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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 22, 2025

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I'm sorry, but Stormtroopers vs Rebels comparisons are not going to move me, or probably many people here. It makes me think the differences are irreconcilable, not in the sense of "the Left are so evil civil war is inevitable" but in the sense of "people who process the problems of the law through the lense of movies for children and adult children simply do not deserve input into the political process, and should be excluded in some peaceful way while the grown-ups sort things out." I feel similarly about such people on the right, but they are thankfully much less vocal than the reddit left.

I mean, when I think about it, I largely agree with Yarvin's take that this is counterproductive theatre to look tough for the plebs, but there's also the fact that the sort of guys ICE is gunning for are not exactly sophisticated ironists, they're largely coming from cultures where tough guys in masks with rifles is what power looks like. The westoid media-soaked response is just the main aspect that really seems too ridiculous to credit.

I think until the rhetoric ratchets down to even remotely sane levels, and people stop acting like Wolverines in Red Dawn in training or radicalized rhetoric, I don’t think it reasonable to assume that an eventual hot war (which will look like the Irish Troubles) is pretty safe as a bet. If anything, we’re moving toward more violence, not less, and those pushing the memes enabling all of this are more often celebrated than punished. Kimmel pretty much celebrated the assassination and freaking Disney is still paying for his show (on a positive note, affiliate stations are often refusing to air it). Where’s the evidence of people stepping back and saying “this is just plain unacceptable?”

I have some Moldbug sympathies, not that im completely opposed to some sort of self government, but that most people are so completely unsuited to the task that they must be told firmly to sit down and shut up so government actually works.

Oh I don't mean the violence, that's very real, I mean that going around in tacticool outfits v&ing guatemalans is theatre. Obviously arresting criminals is great but as a political spectacle it's not really something that builds power.

When I have seen this on the right among normies, it's usually in response to the left's own Manichaean worldview, not because they view the left fundamentally as enemies who cannot be reasoned with.

I mostly mean stuff like the movies about "BASED NOT-JOHN-WICK MURDERS THE SH*T OUT OF CHILD TRAFFICKERS", or whatever the Red Tribe equivalent to soyjacking over marvel/star wars/streamslop would be. I see occasional attempts to right-wing-code the same media as redditors but pretty rarely.