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Sir, there's been four new Nazi/Hitler/antisemitic issues in the conservative community in just the past day
Following the recent Politico expose on the Young Republicans groupchat leak among mid 20s-30s leaders of the organization containing comments about gas chambering their political opponents and antisemitic remarks like this
In the followup to this, yes you heard it right, at least four new antisemitic and/or Nazi controversies in the past day or so.
A flag with a swatiska embedded in it was spotted in the office of Representative Dave Taylor. Rep. Taylor has called it out and condemned it, and it's quite possible he never noticed it before himself but it does seem to be another sign of the embedded antisemitic and pro nazi rhetoric in lower level staffers if one of them put it up.
Additionally, the Border Patrol posted a video on an Instagram containing an antisemitic slur. While the higher ups of the border patrol likely don't have much to do with what gets posted on the social media, it's again another bad sign that the lower levels who coordinate posts and approve them are antisemitic. Someone had to specifically pick that particular verse of that particular version of that particular song, they knew what they were posting and whatever approval process they use, the others would have heard the lyrics and yet signed on.
The third controversy is the most explicit of them all. Myron Gaines, host of the Fresh and Fit podcast (1.58 million subscribers on YouTube alone) posted
Now, I never would have imagine that the word woke includes "thinking the Holocaust is real and Hitler is bad", but that seems to be where we are at now. Gaines is also a former employee of the DHS, which is just another point of evidence of low level gop aligned staffers having pro Nazi/antisemitic views.
But in fact, all of this seems to be par for the course, according to Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab. who also wades into the ring of antisemitic Holocaust denialism with comments like
That's right, at least two major conservative names have directly engaged in unashamed pro Nazi/Holocaust denialism/etc rhetoric in response to the group chat leak and both of them strongly believe that many other high level conservatives agree with them (Myron's use of "We like Hitler and Torba saying it's normal).
As Richard Hanania (Writer of "The Origins of Woke" who has been in many conservative spaces before) explained months before the leak, this is actually pretty common. As he's said before, the two types of comments he tends to get "it can't be that bad" and "lol that's exactly what it's like" such as this agreement from National Review reporter James Lynch
What's interesting is that the one thing both the Nazi denouncers (Hanania/Lynch/etc) and Nazi defenders (Myron/Torba/etc) here both seem to agree on, is that this is common among the young right. There seems to be a broad consensus that this gropyer antisemitic Nazism is growing among conservatives, especially young ones. We've seen this with Kanye and his descent into Nazism, we've seen this with John Reid and Mike Robinson both exposed over their Nazi fetish. We've seen this with Tucker Carlson and Daryl Cooper. The rapid growth of figures like Nick "six million cookies" Fuentes, Ian Carroll and Theo Von. In fact a neo Nazi inspired kid was even behind a recent school shooting in Colorado a few months ago
EW Erickson says https://x.com/EWErickson/status/1978812093773041964
Ben Shapiro says that unity with radicals will destroy the right wing as it pushes moderate Americans away.
Right wing conservative libertarian speaker Phil Magness says
So with all this recent controversy, how big of a Nazi problem is actually festering, and why do the Nazis seem to feel so comfortable in modern conservativism? They even seem to be dropping hints at the highest levels if the border patrol video was intended as a dog whistle to be dropped before deleting. Is this growing widespread agreement (from Hanania to Torba) that this is just the tip of the iceberg among young conservatives accurate? Will this growing trend of Nazi radicalism destroy the Republicans chances among moderates in the future like embracing left wing radicalism hurt Biden? And how do the non Nazi conservatives and moderates balance fighting off Nazi accusations from the left also working to stem this apparant rise of unashamed nazism and Holocaust denialism?
As others have pointed out, it's difficult to not see this entire post as an artful, nut-picking troll.
But even setting that aside, left wing antisemitism, or perhaps more specifically Islamist antisemitism from left wing political parties, is so frequent that people scarcely bother to report on it (or, perhaps, they actively suppress it because it hurts Democrat narratives). The "free Palestine" shooting of the Israeli embassy couple was much more "Nazi" in character than anything Andrew Torba has ever done. I suspect that highlighting right-wing antisemitism, real or imagined, is a case of "accuse your enemy of what you are doing while you are doing it."
