site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There are a few reasons why the conflict isn’t a black and white issue: that it began decades ago with clearly illegal acts like the theft of sovereign land in the West Bank and the killing of civilians and the detainment of Palestinians without due process; the question of proportionality, eg that 9/11 did not morally permit America to destroy every dwelling in the regions of the ME with Islamist leanings; and finally that the evidence suggests Hamas intended to take most of the civilians hostage, but Israel blew up their own civilians being transported back in cars by Hamas in accordance with their military doctrine known as the Hannibal Directive.

Regarding the aforementioned doctrine, I don’t know why it is never brought up, but wikipedia has a decent section on it. If 70 cars were destroyed returning to Gaza, then if each car was maximally filled with hostages, that’s at least 420 civilians. But it’s also mentioned that hundreds of burned out cars were buried, so this may involve 1000 civilians. Some unspecified number of Israeli civilians were killed by Israeli helicopters at the festival; some unspecified number of civilians in cars were shot by tanks, and then by an unmanned assault drone; and then some unspecified number of homes filled with civilians were fired upon by Israelis, eg in Kibbutz Be'eri by a tank crew.

Australia's ABC News covers the use of the Hannibal Directive.[390] The report quotes former Israeli officer, Air Force Colonel Nof Erez as saying: "This was a mass Hannibal. It was tons and tons of openings in the fence, and thousands of people in every type of vehicle, some with hostages and some without." The report also notes Tank officers confirming their interpretation of the Directive, firing on vehicles returning to Gaza, potentially with Israelis on board

As a thought experiment, we can paint the conflict as black and white in the other direction: a people under oppression and persecution for decades attempted to gather hostages to free themselves through negotiation, but the oppressive country slew their own civilians to prevent this from happening, and then proceeded to launch a genocidal war. But this would similarly lack the complexity with which adults should approach difficult issues.