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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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NY Mag published a piece defending Yoel Roth from Musk's "smears", declaring that Musk "falsely implied" that Roth had advocated for normalising child sexualisation in his old tweets.

Turns out, he's apparently a Zionist too! Wonder how this will sit with sections of the left rigorously defending Roth knowing that he probably lobbies for an apartheid state, or the rigorously pro-Israel right exposing his bizarre tweets. And I doubt Musk is in any way interested in exposing the Israeli lobby.

It's not like Musk, specifically, has a history of insulting people by calling them pedophiles, right? It has been fascinating watching certain parts of right wing politics re-invent a Satanic Panic about Pedophilia over the last couple years.

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It's interesting how this particular manner of writing is common among people who are vaguely "conspiracy theorists", or who are vaguely but ominously musing about dark, shadowy conspiracies.

Very frequent line breaks, jumping from topic to topic, a narrative/story-like flow, vague hints.

[not saying this as evidence your points are wrong, good points are sometimes made with weird modes of speaking, but association is strong]

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There's been at least two elite pedophile conspiracies that have come to light that are rather .. solid- the Dutroux affair, and the Pedophile Information Exchange / MI6 thing.

sure. but 'some elites are pedophiles' isn't surprising. there are a lot of elites. hundreds of thousands at least, certainly if we can look to the past and any area of significance in any significant country. There's gonna be some pedophile rings in any randomly selected group of 200k people. I mean, there have been "12,421 individuals" in the US Congress since the US's founding! that's just one specific very important institution!

As pedophilia and homosexuality are both rather rare, it seems very unlikely that they did not know about each other, and got into these position by complete accident.

this is vague. "unlikely got into position by accident". it's not actually saying anything. it's vaguely implied pedophilia somehow makes one elite.

There's nothing 'vague' about saying people on whom blackmail material exists are more easily influenced either.

yes, that is very vague and ambiguous! "people on whom [what] blackmail material exists are [how much] more easily influenced [by whom, to what, for what purpose]"

As pedophilia and homosexuality are both rather rare, it seems very unlikely that they did not know about each other, and got into these position by complete accident.

pedophilia and homosexuality aren't independent here, for actual pedophiles (in the sense of 'wanting to molest 12yos) 95% aren't "straight". Also, yoyoel's thesis is discussing "16yos using grindr", which is very different than "i want to molest 12yos".

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Positions that have perhaps seen, during the entire 20th century been held by only 20-30 different people.

the idea is that there's lots of different positions, and if instead of MI5 director as pedo the DCCC chair or army general were pedos that'd be your evidence instead

So these people have either kept their homosexuality completely secret, despite being in a position, where they were supposedly vetted, or they were part of some homosexual conspiracy in the secret service. The former seems rather less likely than the latter.

you swapped 'homosexual' for 'pedophile'? homosexuality isn't illegal in current_year, and in the '50s you could keep it secret by just not telling anyone. How is 'not telling anyone you're gay' less plausible than 'secret service homo conspiracy'

Nonsensical objection. Having covert influence over a person in an influential position is of interest to every conspiracy out there, from simple criminal organisation, to foreign spies, etc.

your claim is a "pedophile secret service conspiracy". there's a profound difference between 'one secret agency head was a pedo' and 'there is a world-spanning pedo conspiracy enforced by blackmail'. If head of "secret service" is '10 most important positions in a nation' ... and there are 10 nations ... 10x10 is 100, 1 in 100 people are pedos, nothing to explain!

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