site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

New week is here, it is time for some more random culture (and kinetic) war news, sourced from various parts of internets via xitter.

1/ Middle Eastern issues, and general strategy, tactics, law and customs of war in the current millenium.

About half of US deployable air power is ready for Iran boogaloo 2.0. It would be very symbolic if it began exactly at 4th anniversary of three day special operation to desatanize Ukraine.

How it will start? As massive decapitation strike on enemy elite human capital.

An underrated change in modern warfare is the rise of “man hunting” - targeting of individuals, especially generals and other key personnel.

It is fascinating to see how something that was absolute NO in traditional rules of war "Generals do not take pot shots at each other" became normalized in the rules based order.

First organized crime bosses, then leaders of terrorist/freedom fighter groups like Al Qaeda, Hamas or Hezbollah, and now leaders and VIPs of internationally recognized states as Iran or Venezuela. And not only uniformed personnel, but leading scientists are now fair targets too.

This tactic became prevalent, because the targets are completely unable to reciprocate.

US and Israeli high ranking officers are not so well protected, professional sleeper cells should be able to get at them, but there is no evidence that these cells exist outside of Tom Clancy novels.

The highest ranking Israeli person killed was minister of tourism 25 years ago.

True war of assassins is yet to come.

What would be long term results? Being general is not any more cushy job with spiffy uniform, only people who believe in their cause and are ready to die will strive for such positions. Do the forces of freedom have plan B for case when decapitation strike succeeds, all targets are elliminated, but the enemy still refuses to surrender?

It is important to always have plan B. ready.

2/ More Middle Eastern issues

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in Tucker Carlson interview that "it would be fine" if Israel took over all of Middle East.

Angela Price Aggeler, US ambassador to Macedonia, so far hadn't commented whether Macedonians should take back all lands given to their ancestors by Zeus.

3/ Yet more Middle Eastern issues

Israeli ultra-orthodox revived ancient European tradition of burning cats and dogs alive as part of celebration.

Very based and trad pilled.

4/ Woke and also military issues

Ft. Bragg kindergarten teacher who identifies as trans wolf 'Lilith Deathhowl' was fired

The parents had been upset since early 2025 that administrators hadn't taken action to remove the teacher after he engaged in "disturbing behavior" that involved dressing in feminine clothing in class, as well as wearing a dog collar with fetish tags and an animal tail.

It looks like story from 2021, as if celebrations were premature and wokeness hadn't perished yet.

5/ Epstein issues

Epstein before his ultimely demise hid his secrets in storage units. Good news, the whole sordid saga can be prolonged into infinity. At any time, mysterious storage unit can be opened and new Easter eggs rolled out for the eager public.

6/ Now, the thread connecting all issues of the day together

The subway question is again the hottest debate on Xitter right now:

Are homeless drug addicts peeing and pooping in public transport reactionary lumpenproletariat or progressive freedom fighters? Is shitting in New York subway the best way to defeat American imperialism and free Palestine?

What unites Americans is Epstein. Just like how the previous generation, both sides or the aisle could recognize each other as American by claiming the other would gas thé Jews, now both sides can recognize each other by assertions that the other wants to rape and eat children. Our common ground is absurd partisan shitflinging.

Now thé Epstein files will keep being released because people like drama and gossip. We’re the land of The Learning Channel; trashy and nonsensical clearly isn’t a dealbreaker. In 20 years there’ll be another release of the Epstein files indicating then-current politicians went before they were born. Why? Because politics is entertainment now. How long before congresscritters step into the WWE? Who knows.

This, but seriously. The only reason why there isn't a populist uprising against the paedophile-riddled establishment is that the person who was supposed to be leading said uprising turned out to be compromised. * Epstein is far worse than the Dutroux scandal (which led to a reorganisation of the Belgian political system) and although the sex crimes were not as bad as the Pakistani rape gangs in the UK, the complicity of elites is far worse. (This has not yet led to a reorganisation of the British political system, but it looks like it may do).

There is an obvious N-dimensional chess story where Qanon and Comet Ping Pong were a deliberate ploy to spike the future Epstein reveal by making paedo panic (a) low status and (b) sufficiently MAGA-coded that opponents of Donald Trump wouldn't jump on it as an issue. (The hypothetical conspirators know that Trump is lying when he engages in populist anti-paedo messaging because he is one of the paedophiles.) I don't think this is true - I think paedo panic is right-coded because the Anglosphere left have made being the defenders of sexual deviance (other than paedophilia) part of their core values, and the man in the street (mostly correctly) believes that other forms of sexual deviance are strongly correlated with paedophilia.

Right now it looks like the only Americans sincerely opposed to powerful men sexually abusing teenage girls are dissident right-populists like MTG, although I think the MeToo movement showed a few mid-rank figures on the feminist left who were also consistent on this point even when the perp was a Democrat.

* I am using paedophile in the dangerously loose sense the public do - what is relevant to the politics is the view of the typical low information voter, and normies don't care about the Hannaia/Tracey "words have meanings" argument. There were no prepubescent children involved, and accordingly nobody involved is a paedophile in the technical sense, and it is not clear whether or not Epstein trafficked the girls to the clients until they were over the local age of consent. But there was definitely sexual abuse of teenage girls going on.

There don't seem to be any "paedophiles" in the Epstein files, with the possible exception of Epstein himself.

No, regardless of your footnote, 17-through-19-year-old prostitutes don't count. There's a probably apocryphal story where Abraham Lincoln poses the riddle "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" and he gives the answer as "Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so." Well, same goes if you call someone who has sex with a 17-year-old a "paedophile".

I'm not even sure there's evidence of anyone (again, aside from Epstein) actually having sex with a 17-year-old. Yes, if you discard all the meanings of words and all the lack of evidence, there's something here.... but there isn't. A bunch of rich people partying with 17-year-old prostitutes (and I would guess cocaine also) isn't news -- "hookers and blow" is pretty much expected.