site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29383 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A fascist trademark is its insistence that the country is not just a collection of individuals but a people, a Volk: a mystically defined and ethnically pure group bound together by shared blood, culture, and destiny

I hear this a lot, and I have to seriously ask: Is there a single ethnic group outside of Western Europe and America that doesn't believe this? I'm Chinese, and I can say personally that every single Chinese person I know that was raised in China believes this idea. China is not just the land, it's a people and a culture. The only Chinese people I know who don't believe this are the ones that have been either born in or raised in America, and even then it's a 50/50. Am I wrong?

You're not wrong, it's a post WW2 western based Memeplex, in some parts of the west where the post WW2 consensus had less power even that sort of notion is not really established (Center/Eastern Europe)

I would add some Latin American countries to your list of non-ethnostates, Brazil being a very obvious and notable example.

I recently got into an argument with a pro-Palestine guy, who argued that Israel is the world's sole remaining ethnostate. He did begrudgingly concede my counter-example of Liberia (in which citizenship is explicitly reserved for those of Negro heritage). However, he didn't budge when I characterised Japan, Korea and essentially every Arab nation as ethnostates in all but name. Would you think that's a fair characterisation of China?

No who you asked but yes. Though it's important to note that for Chinese this theoretically includes all the minorities too. China is a nation for the Chinese which are Han and the 55 other minorities. Though in practice less so as pretty much everyone is Han outside of a few regions.

Han is a pretty overly expansive category if you spend any meaningful time wandering around China, too.

Dongbei and Guangdong natives might both be Han but there's huge visual and behavioral differences there. Like in European terms it's like having Prussians and Southern Italians in the same category.

I'd argue that when a foundation of a state as a process entails the expulsion of ethnic minorities, it can be considered an ethnostate. Post-1945 Czechoslovakia and post-1995 Croatia, for example.

FWIW, many German men, especially older ones, also still believe this - although they know better than to speak their minds in public.

Unfortunately, it's just no longer true for Germany. It was, until maybe a generation ago, but clearly isn't anymore.

I think the idea of a distinct German ethnic group was always an oversimplification by the Nazis. Population groups intermingle. A random person living near the borders of Denmark or Italy will probably be genetically closer to someone of the other side of the border than to his fellow Germans from 900km away.

Also, I am pretty sure that the work migration into Germany started in the 1960s, not in the 2000s. A pizzeria run by people of Italian origin or a Doener run by people from Turkey were both common in the 1990s.

I think it makes a lot more sense to define nation states culturally, which is to my understanding more the French way of thinking. Join the foreign legion, learn the language and the culture, and once you are done, you have become French.

I think the idea of a distinct German ethnic group was always an oversimplification by the Nazis. Population groups intermingle. A random person living near the borders of Denmark or Italy will probably be genetically closer to someone of the other side of the border than to his fellow Germans from 900km away.

True. The Germans have always been a cultural nation, not a genetic one.

Also, I am pretty sure that the work migration into Germany started in the 1960s, not in the 2000s. A pizzeria run by people of Italian origin or a Doener run by people from Turkey were both common in the 1990s.

Yes, that is correct. But it qas quantitatively a different situation - the Gastarbeiter were still a clear minority. By now, in between different birth rates, migration rates and cultural retention, cultural Germans are already or are certainly becoming the minority.

I think it makes a lot more sense to define nation states culturally, which is to my understanding more the French way of thinking. Join the foreign legion, learn the language and the culture, and once you are done, you have become French.

Of course, that makes the nation-state proposition far more practical than tying it to phrenology or genetic screening. But in all honesty, I think talking about nationalism in biological terms is, outside of some edge cases, just a waste of time. Rounding nations to cultural nations gets the job done, if one wants these discussions to go anywhere at all.

Of course, as a mongrel myself, I have good reason to say so.

Isn't the 'German' volk just an outcome of an earlier political process as a collection of Frankish-ruled peoples east of the Rhine? Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Alemanni, and Thuringians, etc. Though Bavaraians likely included some Celtic and Roman provincial populations, Marcomanni.

When do these older German men feel the Germans originated? Charlemagne, earlier, later?

Are the descendents of the Saxons, and Angles and Jutes that migrated to Britian still German or Dane?

We see in England Æthelstan ruling a multi-ethnic kingdom of West Saxons, Mercians, East Anglians, Northumbrians of both Anglo-Saxon and Danish descent, and Norse settlers from various backgrounds, all being folded into a single political entity unified by the English language, a common legal framework, and the Church.

Most of our modern demonyms are the result of an aglomeration of ethnicities bound together via culture and proximity / geography.

Yes, of course. Historically that's all true. But that's not really germane to my point - which is more that until very recently, there was a clearly identifiable German people, and the remaining Germans of slightly later are still viscerally aware of this. It's "lived experience", dumb as it sounds, not historiography.

viscerally aware of this. It's "lived experience", dumb as it sounds

I understand but is there reason to suspect this awareness isn't the same as it's ever been which is why historically there had been pressure to conform linguisticlly and culturally.

While teaching English in Germany I had an ethnically Korean student, Karl Heniz, who had been born in Germany and was very culturally German.

I think the conversations around many of these issues would be very different if linguistic and cultural assimilation was required / enforced.

I agree. Germany is a nation primarily of language and culture. We have so many different breeds of German - not even one core population of Han Germans or Yamato Germans; it's been a hodgepodge mix from the start. The last genetically distinct populations like the Saxons were integrated so long ago, they're thoroughly mingled in. A Karl-Heinz of Korean extraction is somewhat rare, but if he's second-generation immigrant or later, as you say? By all means, I believe it. Those kinds of people are easily more culturally German in most ways that matter than genetically european inner-city wannabe gangsters.

It's a shame our language and culture are despised by most Germans. That just makes it a hard sell on the cultural market.

Japanese and Koreans also believe this and are open about it. Some normie Dutch and Belgians are pretty open about it too, although they will use softer language and qualifications. This "nation of immigrants" idea is really just an American meme that infected the Anglosphere.

The UK and USA are both explicitly not nation-states from their foundings - that is why they have "United" in their names. (FWIW, Belgium doesn't work as a nation-state either and the Flemish-speaking Belgians who talk like it is one are somewhat ambivalent about including French-speaking Belgians in their project)

You can have a concept of Britishness as a civic identity shared by a closed class of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish (or Northern Irish) people, although there isn't an attempt to actually do that until modern right-populist movements, and it goes down like a lead balloon with the Scottish and Welsh. But the idea that an Englishman and a Scot are part of the same blood-and-soil folk community is offensive to both of us.

The US just is a nation of immigrants as a matter of historical fact. The de facto leader of the anti-immigration movement in American is the grandson and husband of immigrants.

The UK and USA are both explicitly not nation-states from their foundings - that is why they have "United" in their names.

In the sense used here, the US was, from founding, intended to be such -- but without the ethnic purity, since it was mongrel at the foundation.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

So, "one people".

The "United" was about states with different interests, not about different peoples.

You can have a concept of Britishness as a civic identity shared by a closed class of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish (or Northern Irish) people, although there isn't an attempt to actually do that until modern right-populist movements, and it goes down like a lead balloon with the Scottish and Welsh.

I think the one shared identity of those peoples was empire-building.

In so far as there was a real attempt at British nation-building after 1603, it was mostly based on anti-Catholicism in general and anti-Frenchness in particular. Hence the difficulty of including Ireland.

Empire-building as a national project was an example of civic nationalism, not ethno-nationalism. Upward mobility was always (in theory) and frequently (in practice) open to colonials who displayed the characteristics of an English or Scottish gentleman, starting with loyalty to the Crown and not being Catholic. No ethno-nationalistic society would have elected Benjamin Disraeli Prime Minister.

I was observing the whole thing from a more practical point of view. Apart from building and maintaining a world empire, what else did unite the English, Scots and Welsh? What else did they agree on?

