site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Woke right is not a thing: it never was a thing, because actual Nazis, fascists, and white nationalists don't use or accept critical theory. Any resemblance (da joos vs da whitey) is coincidental: the true similarity is that both wokism and fascism are illiberal, but for completely different reasons.

Neil Shenvi has a few examples, surely? He cites Stephen Wolfe recommending using CRT's premises, and taking his opponents' weapons and growing stronger by them, and he explicitly refuses to abjure a critical theory approach. Shenvi also cites Abrahamsen to the effect of there being a 'Gramscian right', and credibly cites people like Sam Francis or John Fonte acknowledging Gramsci's influence on their own work.

That seems like a pretty reasonable prima facie case that at least some far-right or white-nationalist-adjacent people are genuinely influenced by critical theory.

I would make the argument that Gramsci's tactics are, by their nature, apolitical: and they are successful enough that even his most hated ideological enemies have adopted them because they are effective and they work. It is impossible to describe what the woke right is without describing it as a reaction to the woke left: its shadow and anima. Perhaps it was inevitable that the right absorb the insights of the left, and not stay static forever. It is an active dialectic, after all.

Note that rightists who know who Gramsci is a vanishingly small clique in any case.

But nevertheless, I wouldn't oversell the impact for 'A Case For White Nationalism' and other works like it. They are very clever works, throwing the prevailing orthodoxy's own logic against it. They have the benefit that woke structures do, in fact, exist to disenfranchise white men, and all they have to do is Observe while their opponents try to explain why their racially discriminatory policies are actually Equitable to a increasingly cynical audience. The woke right only exists in the imaginations of vanguardist liberals, kicked out of the progressive sphere but eager to gatekeep the populist right back to liberalism.

It won't work. But why it won't work is a whole essay in of itself.