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 -
A gunman has opened fire on an unmarked government vehicle carrying detainees to an ICE facility in Dallas, Texas. Initial reports are two detainees killed, one injured, no casualties among the officers. The gunman committed suicide, but left behind bullets with the phrase "ANTI ICE" written on them.
The online left has been openly calling for and encouraging violence against ICE agents for some time now, as well as attempting to facilitate that violence through doxing of agents and their families. These efforts have lead to a massive increase on assaults on ICE agents and threats to their families. Democratic leadership has refused to address these calls for and encouragement to violence from their base, and instead has joined in with calls for all agents to be unmasked and identified, as well as efforts to compel such identification through law.
This pattern of the blue grassroots engaging in lawless violence while the leadership offers encouragements of varying levels of plausible deniability, has been the norm for some time now. When the Blue Tribe grassroots engaged in a sustained vandalism and arson campaign against Tesla owners and dealers, recent Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz mocked the company's declining stock price and reassured Tesla owners that "we're not blaming you, you can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off". His subsequent non-apology is likewise a notable example of the form. Nor did it start there; as Blues unanimously maintain, Antifa is just an idea, not anything resembling an organization.
In any case, the ICE shooting in Dallas follows Sinclair Broadcasting abruptly reversing their plans to air Charlie Kirk's memorial service, after their local affiliates received numerous violent threats, and a teacher's union lawyer actually shot up the lobby of his local channel's offices.
Jimmy Kimmel is now back on the air, having been briefly suspended for blamed the murder of one of the most prominent right-wing activists in the nation on the right, an accusation repeated enthusiastically by numerous Blue Tribe influencers, activists and leaders. Polling shows that only 10% of Democrats believe Kirk's killer was left-wing. A third of Democrats believing that the man who wrote "catch this, fascist" on his bullets was right-wing, and a further 57% believe the motive for the shooting was either unknowable or apolitical.
Investigators are still looking into motive for what is being reported as a targeted killing at a country club in New Hampshire, where a gunman shouting "Free Palestine" and "The children are safe" killed one man and wounded two others. Likewise for the attempted bombing of a FOX news affiliate's van on the 14th.
We've had a fair amount of discussion over the last week about whether the left has a violence problem. It seems to me that not only does the left have a very serious violence problem, but that there is no one on the left capable of engaging with that problem in anything approaching a constructive way. Simply put, the American left has invested too much and too broadly into creating this problem to ever seriously attempt to resolve it. There is no way for them to disengage from the one-two punch of "The right are all Nazis/Nazis should be gotten rid of by any means necessary"; too much of what they have built over the last decade is predicated on this syllogism for their movement to survive even attempting to walk it back. The vast majority on the left cannot even bring themselves to admit the nature of the problem. But at the same time, at least some of them do seem to recognize that this is getting out of hand in a way that may not be survivable. Destiny's recent comments seem indicative of the mentality at play:
He appeared to elaborate on this train of thought in a recent stream:
...and the core point behind his somewhat incoherent further elaboration seems to be that the left must lean on the right to "lower the temperature", because otherwise the left itself will be forced to accept considerable losses.
The problem, of course, is that he is fundamentally correct. The Right is not particularly scared at the moment. We have had a long time to acclimate to the idea of leftist violence targeting us, and wile we are very angry about our political champions being murdered by leftist scum, with their actions cheered on by the grassroots left as a whole, many of us have long accepted the idea that this was going to come down to an actual fight in the end. We do not believe we created this situation; certainly, we did not bend the entire journalism, academia, and entertainment classes to normalizing the idea that our political opponents were isomorphic to subhuman monsters sneakily concealing themselves among the general population, whose violent deaths should always be enthusiastically celebrated. I've contemplated a post on simply cataloguing the number of TV shows and movies dedicated to one or both of the "The right are all Nazis/Nazis should be gotten rid of by any means necessary" paired statements. Suffice to say, we are quite aware that most of the left holds us in absolute contempt, and a large plurality wishes for our violent death. We are aware that any pushback on these sentiments will be framed as an offensive act on our part. We told the left this was a bad idea. We told them why it was a bad idea. They did it anyway. And now: consequences.
