site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

For me it seems pretty apparent that Rowling was drawing off of a cultural stereotype about bankers/money-lenders that itself either draws from/is linked to stereotypes about Jews.

I'm also confident enough to say that there are enough degrees of cultural seperation that it isn't anti-semitic to include said stereotypes in a work, because they've essentially been laundered of their initial meaning through centuries of use.

For me it seems pretty apparent

Yeah, please explain to me how it's apparent to you that Jewish people are to be represented by goblins. Like I said, that's a particular sort of automatic identification that makes me wonder about the mindset. I've had instances of seeing online "this is plainly a dog whistle about bad thing" and since I look at the image and go "that's just a thing", and I don't have any references to "in 1856 in Georgia the caterpillar was used as the symbol of a slave trading company" then I don't see "Aha, the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland is a code for supporting slavery!"

Cultural stereotypes about gnomes/goblins and bankers are the Swiss not the Jews for the period she and I were growing up.

Cultural stereotypes about gnomes/goblins and bankers are the Swiss not the Jews for the period she and I were growing up.

Well then it's quite impressive that these stereotypes about the swiss managed to completely disappear and be replaced by identical stereotypes about jews in the years between your youth and mine.

Yeah, please explain to me how it's apparent to you that Jewish people are to be represented by goblins.

Damned if I know, cultural influences are funny like that. But I can say that the connection is made, whereas with the swiss I have to say it's a much more puzzling one. The stereotypes I have about the swiss involve cow bells, yodelling and germanic autism dialled up to 11, not greedy, hook-nosed goblins.

The "greedy and unscrupulous Swiss bankers" stereotype was probably more prominent when people kept speculating about all the Nazi gold still hidden in secret Swiss bank accounts. That particular meme about Nazis has gradually lost importance as the years have passed.