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 -
Trump is right, MAGA is Trump. He created the whole political movement. The broader alt-right was inchoate and without any opportunity before Trump gave it form.
It’s actually the failure of the alt right that Trump is in power and they can’t get more of what they want. Remember that Scott Adams meme about how Democrats successfully branded Trump as Hitler, then Hitler won? Time for reflection. Mark Levin opposed Trump, now Trump likes him. Time for some reflection.
What I mean is, these impotent Twitter squabbles actually don’t mean anything. The broad base of MAGA still supports Trump and the Republican Party loves Trump. The people braying that Trump has betrayed them, however influential they might be in the small world of right-wing New York / SF influencers — don’t matter. Objectively they don’t matter because Trump has no compunctions about disappointing them. He doesn’t think about them at all. Mark Levin apparently does matter because Trump is thinking about him.
The alt-right is not why Trump won in 2016 at all. It is simply what was easiest for this insular media ecosystem to write about. Insofar as that definition of “MAGA” died it died a long time ago when Milo got canceled for being a pervert and Bannon got fired for leaking like a sieve. But again that’s not what actually matters.
This plan truster is very happy thank you very much.
Well Trump did run on a platform of 'America First' and 'no new wars in the Middle East, in fact Kamala is the one who'll start wars'...
It's like how in the UK, people were voting for Brexit as part of a way to reduce immigration. Then Boris ramped immigration way up. And so now the Tory Party is gone, effectively wiped off the map just after winning a huge electoral victory under a populist platform. Farage is clearly trying to do the same thing, there is this elaborate misdirection about his real agenda and priorities, he wants to get Poles out and bring more Indians in, to neutralize anti-immigration sentiment, he certainly has no problem with Islam... That's what Brexit was really about in his mind, a dog and pony show for the rubes to persuade them that they were being listened to.
Being a populist is easy, you just have to follow through on your promises and give your voters what they want. You've adeptly explained the 'make promises and then betray promises' part. The next arc coming up is 'get shown the door by voters'. Populism is a reaction against politicians who make all these promises and then renege on them.
All Trump had to do is what he said - mass deportations, cutting leftist grifting to dry up the NGO blob, avoiding foreign wars. Not hard! But instead he shows his real priorities - slavish obedience to the latest batch of Israeli 'intelligence' and all the shady Shapiros, Levins and Kushners in his inner circle.
Trump has done more to follow through on his promises to voters than any president in memory. Immigration tariffs deportations taxes emissions regulations vaccine mandates Paris climate accords government layoffs birthright citizenship. He pardoned the J6ers, he moved our Israeli embassy. This is the first net-negative period of migration in fifty years. Like it or not this is what it looks like when Trump keeps his promises — mostly it looks like the base likes it. Which isn’t just to appeal to popularity but to say there is a fairly simple measure of whether Trump’s voters feel betrayed. They do not.
If you think Trump is taking Israeli intelligence over American intelligence you have crazy priors about what is going on in the Oval Office.
He didn't listen to General Caine who warned about all the obvious flaws in the 'bomb Iran' approach that Trump is now discovering the hard way. Someone must've been telling him it would be easy, Iran was about to collapse.
The Israelis have been shovelling out that same old story about Iran being a few months away from a nuclear bomb, they've been going on about that for decades now. But Trump still buys it, he went on about how they were going to get a nuke and would've if he didn't stop them. US intelligence is much more cautious about this.
You can follow through on 99 promises but if you renege and do the opposite on a high profile promise and can't explain why (Israel was going to strike first, the nuclear weapons that weren't actually being made), it can easily outweigh whatever promises you do make. Especially if it raises oil prices and induces a recession.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
All of the energy behind Trump originally came from the “alt right”, who created the memes that boosted his popularity in the first place. They were fighting the likes of Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin. I remember the exact moment when he spoke about Mexican immigration in unadorned speech and how that immediately turned up the support 10x. MAGA is Trump if we’re talking copyright but the nationalism obviously preceded him. You had to be there. The nationalist current began at least four years before Trump’s elections.
He’s on Fox News. That’s pretty much it. Unfortunately he is 80 years old. We had a guy on Fox News, they got rid of him, but now Tucker has his own show. This does allows Tucker to continue the true “alt right” spirit though. We will see where we end up over the next decade, if it looks more like the original MAGA vision or the Mark Levin vision.
I see no organic support for Trump online. I think midterms will tell. I think there are those like myself who will be voting straight D.
I was there before anyone, I was there from escalator day and faced a lot of doubters and social consequence. The arguments I could recount… The nationalist current was formless. It was there but it had no shape. In Britain it arrived in Brexit and then was squandered for ten years because there was no other figure or leader to champion it — look at Britain for an idea of where America could be without Trump, look to Britain for an idea of what “squandering MAGA” would actually mean.
I don’t really believe this “Trump gets everything from Fox News” meme mostly spread by left-wing journalists painting a picture of Trump the simpleton. (By other accounts he consumes a lot of news in all forms.)
However that’s not really my point; if Trump does just get all his idea direct from Fox News, then it’s a failure of the alt-right not to fight for it. Who’s in the editing rooms, who’s in scheduling? Ten years on the feeling is that Fox is basically no better no worse than it used to be — well at least we still have shitposts and memes!
Tucker is a grifter and not a very successful role model for how a political movement should function.
Well if you support unlimited immigration and Minneapolis daycare fraud and never arresting criminals on the trains I don’t really trust your opinions on the original MAGA spirit.
Fox and people like Levin are dying out; viewer average age is 65. And Levin would not allow any genuine MAGA person in his newsroom. It’s just unfortunately not something MAGA can change. This is entrenched media which we always hated. MAGA never cared about Fox.
Tucker was the most popular Fox show, so it worked with Tucker, for a while, until he was fired. Now he is on x: 18 million views on his Nick Fuentes interview on x, 7 million on YouTube, while Levin is lucky to get 4,000 views on his YouTube channel and 150,000 views on his Fox videos. Tucker’s video on Iran is 4.5x the views of Levin, which is insane when you remember that all Levin does is fearmonger Iran to his audience averaging 65yo. But none of that matters because it’s Trump’s favorite show. The Alt Right has no avenue to influence the 80yo Trump like that, they just have to create propaganda and wait it out.
Genuinely makes no sense. What is he grifting? What does grifting even mean to you?
Ok yeah MAGA is weak and powerless Trump has betrayed us you’re right all we can do is post on Twitter. The key thing is that this explanation absolves us of having to do anything differently, because if it were the case that Trump isn’t beyond influencing and we gave up for nothing boy that would be a shame
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