That said, just speaking from personal experience, in my social feeds earlier today I read some surprisingly outright racist remarks in response to Ketanji Brown Jackson's ill-advised suggestion that being a racial minority be considered a kind of disability. As an anti-identitarian liberal this concerns me greatly, but I do think it is (as others have suggested) directly downstream of leftists spending decades crying wolf. If you spend enough time and energy insisting that your political opponents are Nazis, at some point your political opponents are going to decide that they might as well break out the jackboots, then. The story of Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu of Han comes to mind--
I don't know any Nazis, and I prefer it that way. But if--and I do not think this is the case now, but if it ever were--I were one day forced to choose an authoritarian regime to live under, and the only choices were some kind of white nationalism and some flavor of socialist wokism, I'm confident that my chances of both survival and prosperity would be much, much greater under the nationalist regime.
The only remarkable thing about this post is the political valency; what is this place if not nut-picking to wage the culture war?
Broad swathes of 'antisemitism' on the left can differentiate between opposing Jews and opposing Israel. You and others running cover for antisemitism on the right ignore the significant presence of slogans and groups like 'Jews for Palestine' at all the rallies on college campuses. The largest protests against the Israeli war in Gaza in my region were led by Jewish men in kippahs with megaphones blocking traffic.
Hardcore fundamentalist Islamists who truly hate Jews and want to 'do a genocide' in the local parlance (usually by people who want to murder Palestinians) are broadly orthogonal to left and right. Were the 9/11 hijackers leftists?
And, yes, apparently there was a nutjob who shot up an embassy and presumably wanted to kill Jews. Who was just complaining about nutpicking, again?
Antisemitism on the right rarely bothers to make the Israel/Jew distinction, particularly when it arrives at it's antisemitism via the protocols of the elders of Zion and the Great Replacement Theory and Holocaust denialism. They view all Jews, everywhere, as the problem, nowhere more so than the US government/wall street/other institutions and blame them for immigration and a supposed genocide against white people in the west. Contrasted with 'leftist antisemitism,' how many Jews do you think subscribe to this ideology?
One of these flavors of antisemitism, were it to gain power, would likely cut foreign aid to Israel and boost aid to Palestine. The other would likely pogrom the US government and elites, or worse.
See, when this is done by people you dislike you break out the Narcissist's prayer:
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
How many times have I seen this pasted here when it comes to the gays? trans people? Communism? Cancel culture? At first they said nobody was crazy enough to change genders! Then they said it's happening, but it's good actually! Now the HR lady is crushing my balls while I have to swear fealty to the rainbow flag!
Well, fuck man, if you were calling us gay trannies who cancel people for wrongthink for the last twenty years, I guess we might as well all be gay trannies who cancel you for wrongthink, amirite? Why would you spend so much time and energy insisting cancel culture was a thing? Guess I may as well cancel you now, and also it's your fault.
No, Trump is not a nazi. Nor is JD Vance or Stephen Miller, or probably anyone in the administration. I'm skeptical that any of the incidents OP posted are suggestive that the Fourth Reich is some fifth column in the Republican party. But at the same time, there's been a groundswell of interest and support and tolerance of ideas like Great Replacement Theory and authoritarianism in the Red Tribe mainstream that's been slowly gaining steam for the last decade. And, while I know everything wrong with the Red Tribe is actually the Blue Tribe's fault, what word would you like us to use to describe that? Not nazism, not racism, not fascism, so...what?
I honestly can't tell whether you're being ironic or just aggressively misunderstanding my point. I feel like the most generous thing I can say might be "keep in mind your aims in writing this response to me; now go back and read my post with the idea that I was trying to make the same point to magicalkittycat, for analogous reasons, as you had when writing this response to me."
