site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26595 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.

Compact published a quite thorough analysis of the discrimination millennial white men have faced since the mid-2010s, focusing on the liberal arts and cultural sectors. It does a good job of illustrating the similar dynamics at play in fields including journalism, screenwriting, and academia, interviewing a number of men who found their careers either dead on arrival or stagnating due to their race and gender. It's a bit long, but quite normie-friendly, with plenty of stats to back up the personal anecdotes. It also does a good job of illustrating the generational dynamics at play, where older white men pulled the ladder up behind them, either for ideological reasons or as a defense mechanism to protect their own positions.

A great quote from near the end of the piece that sums it up:

But for younger white men, any professional success was fundamentally a problem for institutions to solve.

And solve it they did.

Over the course of the 2010s, nearly every mechanism liberal America used to confer prestige was reweighted along identitarian lines.

Edit: typo

I was in a Ph.D program in 2014, hoping to go into academia, and I ended up dropping out because I could see that there was no way forward. I know it's a tournament profession and my odds were never good, but once I was inside it became apparent that it was in fact literally hopeless.

I ended up going into technology, because it was the only sufficiently merit-based thing I could find in which I could sort of force open the door. Even there, I think I got a senior role just in time, as I hear the entry level is very very bad these days. I've had conversations with my wife about what we might advise our future children to do with their lives, and I've mentally prepared to tell them that certain dreams are just impossible, and some things can only ever be a hobby for us - even though there are other people who will be able to dedicate their whole lives to them. Maybe it's been a good thing, in that I was forced to keep some things I love as just a hobby, and so I never got burnt out on them by trying to make them a career.

some things can only ever be a hobby for us - even though there are other people who will be able to dedicate their whole lives to them

This has always been true. If you really want to make a career out of something like painting, this has been true for basically all of history.

Basically most art and artisanal crafting (woodworking, etc) falls into this bucket

Edit: to be clear I'm not denying the rest of this, I'm just saying I grew up knowing that a significant number of interesting career paths were cut off due to lack of strong economic viability, thats not a new issue

I don't dispute that, but it also doesn't engage with the article's thesis: that there was a window that was previously open for white men to participate in these culture-making activities, which has been closed artificially. Of course it was never the case that everyone could e.g. write for The New Yorker - there were always too many people who would like to. But the premise before, and the ideal for which we should aim, was that whoever could do it best could get the role, regardless of their identity; and now identity is an impassable barrier.

Previously, the parental advice would have been: "It's great if you want to try and become a journalist, but try and build some hard skills as a fallback plan because it's hard to get a job in that." Now it's, "Don't try to become a journalist at all, the field is actually closed to you."

I don't dispute that, but it also doesn't engage with the article's thesis

So fair, I was really just commenting on that isolated thought

The piece addressed this point as well. Based on the stats white men did not migrate into other high-status fields like medicine, law, and tech, likely because of the same discriminatory hiring practices.

The white men shut out of the culture industries didn’t surge into other high-status fields. They didn’t suddenly flood advertising, law, or medicine, which are all less white and significantly less male than they were a decade ago. White men dropped from 31.2 percent of law school matriculants in 2016 to 25.7 percent in 2024.

The shift in medicine has been even more dramatic. In 2014, white men were 31 percent of American medical students. By 2025, they were just 20.5 percent—a ten-percentage-point drop in barely over a decade. “At every step there’s some form of selection,” a millennial oncologist told me. “Medical school admissions, residency programs, chief resident positions, fellowships—each stage tilts away from white men or white-adjacent men… The white guy is now the token.”

Nor was tech much of a refuge. At Google, white men went from nearly half the workforce in 2014 to less than a third by 2024—a 34 percent decline. In 2014, at Amazon, entry-level “professionals”—college graduates just starting out—were 42.3 percent white male. These were the employees who, if they’d advanced normally over the next decade, would be the mid-level managers of today. But mid-level Amazon managers fell from 55.8 percent white male in 2014 to just 33.8 percent in 2024—a decline of nearly 40 percent.

Ding ding ding.

And then there's the added problem of "oh, and any other field you might want to try could arbitrarily be closed off to you if it ever becomes lucrative and high-status enough for entryists to target."

Professional painters exist, and I don’t even mean housepainters(which anyone who isn’t visibly high when inquiring can get). Portrait artists have no control of the creativity of their profession, is all.

I was in a Ph.D program in 2014, hoping to go into academia, and I ended up dropping out because I could see that there was no way forward. I know it's a tournament profession and my odds were never good, but once I was inside it became apparent that it was in fact literally hopeless.

