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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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I have stated a couple of times before that this place is not right-wing, it has not ever been.

I'm coming to this post from the AAQCs thread. This is farcically wrong. This site absolutely tilts right pretty far. That's not to say it's exclusively right-wing, but the following are all true:

  • The Quality Contributions threads are a combination of nonpartisan wonkposts, and right-wingers creatively sneering at the left. There is no equivalent of left-wingers creatively sneering at the right due to a combination of fewer left-wingers, and since any left-leaning effortpost is much less likely to be nominated.
  • Upvotes/downvotes skew rightward. They also skew towards longer/higher quality posts which some people try to point as the only effect, but low-quality left-leaning posts will almost always be heavily downvoted, while there are plenty of low-quality right-leaning posts that will be highly upvoted.
  • Consistently left-leaning posters have much higher moderator scrutiny and can follow all the rules and still get banned for frivolous rules that plenty of right-leaning accounts violate all the time. A great example is Darwin, who was a prolific left-leaning poster. There was plenty of consensus that he was "bad" in some nebulous way, but when I asked repeatedly what was wrong I was only ever given vague runarounds and examples of posts that proved my point like this one, where I disagree with Darwin's political point, but in terms of debate etiquette and rule-following his detractors are massively worse than he ever was.

You're right, but the predominance of right-wing though here is not by design, or by tendentious moderation. IMO It's also not by left-wingers being naturally more wrong or thinner-skinned. As I see it, it's a nazi bar. Left-wingers can congregate where they like. Right-wingers have to congregate where they can.

I mean, the Nazi Bar analogy explains a decent chunk of it at least. But this is the type of Nazi Bar where anti-Nazis are viewed with deep suspicion by most of the patrons, as well as the barkeep.

Yes to the patrons, but I do think the barkeep is doing a good job of staying neutral. It is still asymmetrical however since the reporting skews anti-left.

Well, then where is your argument? Where are all the leftists who can confidently defend their arguments?

I pointed out pretty obviously in the body of my post that I am waiting for someone to make that argument. The site tilts right because as I mentioned, the Cathedral is (culturally and socially) everywhere and the left has been wrong a lot. The right has been wrong a lot too, but the right's failures are plastered everywhere so the Cathedral can continue justifying its existence. Even so there are enough people here with blue and orange morality that don't match the American blue or red political axes at all; the only reason this pattern matches to someplace that looks right wing is that there is nowhere else to have these discussions that isn't explicitly left wing.

Fish don't see the water they swim in. The only way for them to find out about water is by trying to fly. If you don't realize this then maybe you've been lucky or privileged enough to never had to pretend basic truths don't apply around family members, friends, acquaintances or professional colleagues, for fear of suffering the social, financial, and personal consequences of being called "right wing".

This place is (supposedly) for truth, the enemy of truth is not upvotes or downvotes. It is falsehood. If you're complaining about the popularity of one or the other, go vote in an election. If you are complaining about the popularity of right wing arguments here and you are a leftist, try being less wrong. I am bemoaning the ideological conformity of this place, not the fact that it "tilts right".

There was plenty of consensus that he was "bad" in some nebulous way, but when I asked repeatedly what was wrong I was only ever given vague runarounds and examples of posts that proved my point like this one, where I disagree with Darwin's political point, but in terms of debate etiquette and rule-following his detractors are massively worse than he ever was.

Darwin was very good at violating the spirit of the rules as badly as possible while staying at least plausibly within the letter. His notable technique was to write so as to strongly imply an argument while not technically actually endorsing that argument himself, and then abuse the charity of those attempting to engage with the apparent meaning of his statements. To those who saw through this technique and deployed sufficient effort to actually nail the conversation down into something concrete, he retreated to abstractions and then ghosted the conversation. Throughout, he was insufferably smug and responded to most disagreements as though they were a vast, unreasonable imposition on his precious time, and was utterly incapable of meaningful charity, self-reflection, or admitting that he might be wrong.

If you would like specific, detailed examples, this thread, is my best attempt to provide. Notably, it contained a very amusing argument about how great Darwin was, and how comparisons to another poster who was posting terribly at the time in a distinctly Darwin-like manner were totally unfair, a week or two before that poster confirmed that they were a Darwin alt.

Darwin was banned for rulebreaking, but as others have noted, that ban ended. He has at least two known alts here, @guesswho and @cartman, but he doesn't comment much any more, likely because enough people understand his technique that it doesn't really work any more, and I and others will happily expend effort to point out the games he likes to play and the context behind them in sufficient detail that his efforts no longer bear much fruit.

this thread, is my best attempt to provide.