Less charitably, I did find this line to be unmitigated bullshit:
I am not running cover for antisemitism on the right, and nothing I wrote can be reasonably construed that way. Hell, I am occasionally accused, here, as a moderator, of running cover for the Jews! But neither do I think that the antisemitic left should be simply allowed to do what it does because everyone is so distracted by the tiki torch cosplayers they fail to notice (or outright excuse) blatant antisemitism from the left and its political allies. (And while the 9/11 hijackers weren't formally "leftists," their presence in the United States was arguably traceable to changes in American immigration law plausibly attributed to the left.)
My beef is with identitarians. To my mind, the main difference between leftist identitarians and right-wing identitarians is that right-wing identitarians are a bunch of reactionaries doing reactionary things. Leftists set the stage, defined the terms, and picked the fight. Reactionaries are doing exactly what (as @Fruck correctly observes) the radicals were told they would do. I don't like it. I don't agree with it. I think that nothing good will ever come of identitarianism, no matter how righteous-minded its practitioners. I don't think any of it is good. But neither do I think it reasonable to apportion blame equally to both sides; this is a mess of progressivism's making.
Discussing the culture wars is not the same as waging them. Yes, I acknowledge that people do wage them, to various degrees. But we do try to discourage that.
I am neither being ironic, nor am I aggressively misunderstanding you. Thankfully options exist outside your false dichotomy!
Thank you for your honesty. Now, moderator, ban thyself.
Your post was a mix of whataboutism, if it's true that there are nazis on the right it's not their (red tribe) fault, and oh, while I hate nazis they'll treat me better than the woke police. Insofar as 'running cover' implies you have some secret agenda to promote Nazi material, no, I don't think it's true. Insofar as you're sequentially denying, deflecting blame, minimizing (lol Tiki Torch cosplayers) and whatabouting - yes, you're running cover for them.
In reality, you are a flawlessly objective crystal passing judgment from on high. You have principles that you live your life by, and you chide the left and the right equally, god damnit! Anything less would be to descend into partisan hackery.
And Nara, I am (whatever people may think) fundamentally of this place. I believe that we should strive towards objectivity, that it exists, I deeply believe in mistake theory and progress and that things are getting better and discussion is good. I reject the people on the left who claim that everything is political, nobody is objective and it's all just white supremacist/patriarchal/isms all the way down and doubly so if you're a white man.
But dude, I have to actually invoke that progressive argument here, much as it pains me. You fit the trope of the partisan pretending to be objective and principled to a T to avoid confronting the fact that you are, in fact, also waging the culture war most of the time.
Tiki torch cosplayers vs. blatant antisemitism. I am impressed by your objective framing of the political situation!
Your beef is with the vast majority of the modern left. Seriously, replace identitarian with vast majority of the modern left - is your statement significantly different?
Nara, go to West Philly. Go to Baltimore. Go to Chicago. Much as I love your race-blind ideals, much as they resonate with me, the modern incarnation of progressivism and identitarianism didn't build the slums and the poverty and the suffering. Cancel culture wasn't a thing during the Rodney King riots. You can't be naive enough to ask an entire nation not to Notice that people of one skin color are overwhelmingly worse off, and it doesn't even matter what the cause is. People take that information in the direction they prefer.
The problem is that people like waging the culture war. I commend you and the moderation team, because the failing lies with the users. You can't mod yourself a better forum population.
It looks from this post as if "aggressively misunderstanding" is still in fact what you're doing, though--including, here, by skipping the most generous recommendation I could think of. Look--
My point was that magicalkittycat was engaged with a mixture of whataboutism and the Chinese Robber fallacy that is presently circulating in furtherance of running cover for Leftist antisemitism. Insofar as 'running cover' implies the news media has some secret agenda to promote antisemitism, no, I don't think it's true. Insofar as they're sequentially denying, deflecting blame, minimizing and whatabouting, yes, they're running cover for antisemitism.
