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 -
Let's talk about Israel and Palestine.
Okay, I can hear you sighing already. But before you look away, let's talk about Clausewitz.
War is a continuation of politics by other means. In our ideological age, where everything is political, it may not seem profound: but it establishes a commonality between the military and civilian where analogies can be made. Like, 'what if we have no ability to fight a war, but continue it anyway?' Could we just... filibuster, our enemies, until they give us the political ends we desire?
This concept is similar to the Trotskyite concept of 'no war, no peace'. (That the policy ended in disaster and Brest-Litovsk bodes ill.) In the Clausewitzian model, war is conducted between states. The loser gives concessions to the winner, with the assumption that even a bad peace is better than a bad war, that ending hostilities - even for the moment - is the best way to bring about revanchist policy.
The differential between Palestine and Israel in terms of military capacity is greater than ever: it was never at par, even in 1948. Seventy-five years later and the Arabs might as well be Ewoks against the Empire. Not to say that they lack the capacity to harm the Israelis, but they have no military capacity to enforce political goals on their enemy. Even now, their demands for a ceasefire are entirely one sided: they are simply outmatched in every conceivable military dimension.
There exists a hope in the Palestinian cause, that there will be a tipping point where they can present to the international community of some Israeli atrocity that will bring about a external intervention. It is the only card they have to play. But now that Israel has control of the food aid that goes into Gaza with the ousting of UNWRA, time is no longer on their side. Their enemy will never consent to a return to the former status quo, no matter how urgently the international community chastises them.
Not coming to terms and holding on for maximalist goals may seem like a cheat in insurgency warfare. But inevitably, reality and physical limits intrude onto the nationalist fantasy. It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people. This conflict - indefinitely sustained by Soviet leftist dregs of the anti-colonialist cause - will come to an end not through some master stroke of diplomacy, but a famine long in the making.
Hamas sought to use international sympathy as a weapon, relying on the services provided by American and European NGOs so that they could devote all the funds they neglected to invest in their civilians into their military. Now that military is destroyed, they have no leverage at all. The Israelis are not bluffing. They will not give in, no matter what the pressure. They are perfectly willing to watch Gaza starve until some entity comes out of the territory that they can negotiate with.
As Calgacus would say, "They make a desert and call it peace." Modern problems require Roman solutions. The fatal Palestinian mistake was that they always assumed Israel would come to the negotiating table. After fifty years of fruitless negotiation, the Israelis finally have had enough. There will be no more deals, no more bargains. Just the short, terminal drop to destruction.
The Israelis have been holding the wolf by the ears for 77 years and it looks like they are shifting the hands to the neck. I understand their position: they sincerely believe than any bargain with the Palestinians will only be a stepping point to the final item on the list:
The real problem is that no one is willing to step up and threaten to glass the country that will violate the peace terms first. This means both Israel and Palestine are completely free to defect, unlike Yugoslavs in B&H.
This is a classic slippery slope fallacy. If you think there are good reasons why, for example, you'd easily slide from bullet point 2 to bullet point 3, please state them. If not, this is a bad argument. Why on earth would a two-state solution, once established 'backslide' into something else? Makes no sense! Much less the Palestinians doing so, because the last 20 years or so it's been Israel, objectively, that has been deliberately trying to move and wiggle the borders more to their liking - so if anyone should be worried about a slippery slope, it's the Palestinians?
But slopes are slippery! It's the literal, physical nature of a slope (and the relationship between static and kinetic friction) that, once you start to move down one, you tend to continue. The argument is, I suppose, that a lot of things people treat like slopes really aren't... but aren't they? I'm struggling to think of a case where a political movement, having achieved its proximal objective, declares victory and goes home. Actually, I'm not just struggling; the idea is absurd. Individuals can do that; amorphous groups never can.
Victory draws interest because everyone loves a winner, and to divide up the spoils -- power, but mostly cachet -- you get purity tests, which rapidly become purity spirals. The intra-group dynamics drive the inter-group dynamics: if you don't keep pushing for more, you get pushed out. This is what we see in real life: victory only emboldens movements, and a couple decades down the line, they're demanding things their forebears' mocked as slippery slope arguments. They reach and reach until, finally, the public's patience runs out... then their opponents get a turn.
(This is just one mechanism. There are others.)
The civil rights movement, the moral majority, the LGBT movement, anti-communism, progressivism, interventionism; just a handful of the many, many examples from recent history.
To put it in concrete terms: obviously bullet point 2 makes bullet point 3 more likely. Well, I very much doubt it'll follow such a clean progression; there's generally more momentum to these things. Palestinians don't exactly hide the fact that a supermajority want the last point; how could letting them organize and regroup not make it more likely? It might still be unlikely -- not like any of the other Arab nations have proven able to enforce their will on Israel -- but I think it's very hard to argue it would become less likely.
But, you argue, isn't Israeli oppression a slippery slope too? If Palestine just lets Israel establish settlements in the West Bank (or whatever), doesn't that just make more thorough depredations more likely? Yes! Both sides accuse the other of starting down a slippery slope, and both are right!
(You frame this as 'backsliding' from the two state solution; because you think it's more fair, presumably? But why would Palestine see it that way? Backsliding would moving towards an Israeli-controlled single state. A Palestinian-controlled single state would, obviously, be continuing to slide forward down the same slope: Palestine achieving it's goals.)
In Germany, the Nazis rose in large part to oppose the communists, who were, at the time, the dominant political force in the country (not in terms of votes, certainly, but in terms of organization and political violence. Which was, after all, their stated path to victory). Then the Nazis, having achieved power, ruthlessly suppressed the communists; they would do the same to them if they got the chance, they said. Which was thoroughly borne out the moment the communists did get the chance!
So how, in this model, can de-escalation ever occur? Well, one side can wipe the other out, either literally or in terms of group membership; this is how the conflict between slave owners and abolitionists ended, for example. But true de-escalation mainly happens when both sides lose, I think. The Good Friday Agreement was a tacit admission from both sides that neither could achieve their full aims. And sometimes, when the swings are too quick and dramatic, the public can simultaneously lose patience with both.
And in-between, specific groups can. This wasn't the group I was looking for, but in 2015 a group called Freedom To Marry shut itself down:
And, proving your point:
Yeah, a real organization with rigid, non-democratic decision making processes can avoid this dynamic, at least so long as those processes hold. Japan's surrender in WWII is instructive, here: There was a cabal of officers who tried to prevent the surrender, but discipline held and they were rebuffed. The difference with amorphous groups is that there's just no one who can do the rebuffing; 'leaders' last only so long as the rest of the movement deigns to listen to them.
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