Yeah I had a similar path, wanted to go for a history PhD but all my professors told me it was hopeless as a white man. I also went into a tech startup, and we crushed it, then I got fired two weeks before my equity would've vested despite far surpassing all the goals in my initial contract.

I try to keep the light in my heart alive, stay focused on Christ, etc, but damn I am fucking angry. I have to say. I wish there was a more constructive movement to end this shit, very sad to see that so much of the dissident right is just pure vitriol.

I also went into a tech startup, and we crushed it, then I got fired two weeks before my equity would've vested despite far surpassing all the goals in my initial contract.

I try to keep the light in my heart alive, stay focused on Christ, etc, but damn I am fucking angry

Bruh, you basically got Saverin-adjacented. I think Jesus would understand if you considered pursuing legal action or going on a revenge arc.

I ended up fighting for a decent settlement that was close to a year's income. Probably the better option all things being equal given that the CEO is insanely paranoid and pushed out everyone that did real work in the company. The CTO had it worse than I did but can't talk about that publicly.

Either way, given your posting history on here you're not exactly someone I'd ever look to for moral advice, tyvm.

I didn’t say anything about “moral advice” or advice in general.

For in general, when it comes to advice, I prefer giving, receiving, or neutrally reading effective rather than “moral” advice, whatever “moral” advice may be. Come to think of it, people who immediately reach for phrases such as “moral advice” or “stay[ing] focused on Christ” tend to have a pretty good track record in recent times of losing gracefully. A follower of my posting history might be aware of examples such as forgiving one’s son’s murderer, washing the feet of those who hate you, conceding the supposed non-negotiability of marriage being between a man and a woman.

I’m glad you were able to at least partially subvert the track record and recoup some of your deferred compensation; ywvm.

Indeed, we have very different views of virtue. You're rather Neitzschean I suppose. It's a shame, you could be quite a force if you used your powers for good.... ;P

I always find myself thinking about how people in our position handled this drastic narrowing of our scope of opportunities. I was very influenced by Rod Dreher's Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies, as well as Aaron Renn's The Negative World, which, rather than addressing the racial and gender aspects of this, deal with the anti-Christian nature of the current cultural moment; all of these books, in different ways, basically advise you to focus hyper-locally, to keep your internal locus of control alive, and build what you can in the little domain that you are actually able to influence. So I've done that. I've just been elected to a two-year term on my church's leadership board; I managed to get published in a little local history anthology by a small press; I settled down, bought a house in the Midwest and am trying to start a family.

Still - it's painful that we'll never know what we could have done if we were born into a different reality. I had dreams of being a popular novelist. I probably don't have the ability, but because of the cultural headwinds, I also gave up on that before I tried to reach my maximum potential. You might have been a great professor, or maybe you would not have; but people like us, with even greater ability than us, also got pushed into paths where their potentialities are never realized. I am reminded of Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk, a mid-century novel about a girl who dreams of becoming an actress, and ends up shattered by the experience of continual failure. (And of course by encounters with an infamous cad.) Her outcome: a quiet, happy suburban life, but one in which her initial dreams are forgotten. She makes her peace with that, and I've mostly made my peace with what I couldn't do, and of course I can console myself by saying, "Well, that was just my attempt to be special, and I probably wasn't special anyway in the end." There are failures and mediocrities in every generation, but I would've at least liked to try on a more level playing field. Part of this is just growing up, but obviously part of it is that we were frankly cheated out of a fair shot; and it's only so much compensation to say, "Well, I made a great network engineer."

Hey friend, just wanted to stop in and say I'm doing the same thing. In my twenties I had the dream of being 'significant', but have realized just how much pride was caught up in that. Much more healthy and virtuous is to be a part of your community first, and then if you do good there perhaps you will have expanding influence as a result. To that end I've abandoned my goal of being some kind of auteur, and instead got married, just become a deacon at my church, and am currently working on starting a local small business.

Still - it's painful that we'll never know what we could have done if we were born into a different reality.

I thought about this phrase a lot, and in the end, this is yet another poisonous secular idea seeped in the water you drink. In Christianity there is no such a thing like being born as some other person - as other gender, in other time or other place. You were created as a unique soul by God and it is what it is. It reminds me of the conversation penned by Tolkien where Frodo laments:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

If you don't like Tolien, then look at the Book of Job. In a strange sense Christians are more grounded in here and now, and secularists are more entangled in strange mysticism. Be it Rawlsian idea of how everybody is an immortal soul flying around the Earth waiting to be materialized, presupposing the moral structure from this mystical tought experiment. Or transhumanists raving about uploading their soul and making themselves immortal, or of course transgender activists who literally claim that their souls were materialized in wrong body. All of that is nonsense.

