site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 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.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

He doesn't talk about the why. Perhaps he truly believes it is self evident. 'I was just on holiday and then the nazis came, so I became the resistance.'

Something that stuck out for me was the 'only arresting the worst of the worst 5-year-olds'. The father abandoned the 5 year old to abscond from ICE. The author pretends that ICE is killing people randomly, arresting the innocent (including children) and otherwise being horrible people.

People really believe this? Its truly 2 movies, 1 screen.

Peace will eventually come. Reality always wins.

ICE (and CBP - Minneapolis is a joint operation) is arresting every illegal immigrant who comes to its attention, including schoolchildren. They have said they are doing this, the media say they are doing this, and supporters of the operation (including on this forum) say they should be doing this.

The argument about whether it is possible to be out of legal immigration status innocently has been done to death, but if you think the answer is "Yes" then ICE are absolutely rounding up innocents, and this is what the core MAGA vote want. The claim that Trump-era immigration enforcement is focussed on "the worst of the worst" is a lie for the benefit of low-information normies. MAGA think ICE are deporting them all and this is good, Minnesota Nice thinks ICE are deporting them all and this is bad. So mocking the "worst of the worst" lie is an entirely normal thing to do.