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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   28653 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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That's not what I meant, Im not even that frequent a commenter here these days.

Just defending that the moderation policy isn't really along a left/right divide.

I'd say rather, it's biased against arguments that amount to 'You are moral monster and cannot be tolerated'. This was, at least online, pretty strongly associated with the progressive advance over the last decade, so I thikn reaction against this gets pattern matched to reaction against leftism.

But 3 recent moderation debates have been around:

Alexader Turok: sneering contempt for populist conservatives, from a viewpoint within the general 'right', but a libertarian/EHC perspective.

Burdensome Count: moral outrage against American nationalism from a globalist, EHC perspective, though socially somewhat conservative

Contra Whinning Coil: somebody flaming out because Whinning Coil was allowed to express racist views.

The third was kind of liberal adjacent? But more like centrist disgust at racialist remarks. All three kerfuffles though, were not about left/right, but about reacting to an argument that amounts to 'how dare they!'

To be super clear, I also flamed out of here several years ago, because I too hold some how dare they views. I don't agree with the general philosophical aims of theMotte, and think it is founded in self-destructive tolerance-maxxing. I do not agree with the axiomatic viewpoints that found the philosophy of the motte and it;s moderation.

But I simply defend that it's not left-vs-right.

Contra Whinning Coil: somebody flaming out because Whinning Coil was allowed to express racist views.

On this, it's not always just the racism element, more that what the mods appear to be selecting for is having a line of how much contempt you are allowed to give off when expressing a view. This seems mostly with the goal of preventing the forum from becoming trading insults back and forth.

Some positions inherently come with animus. There's a reason I scroll past the HBD discussions. But there are times I feel that users get away with a little more spice against groups that aren't typically here than if those groups were here, such as when feminism comes up.

This is a good point and, I think, a big reason why the mods are now levying permanent ban warnings against WhiningCoil. Every time he goes as far as he did last time, he causes a wave of discontent and many people have a hard time reacting to him civilly. The more inflammatory he gets, the more it's unreasonable to turn a blind eye to him but not to the people responding to him. I do not envy the moderators on decisions like this, because he's posted many a good post.

this is all fair, I think. But it's aside my point that BC and AT weren't banned for leftism. They both come from a particular EHC right pov.

I agree that BC and AT weren't banned for leftism.

I was more saying that the forum can be perceived as a "right wing secret club" because, for example, a feminist might consider some of the writings about feminism to be boo outgroup, only there are no feminists here. Whereas a comment that is around the line of boo outgroup towards the right will be read by many people who are right leaning, so there are many more chances for an individual reading it to decide that it is over the line and create a hostile discussion.

This isn't necessarily an insult against the mods, because it is admittedly hard to decide when things are right on the line.

FWIW I've been warned by the mods here a couple times for not being sufficiently charitable towards feminists, and I didn't think what I had written was particularly unkind.

I was more saying that the forum can be perceived as a "right wing secret club" because, for example, a feminist might consider some of the writings about feminism to be boo outgroup, only there are no feminists here.

To some extent this is grounded in the objective facts of the matter. We were chased off of two different subreddits because we allowed discussion of controversial views. The controversial views that the authorities took issue with were, invariably, right wing.

The mods try their best to be neutral but they’re only human. There is a set of consensus views here, that does affect the moderation and it affects how users perceive different types of posts, and that’s simply going to be an unavoidable fact of any discussion space you ever enter ever.

Contra Whinning Coil: somebody flaming out because Whinning Coil was allowed to express racist views.

Oh, come now. I could just as easily frame it as Turok and Count were banned because someone was allowed to criticize MAGAs and their feelings were getting hurt. Or are you going to argue that Whiningcoil (and many others!) is habitually more charitable and 'arguing to understand, rather than wage the culture war' than either of those two? I can provide receipts if you like but I assume we can both find better things to do with our time.

People got mad at WC for 1 sentence. His sin was failing to flatter our sacred sensibilities about race. That sentence was NOT saying "outsiders [to White society] are bad" it was saying "outsiders [to the family] are bad." The traditional deference to race is to triple-proofread your post to ensure it can't be misinterpreted in a bad way.

AT and (to a lesser extent) BC write paragraphs of emotion-slop that shouts the vibe on a neon sign. As far as I know, nobody is misinterpreting what they say though. Indeed, with AT and BC often time the vibe is the point.

I think you misunderstand me. I was somewhat flippant because I didn't follow that one super closely, and don't remember the upset user in question. My point is more generally that the Motte's moderation philosophy is against 'moral monsters, end of story' framing. this framing was associated more with the left for the past decade, thus why places like the motte exist, and don't exist on Reddit, pre-Musk twitter etc.

But when Turok and Count jumped in, they didn't do it from the left, and the pattern matching of 'the Motte bans leftists' is incorrect.

Fuck bigots, fuck white people, and fuck low human capital, all get banned for a reason other than political association.

I will concede that 'fuck HBD deniers' seems to get a special pass on this space as some kind of legacy protection

Charitability isn't the only thing that is being measured in any ban. I was just re-reading this post and its replies, in rehashing some old drama to satisfy myself, and there is a reply from Zorba below, to something else that I'm not sure what it was:

I want to be really clear on why it's a warning, though. It's a warning because you have a stellar track record. If you were a new user, this would probably be a quiet remove-post-and-ban; there are people coming from dedicated troll subreddits who are making better posts than this and still earning bans for them. You've been a spectacular long-term contributor, and that gives you a considerable amount of leeway, but not infinite; our ban lists are littered with people who made great post after great post, then some switch got flipped and they turned toxic overnight and now they're permabanned.

Rightly or wrongly, WhiningCoil has a bunch of AAQCs and is generally upvoted and considered a quality, if provocative, user. I can't really think of anyone who thinks the same of AlexanderTurok or BurdensomeCount, even on the left. Do they provide good steelmans of their own side? Seems like they don't, or you'd get more left-leaning posters defending their posts, or you'd get the more even-handed moderators giving more nuanced opinions of how they view the posts. If you've read a lot of moderator warnings, you see that they show their homework when giving any warning or ban.

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