That's because liberal secularization peddled self-actualization as the goal of existence. It was super easy to sell, because everyone dreams of better. "Sometimes you just suck and sucks to suck" isn't a great sales pitch.

Indeed, you get it my friend. I also just took on a leadership position at my local parish, and am volunteering in a broader capacity with my larger church body.

I think that the best we can do is simply bide our time, spread awareness, and grow our social capital, our virtue, while supporting our side of the culture war here and there. Store up treasures in heaven, where moths can't destroy and thieves can't steal.

If it helps, I do think that there's a lot of angry underemployed highly skilled men floating around right now, just waiting for a chance to do something. Trump is old and there's no clear successor, so there's a big power vacuum right now. X is a great organizational space. It feels like we've got the chance to do something now. I just don't know what.

Some form of DOGE would be a good thing to do. Given how fast it was crushed, there are a lot of money (tens of billions at least, maybe more) that basically are stolen from the budget, and it enables huge number of people to do damaging activism full time, without any resource constraints, while the opposing side has to balance having day job and family and mortgage and all the normal dependencies and vulnerabilities. That's like fighting a professional boxer while trying to cook a meal and care for an infant at the same time. No way you wouldn't lose badly. Disrupting this process would make a huge impact. Even just revealing the details of this - and consistently making it the focus of the discussion - would make an impact, most normies have absolutely no idea how much of the crap they are paying for from their own pockets. A lot of this information is out there, just buried in terabytes of forms and reports. Some of it is non-public, but can be revealed if there's sufficient energy dedicated to it. But except for a handful of people, not a lot of politicians, even from the conservative side, take any interest in that. Partially because they have their own, smaller, grifts, which could be disrupted by revealing and stopping all the massive grifts.

My impression is that the federal government is actually reasonably efficient, at least in the sense that the money goes to the thing it's labelled for, which is why DOGE failed. What we really need is 50+ DOGEs for every state and local government, that's where the real waste is. See for example: the latest scandal with food benefits in Minnesota.

in the sense that the money goes to the thing it's labelled for,

Only in a very broad sense, e.g. if the money is labeled "covid subsidies", it is going to somebody who claimed they need a subsidy because of COVID. But whether they actually need that subsidy, whether they should be in the front of the line for that subsidy, and whether their claim has any relation to reality, and whether they are actually going to spent the money to the cause they promised to spend - all this is controlled very weakly. And the leech networks have long adapted to the weak controls and learned to extract money by saying the correct "open Sesame" phrases, after which they get access to streams of money.

That said, I absolutely agree that state and local money need the same treatment.

It's what Paul Krugman called "An insurance company with an army". So outside medicare, medicaid, social security, defense, and interest payments, there's just not much left to cut. All those individual fed programs that sound suspicious like "covid subsidies" just don't amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

Medicare, medicaid and SS also give some opportunity for grift, and so does defense budget (I mean, if climate change is a threat to national security, we can finance climate change projects through defense budget, right? And if racism is a public health issue, we can finance DEI programs via healthcare budgets as well) we still have almost a trillion dollars in discretionary non-defense spending. It is true that solving the budget balance without addressing mandatory spending is not possible. But I am not talking about solving the budget yet, I am just talking about cutting off the most aggressive leeches, and thus forcing them to at least play on equal footing. My point is not about solving the budget - that can come later - but about denying the enemy the resources which should be either deployed to more worthy causes or returned to (or not taken from) the taxpayers. If the Left wants to donate to their favorite causes, they are welcome to, but without the help of the IRS.

And even Krugman (who one can usually rely on distorting the reality as much as possible to benefit The Party) admits this:

Oh, and the federal government has been providing aid to state and local governments, largely to limit layoffs of schoolteachers.

The schoolteachers part is most likely a lie (I didn't check but I know who Krugman is) but the preceding part is true - significant chunk of federal money goes as "aid" to local budgets, where it is rerouted - either directly, or through a basic fungibility trick - to various pet causes. Establishing transparency and control over this would do the conservative cause a lot of good - but they are doing virtually nothing about it.

More comments

My personal push would be to form a unified group that pledges simply to withhold tax payments while this particular discrimination regime is allowed to continue.

Needs to be enough buy-in that "they can't prosecute all of us" is a legitimate factor. And ideally pool funds to pay for attorneys for those who do get tried.

Yes, there's like a dozen ways the state can crack down on this, but that would actually force them to cross those lines OR negotiate.

