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 -
It is Okay to Think That Charlie Kirk was not Literally Jesus.
Charlie Kirk did not deserve to get shot in the jugular for expressing controversial political opinions. I actually agreed with many of Charlie Kirk's controversial political opinions. The thing about controversial political opinions though, is that lots of people don't like them. If you are a person who does not like Charlie Kirk's political opinions, here are some things that would be perfectly understandable for you to think or feel upon hearing the news that Charlie Kirk was shot and killed:
"Charlie Kirk once said gun rights are worth the cost of a few shooting deaths. Kinda funny now huh? I wonder if he's changed his mind."
"Sucks he died like that, but I'm kinda glad I don't have to see his tiny face spouting talking points anymore."
"Charlie Kirk was a massive hack. I think we should care about the kids shot at that school in Colorado more than him."
"Charlie Kirk wanted me kicked out of the country because of my political opinions. It's hard for me to feel bad for him."
To be clear, all of these are tasteless and (in my opinion) poorly thought-out, but they are well within the bounds of civil discourse. None of these are beyond the pale. None of these should get one fired from one's unrelated job. None of these are even close to inciting or advocating for violence.
I was shocked today when I saw a Republican Congressman announce a woke-era pressure campaign againt people who "belittled" the assasination. Apparently I have a much longer memory than many people. I still remember 2020. I still remember George Floyd. It wasn't just the riots, it wasn't just the demonization of physical policing tactics, it was the Orwellian psycholigical tyranny of not being able to express nuanced or contrary feelings about a tragic event. Never again. In a free society, people should be able to express their thoughts and feelings on major events, even if they aren't entirely thought-out or sanitized.
A set of statements in simple argument form:
Free speech (as a concept, not just under the 1A) is generally good. Certainly preferable to open violence.
Belief in and support of Free speech requires you to allow people to actually speak.
Killing someone who ONLY engaged in speech is very bad. Full stop.
If you support and celebrate killing someone over mere speech, you do not believe in free speech (see 2).
If you do not believe in free speech, you're estopped from complaining if your own speech is curtailed or punished. Stated differently, we are not required to extend the protection of certain moral/ethical rules to people who openly reject them.
Therefore, cancelling someone for speech celebrating murder (see 4.) is easily morally permissible (see 3, we won't kill them, but we can do other things in response).
And a step further, it actually helps protect the concept of free speech to punish those who openly do not believe in or support it.
Therefore, actively identifying and cancelling people who are open about their rejection of free speech... is good.
Which of these do you disagree with, or think fallacious?
The main flaw there for me would be 7. I'm skeptical that such a feedback loop can happen in an impactful way. I'd also contend that 5 is questionable at best. I don't believe that rejecting certain principles automatically means that you no longer get to benefit from them. It's not the principles of the people who reject it that matter, it's the principles of those of us who accept it that matter. If we accept those principles, we shouldn't carve out an exception for people who don't accept those principles; otherwise, we'll just categorize everyone who we dislike as "rejecting this principle," much like how many on the left have decided to categorize everyone they dislike as "intolerant" once they learned the slogan "tolerance doesn't mean tolerating intolerance."
I'd also add 3a, something like "Genuinely, in good faith, conflating speech with violence for the purpose of justifying violence against speech one dislikes is possibly the most seductive thing known to man, as such, any attempt at categorizing speech-making acts as violence must cross an extremely high bar."
There are degrees of clarity about whether someone rejects principles.
It's like punching Nazis. Punching Nazis has the same problem--people tend to categorize everyone they dislike as Nazis so they get to punch them. But we don't want to say "the US shouldn't have invaded Nazi Germany in the 1940s. After all, if you make it permissible to hurt Nazis, you'll end up calling everyone you hate Nazis".
The justification for US invading Nazi Germany wasn't because US hated Nazis, though. US invaded them because their allies attacked US and also they declared war on US, IIRC. Rejecting "punching Nazis" doesn't mean rejecting "punching anyone who is a Nazi," it's rejecting "merely being a Nazi means that that person deserves to be punched." If Hitler in the 30s hung out at home jerking it all day to fantasies of his Nazi ideology dominating the Earth or whatever and took no steps to make it happen through violence, I don't think it would be justified to go and kill him or drive him to suicide just because he happens to have Nazi opinions. It's that he and other Nazis decided to commit violence and commit to future violence against US that justified US attacking the Nazis.
With Nazis, one can also make a humanitarian case for attacking them so that the minorities they oppress don't get oppressed. But that, too, would be in reaction to the act of oppressing minorities, not their opinion that "minorities ought to be oppressed" or whatever. Again with the Hitler jerking it at home example, except fantasizing about murdering Jews or something. Of course, this also does mean that the label "oppresses minorities" becomes a useful one to stick on to people one dislikes, which is why we'd also need an extremely high bar for what counts as "oppresses minorities" to the point of justifying violence.
More options
Context Copy link
Killing Nazis is a pretty decent representation of the concept.
Self-avowed/identified Nazis are tacitly or explicitly in favor of genociding Jews, of course.
Which is to say, committing a little homicide on them is easily within bounds.
And scale it up to Nation-State size. "Well you clearly established that you're okay with military invasion and occupation of neighboring countries, can't very well complain that we invaded and occupied you.
(This runs into the issue I talked about elsewhere, that you should do you best to target retribution at the actually responsible parties.)
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