site banner
PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   29559 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think that while Stalin is rightfully reviled, Hitler and his movement set a new cultural standard for evilness.

This is an interesting phrase; it's accurate at the surface level, and also revealing in its accuracy upon scrutiny. It is more than evident that Hitler and his movement set a new cultural standard for evilness.

Cultural.

...Personally, I simply note that, by my standards, many and perhaps most people fail this particular test of humanity, and downgrade my understanding of humans and human society accordingly. The way leftists talk about fascists and fascism is, to me, a reasonably accurate working hypothesis of what most of you out there, the population in general, are really like. Maybe you can be reasoned with, or coerced. Maybe you need to have fire dropped on your cities in industrial quantities. Time will tell, and we all have it coming in the end.

I don't want to dwell too much on this topic, but could it be that these more horrific types of tortures were limited to just a handful of people and the rest were summarily executed?

Nah. Not just the cruelty, but the complicity, was the point. Clinical and targeted actions by a minority would be counter-revolutionary.

Part of revolutionary terror theory is that it's not just about killing the individuals, but destroying the society they were a part of in a way that it cannot come back from. You secure the revolution by preventing counter-revolution, and you can prevent the counter-revolution by making would-be counter-revolutionaries complicit in the revolution, so that its loss would lose them.

Part of that, in turn, was encouraging/pressuring/coercing other members of society into complicity. In more 'civilized' / stable communist societies, this entailed the use of domestic surveillance states where people spied on friends/family/other breaks of social trust that- if revealed- would ruin their ability to operate outside of the state. In revolutionary terror periods, more direct violence, often mob violence, is the way to build complicity on the perpetrators. People who partake in public violence/torture/etc. with the sanction of the state against public enemies are not only unlikely to turn against the state, but are also more likely to rationalize that what the state does is morally justified and not worth bringing to just account, for what the state did was what they did and people tend to rather rationalize their actions than want to confess and condemn themselves.

Both extremes- 'mere' surveillance state participation or revolutionary terror- work on the same principle of breaking down social trust in favor of the state. The crime / moral violation forever separates people from their victims, who are the other part of society. Who can re-trust a spouse or friend they knew betrayed their most secret trusts? Who will trust a promise to agree to disagree from someone who split another's head open for ideological failure? Once you do an indisputably unjust thing in service of the unjust state, that makes you both an accomplice of the state and having an interest in maintaining it against the people who would bring it to account, for justice against it could also mean justice against you.

This tendency works better the more of the population you turn against the rest, and the more extreme the injustice. If it were 'just a handful of people,' then the crimes of the revolution could be projected/shifted to that tiny minority, and by proxy 'absolve' the rest. This is counter-revolutionary, because the goal of the revolution is to claim and change the people, not give them an easy target and rationalization for rejecting the revolution.

Having read many books and papers about the acts of communist regimes, lots of brutal and frankly sadistic executions are pretty par for the course. The best books I've read on the topic contain such a large number of casual documentations of atrocities that one feels sick for hours afterwards.

One of the most stomach-churning books I've ever read is about the Great Leap Forward, written by a scholar who had lived through it and somehow toed the party line throughout (realised the whole thing was rotten afterwards). Here is one of the many sections of the book that calmly lists off reams upon reams of atrocities inflicted on the populace:

Excessively high requisition quotas made procurement difficult. If farmers were unable to hand over the required amount, the government would accuse production teams of concealing grain. A “struggle between the two roads” (of socialism and capitalism) was launched to counteract the alleged withholding of grain. This campaign used political pressure, mental torture, and ruthless violence to extort every last kernel of grain or seed from the peasants. Anyone who uttered the slightest protest was beaten, sometimes fatally.

At the end of September 1959, Wang Pinggui, a member of the Wangxiaowan production team, was forced to hand over grain kept in his home, and was beaten with a shoulder pole, dying of his injuries five days later. Not long after Wang’s death, the rest of his four-member household died of starvation.

In October 1959, Luo Mingzhu of the Luowan production team, upon failing to hand over any grain, was bound and suspended in mid-air and beaten, then doused with ice-cold water. He died the next day.

On October 13, 1959, Wang Taishu of the Chenwan production team, upon failing to hand over any grain, was bound and beaten with shoulder poles and rods, dying four days later. His fourteen-year-old daughter, Wang Pingrong, subsequently died of starvation.

On October 15, 1959, Zhang Zhirong of the Xiongwan production team, upon failing to hand over any grain, was bound and beaten to death with kindling and poles. The brigade’s cadre used tongs to insert rice and soya beans into the deceased’s anus while shouting, “Now you can grow grain out of your corpse!” Zhang left behind children aged eight and ten who subsequently died of starvation.

On October 19, 1959, Chenwan production team member Chen Xiaojia and his son Chen Guihou were hung from the beam of the communal dining hall when they failed to hand over any grain. They were beaten and doused with cold water, both dying within seven days. Two small children who survived them eventually died of starvation.