It's harder to disrupt or de-legitimize such a group compared to one that threatens violent martial resistance. Hence why this approach would probably beat forming an informal militia.

This is nuts! Law fare is the tried and true way of damaging US institutions to effect change.

Who is going to pay for the lawfare?

Peter Thiel of course! There is always some rich white guy with an axe to grind in practice.

I think you'll find that it's quite easy for the IRS to take your tax money. They don't even need to win a trial, they can just take it directly from your bank with a tax lien and force you to contest it. Unless you're talking about money laundering, but then that's a lot more complicated and a serious felony.

Not more serious than armed insurrection, of course.

What does this look like? W2 income is already automatically taxed for e.g. FICA and to some extent income tax. And the government has plenty of well-exercised sticks to get compliance from both employers and employees.

The only way I can plausibly imagine this working is men going NEET en masse, and that may arguably already be happening. But it's unclear to me what change an army of NEETs can effect.

The only way I can plausibly imagine this working is men going NEET en masse, and that may arguably already be happening. But it's unclear to me what change an army of NEETs can effect.

Yeah this is the "lying flat" movement in China, which is spiritually corrupt imo.

Personally I prefer a strategy of working a low-effort job, enduring relative material poverty, and putting more effort/energy into building social capital, virtue, and an awareness of the problems.

very sad to see that so much of the dissident right is just pure vitriol.

There needs to be more vitriol. You can't just ask nicely not to be ethnically cleansed. The people you are up against have recently and openly learned they can just murder you, your children, and your representatives and suffer virtually no political consequences.

Vitriol is a start to what you need to do.

I am also of the vitriolic right, but IMO it behooves us to keep in mind that yours is the exact same rhetoric used by the left to valorize rioting negroes and palestinian combatants and all manner of domestic terrorism and social engineering.

"Our enemies are maximally evil and we must therefore maximize our aggression against them.", right or wrong, cements the conflict as absolute. It paints a glowing red target on you in the eyes of all who previously were only leery of you. It is exactly why the woke left has passed its peak and people are now waking up to the facts that no, western civilization wasn't a sexist racist theocracy and needn't have destroyed itself through mass immigration from the 3rd world, even as it is too late.

I'm not saying there's no conflict. I am myself strongly in favor of punishing my political enemies no matter what breaks in the process. But for anyone who still believes in saving, protecting or building anything - infinite vitriol is poison, and will destroy your cause.

Saving, protecting or building should only come after the enemy is defeated though, through vitriol and aggression. Otherwise they might destroy what you were building and protecting.

Ah yes, once the final victory has been won and the spectre of the enemy ideology is banished forever from the world. Once every actual enemy has been killed and every potential enemy lobotomized and all information pertaining to the enemy ideology has been scoured.

You know, it would be so inconvenient if the enemy were made of the same stuff as us, from the same peoples and families, and a straightforward victory weren't possible. Good thing the enemy is easily identifiable and irredeemable monsters who are completely separate from us.

Seriously though, what would a defeat of the enemy look like, to you?

Seriously though, what would a defeat of the enemy look like, to you?

I can name some examples now that you asked. For one, violent criminal “refugees” from the MENA region getting arrested and deported. Not being “ordered to be deported”, which is very obviously a BS measure intended to deceive NPCs, but getting deported i.e. physically removed. Or cutting aid to Ukraine. Or not suppressing the fact that COVID “vaccines” have caused a massive number of early deaths. Should any of those actually happen, I’d be saying that roughly 30% of the work is done.

Good thing the enemy is easily identifiable and irredeemable monsters who are completely separate from us.

Most of them have in fact made themselves easily visually identifiable already, through public statements and also forms of body modification typical of leftist 'spiteful mutants' (h/t to the Jolly Heretic).

the fact that COVID “vaccines” have caused a massive number of early deaths.

Do you have solid sources backing up this claim?

More comments

I am also of the vitriolic right, but IMO it behooves us to keep in mind that yours is the exact same rhetoric used by the left to valorize rioting negroes and palestinian combatants and all manner of domestic terrorism and social engineering.

All that worked for them. It's still working for them. The woke left hasn't passed its peak; it's just currently in a tactical retreat. In 2028 the Democrats will have a trifecta and their woke vanguard will bring everything back on Day 1, because they have no scruples about the procedural and institutional barriers they use to stop their opponents. They'll "just do things" and there will be no Chicago judge to stop them, nor would they stop if they were told. And if there is resistance, the riot machine gets turned back on.

