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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   37891 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Will Elon succeed in making the Roman salute cool again? Reddit is predictably going apeshit over his gesture that can be construed as one. I mean, I doubt he's done that deliberately, it's a natural gesture in the same way a bendy cross is a natural ornament, but I doubt he's the kind of person that will mumble an apology and withdraw from the public eye for a while. If anything, I expect him to double down and insist it's been 80 years and people should be free to reappropriate the gesture.

I took a look at politicalcompassmemes on reddit, and even they are going insane. Usually there's a mix of views and a lot of sanity, but the comments seem to be 3/4 people saying it's obvious he did a Nazi salute and people are going to concentration camps. I knew reddit hated Elon Musk, but this is something else.

When the ADL is telling people to chill out about the Nazi comparisons, perhaps people should listen.

One of the strengths of John McCain as a candidate was that due to torture in Vietnam he couldn't raise his arms up very high. Thus the press could never run with the "Nazi salute" narrative.

It's an old slur the press loves to run with. The reality is that people wave at crowds all the time in ways that can look like Nazi salutes in short clips or photos. Republican candidates are actually taught to avoid waving in certain ways so that photographers can't claim that their waving is a roman salute.

Musk, of course, never received such training.

Meanwhile Dems can wave freely with gleeful abandon. Lady Gaga introduced Hillary Clinton while wearing some sort of ode to an SS uniform.

This reminds me of how Michael Jordan once decided to rock the Hitler mustache. And then quickly shaved it off. Not even MJ, at the peak of his popularity, could overcome that stigma. I definitely don't think Elon musk can.

Maybe if he'd combined it with a bowler hat...?

If you're like Charlie Chaplin, doing it explicitly as a satire making fun of Hitler, it's fine. But you're not allowed to wear it as a regular fashion. I think it's illegal under the Geneva convention or something.

If you're like Charlie Chaplin, doing it explicitly as a satire making fun of Hitler, it's fine.

Well, yes, Chaplin did satirize Hitler in the 1940s, but he also wore that mustache long before Hitler rose to power, starting in the 1910s.

"No way! Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!"

I believe @Celestial-body-NOS was referencing Oliver Hardy, not Charlie Chaplin.

No, I was referring to Mr Chaplin.

WKUK also noted the similarity

As did The Office. As of course did Chaplin himself.

I mean, Abdala Bucaram Ortiz did, although granted he got impeached and his country wasn’t a belligerent in WWII.

He did shave it off pretty quickly but I was amazed at how long he stuck with it. It was so baffling, not only was it a Hitler moustache it just looked totally ridiculous.

Fun fact, the African Headmaster of the school at which I taught in the Peace Corps used to wear a Hitler mustache. I have a photo somewhere of him at a school function wearing on his lapel what I believe he took to be a corsage but was actually the bow for a birthday present. He was a notorious drunk, but more of a pathetic man than an evil one. I suppose that's why they posted him in BFE out in the Kalahari.

At that time he was ridiculously popular, not just in basketball but in life in general. I think he was genuinely curious how far he could push the line and still get away with it. I'll bet he could have run for president and won if he had tried it seriously.

I'll bet he could have run for president and won if he had tried it seriously.

And I thought I had a low opinion of the average man!

Lmao and he's totally right to boot.

This is Musk's very own "Very fine people" moment.

More like his "hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory" moment.

Is it your assessment that Musk did in fact give a nazi salute?

Maybe he was doing the Terran salute from that Star Trek episode.

I certainly think he did so. Probably intentionally seeking to rile people up since I don't think he has any meaningful political philosophy let alone nazism.

I don't think he has any meaningful political philosophy

...other than 'getting humanity to Mars'.

A man whose allegiance

is ruled by expedience.

Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown;

"Nazi, Schmazi" says Wernher von Braun

He claims that this is an ultimate goal for him but that doesn't mean it's something he actually values nor does it give much predictive power for his actions.

If he accomplishes it, many dumb trolling events like this can be forgiven.

It's the only thing that makes sense.

Even with the context that he said "my heart goes out to you" emphatically right before he motioned from his heart to the crowd?

He said this after making the gesture twice did he not? I think he knew what he was doing - how could he not? He's not some everyman in his first public appearance ever, he's one of the most powerful men on the planet whose primary contribution to his affiliated companies these days seems to in fact be public and private appearances.

