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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Starting from minute 14 or so, in the linked monolog Fuentes goes into his views on the topic. Largely derived from the facts laid bare in this article.

In the end he asks: 'Why is this so hard for people to wrap their head around'? It's a valid question. As far as Fuentes goes, these are not complicated observations. Yet there are entire books on the topic of anti semitism and how it's irrational, pathological this and that... But like SecureSignals points out, they don't deal with any arguments or observations laid out by the so called anti semites. To that extent, the entire premise of anti semitism as a concept is just a framegame.

It's rather comical that whenever the topic comes up, you end up with people asking an endless series of questions as if this is complicated or hard to figure out. It's not.

I think at best this is a scissor.

I can understand why people start to hate a poor behaving minority or a growing and supplanting immigrant group. I can understand why countries that have been in opposition hate each other like in the Middle East and Asia.

I don't understand hatred of Jews. For a minority group they are generally considered well behaved, they are successful and if you want to be jealous that's an angle - but their aren't a huge amount of them so who cares.

generally considered well behaved

There are standards of behavior beyond not shitting in the street or doing drive-by shootings.

What are the relevant ones?

Take out the word "Jews" and insert the word "Russians" and I think you might get somewhere. This is especially fun given that American Jews overwhelmingly came either during the Russian Civil War (how we got Ayn Rand and most of the neoconservatives), during the Jackson-Vanik era (how we got Max Boot), or after the fall of the USSR (how we got Julia Ioffe).

"Well behaved" is a matter of opinion. Successful? Sure. Is having our politics Russified for the better of the country? I don't think so, and IMO neoconservatism is just Russian imperialism or anti-Russian imperialism waving an American flag. That they overwhelmingly subscribe and contribute to bog-standard anti-American Yankee progressive politics back at home is also not endearing.

How does hate even enter the conversation?