site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 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.

Oh I see, in that case yeah

This conflict is so funny in that it seems to turn people's brains off way harder than other ones (on both sides).

It's so nakedly partisan if someone isn't blaming every side for the 100+ years of tit for tat revenge.

I used to think there was a solution and I don't anymore. The Isreali's and the Palestinian's deserve each other.

I do assign Isreal a larger share of the responsibility to end it these days though, given they have so much more power. There's also something so amazing about saving them from the Holocaust only for them to immediately go start kicking someone smaller than them, you'd think of all the people they'd be marginally more sympathetic lol.

I've never found comparisons between how the Nazis treated the Jews and how the Israelis treat(ed) the Palestinians to be even remotely persuasive. The Holocaust was cold-hearted systemic murder on an industrial scale, whereas the Israel-Palestine conflict looks exactly like every other interminable conflict in the Middle East or North Africa for the last ~100 years. Even the much-ballyhooed apartheid legislation in Israel, in which Palestinians are subject to different legislation to Israelis, is also true of e.g. Syria.

The Holocaust was obviously worse. It just contrasts extremely poorly when part of the founding mythos of the country is "we need a save haven for our people, who have suffered greatly" and then you look and Gazans are dying of malnutrition and preventable diseases purely because the Isreali's won't let food in.

History doesn't repeat, but it's definitely rhyming.

Random not very related thought, but the exact same logic applies more broadly to the hardcore lefty's, who are also the more irrational pro-palestinians. They all claim they hate the structures of power that perpetuate racism or sexism , but they don't actually dislike the structure, they just want their people at the top of it. Makes it hard to take them seriously.

In your estimation, how many Palestinians have died of malnutrition and preventable illness since this war began?

I did some googling and actually much less than I would have expected. Common L for clickbait media. Good to know though, kinetic deaths feel slightly less gruesome.

I guess I'll amend my sentence above to "and then you look and Gazan civilians are being killed at close to a 30:1 ratio, with no clear end in sight and a guarantee that once the newest generation of traumatized kids grows up, this will happen all over again".