I actually see this working out well for him regardless, because the accusations come across very blue-anon. It's basically the same thing as a fundamentalist Christian raving about the satanic messages their political opponents hide in plain sight.

That is probably correct, I suppose. It would match some of the justifications I've seen which go along the lines of "he's just trolling" or "the libs lied about this thing so they're obviously lying about this too". The Satanist comparison is apt - these are the people saying bad things ostensibly ironically to make red tribers angry but they are still bad things to say. Tit for tat is satisfying in the short term but self destructive in the long term.

Yeah accusing Trump or his associates of being Nazis seems to have been largely defanged as part of the V I B E S H I F T

I don't think accusing people of being nazis had much weight even back during the Bush years. It's been a silly insult for decades now.

Well, it certainly looks deliberate to me. The flat hand to the breast seems a bit strange to me, I would have imagined that you make a fist first?

It's not a Roman salute, at any rate - the arm is flat in a true Roman salute.

I buy that he was trying to do a "my heart goes out to you" gesture, if only because I can't believe that even Elon Musk is dumb enough to try to do a Nazi or a Roman salute in public.

I think he simply forgot to point his index finger

Does anyone else find Elon Musk supremely anti-photogenic, in the sense that every photo of him looks awkward and unappealing?

I respect his business skills, but he could have used some time at a finishing school. Needs a Princess Diaries makeover.

He looks ridiculous and he's a terrible public speaker. It's oddly reassuring.

he's a terrible public speaker.

The funny thing is, he's an OK public speaker in some older interviews, he even has some charisma. Which means either he gets more nervous now that the stakes are higher, those interviews do a dozen takes per question or he legitimately fried his brain over the last couple of years.

legitimately fried his brain over the last couple of years

My vote on this. He’s been taking experimental drugs for sure, like his ketamine vape for depression. I also think he’s taking anabolic drugs of some sort

I’m going with the ‘don’t do drugs, kids’ answer.

He really wants to be liked and he's not a good actor.

So he's deceptive. And bad at it.

Cannot stand a single one if his non technical interviews. Check him out giving the everyday Astronaut the factory tour. Completely different person basically...

I think he has in the past used that to disarm investors, the same way Gates sometimes used to play the bumbling nerd. But his age and lifestyle catching up to him has definitely made him hit the wall.

You can produce terrible photos of any public figure these days. Given how fast modern digital cameras shoot, even the normal act of speaking will produce awkward frames with eyes closed, moth open, or seemingly in a grimace. Musk has pissed off the majority of the journalist class, so they will do him no favors with regards to photos. These photos are just more evidence that no, you do not in fact hate journalists enough, and they are still really, really pissed at him for spoiling their little clubhouse on twatter.

But its a good sign, as my new favorite phrase goes "you only take flak when you're over the target."

But it's also apparent in videos, and people who support Elon Musk keep sharing photos of him looking awkward as heck while talking about how "exuberant" and "joyful" he is.

Mmm, he has different mannerisms from politicians and most CEOs, but they remind me a lot of a professor who truely loves the material they are teaching. A professor is just as much, if not more of a public speaker than a politician, but their objective is to educate and inspire rather than persuade, so the body language will be different.

Someone can be exuberant and joyful while also being awkward; people of goodwill extend generosity of spirit to people like this and just say they're being joyful.

Goodness, reply to one thing and the goalposts get moved by the referee.

Yes, Musk is both exuberant and awkward, and I don't harbor him ill will for his appearance. I was responding to the idea that his awkwardness was only an artifact of malicious media. Instead, it seems like his supporters are likewise incapable of finding nice-looking images of Musk.

Do they not cover this in media training?

"Very important. If you want to pantomime giving your heart to the crowd, you must use two hands. It is not a one handed gesture"

Although, I can see it now:
"Musk gives doublehanded Nazi salute, showing that he intends to be twice as evil as the Nazis ever were!"

The gesture makes sense for an American salute. The arm is raised outward and upward, like a child reaching for his parent, yet the arm extends maximally (declaring reach) and is held straight (expressing restraint and order). The normal American salute is silly and unnatural — you have the sun in your eye or something? — but the Roman / Bellamy salute can plausibly trace back to something primordial, as all good gestures do. The hand over heart gesture is too sentimental and must be thrown away. Of course if I had my way we would all be blessing each other, that’s probably my favorite gesture.

