site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A good article highlighting the deficiencies identified in the BBC's coverage of the war in Gaza. Choice quotes:

The Telegraph has since reported that BBC Arabic had to make 215 corrections in two years to its coverage of Israel and Gaza - that’s two per week. [emphasis mine]

One issue that was already well known involves BBC Arabic using journalists who had made viciously antisemitic comments... In one example, Samer Alzaenen, who had suggested that Jews should be burned “as Hitler did”, was used 244 times by BBC Arabic between November 2023 and April 2025. He was “consistently introduced as a journalist”, according to the report, as was Ahmed Alagha, who appeared 522 times on the BBC during a similar time period despite having called Jews “devils” and saying Israelis are less than human. When these cases were reported in the media, the BBC disingenuously called them “eyewitnesses”. But normally the same eyewitnesses don’t appear on TV over 500 times in less than two years.

The BBC News homepage has a series of news tabs in the red strip at the top that begins with Home News and In Depth, and then the first specific news topic is ‘Israel Gaza War’ - before Ukraine, UK, World, Business, Politics or anything else. Needless to say, the war and famine in Sudan, on a scale far worse than Gaza, doesn’t get a tab of its own at all.