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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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This doesn't make sense given the way cloudflare acted

Hard disagree. It makes perfect sense as I've argued elsewhere, which is how I was able to accurately predict Cloudflare's actions and was not caught off guard, unlike many who thought differently. Cloudflare is a tentacle of Left, Inc., and its facade of libertarian attitude is a relic of Old Internet mores which no longer exist and are no longer believed in. The progressive leviathan will continue to crush, oppress, and destroy, and there is nothing anyone can do to change it from the inside. No matter how much you beg your masters to take pity on you, they will not. They do not have it in their hearts.

The only path to success, long-term, is a total rejection of the progressive beast. Gather state power and martial power; accumulate resources; take both legal and extra-legal means to inflict harm on the corporations and the people that comprise them.

You know what won't stop Keffals? Fedposting bomb threats. You know what would stop Keffals? Actually doing it. You know what won't sway Prince? Apologizing, groveling, sniveling, accommodating. You know what would? Imposing costs on him as a person.

This is something the progressives have learned much, much better than non-progressives, for whatever reason. Progressives have a total war mentality. It works.

Groveling is a very useful move for people, organizations, even nations, and has saved many from death - which is why it exists. And "temporarily banning certain words in the thread" (and - not even telling anyone you're doing that) is not groveling in any obvious sense.

It's absolutely groveling in an obvious sense. It's the same thing Zorba did with AEO on Reddit for ages, with the end result being we're all here, anyway. Sucking off your betters so that they can enjoy the sadistic thrill of watching you squirm unhappily might buy you some time, but it will never actually lead to a good outcome for you. Just bite it.

Cloudflare is a tentacle of Left, Inc., and its facade of libertarian attitude is a relic of Old Internet mores which no longer exist and are no longer believed in.

That's just unfalsifiable booing better suited for the other place. "Everything someone does that's aligned with people I hate is evidence of them being a tentacle of The Devil, and everything they do that isn't is just a relic".

"This is unfalsifiable booing", sun declares, seemingly wholly unaware that Cloudflare did in fact just betray all their nominal principles in service to the agenda of Left, Inc.

Yeah, no. It's been falsified. Deal with it.

Being a tentacle would imply that they were one all along.

Whether you want to believe they've always been one, or are only one now, is your prerogative. So long as we're clear that they are.

There are those who have internalized the ideology, and there are those who were forced to bend the knee and say the words, and there are those who say the words not when forced but out of habit. You seem to conflate all those groups into Tentacles. Not very good for your strategy, if true.

Those who say the words are my enemy. Those who bend the knee are my enemy. Those who internalized it are my enemy. I don't care about inscrutable motives and complicated internal states - I care about what you actually do.

Cloudflare booted Kiwifarms at the behest of Left, Inc. Cloudflare is thus part of Left, Inc, and I will treat them as such. If you want to argue they only did it under duress, that's fine. I don't care. "I'm your friend so long as it's easy" means you're not my friend.

Do you not think the fact that these 'betters' enjoy flexing their power is a weakness that can be exploited, even if you subscribe to a total war mindset?

In theory, sure, you could kowtow to a sadist so they lower their guard. In practice, there's no real way for Kiwifarms to do that to Cloudflare. What would them dropping their guard even look like?

Dropping their guard would theoretically be allowing Kiwifarms to continue to exist while they stealthily exit to another platform, and continue to keep up the same style of discourse that existed there pre-migration.

You mean that thing they've been doing for years, which led to them getting booted anyway. You need to actually make an exit strategy if you're going to do that.

Ahh, I see I am not up to speed on the history of the site. I had no idea that the Cathedral had been so ruthless in its pursuit of internet deviants. This is certainly more troubling than I thought.

I tend to hope that crytographic blockchains will develop to a point where we can have a technological solution to the problem of state censorship, at least for a time. I haven't seen many other promising options myself.

I agree with you that there is a time for violent resistance to a regime, but I still hold that we aren't currently in that position. Things have room to get much worse before I could justify such action.

This was not Kiwifarm's first brush with the specter of censorship and deplatforming. In the past, they've tried to comply, much like how TheMotte on Reddit strove to comply with Anti-Evil Operations. This can indeed buy time, but only a finite quantity.

And that's fine, re: your threshold. I support violence before reaching that point, because once things are super terrible it's much harder to fight back.

But it "proves too much" - if cloudflare was entirely anti-kiwifarms, they would've folded in 2017, surely?

The progressive leviathan will continue to crush, oppress, and destroy, and there is nothing anyone can do to change it from the inside

there are literally multiple different people in cloudflare. Prince is the CEO and as such probably makes decisions, but he does so for reasons, needs to make his people happy, investors, customers, etc.

You know what won't stop Keffals? Fedposting bomb threats. You know what would stop Keffals? Actually doing it. You know what won't sway Prince? Apologizing, groveling, sniveling, accommodating. You know what would? Imposing costs on him as a person.

Actually killing keffals would ... uh ... not help stop progressives? It'd give them way more reason to fight back, while not materially impacting them at all (he's a random trans streamer popular on twitter). You'd argue that the way to stop christians was showing jesus's body really obviously on the cross, making it crystal clear his hands were bleeding, just in case any peasants missed it. Tell the world about john brown, so they learn from his example!