When I was an angsty 15 year old I punched through some drywall in the hallway going to my bedroom because mom made me keep going to school (as opposed to homeschooling). She hung up the image of a Bishop giving the sign of blessing over the hole, which wasn't repaired until I went to college. To this day the gesture inspires complicated emotions for me, because I do have a capacity for pointless and irrational destruction, I was still actually right if inarticulate about the particular school being a horrible environment for me, she genuinely did want what was best, that Grace in the Christian sense is something given to those who don't deserve it, that she and others would try to manipulate me in this way or that.

Why is blessing your favorite gesture?

It’s gentle (no tension) and it points up to the heavens

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/CristoRaffaello.jpg

What you call the "normal American" solute in fact goes back to the Roman salutatio militaris and is the lindiest of salutes. On the other hand, the "Roman" salute was probably entirely unknown to the Romans and is a bit of artistic license taken by Jacques-Louis David.

We can only hope that the hyperstitious slur gesture cascade is reversing. The rest of the internet has finlly grasped such subtleties as context and the use-mention distinction. Reddit, likely for structural reasons, still retains much of the 2018-2022 monoculture.

In Elon's second salute we can see that his hand is yawed inward in a decidedly nonfascist manner. I skimmed through Triumph of the Will just now, and while there are lots of salutes with variable pitch at the wrist, I didn't see a single one with yaw.

does anyone happen to know how reddit /r/all correlates to the real popularity and engagement of the content? i ask because it seems like the current state is for junior high caliber political content from subs like "murderedbywords" and "clevercomebacks" to be at the top of "hot". somehow i just can't believe this is the most popular reddit content, probably because i'm in denial.

/r/The_Donald proved years ago that the Reddit algorithm can be trivially gamed. Tribal groups are really good at this kind of informal coordination. Users of these subs are already used to regular political content. Users who don't like it get driven out. Users who agree with the political content see their upvotes as a way to influence public opinion. Emotions are high due to the inauguration. All it takes is a few tens of thousands of Redditors who hate Elon Musk to upvote every single clip to the top of every single sub.

I don't get how the use-mention distinction is relevant here?

From what I can tell, Musk is giving some speech related to the inauguration, not a lecture on the symbolism of fascism or something. Not that a professor doing a Nazi salute for the purpose of demonstration would be very appropriate either, typically you would show a video of the period.

Even if you plead parody use, that is still use, not mention.

You're right that it's not quite what is going on here. I see it more like a hypothetical soccer matchup between Nigeria and Germany where the scoreboard reads "0 NIG - GER 2". The physical elements are there, but the semantic meaning isn't.

If you search YouTube for “Nazi salute”, this is also almost every result.

The reason I’m searching is: I don’t actually know what a “Nazi salute” looks like. From what I can tell, it doesn’t really have any specific characteristics other than holding your arm out with your palm flat. But this is basically identical to the way that anybody would wave at a crowd.

The whole thing is so stupid. The bad part about the Nazis was the whole extermination of the Jews thing, not the Hugo Boss uniforms, or the hand gestures.

And there’s really no question that Elon Musk is not trying to exterminate all the Jews. It seems like he was waving in a weird spergy way.

I think that there are solid reasons why democracies have developed cultural antibodies against Nazi aesthetics.

Now, I get not leaving everything which has ever been used by Nazis barren. For example, there are only so many two-letter acronyms, not using SS for something useful seems a bit of a waste, so I am fine with you Americans abbreviating social security thus. Likewise, just because some Neonazis like 18 and 88, even the Germans will not go all tetraphobic (yes, I know) on these numbers.

On the other hand, if someone were to say that we should reclaim "Heil Hitler", because after all, what made the Nazis bad was not their greetings but their genocides, I would reply that this is a terrible idea. It would be like saying that glowing cigarette butts -- unlike wildfires -- are generally not dangerous to humans, and thus we can throw them away without a care.

Of course, Musk's salute is a lot more ambiguous than "Sieg Heil", but in general I think that the gesture should better stay in the cordon sanitaire for a few more centuries.

My theory is that Musk did this deliberately to troll people. I disapprove.

(Also, I re-read SSCs parable of talents from 2015 recently. Scott mentions Musk no less than nine times, as an example of someone who is clearly gifted and doing good on a scale most of us could never hope to do. With a decade of hindsight, this reads somewhat bizarre -- sure, Musk did some great stuff, like making electric cars cool and establishing reuseable first stages, but he also did quite a few things which do not seem worth emulating.)

