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 -
Those should be the examples of right wing violence that the left makes the right eat.
I wonder why these aren’t more commonly talked about?
Do you remember if any prominent right wing figures said that the victims deserved it? There are obviously the people saying that about Kirk, and there have also been semi notable people saying that about Ashley Babbitt, and the victims of the attempted Trump assassination.
It’s been wall to wall condemnation of the Kirk assassination by Democratic Party figures and media spokespeople. And saying “I hate Charlie Kirk, but he shouldn’t have been assassinated” isn’t justification any more than “we need to close the border and deport illegals, but you shouldn’t shoot up a Wal Mart”
We don't need them to condemn the assassination, we need them to condemn the shockingly large portion of their base who are ecstatic about it.
For various reasons the left and mainstream institutions have manufactured a sizable minority that among other things, believes that assassination of American political figures is justified (check out the polling).
These people need to be told by everybody that they are dangerous and their beliefs need to be evicted from education and employment and mainstream thought.
Democrat politicians have been complicit in creating a generation that has norms that are completely incompatible with liberal democracy. This includes democrat strategists and consultants as well as staffers (I know some of them).
It doesn't matter if AOC publicly criticizes assassinations if her supporters love them (and potentially much of her staff).
Now where have I heard this line before? I feel like I heard it a lot about 5 years ago, but I just can't seem to remember who was saying it.
Probably some fine upstanding people pushing a culture we want to see more of in this country.
Speak plainly.
At my job you can wear a pride pin or a BLM badge and at one point it was quite nearly required. If you wore MAGA gear you'd be fired.
I don't see polling showing that the right has a great deal of interest in murdering people who disagree with them.
The left and the right and the demands on either are not the same.
My claim: cancel culture was bad when the left did it and is bad when the right does it. Our norms are fragile, and are worth protecting. Allowing people to speak freely means that there will be some people who say horrible things. Some of those horrible things will be false. Some of those people who say those horrible false things will even mean it.
And yet, the societies that try to silence the people who say horrible false things seem to invariably also start trying to silence the people who say inconvenient-to-power true things. As we witnessed just a couple of years ago.
At that time, many on the right seemed to understand the value of free speech, actual free speech and not "you're free to speak and I'm free to blackmail your employer into firing you with threats of a media shitstorm". And last year, there was a shift, and people started to recognize (out loud) the excesses of the "woke" era. Norms turned against people trying to "cancel" each other for insufficient wokeness.
I mean go look at the discourse about "alligator alcatraz", the people saying "I voted for this, self-deport" whenever there's a report of ICE illegally detaining legal US residents in atrocious conditions or trying to sidestep court orders, this very forum with the dark hinting about how the left has made the right angry and you wouldn't like us when we're angry.
To be clear, I support the right of people on the right to say these things. I oppose any attempts to try to be cute and get their employers to go after them.
But I notice that the right seems to be trying to bring back the worst parts of 2021 era cancel culture. And so, in opposition to that, I claim: cancel culture was bad when the left did it and is bad when the right does it
Cancel Culture: I said the word faggot on Facebook in 2006.
Not Cancel Culture: I a person in trusted authority (such as a doctor) publicly celebrated the death of someone who represents half of America.
Yes Cancel Culture
So apparently saying "Charlie Kirk died the same way he lived: bringing out the worst in people" is now "attempting to glorify" the Charlie Kirk assassination. Obviously it's in poor taste. But firing teachers for saying, on their own time and not even to their students, things which are in poor taste is a bad idea. We just went down this road. It's not a good road. The right saw that it was a bad road when it was their people losing their jobs over saying things that were true but unpopular and tactlessly stated, but apparently forgot what they learned the moment they had the ability to do unto others instead of having others do unto them.
In any case, I'm not super interested in getting in a pissing contest over whose cancel culture was worse. The Floyd era cancel culture from the left was clearly worse. But the trend is in a bad direction.
"The twin towers fell as they lived, a monument to capitalist excess and oppression of the Muslim people" would get you pilloried by both left and the right in the weeks following 9/11. The average American understands that in the wake of tragedy you have to either being showing a tremendous lapse in some combination of judgement, insight, and impulse control or you have to be defending what happened using plausible deniability. In a few months it may be a different story but for now you have widespread bipartisan figures going "the republic is going to fall if you don't stop saying "neiner, neiner" and supporting terrorism and plenty of people went "bet."
Cancel culture was mostly firing and oppressing people for mainstream opinions, stuff they did years ago and stuff they straight up didn't even do.
Dancing on the burning corpse of democracy is not one of the above.
Is the right likely to take it too far? Will they be justified in doing so? Different but important questions.
You want to talk about those talk about those but stop pretending this is in the same category.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link