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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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Judging Europe by the last 80 years is like judging the France by its WWII performance. It's the subcontinent that started and fought in both officially recognized world wars, regularly fought each other in other world-spanning wars throughout the nineteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Oh, and they were world-spanning because in the seventeenth and the sixteenth centuries it colonized the rest of the world, genociding whatever local resistance it encountered.

You think Europeans are too weak to fight their wars, but they are pliable. They have incredible trust in their governments. A year of propaganda and they will be marching in lockstep.

I'm not European so I'm genuinely asking -- is this still true? Will all the migrants also march lockstep to government propaganda? Is there even any possible messaging that could work on both natives and migrants? Will the native populations still march in lockstep when they notice a suspicious lack of Pakistani, Afghan, Turkish or Nigerian faces the conscription office?

The natives likely will, the migrants…might, and will find it hard not to. The government is quite capable of exerting its will on migrants and immigrant communities when it wants to, it’s only that it usually doesn’t want to or thinks it isn't worth it. I think many migrants would leave but I don’t think they’d be able to get out of going to war if they stayed.

The whole thing might collapse after a few years like America in Vietnam as the tensions within the nation come back to the surface. Depends on the exact war.

They have incredible trust in their governments.

True maybe of the Swiss today. The Germans used to trust their government, now that it's talking about disenfranchising 30% of the electorate, they don't do so anymore.

Neither do the French - Macron's approval rating is 11%.