I think that there are solid reasons why democracies have developed cultural antibodies against Nazi aesthetics.

To better generate political accusations against political opponents while deflecting accusations of behavioral comparisons on aesthetic dis-similarity are certainly solid reasons, but they are not good reasons.

It certainly doesn't have much to do with protecting the rights and liberties of the individual, hence why the antibodies are about aesthetics and not practices such as government attitudes towards political-opposition speech (including use of organized political violence and ostracism to intimidate bystanders into non-resistance), political structure dynamics (incredibly strong governmental influence on private commercial actors to leverage nominally independent entities as tools of the party-state), social engineering at the race-composition level.

Moreover, it is and was particularly important that the cultural antibodies be against Nazi aesthetics, as opposed to the aesthetics of anyone who shared in Nazi-behavior, because during the Cold War when those antibodies were developed antibodies against behavior-aesthetics instead of Nazi-aesthetics would have implicated a not-inconsiderable portion of the Soviet-sympathizing socialist-leaning classes. Who, coincidentally, were significant influences in the cultural-antibody process and many of whom still keep their Communist-derived aesthetics.

Germany is not a democracy and not a free society.

I would rather the world avoids the norms from the German authoritarian far left hate speech police that persecutes its only genuine patriots. This is one of the several examples today of the extremes of anti nazi obsession and how that ends up looking as an occupation goverment. Which is because part of the reason this has happened in Germany has been the influence of some of the people who got influence after ww2. Especially the frankfurt school types. This kind of hysteria is what let to these types arguing in favor of giving German children to pedophiles because else it would lead to a new holocaust, and fascism. And they got away with it. But Germany was occupied and it is tragic to see even in other countries that even fought against Nazis, to see something similiar happen.

The general behavior of Germany isn't something to be proud off. The German establishment and those following its ideologies do not have any lesson to teach. Their current behavior is the opposite extreme of Germany under the Nazis.

Now, make no mistake I would rather countries and even more so other countries are lead neither by traitors who oppress their own patriots, the right wing and their own people in general, nor by extreme nationalists invading other countries. I don't think that your succeeds in only stopping the later.

I am not saying your approach is indicative of the worst of it, but to a small extend is part of a general more hysterical reaction than it is warranted. So there is a trend of antifa inquisition fanaticism throughout the world who have proven incapable of stopping only extreme elements of nationalism and not leading to an anti-native state that oppresses its own nation. Two tier justice system, totalitarianism and hate speech codes, having an agenda in favor of extintion of their own nation, and of guilt and self hatred and of course demonizing those who don't share their agenda. Supporting the extreme nationalism of foreign tribes at expense of their own nation. Ironically this behavior has some similarities to what the nazis wanted to do to some of the countries they conquered that they claimed their people like Polish were a threat to the German nation and should not be allowed ethnic consciousness. With the difference that Germans wanted to do it to other ethnic groups while some holders of this agenda want to do this against their own nation.

This has been part and parcel of their anti nazi crusade. It is comical now 80 years after world war 2 to be acting as if Musk's salute is serious business that we must have a strong reaction and talk about as a serious problem. So I would select in favor of not allowing them to play inquisitors any more. It is actually a good idea to loosen up with the hysterics 80 years after world war 2. Obviously the pro HBD nerd Elon Musk isn't out there to promote invading Poland.Musk's views on legal migration are actually a problem since large migration including legal migration, doesn't respect the rights of the indigenous American people to not be demographically displaced, especially white Americans who are especially targeted for demographic replacement.

If we need more authoritarianism, perhaps we need an inquisition towards the antifa inquisitors who went way over the top and while they think they are fighting the ghost of Hitler, they are actually oppressing their own people. And since there is actually a legitimate duty for a society not to oppress its own people, and to promote the interests of its own nation, first of all the preservation of the nation which is the people common ties of kinship, history, language, ethnic consciousness, it probably qualifies as restoration of rule of law and not necessarily authoritarianism to stop this faction which is itself authoritarian.