We'll see. Maybe in America. I expect some changes have already commenced that will manifest over the coming decades, and the political divides of those will not map cleanly to those of the past decades. Demographics remains destiny, and destiny is already happening. There will be a successor ideology to "woke", but it won't be the same - the causes the "woke" were married to are largely discredited in Europe, even as the old guard sticks to them. The young ones have seen them fail. Lockdowns, maximized mass immigration, feminism, tolerance, democracy. The generations growing up right now will find different causes, any alliances with old "woke" will be of convenience rather than conviction. And the biggest bloc of all in Europe will be Muslims - we'll see how that changes the political landscapes. At least that's my prediction.

So, back to America. Maybe it'll be as you say. Maybe a hot culture war or the ethnic cleansing of red-blooded Americans is inevitable. We'll see.

The guy who killed Charlie Kirk is suffering the consequences. He will likely be executed. What more do you want? Random innocent people to be punished as vengeance? People getting shot by random crazies is a fact of life in a free society, and the only person responsible is the killer.

He will likely be executed.

That is very far-fetched.

Yes, the left traded a pawn for a knight or a bishop. Maybe even a queen. They don't seem too upset about that trade, and in the meantime they are winning elections, and their base is crying out for more political murders.

"Oh" you might say "But after Charlie Kirk was killed, thousands of chapters of Turning Point USA were founded!"

First, we'll see how that pans out, and second, the left decided they can murder those too.

Meanwhile almost every single popular conservative is afraid to appear in public because the left will murder them. The right has almost zero ground game because the left will murder them if they do.

It's a winning strategy, and I think we need more of it. Making journalist, judges, legislators and administrators fear for their life in public is a proven strategy.

The right has almost zero ground game because the left will murder them if they do.

It's a winning strategy, and I think we need more of it. Making journalist, judges, legislators and administrators fear for their life in public is a proven strategy.

This looks like fedposting. I get that it is mostly a criticism of the left for actually engaging in political violence, and I'm hoping that there is a degree of sarcasm in it. 3 day ban.

Last time (7 months ago) you got a short ban for something that looked like fedposting you insisted it wasn't fedposting. We gave you a light one day ban at the time. Back then I wrote this in the thread:

As far as I am concerned fedposting is one of the few existential threats that this board faces. The other two are zorba kicking the bucket and a democrat party crackdown on free speech on the web.

One day bans are minor and basically nothing. That is us saying "yes really, this is a rule we will enforce, don't do it". For anything resembling fed posting I'm also willing to hand out bans like candy. Don't fucking do it. We can choose to be lenient when it is just the rules we care about enforcing. But this is a rule that the world will enforce upon us if we don't self police. Be annoyingly verbose and add a bunch of disclaimers if you insist on doing it. We still might ban you, because again we aren't really the ones making the rule on this. Sorry it sucks, I don't like it anymore than you do.

So to reiterate: do not fedpost. Do not jokingly fedpost. Do not look like you might be fedposting.

Can we please wait until there's at least a suspect in custody before using the Brown shooting to support your narrative?

There is no "strategy", it was one guy. If polemicists weren't taking security precautions for their public appearances until now, that's on them. Democrats had a Minnesota state rep shot and you don't hear us complaining about stochastic terrorism or whatever. That risk is part of being a public figure, especially in highly tense political times like we're in now.

Nah, there are some people explicitly and publically advocating more of this - Destiny's "you need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events", for instance. I'd call that a strategy. It's not a strategy "the left" as a whole is pursuing, though (the Democratic Party certainly came out against it).

Yes but this sort of hate-fueled rhetoric is just inaccurate which turns a ton of people off. Democrats lawmakers/elites are not openly murdering conservatives, poorly adjusted criminals and depressed schizos are. I understand that there's a strong argument to be made that the Democratic governance LEADS to these murders, but you have to actually make that argument!!

When you say things like

they can just murder you, your children, and your representatives and suffer virtually no political consequences.

This loses you the moral high ground, and the fight when it comes to normies. You're being taken in by your rage and making strategic mistakes. It's not just that it's factually wrong it's that it's a losing strategy.

I'd agree that OP is indeed incorrect. The corrected statement should be this: they can just advocate for murdering you, your children, and your representatives and suffer virtually no political consequences.

This loses you the moral high ground

How so?

Have you read Howard Thurman? I think his brand of nonviolence and his take on the "hounds of Hell" might interest you.

Yes but this sort of hate-fueled rhetoric is just inaccurate which turns a ton of people off.

Democrats have been almost pure delusional hate-fueled rhetoric for most of my adult life, intensifying into cancerous ferocity over the last decade, and it doesn't seem to have turned anyone off on general principles.

This loses you the moral high ground, and the fight when it comes to normies.

