site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Spencer would tell you not to do anything to paint a target on yourself accelerate the collapse by furthering the more insane parts of the left so you can be the reasonable alternative to the communists when the Reichstag burns.

No, Spencer's much-vaunted "liberal turn" is just a misunderstanding of the fact he isn't an accelerationist and doesn't want to see prevailing institutions collapse. He wants to take them over using crypsis and esoteric group-signaling using the same tactics he perceives have been used by Jews.

He wants the institutions to survive, so the next Christian-successor spiritual movement is ready to take the helm and reorient them in the same way they were taken over and reoriented against us.

Actually, his change toward this position is a result of the failures of political organizing. He has changed his approach significantly since the rise and fall of the Alt Right.

Right now his effort includes studying the aforementioned topic, in particular the Hebrew Bible as the ultimate keystone for understanding how esoteric, cryptic spiritual movements cohere races of people together and direct their behavior. And also how this practice extends to other forms of fictional art creation like film or comic books.

He has a book coming out on the theory he's been calling "Racial Esoteric Moralization", should be interesting. I do think he's correct that there has to be some sort of post-Christian Religion that organizes the behavior and identity of these disparate Right-Wing factions.

REM theory is only unfalsifiable insofar as all critical literary analysis is unfalsifiable. I agree Mark sometimes goes too far speculating on certain nuances, but the big picture items- Hebrew stores like Tower of Babel, Jacob and Esau, David and Goliath, esoterically depicting racial conflict and elevating a Jewish type is very obviously true and insightful. In the most important cases- i.e. Jacob and Esau representing a sibling rivalry between Jew and Aryan, this has always been acknowledged by the Rabbis who relate Esau to the progenitor of Edom, and therefore Rome and Rome's successor Europe. That's just an example for how REM aligns with the interpretation of the Rabbis in a very important case, maybe the most important case.

That analysis applied to modern filmography, i.e. Steven Spielberg is also only as "unfalsifiable" as all film criticism. But Spielberg films are unequivocally an example of REM theory generalizing to modern forms of art depiction, in which the Jewish identities of the art-creators is imbued in their mythological signals, which in turn influences the behavior of mass audiences of people.

The essence of REM Theory that Yahweh is a metaphor and synonym for Jews as a race is unequivocally true. Understanding that leads to a much deeper interpretation of these biblical stories, in particular understanding the stories in which Yahweh comes into conflict with Civilization (i.e. Tower of Babel).

The conclusion that the Hebrew Bible has influenced the creation of races of people, and therefore race-creation is downstream from myth-creation, is so obviously true that we should be shocked that nobody has made this observation before in the way REM has. Have to give it credit where due.

No, I said it's literary criticism, which means it should be engaged on its merits and there is a lot of merit to their interpretation. Especially since some of the most important parts align with the interpretation of the Rabbis.

This is just Richard’s interpretation and nothing more.

It is in fact not just Richard's interpretation:

Although the texts about Jacob and Esau are ostensibly speaking about individuals, each brother represents an ethnic and/or political group that resided in the Levant in biblical times.

Ok, so this is REM theory exactly. It's not some moral lesson from God, it's a myth representing race conflict and intended to moralize a race of people. And the article acknowledges the position of the Rabbis:

This basic sketch of the relationship between the polities of Israel/Judah/Judea and Edom/Idumea during the biblical and Second Temple periods indicates that Edom was a polity that ruled from the Mount Seir area, from Wadi al-Hasa (south-east of the Dead Sea) in modern day Jordan and southward, eventually extending westward to Ashkelon on the Mediterranean Coast, and northward up to Hebron, in the Second Temple period.

And yet, Rabbinic midrash associates Esau and Edom with a completely different geographical area—the city of Rome in the Italian Peninsula—and speaks as if Romans are all Edomites.

The Talmud clearly associates the Romans with the Edomites. And it's not just a Spencer idea that Jacob and Esau represent different races in ethnic conflict.

Even the Philistines, i.e. in the David and Goliath myth are considered to have been likely descended from the Sea Peoples, in particular the tribe with Greek origins:

Possible relations to Indo-European languages, even Mycenaean Greek, support the theory that immigrant Philistines originated among "sea peoples".

Goliath is not a semitic name, it's an Indo-European name and the Philistine language is not semitic in origin. Goliath's height and strength would support the theory from a phenotypical perspective as well.

The point of that being REM theory is both radical and plausible in proposing that these myths are portraying conflict between Jews and Indo-European tribes in many of the important cases. This theory is supported by the Rabbis and the Talmud. It's also supported by some archeological and linguistic evidence tying the Philistines to a tribe of Indo-European sea-farers.

So saying it's "unfalsifiable" is wrong, insofar you could prove it wrong if you could prove that Esau did not symbolically represent an Indo-European even though the Talmud supports the interpretation of Esau as representing an Indo-European type.

Even from purely a literary perspective, Esau seems to represent an Indo-European type with red hair- he is strong and physically fit. Famously, Jacob swindles Esau's birthright by putting on goat-skin and pretending to be Esau to his blind father Isaac, such that Jacob received the blessing meant for Esau. Very interesting stuff. The story harkens to even modern myth in which the "Nerd vs Jock" trope is racialized along the same lines, and the nerd uses his brains to beat the jock and get the chick in the end.

I won't pretend to know that all Rabbis would agree on something, but I'm pretty sure they would at least mostly agree that the interpretation of the early Rabbis was that Rome was descended from Edom. The more controversial question would be why the early Rabbis had this interpretation of the myth.

The article I linked presents an interpretation of the reason the Rabbis associated Rome with Edom that does not agree with Richard's position.

However, the reason that article gives for why the early Rabbis associated Rome with Edom is basically the Transitive Property of Hate: the Rabbis hated Edom, the Rabbis hated Rome, therefore Rome is Edom. I don't find that convincing, but even that perspective supports REM Theory that these myths and their interpretation, and even their changing interpretations esoterically depict racial conflict.

Even the suggestion that the Rabbis associated Edom with Rome based on the conflict of Jews with Rome would only suggest that even the original influence of the story would have been inspired by proto-Jewish conflict with proto-Indo-European tribes as well! Did this conflict between Rome and Judea start with Rome and Judea? No it did not, the racial contact goes back further and the Hebrew bible provides a mythological depiction and interpretation of this conflict in stories like this...

That is REM Theory. It's highly plausible and I think it's a significant theory. It generalizes to art and myth that is depicted even today. It also generalizes to the Pagan canon. It's not just Jews that used Religion for this purpose, the Indo-European Pantheon is likewise an esoteric canon of racial conflict, moralization, and hierarchy. It's a very strong theory and you haven't really challenged it meaningfully IMO.

More comments