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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22382 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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Recently Douglas Murray went on Joe Rogan and had a conversation with Dave Smith about, among other things, the responsibility of influencers with huge platforms to the public. Smith and Rogan took the familiar position of "muh marketplace of ideas", while Murray believes that people with so much influence should be a bit more selective, because exposing the public to bad ideas will lead to some part of the audience uncritically adopting them.

Douglas Murray spent the first, like...hour of the podcast talking about how Darryl Cooper, the noted Winston Churchill historian, had spent his career tearing down Churchill and "just asking questions" about why Darryl is devoting so much of his time to focusing on Churchill.

Except in reality: Approximately a year ago, Cooper spent about 2 minutes making a throwaway comment about how he takes a devil's advocate position about Churchill with his friend, a big Churchill fan, as a way of riling him up and playing around with him. Douglass couldn't do 10 minutes of actual research into this topic before then spending an hour talking about how only experts, people who really understand the topic, should be allowed to talk about things publicly. Darryl Cooper in reality is a podcaster who puts out 30+ hour long series about things like: The Formation of Israel, The Civil Rights Movement/The People's Temple/Jim Jones, World War 2 from the perspective of the Germans[1], The History of Slavery, and The horror of war (a standalone episode called "The anti-humans".

[1]: His whole point with this, stated explicitly, is that Germany didn't just wake up one day and decide to be the Nazis, one of the most evil institutions to ever exist, and then at the end of the war just decide to stop being the Nazis. It was a long process of humans making (bad) human decisions. The implicit point here, and with almost all of his work, is that good people can be talked into doing really bad things, and to be cautious around "movements" (like The Peoples' Temple, or a lot of the civil rights groups) because they can slowly-then-suddenly turn into a nightmare.

Douglass showed his cards, and it turns out that he's an idiot with a nice voice. The Strange Death of Europe was a good book, but it turns out the person behind it is probably a fool.

World War II is basically the world’s secular creation myth now. Implying that this vastly destructive war that killed 60 million people could or should have been handled differently or, God forbid, avoided is basically heresy. It’s like saying “maybe Pontius Pilot shouldn’t have signed that one guy’s death warrant, because letting an angry mob override the fair application of law and due process is wrong”. In any other context a reasonable and good thing to say; but given the specific chain of events that came after and what they mean, unthinkable.

It’s like saying “maybe Pontius Pilot shouldn’t have signed that one guy’s death warrant, because letting an angry mob override the fair application of law and due process is wrong”.

That would be a pretty anodyne statement in Christian society. Pilate is not considered a positive figure precisely because he was derelict in his duty and put Jesus to death.

But if Jesus wasn't killed, he couldn't save everyone, right?

Isn't it a pretty wild idea that the torture and execution of a good man "saves the world"? What's the mechanism there? Sounds a bit like human sacrifice and scapegoating doesn't it? With some magic thrown in.

Sounds a bit like human sacrifice and scapegoating doesn't it?

Unironically yes. The Bible depicts it as a sacrifice: though those who killed Jesus didn’t intend it that way, Jesus did. And if you do a quick search, you will find a million sermons with titles like “Christ our Scapegoat,” referencing the literal scapegoat in Leviticus.

Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, offering himself as a sacrifice to God the Father on behalf of sinners is the mechanism. It’s the core of Christian belief.

Maybe I should try reading the Bible at some point. Is it good literature? :P

There's some novelty in that particular human sacrifice: instead of the victim being labeled evil, he gets labeled god. Which kinda puts a finishing touch to the whole tradition instead of having to find a new scapegoat at each turning. In theory, at least.

Edit: typo

Afaik aztek human sacrifice tradition also held many of the victims in high regard.

That's part of the buy-in for effect, isn't it? You don't get much favor from the gods for sacrificing a rat. The more you invest, the more ROI. I think that's how it goes.

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