On October 24, 1959, the married couple Zheng Jinhou and Luo Mingying of the Yanwan production team had 28 silver coins seized from their home during the campaign and were beaten to death. Their three children, left without anyone to care for them, starved to death.

On November 8, 1959, Xu Chuanzheng of the Xiongwan production team was falsely accused of withholding grain. He was hung from the beam of the communal dining hall and brutally beaten, dying six days later. The six family members who survived him subsequently starved to death.

On November 8, 1959, Zhong Xingjian of the Yanwan production team was accused of “defying the leadership,” and a cadre hacked him to death with an ax.

And:

In the calamity at Guangshan County’s Huaidian people’s commune in the autumn of 1959, the commune’s average yield per mu was 86 kilos, for a total of 5.955 million kilos. The commune’s party committee reported a yield of 313 kilos per mu, for a total of 23.05 million kilos. The procurement quota set by the county was 6 million kilos, which exceeded the commune’s total grain yield. In order to achieve the procurement quota, every means had to be taken to oppose false reporting and private withholding, and every scrap of food had to be seized from the masses. The final procurement was 5.185 million kilos. All of the communal kitchens were closed down, and deaths followed. Liu Wencai and the commune party committee attributed the kitchen closures and deaths to attacks by well-to-do middle peasants and sabotage by class enemies, and to the struggle between the two paths of socialism and capitalism. They continued the campaign against false reporting and private withholding for eight months. Within sixty or seventy days not a kernel of grain could be found anywhere, and mass starvation followed.

The commune originally numbered 36,691 members in 8,027 households. Between September 1959 and June 1960, 12,134 people died (among them, 7,013 males and 5,121 females), constituting 33 percent of the total population. There were 780 households completely extinguished, making up 9.7 percent of all households. The village of Jiangwan originally had 45 inhabitants, but 44 of them died, leaving behind only one woman in her sixties, who went insane.

There was a total of 1,510 cadres at the commune, brigade, and production team level, and 628, or 45.1 percent, took part in beatings. The number beaten totaled 3,528 (among them 231 cadres), with 558 dying while being beaten, 636 dying subsequently, another 141 left permanently disabled, 14 driven to commit suicide, and 43 driven away.

Apart from the standard abuse of beating, kicking, exposure, and starvation, there were dozens of other extremely cruel forms of torture, including dousing the head with cold water, tearing out hair, cutting off ears, driving bamboo strips into the palms, driving pine needles into the gums, “lighting the celestial lantern,” forcing lit embers into the mouth, branding the nipples, tearing out pubic hair, penetrating the genitals, and being buried alive.

When thirteen children arrived at the commune begging for food, the commune’s party secretary, surnamed Jiang, along with others incited kitchen staff to drag them deep into the mountains, where they were left to die of hunger and exposure.

With no means of escaping a hopeless situation, ordinary people could not adequately look after their own. Families were scattered to the winds, children abandoned, and corpses left along the roadside to rot. As a result of the extreme deprivations of starvation, 381 commune members desecrated 134 corpses.

This is all just from the first chapter.

Given this, not very many of the events that @FCfromSSC has quoted strike me as particularly fantastical. I've stopped reading these since; looking at things like the Khmer Rouge grabbing infants by their legs and smashing their heads against trees until they died (to prevent them from taking revenge for their parents) tends to give one a thousand-mile stare for the ages. It's certainly contributed to my (already intense) misanthropy.

Maybe I'm tired and not understanding correctly, but your use of the collective 'you' is reading to me as linking to both the perpetrator and victim of firebombing alike- or possibly both, as in someone deserving firebombing.

Might I ask you to reword this for clarity?

In the above statement, "You" is a generalized label for the people who have internalized the belief that "Naziism set a new cultural standard for evil". It seems evident that this is a considerable portion of the general population.

You, Dean in particular, are doubtless familiar with Progressive discourse about "fascists" and "fascism". I expect you are also familiar with the sort of person who believes that the North was far, far too lenient with the South in the American Civil War, and expresses the wish that far harsher measures had been employed to eradicate the scourge of slavery and the ideology that gave rise to it. The way such discourse frames "fascists" individually, the structures of "fascism" generally, and the lessons it draws from the aftermath of the American Civil War are reasonable analogues to how I regard the aforementioned considerable portion of the general population.

Such people have learned nothing of consequence from the disasters of the 20th century, and it seems likely to me that they will consequently repeat and thus suffer those disasters again in this century. Nothing has changed. This should not be surprising. Humans inevitably human.

"We all have it coming" should be self-explanatory. I also am a human, and am not sufficiently righteous to reasonably claim exemption from the Dresden treatment.

Thank you for providing an elaboration at request. (And that is a sincere thank you. An ! would feel flippant, but the gratitude is meant.)

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats