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 -
Hmm. Recorded footage from someone else, verified to not be selectively edited, showing initial misbehavior from Team Dual-Wield and no prior interest from Bulgarian Man would be strong support. If the based wing of the Internet is unable to dig up any history of deceptive or antisocial acts from Bulgarian, that would also be weaker evidence in favor.
With respect, the fuck is this? People believing themselves to be Napoleon or Jesus or fucking married to Professor Snape on the astral plane do not mean that any of those things are real. The systematic, extended, and horrific abuse of young women and girls in Great Britain by aliens, which was explicitly and deliberately covered up and minimized by the government and media, was a real thing that happened to real people, in spite of people claiming it didn't happen. Conversely, no one in Europe had social or sexual relations with Lucifer the Archenemy, uses hexes to spoil crops or kill livestock, spied on their neighbors through the eyes of a familiar spirit, or flew through the air on a broomstick.
Describing something as a witch hunt is evoking a community turning on someone for committing crimes it is impossible for them to have committed, because magic (and evil magic in particular) is not real. The rape of young girls by foreigners is real, was ongoing for a very long time, and was covered up by people who used every rhetorical deceit in their power to obfuscate, deny, or simply attack people who spoke otherwise. It is, in short, a bad stylistic choice to move my priors in this case, especially when paired with an argument from numbers which seems to be contradicted by another grooming gang incident in the same city dug up by my sibling posters.
Given all this, why should we assume that a random sexual assault case was done by some type of brown, barring specific information otherwise? If we heard that there was a sexual assault in a convent, whose population was 19 female nuns with no criminal record and one escaped sex criminal with a dozen convictions for sexual assault, what sex should we assume the perpetrator is? (And, to be clear, this example is stacking the probabilities in a way that is more exaggerated than racial differences in crime rates are, and that it is not the case that literally all crime is done by some-flavor-of-brown men and that there are plenty of criminal Whites who get up to similarly-heinous shit, but the point is that we are not starting from an equal playing field and that numbers and base rates matter.)
Hang on. You're pattern matching something I've said, into something I did not.
My point was:
The UK has/had rape gangs. I have specifically alluded to the fact that I'm aware of this. I have explained that such rape gangs are thin on the ground in Dundee and similar cities in Scotland, and there is little reason to imagine their involvement in this scenario beyond rampant pattern matching.
On the Right, there is far more popular demand for Scottish rape gangs run by migrants than there are, in fact, actual migrant rape gangs. Specifically in the less urbanized parts of Scotland. I took great pains to make the limits of my knowledge, and that of my ignorance, very clear.
In fact, I have responded to the previous incident in Dundee:
https://www.themotte.org/post/2899/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/359937?context=8#context
That is a rather important thing to keep in mind. Which way, Western Man? Trust the Dundee constabulary more for cracking down on a minor sex trafficking ring, or despise and distrust them because of something that happened on the other end of the country? It is, at the very least, exceedingly poor form to use their success to condemn what they say later.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link