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 -
By vague request of interest in the topic, I am copying over a post I made elsewhere to this thread.
The Chagos Islands Deal, or, The Next Westminster Scandal Is Already Here, You Just Haven't Noticed It Yet
The British-owned Chagos Islands, in the Indian Ocean, host a major US military base, Diego Garcia. Our government is now planning to sell the islands to Mauritius, and to pay them for the privilege.
Brief on the background. The Chagos Islands were originally uninhabited until France brought slaves from Africa to work on plantations in the late 18th and early 19th century. The descendants of these workers became known as Chagossians. The islands, along with Mauritius, came under British control in 1814 through the Treaty of Paris, and were administered as a dependency of colonial Mauritius for administrative convenience rather than any historic connection. In 1965, three years before Mauritius gained independence from British colonial rule, the UK separated the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius to create the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Then, the UK removed around 2,000 Chagossians from the islands to make way for the Diego Garcia base. Mauritius maintains that the separation of the islands was illegal under international law, and has waged a legal battle to get them. In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion that the UK's ownership of the Chagos Islands was unlawful. The UN General Assembly subsequently passed non-binding resolutions demanding the UK withdraw.
Alright, onto the actual scandal. Over the last few months, the British Government has been rushing to put together a deal that would hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. This rush was likely prompted by fears that the next US administration would oppose the handover, and seemingly because of this rush, the British government has kept giving in to new concessions that Mauritus is demanding to seal the handover. So now the UK will also pay $9bn over 99 years to lease the base. Oh, and it'll be inflation-linked. Oh, and front-loaded. Oh, and maybe it'll actually be $18bn instead. A substantial amount of money for a government that is raising taxes, cutting spending, and claiming there's a £22bn 'black hole' in the finances. In addition to the loss of a strategic military base, There are further concerns that the islands would likely end up hosting the Chinese military at the end of all this, too.
And in return for all this, in return for the territory and all that money, the UK gets... Nothing.
So to justify the seemingly impossible, the government has offered an increasingly bizarre list of reasons to hand over the territory, none of which hold up to scrutiny.
No, it is not. The Chagossians hate Mauritius and reject this deal because it doesn't give them self-determination and ownership of the Chagos Islands. In 2021, Mauritius criminalized "Misrepresenting the sovereignty of Mauritius over any part of its territory" i.e criminalized Chagossians stating they should own the islands themselves.
Nothing that would be binding. And besides, international law and what army? This is a US military base. If we care to hold it, it will be held, and there's no force that can take it from us.
No. It will cause other countries with dubious territorial claims on the UK, like Spain and Argentina, to smell blood in the water. Not to mention generally making the government look like gullible idiots.
Unfortunately, it is untrue that Keir Starmer monomaniacally follows international law. For example, his support for arresting Britons over speech crimes violates international law. "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." - UN General Assembly, Resolution 217A (III), Universal Declaration of Human Rights, A/RES/217(III) (December 10, 1948)
In 2022, they agreed to enter negotiations. And then in 2023 they realised how stupid handing the base over would be and pulled out of negotiations. This is also, of course, not an argument in favour of the deal.
I wish I was joking, but this is actually the argument they're currently using.
Okay, I did make that one up.
So what's actually going on here? There's not much that can be said with absolute certainty, but there is certainly some plausible alternative reasons that the government aren't so willing to state. For example, Keir Starmer was well aware of this case before becoming Prime Minister. In fact, Mauritius's chief legal advisor, Philippe Sands KC, is one of Keir Starmer's friends. Sands has seemingly (and maybe illegally) entered the islands in the past. Oh, and that last thing about changing the laws of physics to switch off the electromagnetic spectrum. That's also Philippe Sands. In other words, what's been presented as a national security claim from our own government is, in fact, smuggling a claim made by an adversary instead. There's another figure involved, too. Lord Hermer, who is seemingly involved in negotiations on the UK's side in some capacity, while also harbouring life-long anti-British sympathies. But his involvement seems less obvious here.