I read through it and I'm still not seeing any good examples. I see two main examples with you claiming they're violating the unwritten rules of debate by making a "flat dismissal" and being "uncharitable" in some nebulous way. Once again, this seems like a case of "you just don't like his arguments". I don't either, as I think they're bad arguments, but I'm really not seeing anything objectionable in terms of debate decorum, at least not something that right wing posters do on a nearly constant basis without any intervention.

I direct your attention to the portion involving the following passage:

This is an entirely reasonable interpretation of Darwin's initial comment, and it seems pretty similar to the interpretation several of the posters went with when formulating replies, which were then ignored. I think what you wrote would have been a much better comment than what he went with, considerably less inflammatory, and somewhat higher in content. Unfortunately, the problem is that this is an argument you are imagining, not the argument Darwin actually is making. He absolutely is not claiming that Bezos or any other businessman has a right to sell whatever they choose. He absolutely is not arguing that private censorship is okay (or wrong), or even agreeing that state censorship is wrong (or okay). The argument you are imagining does not exist in that thread.

That may seem like a strong claim. Fortunately, I can prove it pretty solidly, because in that very thread darwin himself very explicitly said so...

[Insert lengthy quote from the comment under discussion]

...In other words, he doesn't actually endorse anything he wrote in that original comment. Nothing you described above was at all the argument he claims to be making, which is unsurprising since the argument he claims to have been making cannot be straightforwardly derived from what he actually wrote. Everyone in that thread who assumed he was speaking plainly and in good faith wasted their time, as you did just now, because he had zero intention of actually prosecuting the argument he implied he was making. His actual argument was that agreeing with BJ's position necessarily makes you either a socialist or a hypocrite, because the only possible response to private censorship is nationalizing the platforms. That's it. That's the entire content of his original post, according to a detailed explanation by the man himself.

Welcome to arguing with Darwin.

Given that his own explanation of his comment completely contradicts your understanding*, it's worth looking at what he actually said in some detail.

Yes, if you completely ignore the difference between government coercion and private businesses.

Did the original essay ignore the difference between government coercion and private business? No, in fact, because the essay is solely about why "book burning" is a bad thing in the abstract, not about whether people should be prevented from doing it, much less how this prevention might be accomplished. His final conclusion is that "book burning" is a loser strategy anyway, so there's no point in worrying about it. Darwin completely ignores the argument BJ made, preferring to substituting an argument that he himself finds more convinient. He does this, by his own admission, because he was annoyed that BJ was saying something negative about his preferred ideology.

Of course, it wouldn't be very persuasive for him to straightforwardly say "This abstract question is dumb, let's talk about a different concrete issue instead". What he does instead is frame his comment as an accusation: "you completely ignore [x]", rather than as a statement of his own views: "I think [x]". Because he does this in as inflammatory a manner as possible, people are too busy reacting to his snarling tone to notice he's pulled a switcharoo on the actual argument being made. Further, the frame of the discussion is now whether the OP did or did not ignore something important about an issue the OP did not even address; meanwhile, in darwin's mind, he has not even offered an opinion of his own at all, so he has zero reason to respond to those like yourself who "misinterpret" him as having done so.

I would be interested to hear how the above is best summarized as me "not liking his arguments".

You're really going to do this smug evidence-free drive-by character assassination in public and then not respond when asked for details?? I find this behaviour cowardly and unbecoming of a moderator.

Once again, is this alt suspected or known? Where's your proof, other than that you don't believe multiple leftists would gather here?

That line about expending effort seems to have been hot air.

If you're a moderator and you know I've done something wrong, then you can ban me. Failing that it just seems like you have a bone to pick with a particular leftist and are taking it out on randos like me for no reason.

Edit: if that's really not the case, it should be easy to show. Or, once again, ban me if you feel I've done something wrong. What I do not like to tolerate is baseless lies with no attempt to even try to show evidence or reasoning in favour of a smug dismissal, especially by an authority figure such as a mod.

I'm sure this boogeyman you're discussing would be happy to know their reach has pervaded so far...

Darwin is one of the most prolific and notable commenters in this forum's history, and his participation shaped the space to a notable degree, both in terms of his sheer comment output, in terms of how people learned to think and argue in responding to him, and in terms of the number of otherwise-productive posters who flamed out trying to debate with him. Those who argued with him without flaming out often had their perspective significantly altered by their interactions with him.

