, the USSR. COINTELPRO in particular was explicitly created to address the Communist Party of the USA and got turned against a broad range of leftist groups from the Black Panthers to Socialist Workers Party to anti-Vietnam protests groups to feminists to the civil rights movement, MLK, etc. IMO the 20th century of American politics wasn't exactly a left vs right thing as much as it was an establishment vs dissident thing. Ivy League Progressives looking out for their own, and doing their part to keep the proles and kulaks in line. Waco, Ruby Ridge and the other big examples of anti-right FBI thuggery that I can think of are mostly 90s onward. And of course the Ryan Kelley debacle early this year.
But why such a shift now, and the promotion of wokeism? The obvious answer perhaps is that with the death of communism in 1989, the ideological threat from the left was no more. But despite the emphasis of woke ideology on oppression/exploitation as a fundamental political relation, collective interests of different groups, the role of struggle, resistance, and solidarity, etc., wokeism has found enthusiastic purchase among American cultural elites. Maybe its partly organic but if so, when did the CIA's New Left ascend to cultural hegemony and how? Were groups belonging to this tribe never sympathetic to the Soviets, or at least suspected of such? Moreover, what do the elites stand to gain here? I'd heard the notion "they want a race war to prevent a class war" before, but are there any worrying signs that there'd be a class war anytime soon? Do elites in, say, Japan and SK not have to worry about a similar conundrum despite their work culture?
I don't think it's as much about ideological threat as it is about this ideology officially proclaiming the goal of violently overthrowing existing state (while nobody likely thought US communists are going to enact the revolution right now, that's still the official goal of any communist party in a non-communist state) and being supported by a major world power having both nukes and (reasonably) fat budgets to spend on disrupting things in enemy regimes. Once that power disappeared, the danger from the ideology alone is much less significant. Imagine Iran having nukes and actively and openly fomenting militant Islam movements in every country they can get into, and spending significant money on it, and actually getting high-level people in US government working for them. I think somebody in the US Government would consider that a reason to take notice, if only for the simple reason that you can't be the government if somebody else overthrows you.
You mean like Saudi Arabia did? I don't remember anyone being too bothered, although a fringe lefty comedian called Michael Moore made a documentary movie about it.
Saudi Arabia never had nukes, as far as I know, and unless I missed something, does not proclaim it's ideology to overthrow all non-Islamic government. I am also not aware of any high-level people caught on being Saudi spies - could you name a couple examples?
I think calling anything Moore makes "documentary" is stretching the term a little too thin, but it's not my kind of comedy anyway - I'd rather watch somebody like Chapelle or Louis CK, but to each their own.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
These are some pretty broad claims. The CIA’s “New Left”?
The “moderate rebels” it supported in Syria were all Wahhabist/Salafist jihadis — “Christians to Beirut, Alawites (Shia) to the grave.” In the Donbas, the U.S. is arming neo-nazi, Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who view all Russians as Asiatic and not fully European (which in the abstract is bad, but neither you nor I are going to martyr ourselves defending an industrial plant in Donetsk). The CIA is nominally answerable to congress, so I’m sure they talk about diversity hiring on their website. But all I see are the same realist international politics. There is no power structure above the nation state, so nation states will compete for power as it is the only guarantee of their own security. Outright war in the nuclear age faces strong deterrent, so proxy wars and other jockeying for position ensue. Same as it has been since the OSS morphed into the CIA post-WW2.
More options
Context Copy link
There were vast groups of elites in favor of the Soviets. The Rosenbergs were the tip of the iceberg. Many people defended them for decades until the Venona telegrams came out and then they all went silent and tried to pretend they weren't Rosenberg tankies all along.
Domestic threats to them vastly outweigh international threats now. China is ostensibly on their side as they have shifted to a sort of international corporatism (aka control of corporations) as a governing philosophy. When you say "death of the USSR" what you are ignoring is the more important thing: death of people. The same thing happened in the south with regards to Jim Crowe. The Jim Crowers rarely switched anything, from political party to being racists, etc. Instead, they died out. Same happened with the USSR hawks who were wary of the left. They have aged out of the intelligence agencies, and were bad stewards at replacing themselves. They relied on credentials (for legal or other reasons) instead of attempting to measure in any meaningful way the alignment of their new hires' interest with the American public, and as such it now has significantly deviated from that.
More options
Context Copy link
The long march through institutions making everything from academia to my mandatory workplace training to my local school board to military generals to the FBI woke?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link