site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Has anyone been following the scenes in China?

The government has changed the definition of a COVID death, apparently to slice the death statistics after relaxing zero-COVID and cases surge. Omicron emerged last year as it ripped through Africa, and that variant seemed less dangerous (although more contagious) than its ancestors. It's suspected that it could be a subvariant of that. Also worth mentioning that China has ordered its first batch of foreign vaccines from Germany, but only for German expats living in China. Too early to tell and we don't have the full facts yet, but I won't be surprised if the situation is grimmer than the PRC government is willing to disclose.

On the other hand, it's amazing how the western mainstream media has reverted to parroting COVID-regime talking points again, after months of calling zero COVID insane. It reads like they're using it as an excuse to justify bringing back more autocratic measures at home, the coming weeks will be very telling.

China covid policy is (was?) an immense success unfortunately the rest of the world is too inept and criminal to react efficiently to covid entry points and therefore millions of humans die and quality of life, worldwide intelligence level and lifespan are put at an extreme and yet unknown risk. How many times will people catch covid in their own lifetime? How many percents of neurons/synapse lost? This is extremely worrying.

China has ordered its first batch of foreign vaccines from Germany

China is the biggest exporter of vaccine worldwide (2 billions ?), while occident was keeping them all for themselves and did not allow other countries to produce patented vaccines (well it maybe was allowed very late I don't recall exactly the timeline) china saved the majority of mankind regarding covid deaths.

While their vaccine was a bit less effective, with the newer variant it is on par if not better? (I haven't looked at the viral load metric, where mRNA vaccine have become entirely useless) see https://old.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/zq0x2h/after_2nd_and_3rd_dose_chinas_sinovac_reach/

Of course the best vaccine would probably be a combination of distinct ones. Also, let me remind the world that the Russian main vaccine is very competitive and was denied out of pure racism, although nowadays we have the ukrainian war narrative.

As for accounts of said racism I invite the reader, for example, to ask himself if he knows what was the biggest genocide during WW2.

As for anti-sino racism, while on the digression, I'll ask the reader who caused the Great Chinese Famine.

  • -40

As for accounts of said racism I invite the reader, for example, to ask himself if he knows what was the biggest genocide during WW2.

Holocaust, 11 000 000 - 17 000 000 dead.

who caused the Great Chinese Famine

PRC, Mao in particular.

Holocaust, 11 000 000 - 17 000 000 dead.

Well I'm not an expert on holocaust, a quick google gave me a 5-6 million killed jews estimate and that is the authoritative one on wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#::text=Between%201941%20and%201945%2C%20Nazi%20Germany%20and%20its%20collaborators%20systematically%20murdered%20some%20six%20million%20Jews%20across%20German%2Doccupied%20Europe%3B%5Ba%5D

It seems the 11-17 number your refer is a mix of jewish kills and the killing of other minorities, especially Romani people

cf https://www.ilholocaustmuseum.org/holocaust-misconceptions/#::text=There%20were%2011%20million%20victims%20of%20the%20Holocaust%20(or%206%20million%20Jewish%20victims%20and%205%20million%20non%2DJewish%20victims)%C2%A0

I am not refering to the Jewish genocide but to one that is twice as big and that you never heard about because of racism:

It killed 11 million human beings, 11 million slavic civilian people for their ethnicity

https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/75106

who caused the Great Chinese Famine

PRC, Mao in particular.

Well that is a misleading answer.

Mao had its flaws but the general direction of china made sense, they suffered from the century of humiliation, something that isn't taught in schools because of racism.

As a result they went from the first economic power worlwide to extreme poverty and had to make, very late, a transition to an industrial revolution (from a mostly agriculture based economy)

There has been flaws during this necessary transition, however people completely fail to understand the reason behind 99% of the deaths, an artificial one, deliberately chosen by the U.S.A and other occidental countries, a worlwide ban on exports to China. A worlwide ban of many technologies including the main disruption of the century, the discovery and production of fertilizers.

Therefore the death of all those human beings has for main and sufficient responsability the occidentals hegemonists and their will to bend China and froze them into the middle age.

The ignominy of the west is rampant everywhere and the ignorance of those crimes againsts humanity continue even today.

  • -24

who caused the Great Chinese Famine

PRC, Mao in particular.

Well that is a misleading answer.

Mao had its flaws but the general direction of china made sense, they suffered from the century of humiliation, something that isn't taught in schools because of racism.

For anyone stumbling upon this thread and not sure what to believe, this is a case where the conventional wisdom is correct, Mao was a terrible leader and his misguided policies were responsible for the deaths of 30 million people from 1960-1962. You can say it was ignorance, not malice, that caused Mao's error, but the fact is that if he didn't know any better it is because he didn't want to know any better.