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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think it's intuitively true that Jewish people care about issues that exclusively or disproportionately affect Jewish people, like anti-semitism or the welfare of the state of Israel, and therefore that, all absent intentional coordination or conspiracy, engage in actions to discourage anti-semitism or support Israel. It's also true that there are some organisations explicitly dedicated to those causes, which explicitly wave a flag for Jews. The ADL fights anti-semitism. AIPAC fights for Israel.
And in the absence of any other evidence, "X is Jewish" strongly raises my probability that X cares about fighting anti-semitism, or that X supports Israel. This much is obvious.
I suppose the problem I have here is that there's a kind of motte-and-bailey. I think your position here is mostly reasonable. Jews tend to support Jewish causes; Jews are a relatively influential and wealthy demographic in the US, and relatively politically mobilised; therefore the US tends to relatively sympathetic to or supportive of Jewish causes. This does mean that not all causes are equal. Anti-semitism really does get treated much more harshly than other similar forms of hatred. This is also indeed frustrating when you have legitimate criticisms of Israel.
The bailey, on the other hand, is the SecureSignals position. Jews being concerned about anti-semitism and enthusiastic in fighting it by no means constitutes a reason to be anti-semitic! You don't have to skip from the motte of "Jews care a lot about Jewish issues and tend to advocate for them" to the bailey of "Jews are a malign parasitic group controlling the US for their own purposes, wake up sheeple".
More options
Context Copy link