No, it seems like that's just media dominance and message control. If you refuse to ever tolerate or acknowledge validity of criticism of your own extremists, you apparently can just brazen out the moral high ground.

Democrats have been almost pure delusional hate-fueled rhetoric for most of my adult life, intensifying into cancerous ferocity over the last decade, and it doesn't seem to have turned anyone off on general principles.

Trumpism, and Musk becoming pissed off enough to buy Twitter, seem the obvious examples. Well, no, the more relevant examples; the most obvious example, in context, is this board.

The rhetoric of pro-Israel politicians is a great example of this point. Randy Fine can talk about how beautiful it is to see dead babies and call for the extermination of Palestinian children all he wants and the DNC aren't even willing to mildly chastise him, let alone pass a condemnation of him like they did for Nick Fuentes.

Look up Jay Jones again.

You are point of fact wrong on every point.

Let me put that another way. Ten years ago everyone knew white males were being discriminated against. Say it then and people like you would accuse me of "giving into hate and losing the normies". Now that it's fait accompli, all the institutions have been lost, white family formation is in the toilet, and our country is lost, people are coming out of the woodwork admitting "Yeah, we did that shit". Articles like the above are allowed to be published. But it's too late, there is no reversing it.

And I'm sure in 10 years time, there will be another slate of late admissions "Yeah, we did permit the ethnic cleansing of white people. Oh well!". And when the actions required to make the survivors whole are proposed, people like you will once again wring their hands going "Woah, woah, that's too scary, you'll lose the normies!"

The normies need to be radicalized. And attempts must be made 24/7 to see that they are brought on board with saving themselves. If you are afraid of losing them, you are failing in your moral duty to save them.

This is way too defeatist my friend. While we yet draw breath there is hope. We absolutely can and will reverse this evil and corruption. Far mightier empires have fallen throughout history. It may seem impossible now, but things change gradually then all at once.

I've been seeing the normies get more and more radicalized my entire life. I think we're on a good trajectory.

This is way too defeatist my friend. While we yet draw breath there is hope. We absolutely can and will reverse this evil and corruption. Far mightier empires have fallen throughout history. It may seem impossible now, but things change gradually then all at once.

There is nothing actionable here.

I've been seeing the normies get more and more radicalized my entire life. I think we're on a good trajectory.

The normies have indeed become more radicalized. For the left, as we saw in the Great Awokening of 2020. Every once in a while they get a good look at their destination (e.g. Sam Brinton transing their kids) and recoil, but then they go right back. And the "adults" on the right preach doing nothing, and when the more action-oriented on the right start acting, said "adults" are more horrified by them than by their leftist counterparts.

Just a reminder that whites have the stablest TFR in the US, it's actually slightly ahead of the black TFR, that US immigration is more white than black, and that whites of any age are the most likely to be married. Your blackpill on white people is not true, although white demographic decline is still likely.

US immigration is more white than black

Are you sure about that?

You're not wrong, but what use is it to have a bunch of radicalized red tribers if there is no plan for them to fight back? As far as I can tell, the "The Republican Party is Doomed" article still holds true today. Without control of any important institutions, there's not a lot you can do.

You can always destroy those institutions instead of trying to control them. Those can be rebuilt later according to different designs.

"The Republican Party is Doomed" is still written by a man that conflates certification with education with job security with meaningful skills, and who today has yet to confront or recognize a very simple flaw downstream of what that means:

There is not some deep physical law that educated young professionals are the source of administrative or executive power in this world. They have been favored for the last seventy years because (outside of academic-enforced Curleyism) they were competent, not just in systems that they created, but in their ability to manage and adapt to the world.

The average college graduate today struggles to use a screwdriver, and increasing numbers struggle to write or comprehend an essay; a far broader group have actively rejected even the ideals of meaningful understanding of reality. Teacher's unions have begged and striked to require increasing levels of education that you and I know does absolutely shit for their actual capability, and they're unusual for anyone studying it, rather than it being a problem. If you throw the mandate of heaven in the trash, it ends up in the trash.

That's not necessarily a good thing! Obviously there's the big grifter problem, where once you realize that the TV-show grifter and the PhD are equally unknowledgable about 1800s history, you have the problem of distinguishing what randos do have anything. There's a lot of infrastructure and cash that's hard to replicate outside of academic or industrial settings, and the resulting processes not getting done because those settings are so hostile to you they'd rather burn cash and credibility, and just no one trying, doesn't change much.

