site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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.

24
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I see the recent right-wing explosion in crazy theories as a pretty understandable, if not reasonable, response to being totally destroyed culturally and shut out of important institutions by the left. With all of the recent censorship on social media sites etc., how can we as leftists expect right-wingers not to get radicalized into conspiracy theories?

The only thing recent about this is that Trumpism blew the lid off things and left the lunatics in charge of the asylum instead of leaving political leadership to the more 'respectable' members of their coalition*. Conservatives have been losing the culture war for decades - not because leftists are censoring them on twitter (a vastly overrated phenomenon), but because liberals have systematically outcompeted them. That may be giving them a little too much credit; a lot of the drivers of conservative cultural collapse and liberal success are socio-economic forces, not political discourse. Nevertheless, the point remains: for pretty much the first time in living memory, it is liberals and not conservatives setting the default when it comes to social norms. The crisis facing conservatism is one of the extinction, not extermination - the institutions they have historically dominated no longer have the clout they once did and the stories they tell aren't as persuasive as they used to be.

It's understandable that they're freaking out about this. It's just not very sympathetic.

*Let's not forget that Obama's term saw the widespread popularity of things like Birtherism and Jade Helm conspiracy theories.

albeit usually with some more qualifiers and generally sane positions.

Left-wing conspiracy theories only seem more sane if you're predisposed to them.