And if that weren't enough, he's one of the most frequently-cited examples for Blues of the sort of high-quality poster this space drives away when they complain about the state of the forum, which is what happened in the above thread. When this happens, I point out that in the first place that he is not banned and that in the second place he was not, in my view at least, a good poster. I generally provide a link to evidence to support the latter position. It seems to me that this is a reasonable way to approach the subject.

...that (once again) random left leaning posters like myself are accused of being them for unclear reasons, with a tone of seething annoyance throughout.

I do not think anything I've written in this thread or the threads I've linked to can be fairly described as "seething annoyance", but writing is always open to interpretation by the audience.

It would be more accurate to say suspected alts, unless you're aware of some knowledge or evidence the rest of us are not privy to??

This is true, and if you say you're not a Darwin alt, I'm happy to take you at your word going forward, at least until I see solid evidence to the contrary. My apologies for overstating my confidence in your case. On the other hand, "left-leaning posters like you" are not accused of being Darwin. You and GuessWho were accused of being Darwin, and GuessWho claims this accusation is correct in his case. Proceeding on the assumption that you're being truthful, that's an accuracy rate of 50% for amateur writing analysis. An accuracy rate of 50% which doesn't seem too bad for amateur writing analysis, particularly when the resulting action is "I have a particular reason to engage with this person's arguments." We make a point of avoiding modding people we're personally engaging in discussion with; the best way to ensure I don't mod you is to get into a discussion with me.

It seems pretty obvious that a moderator of this community engaging in such behaviour would have a chilling effect on left leaning users.

Why, exactly? Again, Darwin continues to be cited by our remaining Progressives as a good contributor, and those of us who disagree do so through discussion, not bans. How does this produce a chilling effect, in your view?

How many people do you think you've wrongly accused of being this person over the years and banned because of it?

Well, apparently you're the first wrongly accused. To my knowledge, no suspected Darwin alts have been banned by me or any of the other moderators.

Perhaps a better question for the right leaning on the forum and moderators: If I were a mod of this community, how many people do you think I would ban and/or flag-accusingly for being sockpuppet accounts based on them sharing similar right wing views and my own amateur writing analysis?

I don't know how many people you would ban. I know we recently banned TequilaMockingbird for being a HlynkaCG alt, but he was a right-winger. We've banned a ton of alts for the guy who pretends to be a leftist and then spams minimal-effort White Nationalist/neo-nazi content, claiming to be "sparking a discussion." I think we banned a number of alts for Julius Bronson back in the day, and for the guy who kept arguing for legalizing pedophilia, though that last one I don't remember the details of as well. I'm pretty sure we've banned a lot more right-wingers for alting than we have left-wingers; the only left-wing alt I recall us repeatedly banning is Impassionata, who is extremely distinctive and hard to miss.

You're really going to do this smug evidence-free drive-by character assassination in public and then not respond when asked for details?? I find this behaviour cowardly and unbecoming of a moderator.

Effort takes time, and I wanted to be as precise as possible.

Where's your proof, other than that you don't believe multiple leftists would gather here?

Everyone seems to be in agreement that lots of leftists don't gather here. If you'd like some examples of posts of yours that seemed similar to Darwin's style, I can go digging for them if you like.

If you're a moderator and you know I've done something wrong, then you can ban me. Failing that it just seems like you have a bone to pick with a particular leftist and are taking it out on randos like me for no reason.

At no point was banning you or Darwin a threat I made. The OP claimed that Darwin had been banned. I pointed out that Darwin was not actually banned, and neither were his alts. I'll take you at your word that you aren't an alt, apologize for mistaking you as one, and reiterate that this entire chain is about how neither you nor Darwin are banned for conversing here.

What I do not like to tolerate is baseless lies with no attempt to even try to show evidence or reasoning in favour of a smug dismissal, especially by an authority figure such as a mod.

I linked quite an extensive analysis of Darwin's behavior above. If you would like me to attempt such an analysis of your posts, it might take a bit to pull together, but I'll give it a shot. Would that suffice as evidence? If not, what would satisfy you?

  1. Your apology is not sincere and I do not accept it as such, since you cannot articulate what it is that you did wrong. You say that you apologize for "overstating your confidence in my case", but this is not what you did. You said that you "knew" I was an alt, and implied it was "known" by others. To a neutral third party observer of your moderator behaviour, that would seem to imply that you have evidence that your assertion was correct from modmail or something. You did not exaggerate the confidence of one of your beliefs, you directly lied and wrote a falsehood with the intent to discredit my account. Edit: saying that something is "known" when you don't provide evidence for it and the something is a pretty inflammatory claim about another user is almost literally the quintessential definition of consensus-building. Do you disagree? This is what I call cowardly behaviour from a moderator, and I find it even more cowardly to pretend to apologize in the manner you have without demonstrating that you understand what about your behaviour was unacceptable. If you don't feel contrition about impugning my character, then I would appreciate you not pretending to.