Ideally countries should have red lines in defense of their own people and preserving them and their interests that they wouldn't allow to be broken, but also respect some of the same red lines for other nations. There is also room for international collaboration beyond just that, but always with respect of red lines. Just like parents should put their children first, obviously define their children as their children and reject preposterous propaganda that just anyone can be allowed to become part of their children, protect their home, not give it to strangers, but not go around making money for their family by stealing from others, dealing drugs, murdering, etc. And of course they can develop some positive relationships with people outside just the family. Plenty of constitutions already say things along these lines of how it is the duty of the leaders of the goverment to protect the nation and how it is treason to harm the nation and have plenty to say about treason. So there is room to remember this and to start enforcing it.

its only genuine patriots

Who would that be? Neo-Nazis aren’t patriots. At best, they’re lukewarm about the modern German state. It owes them no special deference.

I say this despite agreeing that Germany’s laws on the subject ought to be more like America’s.

Without even attempting to read @Belisarius' essays, because nobody's got time for that, here's my take:

The German state and its institutions hates and makes war upon the German nation, people, culture and language. You can love the state and hate Germany, or you can love Germany and hate the state, but not both. Maybe either can be patriotic, but you can probably guess where I stand on it. The German state so not only owes any patriots no deference, but rightfully considers them its enemies.

Now, are Neo-Nazis patriots? Probably more so than the compliant normie.

Some Hapsburgs once told me that Germany is basically still occupied and they renounced their claims to get more independence for Austria. Not doubting their story even if it's obviously self-serving.

Occupied by whom? I mean, I hear stories along those lines often enough, but so far they seem firmly in the tin-hat territory.

That Germany has been culture-formed into a suicidal self-hatred, that I will buy, but actively occupied and controlled by specific foreign powers?

The crux of the claim was that the German government exists to enforce the conditions of the allied occupation after the fact, I believe.

Bear in mind that this was related to me by reactionary Austrians.

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I am not surprised at all that you would go there but I was talking far more about AFD and the anti national ideology. I even was explicit about the failure of German establishment to oppose only extreme nationalism. And in response you act if Germany only keeps down neonazis and you define Germany as a post national state. So you are doing what the German establishment in doing. Which is to create a cloud about 80 years old obsessions of nazism against modern nations.

One can't be an enemy of patriotism for opposing a regime that is hostile to his nation.

Nationalism to a sizable pooint is good and in its absence foreigners and people whose behavior fits under the definition of treason end up mistreating an ethnic group, take over its resources and positions, and end up imposing upon it until they become a hated minority or go extinct.

Too extreme nationalism and you become the group oppressing all your neighbors. Not enough nationalism and you end up with a failed anti national state that oppresses your group and always aligns with foreign extreme nationalists while it brings forth your nation's subjugation and destruction. However in reality this idea of extreme nationalist threat from european countries is wildly overblown in use by those who have an agenda against these nations.

There is a relatively correct amount of nationalism and we can in fact have politics dominated by moderate nationalists who lead things to a better end than the alternative.

If patriotism meant loyalty to the state as it currently exists, that would mean all Eastern anti-commie dissidents were traitors.

Um, yeah. You wouldn’t exactly expect Stalin to reward them.

It’s reasonable to wish the Germans were more merciful to their dissidents. But there is no reason to call neo-Nazis patriots, because the state they belong to explicitly opposes the one they’re patriotic about.

because the state they belong to explicitly opposes the one they’re patriotic about.

I wish we picked a more sympathetic example than neo-Nazis, because it makes the argument somewhat harder, but it's exactly this logic I'm disputing. This might not compute under a "$nation is just an idea" or "citizenship is just aa passport" framework, but historically the idea you'd want to abolish the state you're under in the name of patriotism, is not really that strange.

I think the phrase

German authoritarian far left hate speech police that persecutes its only genuine patriots

is equivocating between “strong believers in a nation-state” and “strong believers in our nation-state.” The motte is that Nazis obviously fit the former definition. The bailey is that the German left ought to treat Nazis as if they fit the latter. This is ridiculous.

For a less charged comparison: the Confederacy. Confederate soldiers and generals were obviously patriots; respecting them as such is fine, but not obligatory. Honoring them as if they’re our patriots? I object.

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Don't people refer to the Secret Service as the SS, at least in contexts where the referent is clear?

not using SS for something useful seems a bit of a waste

Then good thing ϟecureϟignals is bringing it back and putting it to use.

I doubt SecureSignals with his "the Nazis didn't do it and the Jews deserved it anyway" rhetoric minds at all when people call him SS.

YouTube is very strict, even banning Hitler's political speeches. You can find it here on X though if you want to see what a Nazi Roman looks like, NSFW warning for Hitler speech and Roman salute.

