site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25690 thread views

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

ICE has conducted its largest ever raid targeting... Korean automotive workers at a Georgia Hyundai factory?

ICE has released a video of its raid on Hyundai–LG's Georgia battery plant site, showing Korean workers chained up and led away. South Korea's foreign ministry has confirmed over 300 of the 457 taken into custody are Korean nationals.

We don't have all the details, but from what I can glean most of the Koreans were in the country on B1 buisiness visas, which allows the visa holder to attend business meetings and conduct training, but does not allow for "labor". The factory involved is brand new, having opened less than a year ago, which would explain why they needed so many Koreans (Hyundai is a Korean company) to get operations off the ground.

One defense of these kind of raids is that it doesn't do America any good to have foreign companies build factories in the US if they are going to staff those factories with an imported workforce instead of Americans, but it is far from clear that was happening here. I don't doubt that many of these B1 visaholders were "working the line" and as such technically violating the terms of their visas, but that's how foreign investment works. If you build a brand new specialized factory in an area that doesn't have factories of that kind, the local workforce will inherently be inexperienced and unsuitable for the facility. You can't teach people how to run the factory without, well, running the factory.

The big question is what this means for foreign investment in the United States. If you were in charge of a foreign manufacturing corporarion, would you want to build a facility in the United States if there is a good chance your own employees would be arrested for running the company's facilities?

Does nobody have respect for the rule of law? This seems related to the concept of incentivizing lying that came up again in the recent ACX review: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-participation-in-phase

If you have rules and laws and you consistently don't enforce them, then you reward and incentivize rule breakers and liars. We have immigration laws. First and foremost, we should enforce the immigration laws. Then, after doing so, if we find out that we don't have the optimal level of immigration then we should change the number of immigrants we allow.

If foreign manufacturers are forming plans to build facilities in the United States, they should form their plans with the intention of hiring primarily locals, with whatever management or trainers they bring in having legal visas. These plans should involve carefully screening hired laborers to make sure they are legal. If their plans have already factored in plans to hire illegals but are worried about getting raided and choose not to, then good. They should either reformulate their plans to follow the law, or take their business elsewhere.

If we establish a precedent of enforcing immigration laws, then investors will take them into account and the economy will equilibrize accordingly. If we then end up with more American factories, or foreign factories with American workers because a hole was opened up for them to fill, then good, and we have more jobs for Americans. If not, and there ends up being a shortage of factories because we genuinely need the foreign expertise, then we'll be able to observe that and stick some more visas in the immigration budget. And then they'll be legal, and we'll have control over how many there are.

In no world is "make harsh laws and then fail to enforce them because they are too harsh" the correct decision.

Does nobody have respect for the rule of law?

Based on priors, I am doubtful that they were meaningfully violating the law.

So far, Trump has been less of a Kantian paladin who enforces the laws of the land whatever the consequences may be, and more of a petty tyrant who uses "I am just enforcing the law" as an excuse to punish his enemies.

  • You are in the US on a perfectly legal visa but ICE does not like your tattoos? Go to an El Salvador mega-prison without any due process.
  • You are employing illegals on your farm or in your hotel? Don't worry, wise king Donald has decided that he is fine with that, nobody will arrest your workers. (Also, as illegals lack social security numbers, I am wondering how you can even pay them without breaking federal labor law.)

In some cases, Trump seems to be targeting cities for harsh ICE enforcement simply because they did not vote for him.

Is it possible that Hyundai was blatantly cheating with their visa? Certainly.

But my money is on them being targeted because CW-wise, electrical cars (except for Tesla) are a technology of Trump's opponents, or because South Korea has lately not spread their ass-cheeks to Trump's satisfaction.

The South Koreans now probably wish they had built their factory in a more reliable partner country like China instead.

Based on priors, I am doubtful that they were meaningfully violating the law.

Reuters: Workers say Korea Inc was warned about questionable US visas before Hyundai raid

Many South Korean workers were sent to the U.S. on questionable documents despite their misgivings and warnings about stricter U.S. immigration enforcement before last week's raid on a Hyundai site, according to workers, officials and lawyers.

For years, South Korean companies have said they struggle to obtain short-term work visas for specialists needed in their high-tech plants in the United States, and had come to rely on a grey zone of looser interpretation of visa rules under previous American administrations.

When that changed in the early days of U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, some workers were denied entry to the United States under statuses that did not fully allow work, according to Reuters interviews with more than a dozen workers from various companies, government and company officials, and immigration lawyers.

Many of the people arrested were skilled workers who were sent to the U.S. to install equipment at the near-complete factory on a visa waiver programme, or B-1 business traveller visas, which largely did not allow work, three people said.

"It's extremely difficult to get an H-1B visa, which is needed for the battery engineers. That's why some people got B-1 visas or ESTA," said Park Tae-sung, vice chairman of Korea Battery Industry Association, referring to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization.

One person who works at the Georgia site told Reuters that this had long been a routine practice. "There was a red flag ... They bypass the law and come to work," the person said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

LG Energy Solution is working with Hyundai to build the factory.

Officials at LGES were aware of the long-standing issues and some of the companies' employees and contractors were reluctant to travel to the United States for fear of being denied entry, two of the sources said.

@CertainlyWorse @faul_sname @JarJarJedi

B-1 visas do allow some types of work - I bet LGES argues that the workers were there "to install, service, or repair equipment/machinery purchased from a foreign company", or "to train U.S. workers to perform these services", both of which are permissible activities under a B-1 visa per CBP's own documentation provided that the workers do not receive compensation from a US source.