  2. Regardless of how many other left leaning posters are suspected of being alts, I have endured this claim now more than once from more than one person, in both cases with not even an assertion that they felt the need to prove their reasoning to a third party. If such inflammatory claims are able to be made repeatedly on this forum, even by a moderator, then I fail to see how the rules are being upheld.

  3. It beggars belief to me that you cannot understand how behaviour like yours has a chilling effect on left leaning posters. Imagine I decide to attend a book club. I read up on the book and am excited to share my thoughts with the rest of the new members I meet there. The book club is ran by a few authority figures. Once I arrive, people go around the room and start sharing their thoughts. When it's my turn, I start talking about how I like a certain character and you, the authority figure, pipe up and say "Whoa, how can you say that about Character X? You're just like Bob, the member I had to kick out becuase I didn't like them 2 weeks ago, he always loved those problematic characters. Guys, the way this new member's going to engage in our club isn't right for us, I think he's being dishonest and manipulative exactly like Bob was. I know him from elsewhere and he's trouble. But I'm not actually banning him." What about this scenario is unclear or disanalogous to the present context, if you disagree? If you didn't think your comment would have a chilling effect on me, then I struggle to see what your point even was, since you admit your intention is for his (you assumed my) efforts to bear no fruit and his games not to be entertained. Edit: It seems clear that 1 of 2 things must be true here. a) Your words as an authority figure do not hold any weight with the other members of the group, nor do your claims of additional knowledge, so you are vocalizing something with no purpose. 2. You intend for your words to produce a chilling effect towards the new member, because your words and claims to knowledge as an authority figure are respected, at least somewhat.

  4. You say that "effort takes time" and yet, you are still not being precise or defending your claim with appropriate evidence for how inflammatory it is. At the end of this unsatisfactory reply you question what I would consider evidence as if by asking for some scant shred of evidence from you I have asked for a mountain. You waded into a conversation I was not involved in in order to purposefully discredit my account on illegitimate grounds. If you think you have a case for why you might be correct and your apology is not warranted, then I would appreciate you actually making your case. If you don't, then I would appreciate an apology where you don't also claim that your behaviour as a moderator, making claims like these still with no evidence, is totally acceptable and non problematic. Feel free to give the analysis of my posts a shot if you want to do the former.

Edit: Maybe a better question for me to ask you, to get at our disagreement: You seem to think your behaviour does not have a chilling effect on me or other left leaning posters. You say you have not banned me illegitimately. You seem to still think doing a long analysis of my posts comparing them to Darwin would be a fruitful exercise. So what are you apologizing for? What is the issue with, as you say, "overstating your confidence" that I am a liar?

Maybe a better question for me to ask you, to get at our disagreement: You seem to think your behavior does not have a chilling effect on me or other left leaning posters. You say you have not banned me illegitimately. You seem to still think doing a long analysis of my posts comparing them to Darwin would be a fruitful exercise. So what are you apologizing for? What is the issue with, as you say, "overstating your confidence" that I am a liar?

My apology is for claiming that you were a known Darwin alt, rather than a suspected one.

At no point in this conversation have I claimed or even implied that you are a liar. You have stated that you are not a Darwin alt, and I have accepted that claim at face value, and offered an apology for mistakenly claiming otherwise, which seems to me to be the exact opposite of accusing you of dishonesty. A big part of the reason I'm willing to do that is that Darwin's previous alt made no particular effort to deny his identity when asked directly, so the denial and subsequent argument isn't a good match for his pattern of behavior. Unfortunately, you appear to have interpreted my willingness to withdraw the claim as proof that I made the claim flippantly with zero evidence, and then interpret my offer to explain the evidence prompting the claim as proof that my apology is insincere.

Imagine I decide to attend a book club.

Imagine that everyone at this book club wears masks and voice-changers to conceal their identities. Imagine that part of the job for the people running the book club is to identify people who've been kicked out for bad behavior and are trying to sneak back in, to prevent them from causing more trouble.