More broadly, there are still places that have keep some undercurrent of adherence to actual skill or knowledge that's hard to develop elsewhere, with some interest in actual capability, whether or not they've been skinsuited by politics. There's a far broader scope where the things they teach aren't deep knowledge or skills, but they're the teacher's passwords necessary to get anywhere today. FCFromSSC-style "iterated harm-seeking" is going to be very interesting in the !!bad!! sort of ways, when applied here.

I don't think you can avoid plans happening, as people get radicalized, as someone who has even an inkling of what that could looks like, and very many good reasons to wish it wouldn't happen.

More seriously, there's a lot of options radicals have, many of which do not require vast planning or coordination, only common knowledge.

Some of those options aren't bad. If, as a completely random example, the left will be murdering political enemies with impunity or the police and prosecutors will just look the other way when someone on the right gets his or her face punched in... well, I was on team Pink Pistols when gay guys getting bashed was a non-zero risk. I'm not abandoning that because some people insist it'd be better if I were beaten than their brownshits shot, and if they've never said the name "Paul Kessler", I'm not going to even care. There's a functional moral and legal principle, here.

But the majority of options are bad, and they're still going to happen. There's some subtle stuff, like what happens when we it becomes common knowledge the Civil Rights Act doesn't and hasn't realled since its inception, and every jury the least competent lawyer in a red or purple state can manage will nullo your prosecutions, and any lawyer slightly above that Platkins out any attempt to Uno Reverso by getting jurisdiction in a blue state first.

And then there's an actual horror stories.

Remember Malheur? Two years ago, if it happened again, common knowledge had already become that people committing actual terrorist arson against federal police didn't get a 'mandatory' terrorism enhancement. Today, there is basically nothing the nuBundies could say that would cost them political support, and until and unless they literally shot -- not shot at -- federal officers, they'd still have behaved better than anti-ICE groups. That includes literally dropping heavy rocks onto the front windshields of fast-moving cars and people, or running for a national office with a nazi tattoo.

But don't worry, without a college diploma, Red Tribers won't drop rocks. That's a fancy-boy edujumacated physics problem. Electricians, machinists, plumbers, gun nuts, maintenance employees, firefights, construction workers, no possible relevant domain expertise. or at least none I'm willing to discuss publicly

Remember when FEMA decided that they weren't going to provide support to houses with Trump political signs? Ah, without the proper cred-en-tialis there's no way some Red Triber would end up walking door to door or considering neighborhoods dangerous based on matters tangentially related to politics. They'll just be a ton of people doing work requiring hands-on expertise, to serve people they hate and know hate them, with ready and long awareness of normal and subtle failure modes. No way they might be in evacuated neighborhoods before most residents return, with easy arguments to defend any place they could be at all.

Remember some of the California trans sanctuary laws? What do you think happens when the mainstream news reports a father just now kidnapping his son, the federal marshals heroically rip a long-pregnant early teenager from their parent's arms the next week, and no one can talk about what the kid's current gender presentation or who assaulted him to start with? Do you think there's anyone who can argue Loudon County a success case for gradual stepwise moderation? Do you think people need a medical doctorate to notice the difference between a week and twenty-one weeks? A historian's degree find every single person with their name on public record for those orders?

These don't require a plan. Many of them don't even require explicit coordination beyond listening to the news, sometimes even only listening to news reporters biased against them. They're not even indicia I think are particularly likely -- since I don't want this to happen, I'm not going to meme my way into disaster.

But think for five minutes, hard, about what thirty unrelated bad actors might individually want to do, just repeating the greatest hits of the last five years.

Then consider how much post-Civil Rights Act civility may have depended on how difficult it was to ensure an attack would hit the 'guilty' and not hit the 'innocent' -- as the charcoal briquettes rant highlighted, the Oklahoma City Bomber very specifically choose to burn children to death among others -- and what signal hearing "Kirk deserved it" jokes and 'jokes' from their neighbors have sent.

I would like it to not be this way. I don't see many people actually arguing it isn't. Only that it shouldn't be.

I’m sorry, but I can’t help but think this is over-optimistic nonsense.

I don't think you can avoid plans happening, as people get radicalized, as someone who has even an inkling of what that could looks like, and very many good reasons to wish it wouldn't happen.

“Plans” will happen, sure. Lots of stupid, counterproductive “plans” by idiotic “lone-wolf” actors — a large fraction probably egged on and guided by undercover Feds into the least effective courses possible.

More seriously, there's a lot of options radicals have, many of which do not require vast planning or coordination, only common knowledge.

Not effective ones. This is an illusion created by the apparent effectiveness of left-wing supposed “lone-wolf” radicals. who are really just the visible end of a vast, less visible organized apparatus — read David Hines, or Curtis Yarvin.

