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 -
The Two Towers
It is trivial, with the current "very online right" and with the benefit of a (relatively recent) era that didn’t require "diversity", to impose a reactionary reading on the movie trilogy the Lord of the Rings. Having just finished watching the (otherwise pedestrian, at least in relation to the sublime Fellowship of the Ring) Two Towers, the analogies are almost too on the nose. We have a technocratic leader ("a mind of metal and wheels") who leads a rabid horde of third-worlders in a takeover of a 100% white, peaceful, free nation. In the books, the technocratic leader’s "new" cloak is literally rainbow hued. The free nation just wants to be left alone, but is eventually forced into battle. The leaders pine for a simpler, easier time; where valor, honor, and renown were attainable.
Of course, so do all who live to see such times. The folk in the old tales had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. One of Tolkien’s motifs is how easy evil is to defeat: all good has to do is stand up to it. The Ents think that they go to their doom, before utterly decimating Isengard. The Hobbits cower initially during the scouring of the Shire, then win an almost trivial victory. One of my favorite lines from the book is when Theoden decides to go into battle himself, at which Aragorn proclaims, "Then even the defeat of Rohan will be glorious in song!". This is echoed in the movie during the "Forth Eorlingas" last charge. Yet the only thing in the Lord of the Rings that risks genuine defeat is passivity. Ultimately, Theoden’s death in Return of the King is one through which he does win lasting glory: the great Witch king is forever destroyed. Not only will he have no shame in the halls of his fathers, he has a prominent position in their company.
My grandfather served in WWII but never fought. If it wasn’t for the dropping of the Atom bombs in Japan, he would have been in the invading ground force. Given the casualty estimates of a ground invasion, there is a solid chance that his 5 children, his 20+ grandchildren, and his 40+ great-grandchildren would never have been born. He felt some pride in his service, but also regret and shame. Others fought and died. He didn’t.
Two generations removed from WWII, the very thought of storming Iwo Jima or Normandy is unthinkable; both at the national level as well as the individual level. Watch Saving Private Ryan and try to imagine yourself in that scene. My grandfather felt shame, but I can’t even muster that emotion. When I imagine myself in those boats approaching the beach, the only emotion I feel is terror. I am a product of my time, where even the "good" guys lack ambition and will. The world’s richest man trolls on X. The world’s most powerful man trolls on Truth Social.
Another great movie, the Dark Knight, features the iconic (and ironic) line "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain". As I stare at the beige walls of my cubicle, were that those were my options! We live in an age where everything is flattened. There is great evil but without an obvious source. There are many who live upright lives, but without valor or victory. Our present evil is the insidious slow drip of poison that seeps into us through our surrounding milieu.
The great project of the "online right" is to identify this evil, to name it, and to then fight it. Yet this evil remains amorphous and elusive. Each "influencer" thinks they have the "correct" answer. These answers are typically mutually contradictory. In the face of this hydra, some have returned to recommending the basics: reproduce, guard your family, stay in shape, weather the storm. This is sound advice. But as long as the evil permeates are society, our children and our spouses risk defecting. The halls of power rot even as their power becomes more entrenched, threatening lives and livelihood. What can men do against such reckless hate? The one option that is certainly not available to us moderns is to ride out and meet it.
The "online right" is a false friend. It's a total disunited shitshow. Essentially none of these "influencers" have a solid community, wife and family. They are surrounded by hangers on and a rotating scene of BPD groupies. They will not save you.
That's the only way to win though. There were proto wokes in the 60s arguing for exactly what we have now and they won because they were willing to keep endlessly pushing even though for most of the past 60 years they were despised or irrelevant to most of America. But what is it you actually want? To be left alone in a mostly white area? You can move to small town South Dakota and I doubt anyone will much bother you. To go someplace the government isn't woke well all of Eastern Europe is open and Russia just made a visa for people just like you. I found this post well written and evocative but also vague you want to strike back at "evil?" what does that mean exactly?
And we can still do stuff with the right stimulation WWII was entirely different than our current imperial wars of choice. Defending America from conquering great powers is entirely different than propping up some corrupt government in a shithole country. Why should Americans die for that?
Any attempt at establishing sometihng like this, that ensures it can't just be taken from you when convenient, is deliberately attacked.
Maybe Russia. Most of Eastern Europe is just a few years behind the program.
I can give you a list of examples, but surely you understand that a question like "what is evil, exactly?" is a bit unreasonable?
I wasn't suggesting the OP try to set up an explicitly white nationalist town, just that it's not hard to find an almost 100% white conservative town in America. And yet as your article shows most white American conservatives aren't actually white Nationalists, the people who ran Craig Cobb out of that North Dakota town, are statistically going to be mostly Trump voters.
Which is why I asked OP about the "evil" he wants to contain. I maybe should have phrased my question a bit better. A better question maybe would have been what does he want to change about society? Because if it's wanting to be left alone as a white conservative well that's easy to enough to achieve, if you want to seize control of the culture well that's something different. And your probably right about Eastern Europe but that just adds another layer, which is that the "program" is basically the post Christian religion of white countries the only countries effectively resisting it are non white countries, especially Islamic ones. Russia is but only by repression a democratic Russia would see St. Petersburg draped in rainbow flags pretty quick. There's a lot of tension in wanting a white society not part of the current program.
It was just an example, if you tried setting up an exclusive religious community, you'd be treated largely the same way. Like I said the core issue is being able to ensure that the community stays the way you want it to be, and that the powers that be can't just come over and pull the rug from under you. I get that you can find communities that are ~100% aligned ethnically, religiously, or whatever to your liking in America, but lots of these communities have been deliberately uprooted by the state and federal government shenanigans in the past, and there's no indication the situation will change any time soon. You might say "but there are still a lot of these communities left", but I don't think reasonable to demand that people who just want to be left alone, are also told to move periodically - and that's without taking into account the fact that they'll obviously run out of places to move to at some point.
If you're reading this thread, you've surely seen the kinda of things people are upset about - being extremely lenient to criminals, while being punitive toward people who defend themselves from them; using the public school system to indoctrinate children into bizarre ideologies that demand they self-flagellate for the way they are born; the medical establishment performing undisclosed gender-experiments on their children, and outright lying to ensure the parents' compliance; public schools helping to facilitate these experiments in secret from their parents... The list goes on, and I'm sure you've already seen most of these complaints.
It's not actually easy to be left alone. All the things I mentioned are imposed top-down, even on conservative localities.
You're acting like these rainbow flags are put up organically, like the English flags in the UK, and aren't put their by paid NGO mercenaries, backed by it's own apparatus of repression.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link