If the workers did receive compensation from a US source, that means someone fucked up somewhere, but my guess is what actually happened is that CBP disagrees with LGES about whether the activities these workers engaged in qualify as installing, servicing, or repairing equipment/machinery purchased from a foreign company, and decided that the appropriate course of action was to chain these workers up and make a self-congratulatory press release about it, and that we will hear any follow-ups about the outcomes of this raid in terms of findings of actual wrongdoing.

(Disclaimer: IANAL, TINLA)

You are in the US on a perfectly legal visa but ICE does not like your tattoos? Go to an El Salvador mega-prison without any due process.

I've had this idea bouncing in my brain for some time now, what is the purpose of gang identification tattoos/color matched clothes/hand signs. It's ingroup signaling. Ingroup signaling for a criminal organization. Want to go after gangs? Make gang tattoos illegal, make "wearing the gang uniform" illegal. That way you deny one of the primary benefits of being in a gang. Respect.

This is pretty much anti-liberal, though. People should have freedom of association.

Germany kind of did this for an infamous gang called NSDAP. Display their symbols in public, you get a fine. Of course, this also means that we constantly get told by Americans how horribly unfree we are.

And it does not stop the fascists from rallying if they simply pick a different symbol or color. In my opinion, the main benefit was always more symbolic -- victims of the previous iteration of fascism might have to endure similar ideas and rhetoric, but they at least get spared of seeing the swastika banners again.

For gangs, this will simply get you into a cat and mouse game. Gangs will adopt to using more deniable symbols. And what do you do about a Yakuza missing a finger? Tell them that they must wear gloves in public?

In the current political climate, this would also be extended to the opponents political groups the minute it is passed. Neither side will stop at just banning MS-13, either they will want to ban the confederate flag or the trans flag.

This is pretty much anti-liberal, though. People should have freedom of association.

You know, I guess I'm fine with anti-liberal. People shouldn't have freedom of association with a gang.

And what do you do about a Yakuza missing a finger? Tell them that they must wear gloves in public?

Infinite jail time. Yakuza tats? Forced to have them removed or stay in jail, same for the random MS-whatever tats or tears on the face tats. The tats are a costly belonging symbol, tune the cost to infinity. They've already banned the confederate flag and decided it's open season on people wearing trump hats.

And it does not stop the fascists from rallying if they simply pick a different symbol or color.

Please don't tell me none of them came up with the idea to use the Quadruple Progress Flag.

I'm not going to praise Trump for his commitment to equal enforcement of laws. But the problem is not the enforcement here but the lack of enforcement elsewhere. The problem is the past decade of non-enforcement giving the company an expectation that the laws were a formality that they shouldn't take seriously, and giving all of the other companies a free pass so that they all have to skirt the laws to remain competitive.

I agree that this is a problem, but the solution is more enforcement (and more predictable enforcement), not less.

Based on priors, I am doubtful that they were meaningfully violating the law.

"Meaningfully" here covers a lot of ground. Doing disallowed work while here on a B-1 is violating the law, whether you think it's meaningful or not. It's fairly obnoxious to arrest bunches of employees who likely had no knowledge that their employer was using the wrong visa, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a violation of the law.

You are in the US on a perfectly legal visa but ICE does not like your tattoos? Go to an El Salvador mega-prison without any due process.

This does not appear to be a real example, but a reference to Abrego Garcia, who was not here on a visa at all.

Would you put up money on a bet that at least half of the people arrested were unambiguously violating the rules of their visas?

Which side? I'd guess that more than 0 but less than 10% of those arrested were not violating the terms of their visa. It's still obnoxious to do a raid; I'd expect violations like this by a corporation (especially when they were countenanced by the previous administration) to be handled via a warning/demand to the corporation. Of course, if they were warned and just didn't listen... there probably isn't any escalation that isn't obnoxious.

I would not be surprised if half of the workers were arguably violating the terms of their visas, but I expect the modal case here looks like "a worker for one of Hyundai's subcontractors was here on a B1 to suprvise the installation of equipment, and demonstrated to a worker on site how the machine was supposed to be hooked up when they're technically only allowed to describe" not like "Hyundai shipped in 500 Koreans on tourist visas to do unskilled construction work building the factory". In other words, I expect that the majority of detainees were authorized to work in the US, but I would be unsurprised if some were doing types of work they were not authorized to do, though I expect the majority were at least ambiguously authorized to do the sort of work they were doing.

Under my model I would be unsurprised if e.g. DOJ and Korean company disagree about whether work should fall under "contracted after-sales service" or "supervising installation of equipment". But under my model "chain them all up" is not a reasonable response to "people who are not flight risks were doing normal business things but we think they might have technically violated the terms of their visa, we'll find out in court".

I am unsure if there are any good and timely metrics but I would be quite surprised to see e.g. table 42d here showing 475 more (or even half that more) noncitizen enforcement returns to South Korea in 2025 than in 2024 - for reference the current latest data is 713 returns in 2022. (The latest available year here is 2022, so it might be a while before 2025 daya shows up). And my read is that DHS would enforce if they have even a vaguely plausible case of visa violation, so I think absence of this particular evidence would be evidence of absence of such a case.

There might be less janky ways to operationalize this, I'm open if you have ideas.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats