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 -
Is there really not a single right-wing hacker competent enough to find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats? I get the feeling it's a lot less irony-infected than this kind of thing.
Is Hanania a person to trust, here?
Two, for a long time nobody gave a shit about unabashed bigotry from the left perpetrated by every major institution and every university in this country, and most people still don't care. While I think these jokes are very trashy and a kind of male socialization I've never really understood, I'm gonna need a little more than trashy jokes to get up in arms about.
When we get "blackness is evil and must but abolished, but don't worry that technically doesn't mean black people, wink wink nudge nudge" unironically preached by a major university or newspaper, I'll be concerned.
Do you want to revisit a 2020 discussion?
Nazis have replaced the Devil. If you wanted to spit in the eye of Christians, you identify as Satanist and make dead baby jokes. If you want to spit in the eye of hypocritical liberal-progressives, you identify as a Nazi and make those jokes.
For Mark Robinson it was a weird fetish thing, not quite the same example as the rest, btw.
It doesn't take hacking to get democrats(more important than these guys) proudly swearing allegiance to incredibly off-putting things. The dems are very proudly on the losing side of a lot of 80-20 issues so you just have to dig through their speeches until they say things like 'parents shouldn't have a say in their kids' education' and 'illegal immigrants should get transgender surgeries at taxpayer expense' and 'babies who were born alive after a failed abortion should be kept comfortable until they die'.
Yeah, true. They just say it out in the open, rarely any consequences! Well, except for losing to Trump twice.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You would think any Democrat group with a modicum of foresight immediately deleted their chat histories the moment this story broke.
More options
Context Copy link
You don't need to be infiltrate a groupchat to find obvious examples of democrats wanting to do things they know their opponents find terrible. They openly talk about why Democrats should pretend to support economic populism so that they can sneak in trans rights and unlimited immigration, at the direct and explicit expense of white people. Its the entire existence of Lib Of Tik Tok and the progs out this out openly because they think cons are too stupid to ever pierce the barrier to entry of looking at a phone screen.
More options
Context Copy link
this is similar to what o'keefe was doing with his 'stings'. basically getting left aligned people to confide to him or his operatives like a friend.
More options
Context Copy link
How do you mean this? 1. As a Chinese robber fallacy thing, like surely there are some racist Democrats out there. Or that 2. Democrats are doing their soft racism thing of belittling minority groups? Or that 3. Democrats in private are just as racist as Republicans are in private. Or 4. Democrats say racist jokes in private, but don't mean them? Because to be honest, as someone very much adjacent to and in those Democrat group chats. I don't think 3 is likely, and 4 is far less likely then it used to be 15 years ago. There is too much self policing, infighting, virtue signaling, effectively causing leftists to get brownie points for calling each other out on such things all the time.
Doesn't count as racist for these purposes, but really should be more damning for Dems.
Democrats in public have spent several years being way more racist than Republicans in private or public, they just don't call stuff like "white people are goblins" and "whiteness is a contract with the devil" racism, because they gerrymandered racism to primarily be about black people. Belittling white men is a favored pastime. Et cetera and so forth.
So I would imagine whatever they say in private is even worse than what they've been publishing in public for my entire adult life.
Ah yeah, I left that one off my list, but that makes sense. Leftists do say that sort of thing all the time in private, and it would be kinda damning if that were seen more, but not as much as the gerrymandered racism.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, I think the issue with this sort of complaint is that there's nothing horrifyingly racist that Democrats can say in private group chats that would be more horrifyingly racist than what come out of Democrats' mouths in public. Democrats openly saying horrifyingly racist things is just "baked in" to people's expectations of them, such that similar private group chats just wouldn't be scandalous; . And, indeed, a somewhat similar-but-mirrored analog happened in the past month with some small Democratic Virginian politician, with basically no hubbub, in large part because Democrats openly and unironically espousing such hateful and pro-violence rhetoric has just been normalized.
Point of nitpicking. I would consider a small time politician to be, maybe, one member of the state legislator, or mayor of a small or medium sized town. Attorney General of the entire state is starting to get up into a large Democratic Virginian politician. State AGs often make nationwide news due to the policies they pursue unilaterally. I have to hear about Ken Paxton, AG of Texas, all the damned time.
Paxton is kind of a standout but yeah, my understanding would be the AG is the second-most important politician in most states, or at least not lower than third.
Paxton is probably the third most influential Republican politician in Texas nationally at most- Abbott and Cruz at least beat him, and there’s an argument that Dan Patrick does too.
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
Were you not here last week, where we discussed how Virginia politician Jay Jones was outed as wanting to see a political rival's wife wailing in despair as her child bleeds to death in her arms?
No, saw that name in this thread but didn't check the context. How disgusting!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link