When it's my turn, I start talking about how I like a certain character and you, the authority figure, pipe up and say "Whoa, how can you say that about Character X? You're just like Bob, the member I had to kick out because I didn't like them 2 weeks ago, he always loved those problematic characters. Guys, the way this new member's going to engage in our club isn't right for us, I think he's being dishonest and manipulative exactly like Bob was. I know him from elsewhere and he's trouble. But I'm not actually banning him."

The situation here differs in several particulars.

Someone else starts a conversation about how the authorities suck, and how they kicked out Bob, one of the best members the book club ever had. I point out that Bob was actually quite badly behaved, and also that he was not kicked out and actually is still here; he stopped wearing the green mask, and now sometimes he wears the orange mask, and sometimes he wears the purple mask. You, in the purple mask, say, "Hey! Don't call me Bob! Why would you call me Bob! I'm not Bob!" I apologize and state that I appear to have been mistaken about the purple mask, you do not accept my apology, and the above transpires.

It seems to me that there are some crucial differences between these two descriptions, and that mine is considerably more accurate to the nature of the preceding conversation.

Beyond this, you have written much here, but it seems to me that the matter is quite simple. You can accept my apology or not, as you please, and you can ask for the evidence that prompted the original statement or not, as you please. I am still not clear on whether you would like it presented, or whether you would consider that a further attempt to smear you, and I am attempting to respect your wishes to the extent that is possible.

It is obvious that you have strong feelings about the matter, but it is not obvious why I should share those feelings. If you think I am a coward, that my apology is made in bad faith, that I am a bad mod, a flippant asshole, deliberately attempting to drive out blues, breaking the rules, making statements that beggar belief, etc, etc, that is your prerogative; I do not prefer that people hold such opinions of me, but I have also learned that my control over the thoughts of others is sharply limited. If you think I am violating the letter or the spirit of the forum's rules, report me to the other Mods, or make your argument to the forum at large, as you please. If you want to know what the Darwin pattern looks like, I'll note again that I've linked a previous discussion above and have offered to discuss it with whoever is interested. If you want to know why I (and apparently others) have mistaking you for Darwin, ask for details and I'll attempt to provide them. As it stands, you appear to be stating that you find the offer of such details extremely offensive, and also find the failure to present such details extremely offensive, and it seems to me that you cannot have it both ways.

At the end of the day, your emotions are your own business and I decline to involve myself in them further.

Can I assume no evidence will be forthcoming?

An apology where someone can't explain the negative consequences of the behavour they're apologizing for is no real apology. I will reiterate that I find this behaviour cowardly and unbecoming. Since you seem to be confused about my preferences I will again state them openly: apologize if you really, legitimately think you did something wrong and understand what it was and can articulate it to me. Don't if you don't, and defend your claim appropriately. Since you are unwilling or unable to do the former up til now, I have to assume that your apology is insincere, as your defense of your behaviour implies. So do the latter full throatedly instead of half heartedly and provide your evidence.

edit: apologies like yours have no predictive power about your future actions. Since in your words your error was merely "overconfidence", not an attempted lie/smear, and you haven't demonstrated an understanding of how such actions could affect me, I don't see why you would feel the need in the future to not do exactly the same thing over again.

I find your mincing of words to be inaccurate and offensive. You have somehow "not claimed or even implied that I am a liar" while claiming that you "know" that I am someone who I claim not to be in public, and have done so previously. What would you call this, if not claiming that I am a liar or dishonest?? You have "taken my claim at face value" while defending to the death that there was nothing wrong with your initial observation except "overconfidence".

You did make the claim flippantly with zero evidence. This is an undisputed fact that you are free to rectify at any time, you have not provided a single shred of evidence other than your vaguest feeling that our posts are similar somehow. Make your effort post about my contributions to the forum to prove your case. What I find offensive is your flipflopping on the matter. According to you, you have both A) done something wrong and b) your analysis is actually good, you were merely overconfident, you have no systemic bias in your moderator actions, and it is somehow me being overly "emotional" to request a sincere apology.

You are still dancing around the consequences of your behaviour. You haven't answered: Why did you decide to smear my account like this? What are the consequences of discrediting my account by sharing false information?? Could it perhaps be that you wanted to produce a chilling effect and discredit the words that I write with no legitimate basis? If this is not true, attempt to explain how it is not. You have not done this.

If you refuse to either apologize sincerely or defend your claim in proportion to how inflammatory it is, I will indeed pursue other avenues or be forced to throw up my hands and accept this cowardly treatment. At the end of the day, your behaviour as a moderator is not your own business.