Contra @MadMonzer I would say that Britain isn't a proposition nation any more than England/Scots/Wales is. It's an ethnic one with multiple very similar ethnicities. There doesn't have to be a lot we agree on (though there are certain serious disagreements especially around religion) but we are used to each other. You don't need shared memes with your brother for him to be your brother. You don't even have to like him. You just have to dislike him for long enough.

Apart from building and maintaining a world empire, what else did unite the English, Scots and Welsh?

@Botond173 - it really was the Frogs. After the Scottish Reformation, the Scots hated the French (who had attempted to prop up Catholicism in Scotland) as much as the English did.

I would say that Britain isn't a proposition nation any more than England/Scots/Wales is. It's an ethnic one with multiple very similar ethnicities.

I think "ethnic nation with multiple ethnicities" is a contradiction in terms. The non-propositional view that makes sense given the history is that the Britain (or the UK - if you are doing this type of analysis the Irish Question matters) is a multinational state based on an alliance between friendly nations. And in the modern age they don't work (with Czechoslovakia as the textbook example).

Empirically, the folk nationalism of the British nations agrees. Scottish ethno-nationalism has, in fact, defined itself as anti-English first and foremost. Welsh ethno-nationalism is fundamentally pro-Welsh rather than anti-anyone (it focusses on preservation of Welsh language and Welsh-speaking culture). And in England, polling shows that self-identification as English is a proxy for ethno-nationalism and self-identification as British is a proxy for civic nationalism. And "British" nationalists based in England (like Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage) see suppressing Scottish (but not English) nationhood as part of their British national project. English nationalism isn't anti-Scottish per se, but it wants to reduce Scottishness to a cuisine and a costume.

Germany also was originally a non-nation of immigrants, circa AD 400-700. And yet, in 1900, it clearly wasn't anymore - at some point the melting pot cools and you get something solid. And I don't think it took all of 1200 years; the migrations stopped in the first millenium AD, and from then on local and regional populations took root and it's IMO fair to see a connection of blood to soil from there on out. Well, until urbanization, the World Wars, the Gastarbeiter, the Spätaussiedler and finally the "lol whatever" mass migrations of the third millenium.

Just ruminating. I have no point.

Germany coalesces as a stateless (because the Holy Roman Empire is both over-inclusive and not really a state) nation surprisingly early - certainly before 1600, and in my read by 1400. (The academic politics of the University of Prague - now Charles University - up to and including the Hussite crisis make most sense understood as a conflict between Germans and Czechs as national groups). Post-Reformation, there is an issue to resolve about whether the German nation is Lutheran (with Catholic Austria excluded) or biconfessional, but nothing as fundamental as the Breton and Occitan issues in France.

Despite being a state, France coalesces as a nation later than Germany. Perhaps because of being a state - from the point of view of a feudal dynastic monarch national identity among your subjects is potentially awkward.

In my opinion, the 1924 immigration restriction act should have been the beginning of that sort of thing for the US: the gradual melding of the European ethnic groups into a single White American entity. (Scottish, as perceived as a separate ethnicity in the US, actually did vanish sometime in the early postwar era).

But the Hart-Cellar act, by neglecting to set hard, very low annual caps on non-European immigration, blew up the chance to have a single ethnic group composing 90% of the population.

When did Catholic-Protestant intermarriage become socially acceptable in America? You cant combine Anglos and Italians into a single "white American" ethnicity without it.

Sometime in the forties or fifties.

Depends on your circles. In parts of the rust belt different kinds of ethnic Catholics wouldn’t have intermarried with each other, let alone Protestants, before ~1950. Protestant anti Catholicism was a fringe phenomenon by the nineties, but before that it was common in the south- even as the Catholic taboo on intermarriage took serious beatings with Vatican II(northern Protestant anti-Catholicism went into a tailspin at around the same time, for different reasons).

Inter generational Italian language transmission largely stopped happening in the 50’s and sixties, but deliberate government policy was as responsible as changing social norms. The last native French speaking Cajuns were born in the fifties, for another example. German declined earlier for war related reasons.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats