site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Neo-Nazis: you're right, not many of them.

Trump: Trump is complicated because most Mottizens are not Trumpists, but a lot of Mottizens tend to downvote anti-Trump views because they associate it with SJ. Anti-SJ posts that also disparage Trump (particularly on a personal level) are eaten up with gusto; I have one at +17/-0.

"Right-wing extremists": it really, really depends on how you define it. The big stumbling block here is racism: obviously there are a vast number of possible views on "what genetic racial disparities in cognition/personality exist and what should we do about them", but according to SJ and much of the centre, literally any view on the topic other than "all numbers are zero" is automatically far-right extremism. And, well, "all numbers are zero" is quite an unpopular view here; it's outnumbered well over 2:1.

(Heck, they'd likely consider me far-right due to this, which is hilarious since I'm also a socialist.)

If you remove that one particular third rail... it still depends on definition (including whether your definition of "liberal" is the insane modern US one or the etymological one; there are a lot more Actual Liberals than there are SJers). There are more Actual Liberals here than there are ethnostate advocates; there are less SJers than there are people who think major reforms are needed to dismantle SJ; there are probably more SJers than people in favour of chucking bombs at SJers.

Out of pure curiosity, would you consider yourself an id-pol type socialist (in that you think most ideological warfare stuff diverts attention from the true more important class and economics issues, whether on purpose or not), more of a regular political person with a sufficient number of specifically socialist views, a Democratic Socialist type who is mostly a 'liberal' and/or 'capitalist' but likes bigger social safety nets, or a more communist-socialist type? If I'm even capturing the variety right. <Edit: oops you mentioned command-economy below. I have questions: does that imply anything about desirable state political structure? But maybe that would be better for a different post. Maybe stick your neck out and do a top level 'perspective' post sometime :)>

At least in terms of the Motte breakdown I dunno about the exact proportions but I will say that people in general have a wider range of sometimes grab-bag opinions than the classic models might predict. I don't think it necessarily follows that 'everyone is a hypocrite on something' but it's certainly not correct that most people have some kind of rigid political philosophy (even if the ones who do often have the most interesting posts!)

I've been inactive for a hot minute, but the last time I was involved in a big HBD hullabaloo the most common position (hard to tell if it was actually a majority) was something like: "HBD is real and the societal solution to that is something like Classical Liberal Individualism." So nicely enough if you're already of a Classical Liberal bent then it's a solved problem either way.

(Obviously, with all due respect, fuck socialism tho. Historically, it's Western Socialists being out of step to think socialism and racism are somehow at odds. The Russians and the Chinese were/are far from race egalitarians.)

Obviously the ethnostate types don't need HBD to be real to justify their preferences. Real race scientists know how to distinguish the "good" whites from the "less good" ones, anyway. And, at a minimum, East Asians and Jews (boo hiss) are pretty swell by any objective measure of HBD I'm aware of.

Being an SJer and open-minded enough for debating core tenets is a rare combo.

I've been inactive for a hot minute, but the last time I was involved in a big HBD hullabaloo the most common position (hard to tell if it was actually a majority) was something like: "HBD is real and the societal solution to that is something like Classical Liberal Individualism."

Still pretty common.

Obviously, with all due respect, fuck socialism tho.

Just so we're clear, when I say I'm a socialist I'm saying I support at least a large degree of command economy. I'm not saying I want a totalitarian one-party state.

If you're still saying "fuck that", okay, fine. I just want to be sure we're communicating effectively.

Oh we don't have to start an econ flame war here. Usually, when someone unironically uses the phrase "socialist" they do mean some kind of actual Marxist. And while I believe you that you do not support totalitarianism, the problem is that, empirically, a "large degree of command economy" instituted under Marxist ideology turns into a totalitarian nightmare.

If it's the kinder gentler kind of non-Marxist socialism it just leads to economic stagnation. Not nearly as bad.