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 -
Sure, such as, per your article - "Instead, Ms Linker said he was driven by right-wing conspiracies that blame the country's demise on corrupt elites who use their status to spread lies, including facilitating the sexual abuse of children."
I think more detail would be needed to conclude it is far right instead of the identical far left conspiracy theories.
Currently the left is the one banging the drum about government connection to sexual abuse of children.
Pizzagate, Qanon, 2020 election, Russiagate, those are all pretty right wing.
Even Epstein was a right wing leaning thing (at least bipartisan) and still is decently bipartisan. The only reason it's become a "left" thing now is the Trump admin's sudden pivot away from releasing the files as promised multiple times during campaign.
It only stopped being a right thing because they haven't released the list they said they would.
Is vaccine hesitancy a right or left wing conspiracy theory? Has that changed recently?
I think that's a good sniff test here.
Covid vaccine reluctance is hard coded right.
That isn't what I asked.
Historically it was more equal with a bit of left leaning, but since Covid it has shifted hard right, especially with the rise of RFK and states like Florida reconsidering vaccine mandates.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To my knowledge, vaccines are a horseshoe issue and you'll find it on the left and right.
I asked because I find that more partisan types struggle to admit that both the left and the right have issues with vaccines (both COVID and otherwise) with it being historically focused on hippy types and inner city blacks but now having more red tribers.
It's a situation where if you can't admit it's an issue with bipartisan elements I'm not not sure we have much to talk about.
I'm not magicalkittycat.
Though you did get me wondering about how much of historical resistance was lead by hippies (though they're certainly among them!). Some of this was interesting but didn't really get too much into which groups particularly opposed it. The vaccine-autism link started in 1998 but was popularized by lefty celebrities. The furthest back hard data I can find shows that Democrats and Republicans were pretty equal on vaccines from 2002-2015, with Democrats being slightly more trusting.
Yes I know, over the last few days I've become suspicious that MKC is a sock puppet for someone I would prefer not to discuss with and wanted to assess.
I can tell you that in my Pre-COVID clinical practice I occasionally ran into a vaccines cause Autism soccer-mom/hippie/"natural" nut. They'd be impossible to convince.
More often (likely because of my location) I'd run into blacks who were skeptical of the government and so on -if you were kind and patient you could usually convince these.
I'll note the specific poll in your link "how important is it that parents get their children vaccinated" won't really capture this well because "meh" and "fuck off whitey" end up being the same answer.
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
More options
Context Copy link
There are right-wing conspiracy theories about paedophiles and left-wing conspiracy theories about paedophiles. Depape was radicalised by Qanon, which is a right-wing conspiracy theory about paedophiles, as Ms Linker correctly stated.
So I looked for details instead of just articles that say "qanon" and found -
"An Aug. 24 entry titled “Q,” displayed a scatological collection of memes that included photos of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and made reference to QAnon, the baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory that espouses the belief that the country is run by a deep state cabal of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles and baby-eating cannibals."
Isn't that rather close to what the left is claiming right now?
No, not really. The left only cares about Epstein to the extent that it's a weapon to use against Trump.
I'd still like to see what the "references" were. There's a world of difference between "Q really opened my eyes, and now I see that leftwingers like Nancy Pelosi are the adrenochrome eaters" and "Rightwingers are fascists, but this Q guy seems legit. Nancy Pelosi is basically a Republikkan."
The wording there leaves open the possibility that there's some framing gaming happening by the defense, like the Matthew Shepherd case.
"Epstein didn't kill himself" was a meme in left spaces during the Biden times. Turns out "lots of our politicians were having sex with underaged girls at this guy's island, then the guy appears to have been suicided before he could provide details implicating specific politicians" is unpopular with pretty much everyone.
The right was more vocal about it pre Trump, and post-Trump some of the left does see this as an opportunity to go on the attack, but the left cared about Epstein before Trump too.
More options
Context Copy link
And you can easily add a more conspiratorial angle that goes something like "this guy is clearly mentally ill but if you frame his defense in a way that is politically advantageous to us we'll help him out."
I would not usually pretend that is the slightest bit likely but given the time and jurisdiction who knows.
In any case the guy is clearly mentally ill adjacent with unclear etiology (maybe just drug brain rot?) which is relevant in the same way that the recent stabbing is, but doesn't seem to be a clear eyed assassination as the Kirk murder seemingly is.
More options
Context Copy link
I haven't seen even one case of the latter example anywhere ever.
The thing that separates QAnon from previous theories about the elites being child rapists (and there have been left-wing variants - Dave McGowan, who did an yeoman's labor in getting the general theory known among conspiracy circles, was a left-winger) is not the elite child rapist thing but the particular idea that Trump is a savior figure who will overthrow, jail and execute the (leftist) child rapist elites. QAnon rhetoric specifically places DePape on the right.
I think everyone who took Q seriously (and this guy in particular) is an idiot with a mostly incoherent view of the world. And I don't mean that in a way that exonerates them by blaming it on some nebulous mental health problem. I mean that their attempts to assemble facts and details into a viable understanding of reality is just appallingly bad. They are stupid people, or at least they crit-failed important, load-bearing sense-making operations in a way that caused catastrophic downstream effects.
So, given that this dude was at least culturally enmeshed in a very leftist environment, I would expect his adoption of Q to be particularly asinine, because there's more inferential distance to cover with flimsy bullshit. Going all the way to being a QMAGA type is possible, but there's a lot of room for weird, idiotic shortcuts like "Pelosi is a traitor to the left".
My greater point is more that I don't think the framing by his legal defense should be taken at face value. There are multiple plausible reasons they might stress some things and downplay others as a strategy to play the judge and jury.
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
Evidence that the Left actually cares for such connections and theories, rather than just pulling a "your rules, applied fairly" on the Right after Trump weaselled himself out of releasing the Epstein files? (Surely if it's the latter they wouldn't be so committed to the bit that their members would attempt murder-suicide for it.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link