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 -
Bari Weiss isn't the head of CBS because of her great charisma, intelligence or talent but because she's Jewish and she's willing to unconditionally do the bidding of a Jewish billionaire. Jeffrey Epstein wasn't wealthy because he was an intelligent, hardworking person high in conscientiousness (his emails make that clear enough!), he was wealthy because he had no ethical limits whatsoever. Les Wexner and Henry Ford might both be rich entrepreneurs who pay lots of taxes but the latter was unfathomably more beneficial to his society and the world at large than the former. Whether Jews are actually significantly more intelligent is debatable; some would argue Jewish overrepresentation in positions of wealth and influence actually has more to do with nepotism, corruption and a total lack of moral inhibitions.
Like Berlin, 1925?
Of course, one could just as easily say "the left is wrong about every social issue, so of course they're wrong about Hitler" and come to the exact opposite conclusion.
This isn't what Fuentes actually says.
What he actually said was: Jews wanted to replace the previously (relatively) anti-Jewish Anglo-American order with a new one, only to discover that their new left wing allies apply the exact same logic to Jews, causing Jews to switch to backing the right instead. He never claimed Jews are "secretly hoping for a Muslim takeover of America", he's actually said that Jews intentionally inflame bonehead counter-jihad type politics for their own benefit. If you wanted a testable prediction, his pre-election prediction that Trump was going to be dragged into conflict with Iran would be a pretty clear example of Trump acting against his political interests on behalf of a powerful foreign lobby.
That's only counting direct subsidies. If you were to count missile interceptions (the "12 Day War" cost a quarter of the global interceptor stockpile!!!), the cost of constantly moving carrier groups to defend them, protection money for their neighbors, wars fought on their explicit behalf ("Prosperity Guardian"), wars fought on their behalf implicitly (most sandbox wars), soldiers killed by them directly (USS Liberty), soldiers killed on their explicit behalf (Beirut barracks bombings)...
For all that accumulated cost, it would have been far more cost efficient had America turned Israel into a parking lot back in 1948, then America might have some allies besides Israel. It certainly would have cost far less than $300 billion. Or, of course, America could simply stay out of the sandbox entirely, as it did for the overwhelming majority of it's existence.
Perhaps there wouldn't be so many Syrian refugees if the US didn't bomb the shit out of Syria on Israel's behalf and then put al Qaeda in charge. Perhaps fewer sub-Saharan Africans would flow through Libya into Europe if the US didn't overthrow Gaddafi for Israel's benefit and create a power vacuum. One directly leads into the other. That's why people give a shit about Israel, actually; because it destabilizes all of its neighbors as a matter of policy and leaves its "allies" (read: dupes) to pick up the mess.
Correction: we helped the Jews beat Hitler. Every single Jew could have dropped dead spontaneously in 1939 and America would have still had basically the exact same capabilities to beat Hitler.
Pollard sold the Soviets American secrets and then was given refuge in Israel, they played both sides and could just as easily have claimed to have helped the Soviet Union beat America had it gone the other way.
In reality, the Jews sell American military secrets to China, much as they sold American secrets to the Soviets.
Correction: the Jews want "us" to fight their enemies for them, again. America doesn't need to "beat Islam", it simply needs to stay out of the sandbox and reject their migrants.
Interestingly "the Jews" (Ariel Sharon, then Israeli PM) warned Bush about getting stuck in the sandbox.
They did phrase it as "why are you going after Iraq, Iran is who you should be going after" though, which paints a slightly different picture.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2007/08/29/israel-warned-us-not-invade-iraq-after-911
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link