In parting, I've written and then deleted several posts about "conversations we can have in advance." This is, yet again, a conversation we can have in advance. At some point, someone on the left is going to get shot by someone on the right, and not in a legally justifiable way but as an actual ideological murder. And when that happens, all the people mocking the idea of online violent radicalization, after screaming about the dangers of online violent radicalization for the last decade, are going to flop back to being performatively worried about online violent radicalization. When this happens, they will be met with stone-faced negation from Red Tribe, and will then weep and moan about how the extremists of the right just refuse to engage with this obvious problem. This will not deliver the results they hope for, but they'll do it anyway, and we'll move another step closer to chaos.
How do we move past this type of stochastic terrorism strategy though? I mean it is very difficult in my opinion to counter - Democratic leadership has plausible deniability, as many of them decry the violence once or twice publicly, even though it seems they don't really care and sort of egg on the base in other ways.
What to do when one side of the political aisle decides that rule of law is for chumps and they will just instigate violence by dehumanizing their opposition? I don't mean this as a doomer take of "oh it's civil war time" because I believe we are FAR away from the type of degeneration that would require a civil war. I genuinely believe it's possible to come back from this sort of situation.
But what are some actual strategies conservatives could use? It seems that there is already a decent amount of division on the left over this, do they try to bring more people from the left over to their side, perhaps by offering some concessions? Do they try to keep a record of anytime a democrat says something vaguely pro-violence in public?
What are concrete ways to stop this type of behavior?
Start suppressing the far-left? Arrest, debank, infiltrate, undermine, unearth embarassing information (huge contingent of pedophiles here, recall the weird pedo who tried to cover for Kirk's assassin). Definitely get rid of these twitch goons like Destiny, make it known that it just isn't practical for Twitch to be hosting this kind of content. Twitch will then find that the nebulous terms of service mean that, alas, Destiny's channel has to be shut down. Find legal issues and then continuously haul them into court until they STFU, though this works best if you actually control the judiciary.
This is standard govt stuff, a basic security-forces operation. If you're ideologically opposed to pressing the 'suppress' button then there isn't really much you can do. I guess you can try to channel leftist support over to a moderate instead. But that only works if you can do subtle manipulation of the media, which is very difficult today.
More options
Context Copy link
I think honestly the best answer is serious pressure, social and political against all political bomb throwers. The reason that political violence in 1980 was rare was that it was socially unacceptable to be a radical, mainstream media was corralled by technology (there were only 3 channels and news content was limited to a hour a day and whatever was printed in the newspaper), by social pressure (people refusing to watch entire stations who got too radical, or calling the FCC to complain), and because the screen was in a public place, there was social stigma at play to people — especially minor children— watching radical content. In the home, mom can turn off the television, especially since there’s only one and it’s in the living room.
Going on to social pressure, the only people who were radicals were either very quiet about it or were basically social pariahs. The open communist, post high school worked in the fine field of low-rent retail and fast food restaurants. He had few friends and generally only among other true-believing pariahs like himself. If you worked in an office job, you wouldn’t talk about politics because saying anything even slightly outside the fairly narrow window of things white make middle class office workers believed was a good way to end a career. All of this social conformity kept the violence down because it’s hard to justify violence if you’re not pretty radical in your ideology. And if you are pressured to not be radical, and can’t marinate in radical ideology, it’s a lot of work to become and remain a radical as you get pushback from people you know and people who have power over you.
So my suggestion is to basically leverage those kinds of ideas. Make political radicals losers again. Don’t hang around with them, don’t hire them, and don’t let them be radicals in public. Policy wise I would hope that some kind of control can be exerted such that radical content on social media, streaming services, and on cable networks can be removed. Barring that, at least in your own home, be aware of the kinds of content and social media your kids are consuming and as possible prevent them from getting into those kinds of content or influencers. If I were a parent I’d look at the people he’s into and seeing if they are dancing around because Kirk got shot or are calling MAGA or the government authoritarian or something.
