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 -
I'm not sure that we shouldn't care about African conflicts, but that's beside the point. The point is that, for better or worse, Western media appears to disproportionately care about Gaza. The suffering in Gaza has received a great deal more media attention than comparable suffering in other places. Don't like Artsakh? Fine, then, take Rakhine state - over a third again as large as Gaza in terms of population, and subject to similar brutality. Don't like that one? South Sudan. And so on.
It is thus, I think, not true that there has some kind of conspiracy of silence around Gaza. On the contrary, if there's a conspiracy I feel like it was to bring more attention to Gaza, not less.
There are some understandable reasons for the greater focus on Gaza - it involves a close American ally, the history of decades of Palestine as a symbol for wider Arab nationalism, lots of Jews in Western countries who pay particularly close attention to Israel, and so on. I'm not saying it's a great mystery why Americans take much closer interest in Gaza than they do in the plight of the Rohingyas. I'm just saying that they do. Thus this:
This is just not true. There was a huge amount of media focus on and discussion of Gaza, much of it openly critical of Israel. The 'vast and dishonest campaign' you posit seems hallucinatory. As 2rafa and upsidedownmotter show, it's just, well, not a true description of Western reporting on Gaza.
Note that I am not claiming that Western reporting on Gaza is unbiased, or plainly representative of the facts, or anything like that. I am just claiming that firstly there's a lot of it and secondly much of it is critical of Israel, whether implicitly or explicitly, so much so that I don't think one can defensibly claim that events in Gaza have been either hushed up or whitewashed.
More options
Context Copy link