Edit: you have also decided to substitute your own altered version of my thought experiment instead of engaging at all with the meat of the issue: what effect do you think your words have on people who speak like Bob? Is it acceptable to you to unfairly impugn anyone as being Bob who's not willing to go to the lengths I have to reply with paragraphs and paragraphs to extract a half hearted apology on the matter? Does your apology say anything about how you will treat other people who speak like Bob? How should the book club authority's behaviour change to avoid this happening?

"He has at least two known alts here"

I'm sure this boogeyman you're discussing would be happy to know their reach has pervaded so far that (once again) random left leanng posters like myself are accused of being them for unclear reasons, with a tone of seething annoyance throughout. This has happened 2 or 3 times previously when I poke my head in the door.

It would be more accurate to say suspected alts, unless you're aware of some knowledge or evidence the rest of us are not privy to??

It's funny that my username being tied to another left leaning user who lots of people dislike is being invoked in response to a comment decrying the right wing tilt of the Motte. It seems pretty obvious that a moderator of this community engaging in such behaviour would have a chilling effect on left leaning users. How many people do you think you've wrongly accused of being this person over the years and banned because of it?

Edit: Perhaps a better question for the right leaning on the forum and moderators: If I were a mod of this community, how many people do you think I would ban and/or flag-accusingly for being sockpuppet accounts based on them sharing similar right wing views and my own amateur writing analysis?

There was plenty of consensus that he was "bad" in some nebulous way, but when I asked repeatedly what was wrong I was only ever given vague runarounds and examples of posts that proved my point like this one, where I disagree with Darwin's political point, but in terms of debate etiquette and rule-following his detractors are massively worse than he ever was.

No.

Consistently left-leaning posters have much higher moderator scrutiny and can follow all the rules and still get banned for frivolous rules that plenty of right-leaning accounts violate all the time.

A sentiment completely detached from reality, stemming from left leaning posters being too used to Reddit.

A great example is Darwin, who was a prolific left-leaning poster.

...who isn't banned.

There was plenty of consensus that he was "bad" in some nebulous way, but when I asked repeatedly what was wrong I was only ever given vague runarounds and examples of posts that proved my point like this one, where I disagree with Darwin's political point, but in terms of debate etiquette and rule-following his detractors are massively worse than he ever was.

What's nebulous about this? He confidently asserted something as fact, was shown that he was wrong, and then got hostile about it. Do you think this is good behavior? Why are you even claiming his political point has anything to do with why people think he was bad?

Darwin was banned for a long time at some point. Is he unbanned now? I thought it was a permaban, but maybe I'm misremembering.

He confidently asserted something as fact, was shown that he was wrong, and then got hostile about it.

I've never seen an example of him getting hostile despite asking people multiple times for examples of his worst posts. I've only seen people getting hostile towards him.

Darwin was banned for a long time at some point. Is he unbanned now? I thought it was a permaban, but maybe I'm misremembering.

Still no.

Darwin was banned for a long time at some point. Is he unbanned now? I thought it was a permaban, but maybe I'm misremembering.

He was banned for a year back on Reddit. He got a clean slate after we moved here, and never got a long term ban after that. And you know that. It was explained to you by Amadan.

I've never seen an example of him getting hostile despite asking people multiple times for examples of his worst posts.

It's the very conversation you linked.

I don't recall Amadan explaining that to me, but maybe I just forgot or only glanced at his reply at some point. It doesn't really change my point, thought the fact he's not banned right now is something I'll keep in mind.

The conversation I linked is a great example of him not being hostile to anyone involved in the conversation, while people like Amadan are using tons of personal attacks.

I don't recall Amadan explaining that to me, but maybe I just forgot or only glanced at his reply at some point

Here.

It doesn't really change my point, thought the fact he's not banned right now is something I'll keep in mind.

Your point was about unfair moderator action, and you linked to that post as an example. What's the point of even "keeping it in mind" if you claim it doesn't change your point?

The conversation I linked is a great example of him not being hostile to anyone involved in the conversation, while people like Amadan are using tons of personal attacks.

For Amadan I can count "you are either being astoundingly clueless or just flat out disingenuous", and maybe "you have actually spouted a ton of bullshit", though applying your criteria it doesn't count since it's an attack on his claim, not on him.

For Darwin it's making a false claim, making another false claim to support the first one, and than declaring "I don't give a fuck about the claim being true". If that doesn't fit your definition of "hostile" I don't know how to convince you. Either way please explain to me how is having issues with this sort of behavior in any way "nebulous".