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 -
SS says a lot of pretty nakedly racist things, but man, a screed defending a literal call to abolish the White race that ends in claiming the desire to protect one's culture and homeland from foreign replacement is some vile thing -- as if literally every people don't want to do that, as if it wouldn't be considered mad, bigoted offense to promote this same replacement for minority groups -- is quite possibly the only situation where Secure sounds more sympathetic than the person he's arguing with.
Again, I’m not saying that Ignatiev’s beliefs are good — I oppose pretty much every aspect of his worldview — but simply that they are sincere and internally consistent. They’re not hypocritical. He doesn’t appear to want any special carve-out for Jewish people, nor does he seem to have any special affinity for Jewishness on account of his own personal ancestral background.
Like, yes, many Jews, Ignatiev himself, are hardcore believers in deracinated progressive abolishment of blood ties. So are many non-Jews! If you want to oppose their beliefs — and I do! — it is a useless distraction to try and smoke them out as secret Zionist special-pleading hypocrites. We can just oppose their actual stated beliefs, which are bad enough, instead of grasping at straws to call them liars.
Oh, yes, assuredly. Ignatiev's creed is abominable, but so long as he also supports the dissolution of Israel and Black identity or whatever, he's evil for non-hypocrisy reasons. That's a thing SS is good at: finding a lot of evil Jews. The problem is they're mostly evil Jews, whereas he thinks they're evil Jews.
It's rough! Ignatiev's beliefs are awful. But not Jewishly awful. Still, SS is more sympathetic than Ignatiev.
Do you think Ignatiev is motivated by his Jewish identity to any significant extent, or that his cultural output is influenced by his cultural and genetic heritage? If so, then it's not just- he's evil and he happens to be a Jew. My position is that he's neither good nor evil- he's a Jew.
I think everyone is motivated to some extent by their identity and environment, but I don't think Ignatiev's evil is motivated by his Jewish identity. He's embraced globohomo, not Jewish Supremacy, far as I can tell -- but I don't know the man outside of this quote everyone's been debating, so if you have something else condemning him, by all means share. It wouldn't be hard to persuade me against him, I think he's obviously a piece of shit.
And unlike you, I would call him evil.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well, the problem is for SS, all Jews (modulo some tiny fringe who agree with him that yes indeed, we Jews are awful!) are evil.
Eh. They both basically want to eliminate their outgroup. I suspect Ignatiev's agenda is probably not literally exterminationist, so fwiw I find him more sympathetic, but that's like choosing which woman on The View is more intelligent.
Do you think Ignatiev's ideology is that "all white people are awful?" I don't think that's his ideology. I think he's hostile to White Identity.
It's so telling that you are so charitable to Ignatiev when I have never spoken rhetoric nearly as inflammatory as Ignatiev in his statements on the White race. But you still interpret his philosophy openly calling for the end of the white race with so much more charity than my cultural criticism of Jewish behavior in American society.
When it comes to Jews, it's not possible to simply oppose them politically and culturally. You have to be an exterminationist if you oppose Jews politically. You can't just oppose their influence in culture and academia and foreign policy, if you criticize them it means you want them all killed. Only for Jews though. This is the hysterical bullshit standard you enforce in every single reply to me Amadan, but don't at all apply to a Jew who openly calls for ending the white race by any means necessary.
Yes, that is exactly what I said.
I think Ignatiev distinguishes between white identity and the white race. Whether you or I find that distinction meaningful is irrelevant to understanding what his meaning is. Lots of non-Jewish white people in the woke movement say exactly the same thing. I have, in fact, heard some white people unironically say the white race should be allowed to go extinct (and a few loons even suggesting more direct and immediate measures), but they are pretty far out on the fringes and not what most of these people mean.
I'm "charitable" in the sense we are supposed to be charitable to views we disagree with here on the Motte, which means not straw manning, eliding context, or characterizing someone as saying something they didn't say. I don't think Ignatiev is calling for the end of the white race, in the sense that white people will no longer exist. And I think you know this and you are being dishonest in claiming you believe that's what he's saying.
If all you said was "Jews have disproportionate power in politics," I wouldn't disagree with you factually, though I'd still want to know what specific remedies you advocate and why you think it is specifically a problem. But come now, SS, you tactically hide your power level but your agenda is not merely JAQing about why so many Jews.
