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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34555 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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On a practical level biker gangs, like many gangs, actually exist less from the financial angle (though that helps) but from (often violent but not always) kids from broken families getting caught up in a group that fills most of the needs a family would normally fill. Brotherhood, purpose, importance, outlets for anger, structure, exhilaration at breaking the rules, all that. It's a fake family in the ways that count, of course, but much like pets filling child-sized holes, it works pretty well overall - that's why it exists.

On one end is La Cosa Nostra. The mafia has all the usual organized crime traits including a shared ethnic identity and occultist rituals. Unlike, for example, Salvadoran gangs the mob was regularly motivated by business interests more than common thuggery. Matt Lakeman has a great blog post on El Salvador which includes a chunk on the history of its gangs. Technically Salvadoran gangs made money like the American mob or any other organized crime outfit. They provided a living for members primarily by extorting impoverished people. Even accounting for the poverty, Lakeman says their violence was usually more street conflict than financial as the mob or cartels might operate. Even guys at the high end of the hierarchy were making peanuts.

I picture biker gangs as landing between the two. Although, there are many instances of serious and significant criminal enterprise involving bikers. The decentralized nature and sheer number of criminals on 2 wheels makes it a difficult comparison. The bonds, friendship, and potential for a surrogate family apply to all of them and to non-criminal clubs, too.

I remember hearing I think this story a month and a half ago

Yeah, I don't know what to think about that guy. He made claims as a "whistleblower," did rounds of press, then claimed a kid was killed who turned out to not be killed and was instead "saved" by Israelis so as to avoid him being murdered to prove he was killed. I never did see anything to refute that counter-counter-propaganda with regards to that dead kid claim. There were other efforts to discredit that guy. Mess, noise, I don't know. Someone's muddy psyop working on me as planned I suppose.

They directly created this cratered, destroyed, lawless zone with arbitrary and changing rules for civilians and a crippling need to import virtually all of its food, and need to take responsibility for it - direct responsibility for it.

Israel doesn't win humanitarian plaudits or reprieves by taking responsibility which could mean a lot of things. Nonetheless, I agree it looks like they meander and coast on current status quo to avoid certain outcomes. They probably prefer it this way than a hypothetical Hamas-less Gaza with a path to statehood. They do have their reasons.

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