I'm not sure that political violence in the US in the 1980s was much more rare than it is nowadays.
In the 1980s, there was a politically motivated bomb explosion in the Capitol building and a politically motivated assassination attempt on civil rights leader Vernon Jordan. Also, mentally ill individuals killed former Congressman Allard Lowenstein and attempted to kill President Ronald Reagan.
Granted, the assassination attempts that I mention were not politically motivated, but then I'm not sure that the attempt on Trump's life in Butler, PA was either.
The 1970s had a lot of communist and also more or less vaguely leftist violence from the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, and so on, even though the same social factors that you mention applied. It was pretty easy back then for radicals to find other, fellow-minded radicals.
Three political attempts at violence in a decade is much lower than the current baseline which is at least 5-6 within the last 6 months. You can’t really reach absolute zero, but having those events be rare is a much better thing. The 1970s were more radical mostly because of Vietnam and the draft and mostly calmed down once the war and draft ended.
Butler I regard as at least semi political simply because I don’t think you can non-politically shoot a presidential candidate during a campaign rally. He was also disturbed as I understand it, so mental illness plays a role.
Those are obviously just the high profile ones. Most of these from our time won’t be remembered in a couple decades.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
About 15 years of electoral disasters for the perpetrating ideological coalition, such that a sustained political incumbency on the part of the targets can initiate, prosecute, and carry out sustained prosecutions of malefactors, logistical supporters, and moneyed backers without a partisan flip and abandonment of enforcement. This, in turn, leads to an entire political generation of the legal survivors ingrains in their follow-on generation the importance of both legal and political distance with violent extremists, even as the legal survivors in some respects owe their rise in the opposition- and thus have a personal stake in the status quo- to the willingness of the ruling party to prosecute their inner-party rivals.
Political violence is not good, but it's not exactly new, even in the US. The social media coverage is new, the visceral, overwhelming awareness that there are [many] people who support it is new, but the existence and even implementation of it in democracies across the last two centuries are not. There are reasons that we don't typically remember or bring up the violent extremists movements of yester-century, and that's because they died on the vine. Few people talk about violent labor protests, for example, because the violent labor movements largely had their backs broken in many states.
More options
Context Copy link
Heat continues rising until society bursts. The left really, really, really needs to get it's house in order.
More options
Context Copy link
Do not negotiate with terrorists. If someone threatens you, and you visibly give in to their threat, you are incentivizing that behavior in the future.
Unfortunately, we really don't have a good way to deal with people who want to cause a lot of damage, are willing to give their own lives to do it, and don't have any prior history of violence. I don't think we can have a way of dealing with that while maintaining a free society.
I'm talking about liberals like e.g. Ezra Klein who have shown a lot of public distaste for this sort of thing. Not the terrorists themselves.
Perhaps conservatives should concede 20 bucks?
The irony is that if I recall, that comic was originally done as a condemnation of GamerGate, arguing that the peaceful contingent was aligned with the harassers and trolls out there.
More options
Context Copy link
Hah, amazing comic. Thanks for sharing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Realize that if they don’t agree with this that they’re on the wrong side, and then switch sides. Like most of the post / ex liberals who are now MAGA, including Donald Trump himself.
Americans are not going to hug this one out, this ends when one side defeats the other.
There are a million ways that can be done, including multiple ways with minimal necessary violence, but that’s basically it.
This is not me waging the culture war, this is me seeing very clearly the nature of the thing.
None of this was inevitable or predestined, and yet here we are.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Any concession has the potential to make it spiral into way worse violence, as it would validate to the left that violence as the best way to get what they want, AND would signal to the right that The West Has Fallen, no one is on their side, time to despair and go full warlord. Maybe it won't, but it's an option to be very careful with.
Again, I'm talking about concession to people on the left that are decrying the violence, not those that are happy with it.
As long as these concessions are specific to the people decrying the violence, in a way that's contradictory or at least counterproductive to the goals of those celebrating the violence, I think such concessions would work very well. These would actually be possible, since there are many substantial disagreements between the peace-wanting left and the bloodthirsty left.
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