Anyway, now we have multiple opposition figures accusing Keir of, effectively, treasonous corruption.
Conservative MP Robert Jenrick:
Reform MP Nigel Farage:
Dominic Cummings:
I am gleefully awaiting the next reason the government presents for why we need to hand the islands over in full expectation that it is even more hilarious than the last.
Perhaps there’s a simple reason for this anti-British deal. Two of the key players you mentioned, Philippe Sands and Lord Hermer, are both Jews. You even mentioned that Lord Hermer harbors anti-British sentiment. Subversive Jews are trying to undermine the UK’s geopolitical power when the nation is weak and vulnerable. Starmer, though not a Jew, fits the role of the useful idiot here.
Since you’re looking for possible explanations for this seemingly irrational behavior, I thought I would supply an explanation.
You're breaking so many damn rules in one comment I'm mildly impressed. You have not proactively (or on demand) produced any evidence to suggest a conspiracy of the Jews. Or that they have anything to gain from weakening the British state. Inflammatory, boo-outgroup, throw it all in, toppings are free with this sandwich.
You've been warned in the past, and I'm giving you a short ban so you know they have teeth. Even our most fervent anti-semites hustle to meet posting standards, and I'd advise you do so too.
The comment isn't especially rule-breaking on any of those fronts. It brought useful context to the original post. I learned something from it. If there were a top-level post about, say, people behaving in a strikingly unruly manner in public, and a reply added that they were black as a partial explanation (and obviously it could only be a partial explanation), there is no way that would get modded, let alone as casually as this. Just like the ungovernable black, the far-left Jew who loathes his host country's past glories and dominant ethnic group, and is politically engaged enough to act on it, is a recognizable type. Both Jews and gentiles have been writing about it for over a century, sometimes sympathetically. It shouldn't be necessary to break out the stats/conspiracy board every time one wants to gesture at it (and doing so would probably only derail the conversation and make the pile-on worse).
I'm mostly a lurker here, but I've noticed that when I do find the motivation to post, it's often to defend others from anti-anti-semitic dogpiling and mod action. Maybe this is my own bias talking, but it seems to be the one topic where The Motte loses all reason in its eagerness to shut down conversation, and the quality of the responses drops off a cliff. Besides the ban itself,
@2rafa
It's common knowledge (I hope this point is simply consensus so that I can't be accused of building one) that far-left, white-hating, anti-colonial Jews are often, perhaps usually, also anti-Israel. Obviously this would make it hard to argue that Hermer and Sands are part of a conscious international conspiracy to promote Jewish world domination or whatever, but @Cirrus said no such thing. While, if Cirrus took your rebuttal on board, he might have to posit a more complex motivation for the antagonists in this story than raw will to racial supremacy, that is not really a problem for him, as highly prominent Jewish public figures are obviously smart enough to have more complex inner lives than that (that still, demonstrably in some cases, reserve a place for hating white gentiles). For me, learning that both the key figures in the Chagos story happened to be Jewish had the total effect of minimizing the cognitive dissonance/surprisal/confusion I had on first reading OP, and learning that Hermer favors Palestine did little to increase it again.
@Quantumfreakonomics
OP established that whether or not it has anything to do with their Jewishness, Hermer and Sands appear to be acting against national interest, even out of contempt for the English people, as some have alleged. So taking that as given, do you think it is more natural that they should be ethnically English or Jewish? Of course there are many self-hating English people as well so it's not a slam dunk, but I think the point stands. I might have predicted that Hermer and Sands were Jewish on first reading the story, and although I can't honestly say the thought occurred to me, I attribute that to being less vigilant than I could have been (to be honest "Phillippe Sands" should have been a dead giveaway). Thanks to Cirrus' comment I am less slightly less likely to miss such details in the future.
@TitaniumButterfly
"Random accusation" would be if the key figures in the story weren't literally Jewish.
