site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

As most know, there has been a media battle within the Con Inc ecology. I want to go over some of those developments. If you know the lore you can skip the story so far.

Story so far

On October 27 Tucker Carlson did an interview with Nick Fuentes on The Tucker Carlson show. Sitting at a comfortable 6 million views, it’s one of his most viewed videos. Following that interview, jewish ethnonationalists like Ben Shapiro and Jonathan Greenblatt made the rounds condemning and calling for disavowals. But condemning and disavowing Tucker Carlson is easier said than done.

When the Heritage Foundation released their condemnation video, they distinctly claused out Tucker from their criticism. This, for jewish ethnonationalists, was outrageous. Eliciting remarks from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Ted Cruz, and other jewish ethnonationalist stooges. Tucker needed to be firmly disavowed, and Fuentes was not to be talked to or debated, but ostracized and ‘canceled’. Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, went back like a beaten dog and put up a second apology video saying as much. Still, it was not enough and condemnation articles, calls to resign and protest resignations rained in.

Despite all this chaos, Roberts kept his presidency, Tucker remained unfazed, and Fuentes was only emboldened by the attention. releasing an hour long monolog on the alleged overbearing fact of jewish ethnonationalist influence in American politics and his position on the modern JQ. The jewish ethnonationalist front had to hit back somehow.

Enter Chuck Schumer, proposing a senate resolution to condemn Nick Fuentes and the platforming of him by Tucker Carlson.

Whilst Fuentes is only emboldened by such attention, it might be different for Carlson. It is, after all, harder for a man of credibility and standing like him to shrug off an official disavowal like that. Though it could not have come from a better direction as far as a right winger is concerned, it is still bad.

The Carlson Rebellion

Missing from the firestorm of outrage and shock from the Fuentes Carlson interview is the simple question of... What exactly is Tucker Carlson doing here? Unlike Fuentes, who lives for this type of spectacle, Tucker is, one can imagine, an actual person with connections and things to lose. So why?

In a recent episode Tucker laid out his answer to the Fuentes Question. Young mostly white men are flocking to the extremes, both left but mostly right, because America sucks. Everything from the housing market, job market, education, media, domestic and foreign policy. It's all anti-white. It's all anti-male. What exactly does anyone expect young white men to do? What confident identity is even available to young white men?

To that extent one can sense Tuckers ire towards the establishment and those who shill for it. How is it possible to allow things to go on like this? To ignore it? Telling young white men to be individual whilst every other group is forming coalitions to outcompete them is suicidal and stupid. Why can't we tell them something else? Something they actually want to listen to. Well, that might lead to another holocaust in the minds of paranoid jews so, no, we can't. Young white men just have to die alone and abused.

Say what you want about Fuentes, but Tucker, at the very least, has a proposition that is open to compromise with the ethnonationalist jews on the right: This individualist free market zionism stuff isn't working anymore. Things, as they currently are, have to change. And if the only response to that reality is calling everyone an anti-semite or a nazi then what is even the point of this?

If Chuck Schumer's resolution passes it would be the first time in US Senate history of such a condemnation of a private citizen for political views.

Young mostly white men are flocking to the extremes, both left but mostly right, because America sucks. Everything from the housing market, job market, education, media, domestic and foreign policy. It's all anti-white. It's all anti-male. What exactly does anyone expect young white men to do? What confident identity is even available to young white men?

The foremost appeal is the force of truth. If you watch Nick's monologue, his criticisms are true. They are rational arguments, and they are anti-fragile in the sense the backlash they provoke strengthens their currency. It's not just due to the housing market, job market, anti-white Culture. It's due to the very real cultural criticism of Jews that Nick gives which nobody else has been willing to say. Jews themselves incessantly criticize White culture and identity through all mediums and institutions they control. And then they become apoplectic when a White man fires back with truthful criticism of Jewish identity and culture.

One thing I have never seen from any of the Jews weighing in on the Tuckercaust is an acknowledgement of the arguments Fuentes is making. They grasp for some other explanation for Fuentes' popularity, but they never restate the arguments Nick makes in that monologue for example and engage them. They simply pathologize the individuals who are being influenced by these arguments. It's why Shapiro would never debate Fuentes. If Fuentes laid out his argument as clearly as he does in this monologue, what would Shapiro even say?

The only path forward would be for Jews to acknowledge the truth of Fuentes' arguments and make genuine efforts to reconcile. They are incapable of that, which is why cancellation and pathologizing the "anti-semites" is their only reaction to this Cultural Criticism going mainstream and it's not going to work.

The main issue is that groyperism doesn't actually fix the problems. It feels fun and powerful to point out dual loyalists on Twitter, but this is a tertiary issue at best.

This individualist free market zionism stuff isn't working anymore.

It actually is though. Young white men are being taken advantage of because we aren't individualist and free-market enough. Working-age white men are the backbone of American industry. They are the ones who will rise to the top in the absense of government intervention. What is dragging them down is

  • Taxes, to pay for redisributionist policies like social securty, medicare, and medicaid, and

  • Degree inflation, which drives up the salary of female-dominated professions like education and health-care (which are themselves government-funded!), therefore driving down the demand for husbands.

Young white men do not benefit from socialized government services. It will also not help to drive all of the rich Jews and high-skill immigrants out of the country. That will reduce the number of high-paying jobs available to young white men.

The main issue is that groyperism doesn't actually fix the problems.

This individualist free market zionism stuff isn't working anymore.

It actually is though. Young white men are being taken advantage of because we aren't individualist and free-market enough.

The thing that doesn't work but makes a big show out of being on people's side will always win over the thing that doesn't work and makes a big show out of hating them. I'd expect the establishment would learn that lessen given who's president again (although, to be fair, it looks like he did make some things work this time).

Oh, but you said that free market individualism does work and doesn't hate anyone, well, too bad it's not in play. The establishment is not free-market individualist, even establishment conservatives aren't. The only people in favor of it are two dozen autistic libertarians, and everyone else who pays lip service to it does so cynically. Everybody loves the free market when they wan't to ship people's jobs to China or import 7 zillion low-wage workers, but come recession they'll suddenly discover all their friends are too big too fail. Everybody loves individualism, but somehow can't be bothered to criticize literally any other collective identity that people organize around bar one (or I suppose two), and heaven forbid someone suggests treating everyone's favorite ethnostate the way any other country is treated.

People see through this stuff. You can't lament that they aren't buying a solution that would actually help them, but that should be the cause for introspection, not just for criticism of others.

Yep. Step one in making things better for young white men is killing affirmative action, which is directly discriminating against them. Step two getting rid of all the indirect discrimination -- includes that degree inflation, regulations that harm industries with a lot of blue collar jobs (which are disproportionately male), bans on disparate impact (which goes to "white" more than "men"), that sort of thing. Taxes probably come after that. Jews aren't even on the map. Randy Fine ought to resign, but his stanning for Israel isn't having a measurable negative impact on white men in the US.

Step one in making things better for young white men is killing affirmative action, which is directly discriminating against them.

This would probably improve the lot of most Jews, who stand to take some proportion of the spoils currently reserved for URM.

If Fuentes could stomach doing something that indirectly helps them because it also helps him, that is.

And if the only response to that reality is calling everyone an anti-semite or a nazi then what is even the point of this?

Well it worked pretty well, boomers have already had their opinions set by the television.

I read somewhere an argument about how stable systems were inherently unstable in a changing world. They set up the whole ADL/AIPAC/lobbying/media machine to suppress and drown out dissenters. It worked well. But it works by suppressing rather than adapting. Things change, people get increasingly upset about the anomaly of them funding bombs for Israel to blow up random Palestinians, while the usual suspects in the media are still talking about how Israel is the 'most moral army.' That works if you have total media dominance but not if the battlefield is somewhat contested, it backfires if there are videos of Israeli parliamentarians enthusiastically justifying torture, if they go around shooting unarmed protestors or people trying to get food. Trying to stick to the maximalist narrative just further delegitimizes that media power.

They keep mashing the 'suppress' button but the suppression isn't working. The system is designed to be stable, not to change. The goal and methods and mindset is fixed. There is some evidence of adaptation (Team Israel is working to try and manipulate the Tiktok algorithm and LLM training data for instance) but the system as a whole is breaking down.

Over on another forum, a groyper is swearing up and down that groyperism isn't all about The Jews. And here you go ruining it for them.

Why would someone even lie about that? Their whole thing is pointing out Jewish influence. It completely defeats the whole point to not do that.

Presumably because they know that having positions that wouldn't be out of place in 19th century Eastern European peasants marks them as "low human capital", as another figure on the "right" likes to say.

I don't like the gropyers. Nick Fuentes is a Mexican gayhomo larping as a whitenat.

But philosemeticism has clearly run its course in the West. The left discarded race blind meritocracy. Now, the right has too. You can't unring that bell. Saying "Jews have a disproportionate amount of influence in the halls of power compared to their population" can't be taboo if everyone is running around saying that about the whites. If Con. Inc demands its audience stop noticing, they'll be ignored. You can't be a nationalist for America and be a Zionist at the same time. You won't fool anyone.

Yes, that means you, Ben Shapiro.

You can't unring that bell. Saying "Jews have a disproportionate amount of influence in the halls of power compared to their population" can't be taboo if everyone is running around saying that about the whites. If Con. Inc demands its audience stop noticing, they'll be ignored.

This hits the nail on the head. The post-Holocaust Jews advocating against racial consciousness knew what they were doing. Noticing begets noticing. HBD or idpol based arguments on Right or Left will always lead to anti-Semitism as long as Jews are tracked as a distinct group in any way.

There's no stable HBD argument that rules out antisemitism. You can't build an argument around 13/52, that simultaneously avoids questions about Jewish over-representation.

There's no stable idpol argument that rules out antisemitism. You can't complain that blacks are under represented in XYZ, without protestant whites eventually noticing that there are almost no protestant whites in XYZ.

Chesterton's Fence.

The left discarded race blind meritocracy. Now, the right has too.

Well yes, the younger right is. I don't think it's the same cohort changing their mind over time. But I wonder to what degree the young right feels the intellectual drift of the left has forced them to be like the left, grudgingly, or even if the left's diversity machine arrayed against them wasn't around, they'd pursue identity politics anyway. As in even if the country 95% white, we should stoke white consciousness.

I had a tiff with conservative Jew Katya Sedgewick on X, someone I've interviewed and have been mostly supportive of...until Octobers 7th and everything that came after severely scrambled matters.

She says a day or two ago that her primary concern is the fate of Jews in America. That it's existential and no other policy concerns matter in comparison. I point out how blatantly idpol this is and she denies it. I think some conservatives believe Jewish idpol to be necessary in order to repel all the other idpols. The one idpol to rule them all, if you will, as it's as close as one gets to defending liberal individualism and modernity against 99% of idpols, which are anti-that. Jews are a stand-in for a more abstract idea.

So, speaking as someone who's been accused of giving special protection to Jews on the Motte and even being a Zionist myself:

I've been a subscriber to Bari Weiss's Free Press for a while but I'm cancelling my subscription. Why? Because every damn issue is about how Nick Fuentes or Zohran Mandani or whoever said anything negative about Jews or Israel is an existential threat. I have mostly enjoyed the Free Press's coverage on issues, but it became very, very noticeable that they're iconoclasts and contrarians (or at least willing to platform heretical views) about everything except Jews and Israel. On that topic, any synagogue in the country being spray-painted is worthy of a headline, and no article will ever suggest Israel is anything but a victim of calumny.

I get that it is personal for Weiss, but it's like every Jew became unhinged after October 7. To be fair, so did the Left, and now the Right's anti-Semites are crawling out of the woodwork. It's hard to blame Jews too much for feeling like everyone is out to get them more than ever when it really does seem like everyone is out to get them more than ever. But it's also a little hard to feel sympathetic to people like Weiss who think articles mocking everyone else's idpol are hilarious but don't you dare make light of hers.

But it's also a little hard to feel sympathetic to people like Weiss who think articles mocking everyone else's idpol are hilarious but don't you dare make light of hers.

Isn't that the position (regarding their own and others idpols) of most users here?

Being concerned about the fate of your own ethnic or religious group is normal. That's not idpol as it's been during the culture war. The culture war idpol has been "being concerned about the fates of SOME ethnic groups is OK, but about others is pernicious racism". We're never going to make blacks stop caring about black issues or Asians caring about Asian issues, and we shouldn't try. Same goes for Jews, same should go for gentile whites. Sure, ideally, there's many cases where one should put ethnic interests aside, but these need to be reached by political negotiation, not unilateral disarmament.

Being concerned about the fate of your own ethnic or religious group is normal. That's not idpol as it's been during the culture war. The culture war idpol has been "being concerned about the fates of SOME ethnic groups is OK, but about others is pernicious racism".

Isn't that exactly what western Zionists are doing? Jews are allowed to look out for Jews, but Christians aren't allowed to look out for Christians. Imagine a Heritage Foundation report about how over-represented Jews are at prestige schools and professions, and how correspondingly under-represented Protestant Whites are. Do you think the ADL and Bari Weiss would say that was acceptable?

Being concerned about the fate of your own ethnic or religious group is normal.

Or nation. That's another group. And it stands above idpol.

Again, that only works if the smaller groups can come to an agreement. Making your own interest only that of the nation while everyone else is fighting for their own is a great way to get robbed.