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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25914 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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Many things are habbening at once, here are for some more random culture war (and culture war by other means) news for the second part of the week.

Middle Eastern habbenings are already sufficiently covered elsewhere, things are going interesting even outside this part of the world.

1/Cancel culture files

Canceling machine is still running in overdrive mode, and it is coming for Cesar Chavez.

It turned out that "Moses of his people" routinely raped underage girls including another famous activist Dolores Huerta.

This is bad. Imagine if it came out that MLK raped Rosa Parks. That bad.

Many streets, schools, libraries, parks etc. are to be renamed soon.

It is already beginning.

2/Dukes, princes and kings of hazard files

Gambling is getting normalized and spreads all over the world.

Not only betting on sports for plebes, but betting on world habbenings for sophisticated situation monitorers.

In Washington DC, Polymarket just opened the world's first bar dedicated to monitoring the situation.

This sort of gambling, in addition to ruining people's finances and lives, adds another element of chaos to already spicy world's situations. With few clicks, anyone in even middling military/govt positions can personally greatly profit from insider info.

And if you are in high, decision making position ... another source of income opens, faster and more lucrative than old timey corruption and theft.

No suprise that tensions are running high.

A war correspondent just received death threats from online gamblers who wanted him to change his reporting on an Iranian missile strike so they could collect a payout. One bettor had $900,000 riding on the outcome.

3/US gun politics files

Illinois wants track all ammo and mandate microstamping of serial numbers to all ammunition.

Even if they could make it work, there is so much ammo already manufactured, you could say. This is no way to protect Black lives from gun violence!

This is the point. You cannot get the evil white gun hoarders for their guns (yet), but you can send them to prison for unserialized ammo.

4/Democracy files

In suprising news, Kim Jong-un wins North Korea’s parliamentary elections with 99.93% of the vote.

This was not something anyone could predict.

In 2023, Kim oversaw his party's WORST election results in 60 years, winning just 99.63% of votes.

But "to give up" is not in Kim Jong-un's dictionary.

He persisted.

He fought and regained trust of the people. May this tale of true grit and determination inspire all of us.

5/Woke culture files

You’re not hallucinating the great weirding of America

You’re in a small town in Wisconsin.

The transgender assistant manager at CVS has a septum piercing, a wolf cut, and a nametag that reads “Finn.”

TL;DR: Wokeness is not dead yet. It might be wobbling at the top, but it is marching triumphantly across America.

Dinergoth is the aesthetic of ruined suburbia and dying small towns.

They are the mainstream now, they are not weird anymore. You are the weirdo.

6/Space invader files

Third recorded interstellar object at 16th March crossed the orbit of Jupiter and is now on the way out of Solar system.

So far, three interstellar objects were detected.

Number Two looked and behaved like ordinary snowy mudball, numbers One and Three were, in comparison to Solar system objects, very strange.

Either we live on rather busy interstellar highway, or interstellar objects are not at all like Solar system ones.

Alien starship monitoring community breathed in relief (and disappointment).

Close encounter with Jupiter was the opportunity for space battleship to rev up her engines and use Jupiter's gravity for course correction straight to Earth.

Previously, we had doubt about object origin. Now, we are certain that crew of 3I/Atlas is made of highly intelligent beings who saw nothing worth conquering on this monkey planet.

7/Cryptid files

The famous Patterson–Gimlin film was, for 59 years, known as the best evidence for existence of Bigfoot/Sasquatch.

Now, new documentary shows it all as "incredible hoax". Not only straight confession of Patterson's son Clint, but another 16mm film reel showing Bigfoot costume.

More links and sources here.

But, at the end, it doesn't matter.

Real or not, Bigfoot lives in our hearts. For forever.

Update: Cancellation of Cesar Chavez proceeds with lightning speed.

It is so urgent that there is no time to call stone workers to grind away his name from marble.

When Gray Lady is speaking, everyone is listening. News about death of traditional press turned out to be way, way premature.

I'm guessing it's especially fast here because who on the Right or Centre is going to stand up for Chavez? Maybe we should, just to defend the principle of not unpersoning people, idk, but that's not really a hill I feel like dying on.

According to some he was an anti-illegal extremist. Heres a drawing of Trump and Chavez discussing border security.

Okay, this is just linkspam.

Yeah, some of it is kind of interesting. Like a listicle or a "You won't believe..." TikTok or YouTube thumbnail is interesting.

We have rules against low-effort posts that are just collections of culture war fodder. No, we are not going to bring back the link roundup. That is not what this place is for.

Don't do this again.