I find it pretty funny that it's you, but also, thank you, that was helpful.

I mean…yeah that’s pretty vague. Yeah if somebody is shouting “heil” and throwing their arm out like that it’s a problem, but I don’t think we should maintain a ban on holding your hand up above chin level or anything like that.

Even ADL isn't buying the controversy. I don't this "scandal" has much staying power among the powers that matter. But it may provide a useful long term smear for the masses, like the weird couch hoax.

Is this really that surprising? They are too busy fighting imaginary antisemitism--criticism of a democratically elected government of a country and probably see the need to not alienate the owner of one of the largest social media companies.

Yeah, and it's not showing up in my mainstream news feeds -- it's only a social media thing, especially on reddit. The news is talking about the actual things Trump has been doing.

It's a good reminder that reddit has a ubiquitous userbase, particularly in terms of age, and you won't find much real political diversity there, even in places that claim to have it (the conservative sub is mostly libertarians). I agree with you that this is another couch-fucking social media propaganda meme, and I have an eerie feeling the reddit algorithm is being gamed or manipulated to put it in front of as many zoomer eyeballs as possible.

it's not showing up in my mainstream news feeds

Reuters article

"This was no ordinary victory. This was a fork in the road of human civilization," he said. "This one really mattered. Thank you for making it happen! Thank you."

Biting his bottom lip, he thumped his right hand over his heart, fingers spread wide, then extended his right arm out, emphatically, at an upward angle, palm down and fingers together. Then he turned and made the same hand gesture to the crowd behind him.

"My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured," he said as he finished the gesture.

The gestures were quickly scrutinized online.

Even ADL isn't buying the controversy.

Are we back in the Berenstein Bears timeline?

I have to admit, I was surprised and I am trying to acknowledge that my prediction was wrong: when I read the text I thought that whatever Elon did would have to be a stretch to call a Nazi salute.

Then I watched the video and... yeah, idk. Based on priors I assume he wasn't trying to do a Nazi salute, but it really is what it looks like to me prima facie. If you point out that "no, a real Nazi salute is..." I just have to say: yes, I believe you, but that salute definitely fits with a normie imagining of what it looks like.

Until someone pointed out to me that the Hitler salute was directly in front, I realized two things:

  • Elons salute indeed doesn’t look that hitleresque
  • I’ve been doing the Hitler salute in my bathroom mirror during shaving wrong this whole time

I’ve been doing the Hitler salute in my bathroom mirror during shaving wrong this whole time

Do you shave in a little mustache first?

(That's the joke.)

pics or it didn't happen

Good gravy I never expected to see the adl call for grace, they must be utterly terrified.

Terrified of what?

The people turning on them if they throw their weight around like they used to.

Where does the ADL stand with Elon? They seem to jump on everything, usually

It could be a vibe shift or just them backing an antiwoke ally.

Alternatively, they looked at the full context and are reassured that Elon Musk's intent was not what the memes are suggesting.

I realize that saying activists are sometimes sensible is unpopular, but this should be a "thank goodness, my opponents aren't as bad as I thought" moment.

The ADL is antiwoke?

In the same sense that Frankenstein was against his monster.

After October 7th (and, more to the point, after the Woke response to Israel's blockade and invasion of Gaza), a lot of Jews are reconsidering whether spending decades spearheading the left was a good idea.

After October 7? I imagine they've gained some appreciation for the antiwoke's hatred of certain groups.

The ADL is more concerned about imaginary antisemitism than real antisemitism.

I think the ADL is taking steps to recalibrate when they realized they were starting to become a punchline on both the right and the left.

They’re concerned with what their donors are concerned with, which varies through the generations.

I think the woke right, alt-lite, dissident right, or whatever we are calling them this week need to get their noses out of the extremely-online left's stash.

amazing how history repeats https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-38057104

you have to assume your enemies are really smart and also really stupid . starved for controversy, the media has to create it

That's not even remotely comparable to this due to a number of reasons.

Is it organic or are they messing with the algorithm. Almost every post on the front of /r/all is about this: https://archive.is/HKkuk

Related: almost every subreddit now has a post “Should we ban links to Twitter/X?” with the majority of lefty subs predictably clamoring for more censorship to oppose nazism (because nazis were known for their dedication to free speech apparently?). It all feels extremely astroturfed, or maybe just a consequence of the echo chamber reddit has been cultivating for the past decade.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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