Every once in a while it will happen that I am in a conversation with someone here, using the terms and tropes of this place, and it will turn into a kind of "no, you" debate. This seems to be most common with motte-and-bailey arguments--"no, I'm not playing in the bailey, you're playing the bailey!" Sometimes people find ways out by finding a good word to taboo, or through careful charity, or whatever. I'm honestly not great at this (Zorba is genuinely great at it) but I do try. Anyway we seem to be in one of those circles now, where I get accused of whataboutism (maybe simply because I'm not the OP, and so there's a "first mover" advantage or something) for pointing out how OP's sources are engaged in a kind of whataboutism.
Right, and the circlular firing squad for this argument is the one where I point out that you're playing the role of the leftist who simultaneously speaks as the arbiter and adherent of objectivity and truth while downplaying the possibility (or at least likelihood) of objectivity and truth. Why is it that forums with actual free speech so often begin leaning to the right--almost as though leftism can't stand on its own two feet? Clearly I am not without my priors! And yet exactly one of us in this discussion has frankly admitted the existence of, and offered criticism against, both right-wing and left-wing antisemitism and racism, and it isn't you. I wasn't kidding, here:
Yes! White supremacy is not a new kind of identitarianism, though the term "white supremacy" has gotten woefully overextended and maliciously distorted in furtherance of Leftist aims. And I think a lot of Leftists are not identitarians, though sometimes they have to be reminded of that. The anti-Woke Left is not a group of insignificant size--and relevantly, my sense of this forum is that most users are anti-Woke leftists who have been surprised to find themselves in the center-Right of the Overton window, as radicals have stretched it to reach the territory of identitarian spoils systems.
The main difference between left-wing identitarians and right-wing identitarians so far is that left-wing identitarians mostly control their political coalition (the Democratic Party) while right-wing identitarians remain at the fringes--albeit, less at the fringes than they were before the Great Awokening. With specific reference to antisemitism, the antisemites on the Right are reactionaries who fetishize a failed effort to implement national socialism in a country they often know nothing about. The antisemites on the Left, by contrast, are the vanguard of Islamofacism, a movement with at least tens of millions of supporters around the globe, who are prosecuting a centuries-long grudge against the ideological descendants of Judaism and Christianity. I don't think it's "whataboutism" or "running cover" to suggest that if we're going to talk about political antisemitism, we should talk about all of it, not just those bits of it that are most convenient to our preferred narratives.
I echo @Chrisprattalpharaptr’s half-bemused, half-despairing incredulity at the fact that you apparently genuinely think that MAGA isn’t an identitarian movement.
‘Remove the log from your own eye’, indeed.
I suppose you can make the case that they are "identitarian" in some vague abstract sense, but you're just not going to find the kind of racist screeds published by MAGA that routinely get published by progressive institutions. Or if I'm wrong feel free to enlighten me, but you seem like the one with the log in the eye.
Give me the worst such screed you can find, and I guarantee you that I can give you a MAGA screed that’s just as bad, if not worse.
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It is and it isn't. Anyone who tries to suggest to a MAGA blue-collar worker that he should get affirmative action for being white will likely get a punch in the face. Rightly or wrongly, most MAGA supporters see themselves as rolling back unfair discrimination against them, rather than advocating for their own racial interests. Though tbf even as I type this I'm reminded that a lot of the progressive left launders its demands the same way, but the spirit still seems kind of different... they are often explicitly racial in a way that MAGA just doesn't seem to be. There's no Ibram Kendi in power saying, 'any disparity between white people and others is racist', there's no public statements 'blackness is an original sin', no 'grit and resiliance is a hallmark of black supremacy'.
I think it boils down to the fact that America is, still, a largely white country and a largely white-run country, where almost everyone was raised with the 'I have a dream' speech. White progressives are comfortable flagellating (other) whites, and raising up other races; despite many accusation, white MAGA aren't comfortable denigrating other races or exerting white supremacy, and those few who are don't feel able to say so publicly.
Using those specific words, probably.
Phrasing it instead as “putting them in the positions they deserve, and clearing out all those unqualified affirmative action hires who got inappropriately appointed to those positions instead of a deserving, meritorious applicant like themselves”, and that will get an enthusiastic approval.
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