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 sure a lot of people would have said the same thing about Nazi Germany as about Jericho. This mostly tells you how bad Nazi Germany is, not the Jews.
Polling from the WWII era disagrees —
https://x.com/gen0m1cs/status/1913800277792039250
Only 25% of active soldiers “really hated” Nazis. 31% felt no personal hatred and 38% thought they were “pretty much like we are”. Among those 25% who “really hated Nazis”, perhaps some amount of them would want to genocide every German, but I doubt it’s more than a few %. And only 29% thought that America shouldn’t supply aid to Germans. Those polled were active soldiers, not the general population like in the Israel polling. So not even an America soldier who literally fought against the Nazis feels the way an Israeli civilian feels about Gazans.
So a quarter of American soldiers - who had suffered zero effects back home, other than a bit of minor rationing - still "really hated" Nazis. And that wouod be, to my understanding, before really being too aware of the Holocaust. Imagine if the Nazis had committed the same atrocities to Americans on American soil as Hamas did on 10/7.
They had Pearl Harbor, but Americans didn’t hate the Japanese much either, from 1940s Gallop polls you can find online. Of course they did use nuclear weapons at the end, which would be a fair comparison.
Or we can just look at 9/11? America didn’t bomb every Iraqi dwelling until every member of the Taliban surrendered. That would be sociopathic. And this caused more casualties than in Israel.
Leaving aside the conflation of Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s a ridiculous comparison, because neither Iraq nor Japan nor Germany were entirely or mostly or even substantially urban.
In reality, footage of postwar Dresden, Berlin and Tokyo looks pretty similar to footage of urban Gaza today. 5% of Germany’s civilian population died in the war by most estimates, more in many major cities. Again the numbers in Gaza are similar (WW2 was longer, but the pitched phase of urban fighting that saw most of those casualties was actually much shorter). Iraq saw far fewer civilian casualties because the Baathist government was deeply unpopular, its military was a traditional uniformed military built on the failed Arab military model of the 1970s and the majority Shia population eagerly dismantled what remained of Hussein’s regime. Go back to America’s last genuinely major conflict in Vietnam (again, predominantly rural at the time of fighting which inherently means a much lower civilian casualty rate) and the civilian casualties spike accordingly, because the enemy had morale.
That is, by the way, what it takes to root out a highly entrenched urban guerilla force that doesn’t wear uniforms, has an extensive tunnel network and embraces hiding among the civilian population. The only alternative Israel’s detractors can offer to the way the war has already been prosecuted amounts to ‘just leave and negotiate from a distance’. That is a valid approach, and a fair argument (and one I agree with), but it is not and can never be a military strategy, only a diplomatic one. Militarily, strategists offer no alternative. If you were in charge of the IDF and were given the order to militarily destroy Hamas with the soldiers Israel has and the equipment it has, you could likely come up with no military strategy that had fewer civilian casualties than the current approach.
Falluja was fought against insurgents in Iraq. While 60% or more of the buildings in Gaza are destroyed, after this battle (the worst of the urban combat in Iraq) only 20% max were destroyed. Why didn’t America just bomb the city until everyone died? Al Qaeda was fought in the battle of Ramadi. Years long urban battle. Why didn’t America just blow up every single dwelling? Same for in Baghdad, over 2 years.
Comparing Hamas, with limited offensive capabilities, to Nazi Germany, doesn’t make much sense. They were compared in the above to show that even the comically worst enemy of history weren’t despised with genocidal intent as Israelis despise Palestinians. But you can’t compare Hamas and their kidnappings / killings to a Nazi invasion of continental Europe. The best comparison is our fight against Al Qaeda and insurgents. They launched an attack on American soil that killed twice the number as Oct 7. We went after Al Qaeda and Baathists as a result. We didn’t aim to starve them to death. This is the closest thing to a 1-to-1 comparison. Vietnam was a notably bad war, people still bring it up all the time as an example of what not to do.
This is unfalsifiable. The few accounts we get from the ground indicate little regard for human life. The recent video of the ambulance workers being killed is an example. You can do what Americans did in Iraq and go into Gaza on the ground. You can enter tunnels and raid homes like we did in Vietnam. If they are unwilling to do this out of fear, then Israel should give up and make compromises. I don’t think the answer is starvation and trying to destroy everything in Gaza.
If Israel was willing to bomb Gaza until everyone died, the war would be over by now because everyone in Gaza would be dead. Do you think this is what is looks like when a modern military power with total air superiority tries to obliterate a civilian center? It is not.
It is entirely within Israel's power to turn Gaza into a smoking pile of rubble. They are choosing not to do that.
If Israel were to do everything they could to kill as many Gazans as possible without losing what remains of international support, what would they do differently than what they are currently doing? They know they can’t actually bomb everyone immediately, all at once. But they can bomb as many as they can get away with, keeping everyone in semi-starvation, causing maximum trauma, destroying every dwelling, and so on. They can kill them all slowly in this way, to reduce international outrage.
See, now we've gone from talking about facts to reading minds. How do you distinguish someone who wants to kill as many Gazans as possible but is held back by the international community from someone who acts in line with the attitude of the international community because they're part of it? You're essentially blaming them for things they aren't doing, but which you assume they want to do.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link