site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26590 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have complained myself, as a former Free Press subscriber, about Bari Weiss's editorial direction. You are not wrong that she obviously sees herself as a defender of Jewish and Israeli interests (and she equates the two when it's convenient and differentiates when it's not). That said:

Either you insist Weiss's career was propelled by her merit and IQ, or you acknowledge that her most important credential that earned her station was being a Jew connected to other Jews who was perceived as the best fit for pivoting the network to steer the national narrative in favor of Jews.

Your problem, as someone more obsessed with Jews than Jews are, is that you seek simple and totalizing answers ("Jews!") to everything.

Certainly when looking for a new CBS editor in chief, Ellison was going to pick someone with pro-Israel credentials, and almost certainly someone Jewish. But he was also looking for someone aligned with the new (Trump) regime yet not in obvious bootlicking way. Weiss's Free Press had over the past few years earned a reputation for delivering good journalism that was critical of liberal orthodoxy and "wokeness" (i.e., had a bit of a following on the right) without being an outright MAGA publication. And putting Weiss in charge after her unceremonious ejection (technically she resigned, but) from the NYT was putting a thumb right in the eye of people both Ellison and Weiss despised.

So the answer is yes, Jews, but that's not the whole story. You would hardly expect Ellison to put a pro-Palestinian leftist in charge, would you? That actually excludes a pretty good chunk of the media elite. Weiss was probably on the short list for a number of reasons, Jewish being just one of them.

I seriously don't see how that addresses anything @SecureSignals has said. Like, yes, Bari Weiss is more than just «a Jew», she's a specific person, with individual connections, traits, skills and credentials that have differentiated her in the pool of admissible candidates. Certainly she couldn't be substituted with someone like Norman Finkelstein on the mere account of his ethnicity. The issue here isn't even Bari per se, it's the criteria defining the nature of the pool. It's the same issue as the negatively-defined criteria of DEI preferential treatment, which people are much more comfortable rejecting.

The issue here isn't even Bari per se, it's the criteria defining the nature of the pool.

I wouldn't count "critical of wokeness without being outright MAGA" as a problem with the nature of the pool, in the sense you seem to mean. That's probably going to be the best you'll get if you're going through journalists--exactly what should the pool have been instead?

That seems to broadly concede the point, doesn't it?

Imagine, say, the NYT was taken over by a Norwegian billionaire who had really strong opinions on what should be done with Norway's national fund. It's kind of a regional issue that most non-Norwegians don't have much of a stake in and he therefore carefully vets his hires for top editorial positions to make sure they have the correct stance and strong ties to his faction. Naturally, this means that they are all Norwegian.

Probably these picks have strengths beyond being Norwegian! They write well, they're bright, they're personable. Some of them have a good reputation and industry awards. You can't get a job in the new NYT just by being Norwegian, and being Norwegian is only one of the reasons they were on the short list.

But when you get right down to it, the editorial team got hired because they were Norwegian.

It seems to me that those of us who are not Norwegian have a right to ask whether this counts as illegal discrimination, and if not why not. We also have a right to ask clearly, in public, what it means for our information ecosystem that one of the main sources of information is now being run largely by and for Norwegians, without getting fired for anti-Norwegianism. Yes, it's more complicated than that, but that doesn't mean you can't draw a pretty clear conclusion.

(Apologies if it turns out we are in heated agreement.)

Right, I don't disagree that rich Jews tend to stick together. I am not surprised Ellison hired a Jew. Obviously if he explicitly stated "I'm not considering any non-Jews" that would be illegal, but--he probably would consider a small handful of non-Jews.

In your Norwegian example, I would find the choice of a Norwegian unsurprising, and while I guess if I were in the industry I'd grumble about it, I wouldn't be overly exercised about it if non-Norwegians weren't being shut out.

Unless, of course, I subscribe to some dark conspiracy theory that, since the cold dark days of å dra på viking, Norwegians have been ever raiding and warring against Europeans and to this day seeking to undermine the purity of Anglo-Saxon stock.