If you are constantly talking about how one particular ethnic group is a threat, how their values are hostile to ours, and how almost every member of that group is driven to behave in a certain fashion, yes, it leads me to strongly suspect that your actual agenda is exterminationist, because if you really believe all the things you say about Jews, it would be irrational not to be.
If you want us to believe that Jews are parasites undermining our civilization and we cannot peacefully coexist with them, but you don't want them dead, you just want to... you know, raise awareness, well, you're either treating your audience like chumps or you're unwilling to follow your own logic to its logical conclusion, and I don't believe for a second it's the latter.
The notion I hide my power level is absurd. I'm very open that I view the dynamic between Jews and White Gentiles to be a very profound, long-standing cultural and political conflict that is even deeply rooted in the Jewish religion itself. Ignatiev is just a figment of that conflict. But what gets annoying is that you won't allow me to simply recognize a political or cultural adversary as such. I have to be an exterminationist hiding my power level. Yes, they are a threat obviously. But acknowledging and engaging a threat is not the same thing as being an exterminationist. I don't think the USG wants to kill all the Iranians even though the USG considers them to be a threat.
I wouldn't even say about Jewish identity what Ignatiev says about White identity. I don't call for the end of Jewish identity but the renaissance of European identity, and that's not simply because I'm hiding my power level. I do accept the reality that Jewish influence in politics and culture is a huge counterforce to any political or cultural effort to achieve that, with Ignatiev only being one of many examples of Jewish academics pathologizing White racial identity while declaring strong opposition to anti-Semitism. But on the other end of the political spectrum you have Ben Shapiro who is also opposed to White identity.
What are we to make of the fact that two figures so politically divergent as Ignatiev and Shapiro still oppose White identity and strongly support Jewish identity?
I mean, in one sense, sure. Everybody who pays any attention to you knows exactly what you are, and your very username is a coded reference to it.
In another sense... well, I did actually take a look a while back, and you do seem to have made a very consistent attempt to retain one last shred of totally-implausible deniability. You always slide around the accusation of being a neo-Nazi - you never deny it, but you've never actually confirmed it either. And in this very exchange, you have slid around the accusation of wanting the Jews dead; you didn't confirm it, and you threw shade at @Amadan for presuming it, but you carefully didn't actually deny it either.
So the scouter on you reads 8950 instead of 9001. Yes, certainly, 8950 isn't very much lower than 9001, but you are still hiding those last few points of your power level for some reason (the most charitable such explanation being that there are legal ramifications to you saying the magic words).
I have denied being a "neo-Nazi", although I accept that in common parlance "anti-Semitic White identitarian" is the operative definition of neo-Nazi, and if that's the definition then sure? National Socialism is a defunct pan-German nationalist movement, I don't identify with it and I don't support German nationalism or any petty European nationalism.
Yes, everybody here does know my views because I don't hide them. The accusation that I secretly want all the Jews killed just because I give cultural criticism towards Jews in a similar nature as Jews like Ignatiev constantly levy against whites is simply your attempt to enforce a social consensus making any criticism of Jews taboo. I reject your social consensus, I have and will engage in critique of Jewish identity in behavior in similar nature and measure as Jews do towards Whites. I'm not hiding any beliefs.
The notion that I criticize Jewish identity and behavior and people like you hysterically yell that I secretly want to kill all the Jews is a byproduct of the exact cultural forces I am criticizing. You can't accept that I just have a political and cultural opposition to their influence in politics and culture, that's impossible in your mind. And instead of arguing against my opposition you attack positions I don't hold and claim I secretly hold them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You don't hide that. You hide your final solution. You talk and talk about how "Jews are a threat." Okay, what should we do about this threat? (SS posts more random stuff about how some Jew did something, see how threatening they are, and look! Israel!) How do you want to acknowledge and engage this threat?
Gentiles are not at war with Jews. Neither are a nation. If by analogy you think we should be bombing the Jews' infrastructure to deprive them of offensive capabilities, so to speak, how would you propose to do that?
Cool, I am a white person with Russian, German Jewish, Irish, Scottish, English, and Norwegian ancestry and (according to DNA testing, much to my surprise) about 20% random North African, Southwest Asian, and Turkish admixture. How should I identify? Am I Jew because of my Jew blood, even though my entire family is physically and culturally WASP? Do I get to count as white? Which side should I take in the wars to come?
NB: while I'm pretty sure you meant that Jews aren't a country, Jews do fit the primary definition of "nation" pretty well.
(Obviously, Gentiles do not.)
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