site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The Dread Jim weighs in on the "moderate right".

Basically, to him the right isn't progressing at anywhere near the rate it needs to in order to enact radical change. He uses Asmongold, the popular live streamer, as an example. Asmongold is perceived to be anti-woke, but in reality all of his positions (in Dread Jim's opinion) are moderate/centrist.

For Dread Jim, the only way to save civilization is through the following:

  • Eliminating voting rights for the vast majority of "normies", and all women
  • Executing gay people ("poofs off roofs")
  • "Conscripting wombs"

He seems to view this last solution as the most important. Fathers should once again be responsible for marrying off their daughters, and if that's not possible, the state should step in. Similarly, adultery should be punishable by death.

Barring these radical changes "failure to murder everyone who is insufficiently left is likely to also be 'extreme far radical right'".

  • -15

I am a right-wing extremist. I am aware of "The Dread Jim" from many previous discussions through the various iterations of this forum.

His proposed solutions are not feasible, nor are they necessary, nor does he appear to possess insight or a track record that makes him worth listening to or discussing in any significant way. He, like many similar "right-wing extremists", appears to be possessed of a combination of panicked fearfulness and abstracted zealotry aimed at a sort of imaginary, narrative-based glorious final battle. He, like many others, lacks the necessary coldness of heart to effectively prosecute the culture war.

His suggestions are similarly foolish.

  • eliminating voting rights is unnecessary if federal power can be annulled and Blue cultural and political power centers neutralized and demolished, which by all evidence appears to be much easier to accomplish.
  • Rolling back LGBT's influence on our society does not require exterminating LGBT people, only creating general awareness of the concrete harms their movement has caused and an understanding that their social control can and must be resisted. This, again, appears to be working.
  • It is a very good idea to roll back feminism and "women's rights" generally. As with LGBT, what this looks like is establishing common knowledge of how these movements have catastrophically overstepped, the concrete harms they've caused, and the ways we were better off before them. Women having the vote is irrelevant if we neutralize the unaccountable power that vote is meant to enable. Relationships between men and women, whether spousal or familial, are not advanced by the sort of iron fist Jim advocates. Loving relationships can exert a level of stabilization, security, and sound life decision-making that Jim's preferred forms of tyranny can never achieve.

With respect, I think you're trying to have it both ways; you call yourself as an "extremist", but your suggested proposals and the congeniality with which you express them are not really outside the mainstream in 2025. Maybe a bit outside the Overton window, but not by much. Like this

Rolling back LGBT's influence on our society does not require exterminating LGBT people, only creating general awareness of the concrete harms their movement has caused and an understanding that their social control can and must be resisted. This, again, appears to be working.

is not a controversial statement. Uttering it does not make you an extremist.

It sounds like you want to go back to the 90s; Jim wants to go back to...I don't know, the 16th century and also kill a lot of people in the process.

As with all these conversations between "normie" right-wingers and people like Jim, the distinguishing factor is race. Race is of paramount importance, and by extension immigration and demographics are the only issues that matter.

With respect, I think you're trying to have it both ways; you call yourself as an "extremist", but your suggested proposals and the congeniality with which you express them are not really outside the mainstream in 2025.

I am on record that large-scale, open-ended political violence is a preferable outcome to the political outcomes Blue Tribe appears to me to be aiming for, and further that I believe Red Tribe can and will decisively win such a fight. I have argued at length that the Constitution and rule of law are dead, and that their corpses provide little advantage to our present situation. I have argued at length, and continue to argue, that reconciliation between Reds and Blues is probably impossible in the foreseeable future, and that the culture war is terminal for our society as presently constituted. If you think that these positions do not qualify me for the label of extremism, I'd be interested in hearing your arguments as to why.

What separates me from Jim and his ilk is that I have a better understanding both of why that violence should be delayed as long as possible, and why we have advantages in executing it that are not necessarily compromised by such delays. If I am not mistaken, Jim himself, and certainly many others like him, argued that we were already past the point of no return, that political solutions were impossible, and that in fact we had already compromised our ability win an outright fight, leaving fighting immediately as a desperate last resort. And then the 2024 election happened, and suddenly our position is considerably better.

I am on record that large-scale, open-ended political violence is a preferable outcome to the political outcomes Blue Tribe appears to me to be aiming for, and further that I believe Red Tribe can and will decisively win such a fight.

I am curious, I disagree and think civil war is very unlikely, but I think that if this does happen and if defeat were imminent, unleashing a nuclear holocaust on the US and cleansing it would be preferable to the red tribe being allowed to conquer and rule over the ruin of my Northeast. Does that make me an extremist as well? If so, which kind?

Does that make me an extremist as well? If so, which kind?

Yes, it makes you a Blue Tribe extremist. It also means, in my opinion, that you lack imagination.

that you lack imagination

Expound

Why not move somewhere else? Why nuclear bombardment? Why do you ignore forms of defeat that do not result in Reds ruling you with a jackboot; for instance, a new norm of strong federalism where Blues have blue laws in blue places and reds have red laws in red places? There's also the part where Reds would survive Nuclear bombardment a whole lot better than blues, and would in fact likely rebuild; the threat here is asymmetric to your side's disadvantage.

If Blue Empire were eternal despite all we Reds could attempt, if we were crushed as badly as the Christians in 1600s Japan, I think I would flee elsewhere before resorting to nuking the country. No evil rules eternal; sooner or later, often sooner, it burns itself out.

I think you are making a similar mistake to Jim; you also lack the inner coldness-of-heart, are also carried away by the narrative glories. You lack temper to lose.

In an actual scenario where they start a civil war and win, why would the Reds not rule with a jackboot? Even if they assure you, as a member of the Blue team, that they will not, as they try to persuade you to put down that big red button, why would you believe them?

I wouldn't trust any belligerent in the culture war to be magnanimous in victory on the best day, and here we are in a subthread where we're actually talking about the blog by some redtriber who is very openly fantasising about jackboots and lots of other redtribers are assuring us that he is very important and influential.

More comments

I mean my nuclear hellfile in this case is a metaphor for an artificial pathogen engineered to inflict maximum casualties on red tribers, but I get your meaning, retreat is probably a better option than mutual annihilation. I would need a way to make sure the red tribe wouldn't be able to complete an AGI for that to be reasonable, but on the whole, I would agree.

More comments