@jeroboam
You're a thoughtful poster most of the time, but here we go with the anti-anti-semitic tropes. It's always the same "low-IQ" verbiage.* What's conspicuously low-IQ about his comment, of all the comments on here? It is at least coherent and well-structured (though short), and it contains no spelling or grammar mistakes. Most commenters who can meet those standards don't have to worry about being tarred as "low-IQ", at least not based on a single post. Admittedly it doesn't take a very high IQ to google someone's ethnic background, but the same goes for any low-effort reply that just serves to add context. "Low-IQ" is boo lights for any criticism of Jews that falls below @SecureSignals' standard of eloquence (which is met by maybe two or three other posters forum-wide).
For every "boring and annoying" antisemitic post on here, there are 10 NPC-level rebuttals. I urge all of you anti-anti-semites to consider if the fact that every drive-by post like this spawns a chorus of affronted Jews yelling "Shut it down!" helps your case.
*I saw a lot of this in the weeks after Oct. 7: according to several prominent internet Jews, not supporting Israel makes you "low-IQ" of all things. Other positions might be perverse, misguided, unsound, averse to facts, ideologically motivated, evil, even dumb, but somehow the word cloud for opposition to Israel and other positions that are facially unfavorable to Jews usually contains "low-IQ". What seems pretty plainly to be going on is that these Jews are leveraging their reputation for high IQ to give their attacks on the "low-IQ" extra bite. After all, they are the final authority on IQ.
But are they then distinguishable in any way from non-Jewish far-left white-hating anti-colonialists? If not, then what explanatory power does harping on about their Jewishness bring to the equation?
More options
Context Copy link
Very few of those people are Jewish at all. The majority of Jews on this board just don’t engage with those posts except occasionally.
Not a bad writer but ridiculous suggest only two are three are on his level (many more are better).
That is kind of the point, the argument is so poorly made that it doesn’t exist, it’s noooticing with no backing, it says very little. If the argument is some KMac group evolutionary strategy, Hermer has clearly acted against Jewish group interests by using his extremely prominent position in what is still a major nuclear power to relentlessly and publicly bash the only Jewish homeland. If it’s that there some progressive and powerful Jews (for relatively dull HBD reasons especially overrepresented in wordcel careers like law) who fully buy into anti-colonialist ideology, then sure, although there is absolutely no shortage of those among the native population. But it’s not really clear what he’s saying, beyond saying nothing except that he can look someone up on Wikipedia, then click early life.
I at'd 4 people. You are Jewish, and unless you are including yourself in "those people" you must know at least one of the others to be Jewish. In which case that's half.
I'm sure The Motte has a fair number of Jewish users, and given the highly disproportionate reaction every time a Jew's being Jewish is brought up, it seemed reasonable to expect Jews to be amply represented in the pile-ons. I didn't seriously mean to suggest it was all Jews.
Well, his post (unlike all the replies to it) was an observation about the topic at hand. It wasn't about how finely wrought a theory of Jewish group behavior he could shoehorn two relatively obscure public figures into (and again I don't think Motte users would actually appreciate every throwaway antisemitic comment turning into a paragraphs-long screed about group evolutionary strategy and so on). As a reply, it was up to par. It reduced perplexity. I can see why it would be annoying to be faced with refuting a direct association between an isolated fact and a statistical pattern without any mediating causal link. That said, I feel like that's not an uncommon form of argument around here, so if you don't dispute the pattern (i.e. that Jews are overrepresented compared to non-Jews in radical left-wing/anti-white politics/culture production, and more overrepresented than can be predicted from their verbal intelligence alone), you could just let it go.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is why boring and annoying antisemitic posts are strongly discouraged -- maybe the antisemites should try posting something interesting?
Like, SS is not my favourite poster (and I hate to encourage him), but his holocaust denial posts do bring in some interesting history at times -- I don't believe that a meticulously researched post about the connections these two Powerful Jews have to the International Zionist Conspiracy, and the specific actions they took to broker this ridiculous deal; maybe wrapping up with the was in which the ridiculous deal makes these Jews more Powerful and will enable the IZC to take over the UK -- would face mod sanctions.
It would probably still get a lot of pushback, but steel sharpens steel, right? Have at 'er.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link