Then maybe I'd be obsessed with posting about Da Noorse.

Isn't there a reasonable spectrum in between? Like, you're really not supposed to act like this, not in the West. If everyone I hired was a white English national I'd get it in the neck for God's sake, we've had decades of trying to root out any in-group preference at this point, with massive collateral damage in the process. You don't have to be a dark conspiracy theorist to object to someone buying a major news organ and stuffing it with their co-ethnics to influence public opinion towards their ethnostate, you just have to be a regular person. And if you're a would-be journalist with all the same talents or better but you're shut out purely because you don't give a shit about the Norse it's even worse!

There's also the issue that this kind of thing is literally what dark conspiracies are. "Norwegians are buying major newspapers to control the coverage of Norwegian issues" is a conspiracy theory in its own right, even if NOG never comes into the story once. Again, there are points on the spectrum in between 'this is ok' and 'Vikings have been ruling over us for a thousand years, ever since Harard secretly conquered Britain in 1065'.

Yes. If a Jew hires only Jews, I would expect him to be sued for discrimination. But the fact that a lot of Jews rise to elite ranks doesn't require more than the usual amount of networking between people who know each other (we talk a lot here about Jews and Indians helping each other network, but I've seen Mormons, Catholics, and evangelicals do the same thing), and Jewish success being disproportionate for reasons we've also discussed.

What I expect is that Ellison was inevitably going to hire some strongly pro-Israel, which made it highly probable it would be someone Jewish.

We do seem to be in furious agreement, right up to the bit where your train of logic ends: 'and therefore it's annoying but basically fine'. I get that you can't make an 'ought' from an 'is' but I don't want to be ruled over and shut out of good positions by a cabal of people who don't like me much, especially when nobody else gets to play the same game.

(Yes, it happens to some degree with other groups too but a) rarely quite with such chutzpah and shamelessness, and b) if you make up a big majority of the local population then at least your news output or whatever is aligned with them and not so many people are getting shut out).

but I don't want to be ruled over and shut out of good positions by a cabal of people who don't like me much, especially when nobody else gets to play the same game.

I mean, some UK MPs have Jewish backgrounds but I don't see them advocating for particularly ethnocentric positions. The highest profile Jewish MP, Zack Polanski, is an example of the opposite.

Regarding getting shut out of good positions, if that's been your professional experience then I can't say otherwise, but I've literally never heard of this happening in the UK (not to say it's never happened, but I would think it's exceptionally rare). There simply aren't enough Jews for them to be regularly hiring each other over everyone else.

especially when nobody else gets to play the same game.

Didn't Trump just roll back disparate impact protections?

No, they're statutory (Civil Rights Act of 1991), so he can't.

Maybe, I didn't follow it. What happened?

I mean, ideally I'd like everyone to abandon tribal identity and self-interest. I just do not agree with SS that Jews doing it is more harmful to me than anyone else.

Ellison was going to pick someone with pro-Israel credentials, and almost certainly someone Jewish.

Why is this almost certain? There's no shortage of Christians with pro-Israel credentials.

I think the Venn diagram of successful non-jews in the media with pro-Israel stances is pretty small. I can't think of many.

Another point in Weiss's favor is that she courts controversy -- and this being media, that's usually a good thing. Hell, when was the last time anyone talked about CBS this much? I'm not seeing a lot of downsides (yet) to Ellison's choice.

Weiss' resume isn't that deep, in terms of running a major television news corp. For comparison, the equivalent guy at Fox News started on O'Reilly before Weiss was out of college. She had a roughly ten year career in print journalism, and founded a modestly successful substack. By that standard, she's about as qualified as Scott Alexander to run CBS news. There's a ton of gentiles with resumes that stack up against hers. And frankly if there aren't, that seems to be giving the game away to SS to begin with, doesn't it?

Another point in Weiss's favor is that she courts controversy -- and this being media, that's usually a good thing. Hell, when was the last time anyone talked about CBS this much?

CBS news affiliates mostly cover local news. Becoming purely ideological may or may not be a good approach there.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats