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Notes -
The solution to prevent the motte from becoming a "den of witches" whilst still preserving its founding ethos is... variability. The mottes generalist nature is a strength here.
The pertinent issue is that a certain group of people have an overwhelming axe to grind on a specific issue and there is just no way a neutral observer can even fight back because they did not spend a literal 1000 hours grinding whichever side of that axe. Resulting in evaporative cooling (People just don't like seeing things they disagree with over and over and over again, irrational yes, they can just ignore them, but they are still people).
However. Because the motte is generalist. A lot of discussions can concurrently take place on a lot of different topics. The axe grinders can grind their axe in the corner with their fellow enthusiasts and the others can have a discussion on something else entirely.
To prevent a specific topic from sucking out too much oxygen. The mods should probably.. limit the number of discussions on a specific topic if it starts getting unwieldy.
I'll drop my hot take here. If there are too many posts about the Jews or the Holocaust. The mods should just go "Alright, we have reached our Jew discussion quota for the next two days, time to move on to a new topic". I personally REALLY don't care about this topic, I don't care if it was 6 million or 600 or 600 septillion. That topic makes the motte worse for me.
The mods could also add a banner to a specific post such as "This is an Urban Planning post" or "This is a Holocaust skepticism post", allowing for people looking to grind their axes to find their fellow axe grinders. And there will be a limited number of banners allowed per day. Shitty idea, I know, but I am throwing it out there.
I don't care if I am surrounded by witches. I am okay with associating with them. I don't even care if I have to see their witchy ramblings. I just don't want to see ONLY witchy ramblings.
Looking through the past CW threads, I'm not seeing it - "ONLY witchy ramblings." This is basically the only space of this kind that doesn't ban critical discussion on Jews or the Holocaust, which are very important topics in the Culture War, so when it does come up it is probably bothersome to a certain type... but:
Does not follow. There are some topics that come up here frequently that I REALLY don't care about, and I click the '-' button within the 0.5 seconds it takes me to realize I'm not interested in the thread. You should just say that it's a topic that you do care about, and it bothers you when people discuss it with a critical perspective. That would be a more honest complaint, and it would ring true for the vast majority of people.
Allowing those topics (though I personally have posted 0 top-level threads on Holocaust denial (so far)) will lower the status of the community in adjacent spaces like SSC. I get the impression the mods are more committed to the purpose of the community than they are status signaling to other rationalists (and I don't mind the token denunciations from the mods here in that thread).
I find this statement unsupported. You can deny the Jews cultural veto in the same way you deny the black Americans, no need to prove anything about chattel slavery never happening in the south.
The focus on the topic generally is why I find white supremacists and nationalists utterly boring.
Can you explain exactly what you think is unsupported? You don't think the Holocaust narrative is important to the Culture War? It would be hard to take that position. Or you agree it is important but it's just boring and unnecessary to talk about it critically?
I think it's unnecessary to talk about in the context of the culture war. Your post almost sounds like you're denying the Holocaust for instrumental reasons, although I think you've posted that your reasoning went the opposite way. In any case, there's no need to deny the Holocaust to think the ADL is full of shit or to think that mass immigration is bad. If not the Holocaust (which I do think happened) someone will simply make up a fake genocide like the time the French killed more than the entire population of Algeria when they conquered it. But that would not justify Algerian immigration to France even if it was true!
Historical arguments are rarely politically productive. It's not like debunking Rousseau would destroy progressivism by taking out its roots, people would carry on exactly as they had before. Disproving the Holocaust would be the same. We know MLK was an awful person, but it hasn't taken even a little bit of wind out of the sails of progressivism.
Let's say theoretically that Revisionists are correct, you would still say it's unnecessary to talk about in the context of the culture war? Revisionists being correct wouldn't change your opinion on any culture war topics? If so, then we can just agree to disagree, and you're free to avoid discussion of it as you please.
If, theoretically, you learned the Revisionists aren't correct, would it alter your opinion of Jews at all?
That's why most most people don't really care about Holocaust denial and would not be much moved even if you could convince them that at least some parts of the historically accepted narrative are false.
"At least some parts" of all historical narratives are false, I'm obviously making a stronger claim than that. I think a lot of people would be moved by learning, for example, that there were no gas chambers or extermination camps. People here put on a display pretending that they wouldn't care if that Revisionist critique of the historical narrative turned out to be true. But it's hard to believe them when they otherwise seem pretty dishonest about their disposition towards Revisionism.
With all the criticisms you could make of Holocaust denial, "most people don't really care about Holocaust denial" is probably the least believable complaint you could make. People care a lot about Holocaust denial. Revisionism is systematically censored across all major platforms for publishing, social media, and video content. It's banned by law, with many people currently serving time for the crime of Holocaust denial. Canada, last year, is the most recent nation to criminalize Holocaust denial. Recently the head of CODOH, Germar Rudolf, has resigned and is in hiding in the United States because the US has denied his green card renewal and denied his application for political asylum- despite the fact he is married to an American wife with whom he has American children, and Germany has simultaneously refused to renew his passport. He is trying to avoid being deported to Germany for which he would spend many years in jail.
The people who seem to be most animated in responding to Holocaust denial also seem to be the ones saying how they don't care about the topic, or find it boring, but I just don't believe you because it's not the way someone acts when they have no investment in a topic. The number of replies I have received suggests that a lot of people care about the topic.
Okay, I should not have said "People don't really care about Holocaust denial," because you're right, obviously they do, it's an emotive topic.
But what I meant (and I think you know I meant this), is that even convincing people that the Holocaust was "less bad/exaggerated/not an intentional planned industrial-scale genocide" is not going to get anyone where you are actually trying to get them, which is joining you in your animosity towards Jews and following you down the ZOG rabbit hole.
So when I say I (and we) are bored and don't care about your umpteenth iteration on the subject, it's because (a) we do not find your arguments convincing and repeating another wall of text about it looks like you're taking the obsessive "This time, I'll get through to them!" route, and (b) we know what your actual agenda is (it's not clarifying historical inaccuracies). It's like JB and his never-ending theses which always generated a lot of replies. The fact that he could always provoke lots of replies with very emotive topics does not mean he was not tiresome and boring going on about topics people were sick of. I get that you're going to keep doing it because you are on a crusade and you're hoping to pick up a few converts, but "Haha, obviously you care a lot because you keep arguing with me!" is not the own you think it is.
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I'm already pretty right-wing, I would become more skeptical of historians in your scenario but none of my political positions would really change. If revisionists were correct about the Holocaust, it would be very important to set the historical record straight. But I think it would have a pretty minimal effect on the culture war.
Let me ask you a question: What do you think would happen, culture-war wise, if you were able to prove that the Holocaust was fabricated?
The revisionists will tell you that they can 100% prove that Holocaust never happened, but no one is listening.
Let me rephrase the question: What would happen if Wikipedia, NYT, CNN, BBC, FOX etc... accepted revisionist thesis, and changed their official line into: "Germans during WW2 put Jews in camps, and then the wily Russians killed them all, blamed the Germans and lied so skillfully that whole world was fooled."
Well, it would be perfect propaganda line for second round of Cold War, the perfect proof that Russians are up to no good, could never be trusted and no compromise with them is possible.
This new line will not rehabilitate the Nazis, would not make them look good, but would make Soviets look worse.
Current official history, both popular and academic, sees Hitler as 100% evil and Stalin as 99,99% evil. With this new revelation, the proportion will be reversed.
Anatoly Karlin tongue in cheek predicted this scenario years ago.
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It is loosely important but has very little direct effect on culture war issues.
But as stated above the last time I've seen an interesting take on it was before 2014.
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