site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

https://www.newsweek.com/video-appears-to-show-new-ice-shooting-in-minneapolis-11411971

Ice shooting round 2 has kicked off. Numerous rumors already flying around but will be a bit before we have facts I imagine.

EDIT: I've been asked to add some relevant points, I'll say: this comment has links to various angles: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405295?context=8#context This comment mentions the "Sig misfire" angle that I've seen a bit: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405451?context=8#context

Walz has activatedthe national guard: https://x.com/MnDPS_DPS/status/2012614253090619619 The NBA postponed the Minnesota/Golden State game tonight.

Here's the timeline as of about 6:30 Western time day of:

  1. Alexi Petti shows, armed, up to participate in an ICE observation/disruption event in Minneapolis.

  2. Alex gets into an altercation with police, possible involving a woman who was pepper sprayed.

  3. The police/ICE pepper spray him as well, and tackle him to the ground.

  4. Alex appears to, during the scuffle, also attack the initial woman who was sprayed. He seems to grab her and try to pull her somewhere (possibly trying to "de-arrest" her)

  5. A so-far unknown law enforcement officer appears to disarm Alex while many other officers are wrestling with him on the ground. The scene is chaotic

  6. A second or so after Alex appears to be disarmed, he also appears to reach for his (no missing) gun

  7. This is when he is shot and killed.

Here is a slow motion video purporting to show him reaching for his missing weapon: https://x.com/KimKatieUSA/status/2015181670576775302

Here is an annotated/slowed video showing what appears to be an LEO disarming him: https://x.com/brandonstraka/status/2015140156806934987

Non-Twitter links: 1 2

Here is a slow motion video purporting to show him reaching for his missing weapon

I personally can't see any reaching in this video. But the uploader claims to see Pretti reaching at the 27-second mark, which is well after he was first shot by the officer at the 21-second mark. So your items 6 and 7 need to be corrected:

(6) An officer draws his gun and shoots Pretti.

(7) All the officers disperse and stop holding Pretti down. Pretti partially rises from the compressed kneeling/dogeza position in which the officers were holding him, but soon falls back to the ground. Pretti allegedly (observer opinions vary) reaches for his empty holster as he rises.

(8) The aforementioned officer shoots Pretti several more times.

I saw this post on Kiwifarms, but I've also seen others make the same argument elsewhere. The gun Pretti had on him is incredibly unreliable. Pretti was disarmed, but the gun still went off by itself in the officer's hands. You can see this in the linked video. There are a few frames where there's a muzzle flash and the gun jumps up. The gunshot spooks the other agents, who then promptly execute Alex Pretti as a result.

https://uploads.kiwifarms.st/data/video/8457/8457365-a397cfea4716acf38f4dfed2c6bb7098.mp4

Having painstakingly reviewed the video frame by frame from the 0:37 to 0:40 mark, when the first gunshot happened, I am as sure as I can be that this is what happened:

  1. ICE agent retrieves the gun from the guy
  2. As we would find out later, this gun is a SIG Sauer P320. This is a crucial detail that pretty much everybody is overlooking but it's the entire lynchpin of this unfortunate incident.
  3. ICE agent with the guy's gun starts to move away
  4. The gun just goes off. No, the agent did not fire the gun. If you look closely, the agent's finger is not on the trigger. The gun just went off. At 0:38 and 0:39 if you go frame by frame you can see what appears to be a muzzle blast and you can see what is definitely the gun suddenly jumping in his hand, both telltale signs that the gun has just discharged. Despite the distance and the video quality, it is still obvious the agent does not have his finger on the trigger.
  5. This spooks the rest of the ICE agents and they shoot the guy dead.

Why did the gun go off? Short answer: the SIG P320 is a notoriously dangerous piece of shit and it literally does just go off sometimes.

Long answer: The P320 has a specific design feature intended to make the trigger lighter, however this introduces a safety problem that could cause the gun to go off if dropped, put in a holster, placed gently on a table, or even shaken or jerked around, as happened to that particular gun in the footage. If the gun were made well, it would be safe, but SIG is notorious for its cost-cutting measures including the outsourcing of component manufacture, this affects the military, police, and civilian P320s. These guns have been built poorly and have in fact literally gone off, injuring many across the world. Don't believe me? Just google "Sig P320 incidents" or something along those lines and you'll have no shortage of articles to peruse. Ask SIG about all the lawsuits.

My analysis: the gun went off because it's an unsafe piece of crap, this spooked the ICE agents and they lit him up. That is what happened. That is history. Was it right? Was it wrong? Does this even matter? I won't answer the first two questions but I think we all know the answer to the third. Ultimately, the first shot being a not-so-rare accident from a known unsafe gun will be forgotten except by people like me who were here today and choose to not forget. Hopefully that's a few of you.

but the gun still went off by itself in the officer's hands.

I'm not a gun guy, but I know physics. I don't buy it yet. I don't see a muzzle flash. There is a bright spot that appears near the end of the barrel at about the correct timeframe, but it's also there in the exact same spot a few seconds earlier. This is a brightly-lit spot of background concrete. We also don't see any impact on the ground where the bullet would have hit if it had been fired from that gun at that moment. The recoil looks wrong too. The arm moves out yes, but there is no rotation of the gun relative to the arm. There doesn't seem to be any torque applied, as would be the case if the motive force came from the gun itself.

https://files.catbox.moe/vm5krv.png

https://files.catbox.moe/1fd7uk.mp4

I was referring to this. It looks like something is coming out of the barrel of the gun. I assume it is a muzzle flash because it appears at the same time as the sound of the gun shot is heard.

Previous discussion on the unreliability of the P320 here.

I saw this post on Kiwi Farms

Link

Big if true, I guess.