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 -
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?
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.
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.
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.
Does this argument apply to anti-Asian bias? I know there is some animosity between parts of the right and South Asians, but the success of East Asian immigrants in the US hasn't seen anywhere near the animosity that Jews get, especially from "protestant whites."
Yes, but East Asians have mostly flown under the radar (aside from occasional generic Red Scaring about the CCP or Hyundai getting busted for breaking labor laws) due to being underrepresented in politics (and remember that American politics has lots of east coast bias, while most East Asian Americans live on Hawaii or the west coast). Fox News might as well be the Zohran Mamdani and Israel channel whereas I never hear anything about Michelle Wu.
Sarah Jeong exists but East Asian Americans aren't perceived as grievance mongering to the same extent as American Jews or South Asians. It probably also helps that the East Asian FOBs or would-be immigrants (and note that "Asian" immigration has been much more heavily South Asian in the last 20 years than used to be the case) don't speak English and/or are behind the Great Firewall while South Asians are more active on social media (See: the holy war on twitter over H1-Bs).
More options
Context Copy link
Yes.
While people have pointed towards a racist coalition of "everyone but the Blacks," it's pretty tough to come up with arguments for why every stereotype about blacks is true and unchangingly based in genetics, while all stereotypes about Chinese are either lies or bias or cultural coincidence.
To be clear, I have never at any point claimed that the various issues with black Americans are wholly and unchangingly based on genetics. In fact I have argued explicitly against such a claim. I have said many times that if enough aggressive and sustained cultural pressure could be placed on black Americans to abandon the practices and frames of mind which make their culture so dysfunctional, I expect that we would see a substantial (though not complete) narrowing of the gap. The problem is that such cultural pressure is simply completely infeasible under any political paradigm that could credibly emerge in this country in my lifetime.
My apologies, I misunderstood your opinions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This would be consistent with any purported animosity toward Jews from gentile whites not being primarily motivated by Jewish success per se, but because Jews feature prominently in politics, Hollywood, mainstream media, academia, and at the ballot box promoting anti-white messaging and anti-white policies.
While East Asian Americans lean democrat and gentile white Americans might be annoyed with East Asians for doing things like studying too hard and ruining classroom fun vibes, East Asian Americans are less prominent when it comes to anti-white rhetoric and are quite prominent as allies in at least one domain (affirmative action).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That doesn't seem right to me, if anything stable HBD arguments would notice the higher average IQ of jews and say antisemitism is combination of invalid jealousy and valid concern about ingroup bias, same as lefty feelings about white people in general are.
As an actual HBD understander I have to step in here - this is not something that HBD proponents would proclaim. IQ and its heritability is one of the most basic aspects of HBD, the very first thing you learn when you get started. When you start talking about jews through the lens of HBD you start talking about things like ingroup preference(which you did, to your credit, mention), distinctions between verbal and visual IQ, levels of neuroticism, etc. There's some interesting information in there, like the obvious-in-hindsight knowledge that the European portion of Ashkenazim genetics came from Italians, or that several of the genetic diseases that are common amongst jews relate to the same kind of neurotransmitters that are involved in verbal IQ.
I don't care enough about jews to go through all the evidence and declare one way or another that the field supports antisemitism, but I can confidently state that your view here isn't correct. At no point does HBD support the idea that antisemitism is caused by jealousy - if you're being intellectually honest, the difference in population size between Ashkenazim and gentiles means that there's actually a higher population of gentiles at any given level of IQ than there are jews. If you want to bring out the jealousy argument, it would actually be running in the opposite direction. I'm not going to do it because I have better things to do, but it would actually be possible to take population numbers and IQ averages to work out how much jewish overrepresentation in certain fields is due to IQ and how much is due to ingroup preference and kinship networks.
More options
Context Copy link
It's really tough to make arguments built around "Noticing" patterns which will be able to stop people from holding all kinds of folk prejudices. If evolution doesn't stop at the neck, why does it stop at morality? If my aunt Hilda was absolutely right about the niggers, why was she completely wrong about the kikes?
The argument that IQ is measurable while morality is not, is just a case of looking for your keys under the streetlight. Pay attention to the race of criminals, but ignore Epstein and Weinstein, ignore the ethnicity of the Bolsheviks and the cultural Marxists, etc.
Encouraging race blindness is the best way for Jews who wish to remain distinctive within larger societies to survive.
You forgot to mention them urging Pilate to have Jesus crucified.
The Soviets mostly were not Jewish. I have not heard the claim that Jewish Soviet officials were especially heinous, statistically speaking.
Epstein and Weinstein were, first and foremost, rich bastards. I do not think that once you control for "being a high society member" or "being a Hollywood exec" (which is well explained by HBD on intelligence), there is anything left to indicate that Jewish men have a higher incidence of sex pestery than gentiles.
Jews were over-represented in communist circles disproportionately in Russia and Germany, they even tried to do a failed coo in germany. The jews in power were later purged in communist party.
More options
Context Copy link
During the early parts of Soviet history there were a lot more of them. From the 1917 Revolution to around the late 20s-early 1930s. Which means there were a lot of Jewish party members participating in particularly ugly war crimes during the Red Terror. Some of these had the character of an ethnically and religiously motivated pogrom more than class warfare, especially many of the actions against the Russian Orthodox Church.
Stalin kicked most of them out (along with most of the other ethnic minorities) because he was staring down the barrel of a huge war with other foreign powers and he needed a more Russian centric communist party to get the largely Russian population on board for it.
Now none of this particularly reflects on Jews specifically. Vicious ethnic and religious persecution of various kinds was very common for most of European history. Many other communist revolutions were used as a cover for ethnic and tribal warfare. And in Russia specifically, the government using one designated favorite ethnic minority as a stick to beat everyone else into line was a standard part of government structure.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It doesn't rule out anti-semitism because jealousy may be "invalid" but it's also going to happen. You can't "rule out" antisemitism, any more than you can rule out other such sentiments. Aside from dissolving the identity utterly, but that's not going to happen with most identities, and certainly not with Jews.
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
More options
Context Copy link