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 -
To remove myself from the object details of which I am sure others have debated fruitlessly for decades at this point, let me bring up the example of the conspiracy theory that the Americans faked the 1969 moon landings, and that Stanley Kubrick was involved in the sci fi performance of the century.
Suppose it is actually true, for the sake of argument. First of all, who would actually care?
The Soviets wouldn't care. (They wouldn't be around.) The Americans faking the moon landing didn't stop them from doing the MIR-Spacelab spacewalks, or the Russian Federation from participating in the ISS. The revelation wouldn't make the USSR un-collapse.
Would the Chinese care? Maybe a little. No one, since the Americans, have made a manned moon landing. In fact, the landing being revealed to be a fake might induce a second space race, which would be actually a good thing.
Would Elon (and the private sector as a whole) care? Would they stop trying to make rockets, because of a Kubrick landing? No.
In fact, the only people that would actually care about this, in terms of real-world impact, would be the conspiracy theorists themselves. And it would prove what..? That the US government lies? Uh, that might be a few decades behind the popular zeitgeist, with that one.
(~)
Even if you give Holocaust deniers their premise out of the gate, it doesn't change anything in the real world. The 1948 Arab-Israeli war was real. The 1967 Six-Day War was real. The Yom Kippur War was real. The 2nd Intifada was real. 10/7 was real. In short, the Israel national mythology no longer requires the Holocaust to be true in part or in whole. The fact that it is true is historical trivia now, only of interest to historians, autists, and racists of a certain kind.
There seems to be a persistent belief amongst anti-semites of every stripe that once the normies are awoken to the Jewish Question, there will be a spontaneous uprising of sentiment as all Jews everywhere are cast out for... what, exactly? Exaggerating war crimes inflicted upon them? Making them up, whole cloth? Isn't that what every people have done, in the modern period? If they could only present their case, then the Yahuds would be driven out, and Israel would spontaneously combust, or something.
Uh, no. That won't happen. Seriously, no gentile cares. (Well, the Jews and Arabs certainly would. But that's another question entirely.) Because debating the Holocaust is Fucking Pointless because, right or wrong, it is now an academic subject and is not worth your time or energy. The only people who care about revisionist history are weirdos in any case - hoteps with black beethoven, feminists with their omnicultural patriarchal conspiracy to suppress female achievement. It's all retarded and anyone with sense keeps away from it.
They wouldn't be able to tell you your society MUST accept an unsustainable number of immigrants or else it's the holocaust 2.0 all over again. It would be a serious blow to the current globalist view that people are interchangeable fungible worker asset to be moved around at their whim. It would help rekindle further nationalistic and ethnic cohesion.
The modern holocaust deniers don't really much care how many jews or if any died in the holocaust, they have current day grievances with the internationalist machine and work their way backwards to who is pushing the ideas (critical race theory, abolition of nation states, gender studies, feminism) and become "radicalized" vs the people who they see time and again at the center of the clusterfuck.
I'd rebut your point in that pro-Palestine leftists who hate Israel's guts and even low-key subscribe to Arab conceptions of Holocaust denial are still all-in on globohomo immigration. Proving the Holocaust didn't happen won't stop the flow of Muslim migrants even if you kick out the Jews. There is no tactical or strategic benefit to be gained from tilting at this windmill.
They'll stop being my Realpolitik adversaries when they stop doing everything in their power to oppose a movement based on existential needs.
crushedoranges wasn't telling you to stop considering them you realpolitik adversaries. He was telling you that, in fact, wasting energy on Holocaust denial is not good realpolitik.
The Jewish political machine organizes itself through an oppressor/oppressed narrative, which makes Holocaust denial somewhat analogous to disputing the King's bloodline.
Because we live in a progressive-dominated society where these narrative frameworks carry legitimizing weight, if you view yourself in opposition to this machine then opposing these becomes the pragmatic approach regardless of their veracity.
But Jews do have mountains of legitimate oppression to derive intersectional street-cred from, with or without the Holocaust. Without even going into pre-WWII antisemitism, the best that Revisionists can do to exculpate Nazi Germany is claim that the so-called death camps were actually just more labor camps. That is, the worst that they can do to Jews' stock of victim-points is to say that Hitler enslaved them rather than exterminated them. Newsflash, "past enslavement" seems to be plenty enough victimhood to get by in the progressive stack, judging by blacks.
Intersectional street cred is not granted based on legitimate claims, but effective opposition to white heritage Americans - a largely philosemetic group without whose support the Jewish political machine would not be able to operate.
Well sure, but if you think it all comes down to whether the "Jewish political machine" is able to generate support regardless of the facts, then the factual accuracy of the Holocaust narrative is still moot. A political machine with the capacity to spin an ostensibly nonexistent genocide into goodwill should, by all rights, be perfectly capable of spinning actually-real enslavement into an equivalent amount of goodwill.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link