Sucking off your betters so that they can enjoy the sadistic thrill of watching you squirm unhappily might buying a mypillowbuy you some time, but it will never actually lead to a good outcome for you. Just bite it.

Okay, so you're kicked, then you bite. And what happens to dogs that bite? They get put down. This is the strategy - "this dog is dangerous. he bites when we kick him". Provoke the right, use their fighting back as an excuse to totally destroy them. Biting doesn't stop the progressives. Actually taking power would - killing keffals takes as much power away from progressives as calling them 'racist' does

But it "proves too much" - if cloudflare was entirely anti-kiwifarms, they would've folded in 2017, surely?

It's fun to make your enemies squirm. It's fun to make them obey you. It's fun to gather them in one place as a harmless boogeyman you can point to to help conjure up public support and sympathy. Up until they stop being so harmless, and someone actually wants to send a message, at which point there is nothing that can be done.

there are literally multiple different people in cloudflare. Prince is the CEO and as such probably makes decisions, but he does so for reasons, needs to make his people happy, investors, customers, etc.

Agreed. Prince is the most public-facing of the tentacles, not the only one.

Actually killing keffals would ... uh ... not help stop progressives?

I am still unsure to what extent I can advocate political violence here. Suffice to say "if you kill your enemies they win" was silly when Trudeau said it, and it's silly when you say it. You would in fact stop progressivism in its tracks if being a degenerate strongly elevated your risk of death. See: why even the woke don't tend to touch Islam.

I am still unsure to what extent I can advocate political violence here.

We're not going to be as strict as we were on reddit, where we had to consider what an admin might (un)reasonably consider a threat of violence, but that doesn't mean a free reign on fedposting.

Oh, you can rest assured I won't fedpost here. Fedposting is pointless; if you have actual plans, don't publicize them, and if you're recruiting, don't do so online, that's how you get glowies. I am not advocating for any specific, imminent illegal action, but I am asserting the moral and philosophical soundness of accepting violence as a means of conflict resolution.

If you commanded the US military and they took control of every central corporate office, every think tank, every executive agency, the internet, resisting law enforcement, significant courts, et cetera - either by killing or imprisonment (or just lustration) - then, yes, you win.

If you kill keffals, you don't win. It doesn't do anything, besides getting people mad. Keffals is a twitch streamer who posts about being trans on twitter.

You do not need to command a state or a military or a corporate office. Islamic terrorism is effective, consistently effective, because it is personal and unstoppable on a human level. No amount of political or social influence can stop the sheer mind-numbing fear of death that comes from a devoted and violent enemy.

Violence works. It has worked all throughout human history. Violence is the truest and most honest form of conflict resolution that exists, and it cuts through all bullshit. Violence's only downside is that once you commit to it your life is endangered, and so people shy away from it. But if you can cross that threshold, if you can accept you have no future that isn't soaked in your own blood, you can wield a level of power rivaling any President, any dictator, any CEO.

All power is a proxy for violence. At its core, influence of any kind is the ability to have violence inflicted on someone. When you embrace the violence yourself, you are power.

Why are you counting Islamic countries as a success story? I certainly would not want to live in an Islamic country, they have also been beaten by the Cathedral by being forced to a far weaker form of statehood than their natural resources should allow.

For instance, look at Norway - they have similar amounts of natural resources but played along with the progressive beast to some extent, even though they haven't joined the EU formally. Even though they have a much more socialized system, Norway still has a surprising amount of anti-woke thought and is not as censored as the US.

Islamic countries are terrible. Islamic terrorists are remarkably effective at coercing non-Islamic entities into appeasement and craven tolerance. I am praising the latter, not the former.

Do you not think the two are related at all? The violence inherent in Islam is to me the most convincing reason the developed world keeps them at arms length, while still playing lip service to muslims in meaningless woke media.

The world has had plenty of violent empires and states. The flaws of the Islamic world come from its people, violent or not.

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No amount of political or social influence can stop the sheer mind-numbing fear of death that comes from a devoted and violent enemy

yeah, and the same applies to the right, except worse because the progs control the state or whatever, so they just use the entire power of the state as the justified violent enemy to suppress the right. Guerilla movements only work because there isn't will to violently suppress them. And if rightoids start suicide bombing innocent trans people, there will be will to suppress them!

Yes, that's war. People on both sides die. It's why we use proxies, so that people don't have to die en masse. But the more faith in the proxies falters, the more one side dominates the processes and subverts the systems, the more reason there is to abandon the proxies.

I've said elsewhere we will not have a second Civil War. I stand by that. But we will have violent troubles.

right, and if you manage to convince the US military to do a right-wing coup (not possible itself), it'd be fine. but the point is - you suicide bomb, the state imprisons you and your friends, you don't get special treatment like hitler did or the communists did because nobody in the state wants to protect you, you lose. Nothing is accomplished - being gay was illegal 100 years ago and they still fought for it, a few terrorist threats aren't quite enough to win here. what's the point?

Islamic terrorists haven't convinced any foreign states to perform a pro-Islamic coup, yet nevertheless they have a chilling effect on their detractors, who will often twist themselves into pretzels performing apologetics.

You do not need to overthrow a state. You only ever need to hurt and frighten specific individuals in it to influence the collective entity.

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