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 -
I'm trying to find a way to move the conversation forward and not dredge up the past, but when I hear stuff like this it's really hard. Like, how come you never mentioned all your worries about the system when every other anti-woke here was doing so? How come the spectre of McCarthyism didn't worry you enough to bring it up, when it was progressives doing it?
And is "I'm not in America" a good argument for you? Your country is literally arresting people for tweets, and you're worried about people getting fired an ocean away from you?
I’m not going to dox myself to make a point, but back when I was a politician I wrote under my real name in support of Jyllands-Posten posting the Danish cartoons, and against prosecuting David Irving for Holocaust denial. I cite Exiting the Vampire Castle more than anyone else on the Motte because I read it and agreed with it when it first came out in 2013. Real supporters of free speech exist, even if there are not many of us. I came to the Motte because I am one, and it was a rare example of (back then) a non-rightist space that hadn’t been completely taken over by wokestupid. I don’t think I have been particularly silent on this board about the destructive stupidity of wokestupid cancel culture, although I was lurking and not posting when it was at its worst.
Re. The international angle, various people in the US, most recently when explaining what Charlie Kirk was pushing back against, have talked about the climate of fear that wokestupid created in US universities and PMC workplaces. That mostly didn’t happen in the UK. The difference in attitude to mildly risky office banter was obvious when I worked in transatlantic teams. “I’ll tell HR you said that” remained the punchline of a joke in London banks throughout the Great Awokening. Some of this is cultural - the US is the only first world country which doesn’t have a social norm of “firing employees for out-of-work political speech is bad.” Some is legal - the specific way the US enforces anti-discrimination laws creates perverse incentives. But if non-leftist Americans are telling the truth about how bad things got, the practical limitation on the free speech of people who were not professional right-wing provocateurs was worse for you than it was for us. Fining people for teaching dogs the Roman salute is bad, but a lot more people want to make small donations to right-wing causes or say that there are only two sexes than teach the Roman salute to dogs. The UK courts have ruled explicitly that saying there are only two sexes is not a firing offence, and I’m not aware of a case where a British employer even tried to fire an employee over a normie-level political donation.
When I published, under my real name, a pamphlet that mentioned the word “nigger”, I was not worried about career-limiting consequences. I would not have done that in the US.
The nature of English-speaking PMC society is that some of the things I care about are produced by communities of interest which span the English-speaking world. Wokestupid cancel culture created fear, anger, hate, division, and above all retardation which broke things I care about - and not because of the specifics of what was cancelled. The backlash to wokestupid got us Brexit and the Trump tariffs, which also broke things I care about. Right-wing cancel culture will spread fear, anger, hate, division and retardation and break things I care about. And it will either provoke a backlash which brings Commie-adjacent leftists to power or succeed and empower the worst elements of the right - in either case I expect the long-term political consequences to include harmful economic policies which break things I care about.
I was originally flabbergasted by your post, so I had to take a step back, mull it over, read it over a few more times, and hope it would help. I don't think it did...
First of all, definitely do not dox yourself, it won't really prove your point, because the issue isn't that I don't believe you. The issue is that for over 10 years we've been seeing an ever-escalating cycle of speech-controls coming from the left. Now, my memory is kinda sketchy, and I do tend to remember some thing better than others, but I simply do not recall you expressing that much of an issue over that. Now that the right retaliates with a fraction of the force the left was applying for over a decade, you call McCarthyism. This is the basic state of where we're at.
Now, in order to show me that you did actually have an issue with left-wing speech control, you bring up... cases from over two decades ago? How is that addressing my concerns? What I want to hear from you, and people from your side, is that if I burn political capital (such as it is) with my side in order to enforce a "free speech" rule for all, you'll do the same when your side starts transgressing, and won't just slink back under a rock, wait for it all to blow over, and call me a McCarthyist for not raising a finger in your side's defense once they're out of power again. I'm sorry, I'm already pushing 40, I don't have time to play Charlie Brown in political cycles that take decades to play out.
I'm also not sure what point you think you're making when you talk about citing "Exiting the Vampire Castle". You did it a whopping 4 times total, including this post, and it was always to litigate some point about chronology, and never to show a left-winger how they're doing leftism wrong.
Right, and your previous point was how this climate of fear prevents various critical sectors of society from doing it's job properly. I'd argue that norms like "don't make fun of victims of political assassinations" is far less harmful to the work of these sectors than norms like "don't talk about riots being ineffective at political persuasion", or "don't talk about the impossibility of men becoming women".
I'm not an American, and don't live in America.
You literally just arrested Graham Linehan for making fun of trans people. Your government arrests ~30 people per day, over tweets. This includes criticizing progressives for being too authoritarian by arranging their flag in creative ways
Yeah, the court has ruled so in response to Maya Forstater getting fired. The case had to go all the way up to the Supreme Court, and the ruling was extremely controversial. How did you end up thinking that this shows that the British workplace culture less censorious than the American one?
Again, I've seen you talk a whole lot more about one than about the other.
More options
Context Copy link
Your post would be perfectly fine without "wokestupid" sprinkled all through it. Don't do that, it's nothing but sneering. Just like if a liberal wrote a post criticizing "conservatards."
I am a liberal - it is a way of showing goodwill to the local majority. But I'm happy to stop doing it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link