Some of those options aren't bad. If, as a completely random example, the left will be murdering political enemies with impunity or the police and prosecutors will just look the other way when someone on the right gets his or her face punched in... well, I was on team Pink Pistols when gay guys getting bashed was a non-zero risk. I'm not abandoning that because some people insist it'd be better if I were beaten than their brownshits shot, and if they've never said the name "Paul Kessler", I'm not going to even care.

Sure, you can say “better to be judged by twelve that carried by six” or such, but when the choices are:

  1. Take a beating from the “brownshirts,” and maybe get crippled or killed, or

  2. Shoot one or more of them… and get tried in Federal court for murder and “hate crimes,” inevitably convicted and sent to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for, if not life, then decades; where the guards, having been informed that you’re an evil racist homophobic transphobic white supremacist Nazi Klansman who should die behind bars, pass this on to every non-white gang in the prison, at which point you eventually end up getting shanked to death if you’re lucky, but more likely cornered, repeatedly violated, and then beaten to death (just like you were trying to avoid to begin with); all while the guards look the other way.

How many people do you think will really pick option 2?

But the majority of options are bad, and they're still going to happen.

Mostly when the state allows them to happen, because it’s convenient to let them happen as an excuse to crack down further.

There's some subtle stuff, like what happens when we it becomes common knowledge the Civil Rights Act doesn't and hasn't realled since its inception, and every jury the least competent lawyer in a red or purple state can manage will nullo your prosecutions, and any lawyer slightly above that Platkins out any attempt to Uno Reverso by getting jurisdiction in a blue state first.

This is unintelligible. Beyond the grammar errors — “when we it becomes”? — I have no idea what this means.

Today, there is basically nothing the nuBundies could say that would cost them political support

And that “political support” is useless.

they'd still have behaved better than anti-ICE groups. That includes literally dropping heavy rocks onto the front windshields of fast-moving cars and people, or running for a national office with a nazi tattoo.

It doesn’t matter how much right-wing radicals have “behaved better than” various leftist groups, because what decides punishment is not the level of “bad behavior,” but “who, whom?” Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi, as the Romans said.

Left-wingers can drop rocks. Red-tribers can’t and won’t, not because it’s “a fancy-boy edujumacated physics problem,” but because they’ll be destroyed if they try. They won’t get away with it like the other side does. Anyone on the right who so much as tries will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Their “associates” — their friends and family — could be prosecuted too; or failing that, cancelled, fired, blacklisted, debanked, attacked by “brownshirts,” burned out of their homes, etc.

If your “people doing work requiring hands-on expertise” try anything, they’ll be caught by the omnipresent surveillance we live under, and completely crushed by the invincible Leviathan of the state.

Remember some of the California trans sanctuary laws? What do you think happens when the mainstream news reports a father just now kidnapping his son, the federal marshals heroically rip a long-pregnant early teenager from their parent's arms the next week, and no one can talk about what the kid's current gender presentation or who assaulted him to start with?

I’m not clear on the scenario you’re vaguely gesturing toward here, but the answer to “what do you think happens?” is “nothing,” because nothing ever happens. Red tribes grumble, and mutter “somebody aught to…” and “next time, we’ll…” and then roll over and take it. I’ve watched my parents, my friends, my neighbors do exactly this my entire life.

Do you think there's anyone who can argue Loudon County a success case for gradual stepwise moderation? Do you think people need a medical doctorate to notice the difference between a week and twenty-one weeks? A historian's degree find every single person with their name on public record for those orders?

What difference does any of this make?

But think for five minutes, hard, about what thirty unrelated bad actors might individually want to do, just repeating the greatest hits of the last five years.

First, there’s what these bad actors might want to do, and then there’s the separate question of whether they’ll actually try to do it. Very unlikely, I say. Too comfortable, too much to lose — and smart enough to see that their odds of getting away with it are too low. Then, even if they try, there’s the odds they get away with it. Which, again, one can see are abysmally low.

It’s not “right-wingers are too stupid and lack the edujumacation and proper cred-en-tials to strike back” — it’s that we’re too weak and disorganized, and the enemy too strong and organized, for any of this sort of thing to ever work (that is, at anything but being counterproductive).

More comments

You're not wrong, but what use is it to have a bunch of radicalized red tribers if there is no plan for them to fight back?

There was no plan, and Charlie Kirk is still dead, the power he wielded in life shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds.

You can make a pretty big impact without a "plan".

You can make a pretty big impact without a "plan".

You can if you you have the tacit, hidden backing of a vast, powerful, organized apparatus behind you. If you don't have that, though…

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