I visit this place less than I used to, partly because post-Elon twitter has filled the uncensored political discourse gap, but also partly because these overly-strict rules have led to too many long-winded, low information density posts dominating this thread - and some interesting events going entirely undiscussed, presumably because no one can be bothered to write 10 paragraphs about it to avoid being modded for low effort.

As soon as someone says "I have to write ten paragraphs to..." I dismiss them as someone disinterested in factuality.

OK, my apology. If such content is unwelcome there, I will not post such links here any more.

Is there any other forum where you normally post them?

Please bring back the—

No, we are not going to bring back the link roundup. That is not what this place is for.

...oh.

I miss it too.

I do see what you are getting at, but (for one) I hadn't heard about the Bigfoot news so that was genuinely new and informative for me. Maybe this would have worked better for Friday Fun Thread, but thanks for that one, Eetan!

Okay, this is just linkspam.

It is an extremely interesting link collection that I personally quite enjoyed. Thank you.

We have rules against low-effort posts that are just collections of culture war fodder.

Curating those links requires more effort than a vast majority of the posts here.

No, we are not going to bring back the link roundup.

But you should.

Don't do this again.

Please do this again.

If you don't like the rules you can raise it with us and we'll discuss it (but this particular rule has been discussed repeatedly and we are very unlikely to change our minds). Telling someone else to set themselves up for a ban is definitely not going to move the needle.

I think it would be interesting to allow a lower level of effort (a paragraph or so) for links relating to events older than a specified interval --- tentatively a week, maybe even a month. If necessary, those could be confined to a single thread.

A little off-topic, but how about a thread for registering predictions?

Last night I had a vivid dream that I was in Seoul, South Korea and suddenly there was a major incursion by the North Koreans. Yes, it's pretty unlikely that I have the gift of prophecy, but hey, a guy can dream, right?

Bring back relatively-bare link posting! In its own thread if need be.

The top-level post below this one (JeSuisCharlie's) is literally just a link with a quote from that link: the only user-provided content is the label for the link. EDIT: that was a second-level post, not a top-level one, and that does detract from my point somewhat.

You don't mod it, despite that having less personal commentary than any one of Eetan's links.

The resulting discussion from that post is interesting and enjoyable. The Motte would be worse off without it. That is true for this top-level post as well.

People posting uninteresting links is a self-solving problem when no one responds to them. We're a discussion forum, and having a jumping-off point for a discussion is useful.

The top-level post below this one (JeSuisCharlie's) is literally just a link with a quote from that link: the only user-provided content is the label for the link.

You don't mod it, despite that having less personal commentary than any one of Eetan's links.

It's not a top level post, it was a response to eetan.

Discussion engagement with a topic is a limited resource here. So if you spend the time to write up an in depth post and it take you half a day, you don't want someone sniping the topic by basically posting a dumb article or twitter thread.

Yes you can respond to them, but responses often get less engagement than the top level.

Other spinoffs of the culture war thread concept have been tried. The ones that allowed bare links are all dead.

It's not a top level post, it was a response to eetan.

Yup, I got this wrong. I've edited my original post to make note of this.

Discussion engagement with a topic is a limited resource here. So if you spend the time to write up an in depth post and it take you half a day, you don't want someone sniping the topic by basically posting a dumb article or twitter thread.

That's a fair point: you want the opening post on a given topic to be the highest-quality post, so low-quality posts that take less time to write can undercut people with less effort.

The question is, is a higher-effort post actually going to be written on a topic? From the above, I've seen the dinergoth thing before on the Culture War thread, but that was a previous week, so it seems there was more discussion to be had on it. I'm not sure if the other topics would have otherwise gotten any mention. And if there ends up being no post on a topic otherwise, then the relatively-bare post was the highest-effort post and it's being blocked by the forum rules.

I don't have a great way to solve all of these issues: the best thought I have is to have a bare-links-allowed post later in the week, so that anyone wanting to write detailed posts has a few days head start at the start of the week. That doesn't help with events that actually occur midweek though, and "no bare-links posts about things that happened less than 2 days ago" seems like it would be too annoying to implement for the mods. IIRC we used to have something similar around major tragedies, although I may be confusing that with another forum, and major tragedies are thankfully rare (or we calibrate "major" by how common they are, at least)

Other spinoffs of the culture war thread concept have been tried. The ones that allowed bare links are all dead.

Do you mean on TheMotte, or are you talking about places like TheSchism? I think that's maybe a "correlation implies causation" instance: the problem with TheSchism was not its bare link thread.

Depending on what your criteria for "other spinoffs of the culture war thread concept" is, rDrama seems to be alive and quite active despite allowing basically any level of effort or non-effort. The discussion criteria is clearly not up to the standards of theMotte, but I think that's more downstream of the userbase and general comment moderation.

John Nolte has a theory about why the left is suddenly so eager to throw Chavez under the bus.

Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration every bit as much as Donald J. Trump. Chávez understood that illegal aliens undermined the wages of legal migrant workers and their union bargaining power.
Cesar Chavez was so opposed to illegal immigration that, just like Minuteman Project of 2004, which was widely smeared in the legacy media as racist, Chavez put together his own militia to stop illegals from crossing the border. There are credible reports that violence was used as an example to others.
To form his United Farmworkers Union (UFW), it was Chavez versus the growers, and for obvious reasons, the growers loved the open border.
For just as obvious reasons, Chavez did not.
And there you have it.
That’s why it was time to take Chavez down. The left feared, and not unreasonably, that as Chavez once again entered the public consciousness through these milestone birthday celebrations that New Media would co-opt him as a powerful symbol of the truth: that illegal immigration is devastating to the working class and benefits the rich and powerful.

How often do the actual beliefs of historical figures actually matter once they've been pedestalized? I'm fairly sure MLK would have a bunch of conservative cultural views that'd get him cancelled today

Person matters but not as much as time and place. Most people couldn’t tell you what his beliefs were beyond a gesture that he was important for developments in the civil rights era.

Indeed. People don't usually worship the person as a whole, but merely the carefully curated public persona.

True. I can't imagine the reverend would have been an enthusiastic supporter of gay marriage or trans rights.

My understanding was that he was cordial towards the gays by contemporary standards but it's pretty implausible he'd hold 2026 views

I'm kind of skeptical about this, because the Left can easily just lie about what Chavez stood for. There are plenty of examples of the Left inverting reality when necessary.

My guess is that someone just decided to come forward with a story for whatever reason, which motivated other people to come forward with stories. Either because they were genuinely abused by Chavez or just wanted attention.

Why not both?

The left has, generally, been actually pretty good about canceling their own. This is partially because infighting is part of the culture, but also because the machine is stronger the more blood is fed to it. Plus some actual principle, honestly.

Cesar's cancellation has been extremely swift and well-coordinated. I'm sorry, but I don't see this behavior as demonstrably different from MLK. Cesar may be lower on the racial victim hierarchy, but I think erasing him is extremely convenient right now.

I'm sorry, but I don't see this behavior as demonstrably different from MLK.

The evidence here is a lot stronger (especially from a left-wing perspective) than MLK’s “totally real rumors in J. Edgar Hoover’s burn book”

Why not both?

Occam's razor.

Plus some actual principle, honestly.

I'm rather skeptical of this. Can you point to three instances in which (1) the Left has cancelled someone; and (2) doing so was a genuine and significant setback for the Left?

but I think erasing him is extremely convenient right now.

I don't think it makes much of a difference. Probably 95% of Americans have no idea who he was or what he stood for. I myself had completely forgotten him until now and I went to college in an agricultural area in the American West during the boycott grapes era.

My primary memory of Cesar Chavez is the "Ricky Martin Does Not Sell Out His Latin Heritage" bit from MadTV.

The dingeroth piece was bad, but it was bad in a way that all trend pieces are bad—take a fringe phenomenon and elevate it to the level of a national trend. I spend a lot of time in suburban and semi-rural Pennsylvania and I don't see any more "alternative" people now than I did 20 years ago. I couldn't tell you the last time I saw an obviously trans person in public, and I've never seen a furry despite the fact that they hold a national convention in Pittsburgh every year. The author doesn't do himself any favors when he tries to illustrate the phenomenon through a Tinder date that one would think would turn into a "first date from hell" story until you find out that he went out with this girl for some time until she ended it. If you're going to write a trend piece that's supposed to appall the reader, you're supposed to do it from a position of detachment. He'd have more credibility if he presented himself as an NPR-listening urbanite who came of age in millennial hipster culture and operated on the assumption that self-described nerds and people otherwise immersed in alternative subcultures were all similarly aspiring intellectuals who would know what Maoism is and have impeccable musical taste (my generation is superior to your generation, etc.). It would still be a dumb trend piece, but at least the author's revulsion would make sense.

But as bad as the article is, Forney's tweet is even worse. He operates on the assumption that this phenomenon is an outgrowth of "libtardization", but it's not. He makes statements like:

I stopped into a Paris Baguette in Morris County to use the bathroom and the clerk on duty had both face tats and enough metal in her face to freak out a metal detector.

I don't know about Morris county, but I do know of places about as far from Pittsburgh as Morristown is from NYC where this wouldn't have been surprising 25 years ago. His concern about "degeneracy" trickling down into the lower classes, particularly people who he thinks should be conservatives, only underscores how out of touch he is. It's almost as if he's entirely unfamiliar with the concept of white trash and assumes that the rural poor are all hear-working, God-fearing, upstanding Americans. Does he not know that this is the epicenter of professional wrestling viewers and Jerry Springer guests? Has he never been to West Virginia? Does he not know where the fentanyl epidemic started?

Matt Forney, for those here who never heard of him, is a relatively obscure blogger, troll, journalist and author who at least used to identify as alt/dissident-right (he even attended that infamous NPI conference of Richard Spencer in 2016), one of the earliest disciples of Roissy and had been active in the blogosphere as early as he was. He’s from NY state but has been an expat living in various countries for a decade or so, it’s thus entirely plausible that his knowledge of US small towns is limited or outdated. I find it very unlikely though that he isn’t aware of the opioid epidemic or the white trash characteristics of Jerry Springer’s audience, parts of West Virginia or the fandom of professional wrestling.

Anyway, what I’d point out is that his tweet seems to specifically address a clueless and rosy assumption that seems to hold on among comfortable middle-class mainstream Republicans, probably since Reagan’s time or at least Clinton’s time, that although the nation’s big cities may be lost to cultural degeneracy and leftist hegemony, but the predominantly white rural areas, flyover states and US small towns are still populated by decent, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth patriots with their heads screwed on right. This notion appears from time to time, just think of that dumbass ‘Try That in a Small Town’ song that was also discussed on this board.

What is the truth of the matter? Tattoos, for example, used to only be worn by prostitutes, soldiers, sailors and criminals. I imagine there was a time when the only people who had piercings were dissident artists, freaks and hooligans. There were degenerate hobbies that were only practiced by the spoilt offspring of rich urban families or members of the underclass with nothing to lose. But all these things have since been normalized and commercialized, as is to be expected under modern capitalism. These trends started in big cities and gradually spread to mid-sized towns, eventually to small towns. It wasn’t a quick process, but it did happen. It seems many people share the illusion that it has not happened and will not happen to the bucolic small towns they have always idealized. That is Forney’s point.

I think you're heavily overselling the spread. I actually do live in a small town, and with travel sports I see a bunch of the others in the area. A mom having a tattoo or three is no longer outrageous, sure, but not the default, they're in reasonably concealable locations, and she mostly doesn't have any facial piercings. The vast, vast majority have no visible "cultural degeneracy" markers at all.

Arm tats on dads are a bit more common.

I've never had a diner waitress who looked like a leftist. I mean, they exist, but it's like the white girl with dreads at the smoke shop. The attendants at one particular amusement park were very disproportionately gender-ambiguous they/thems.

I couldn't tell you the last time I saw an obviously trans person in public

Last Saturday out running errands with middle my middle son. The cashiers Best Buy and Harbour Freight.

I couldn't tell you the last time I saw an obviously trans person in public, and I've never seen a furry despite the fact that they hold a national convention in Pittsburgh every year.

Does this reflect the world, or just your area of it being selected away?

I'm in a suburban/exurban bit of a Red State, and there's a trans woman at one of the local Jimmy Johns, a couple trans men at Kroger. And in addition to me being a furry - admittedly only one that's only visible in terms of stickers or pins - I've seen actual fursuiters at a (local grocery chain) and at the local Ren Faire.

And Anthrocon in Pittsburg is one of the the big conventions, 17k+ people. Even smaller ones like FurTheMore (about a tenth of the size!) in Baltimore you're going to see fursuiters walking to the convention center if you're at downtown and driving at the right time. Or at least I did, and I wasn't even in Baltimore for the convention (or even for fun).

I mean, it's not something I actually look out for, but the last time I inadvertently interacted with a suspected tranny was at a suburban Burger King drive thru last year, and I saw the same person on the T last Fourth of July and I'm pretty sure there were anime pins on his/her backpack. I know that the owner of a flower shop near me employs a trans delivery driver, but that's because I know the owner and she mentioned that during a conversation in a bar. I'm sure I have seen one in the interim, and maybe even noticed, but it wasn't enough to register permanently.

I do have a second cousin who decided he was trans a couple years ago at the age of 30, but he sent an angry letter blaming them for "everything" and he hasn't appeared anywhere since, and it's been at least 15 years since I've seen him. His sister is getting married this summer and we're wondering if he will show up at the wedding. I know I'm one of the more liberal posters here but I have no special affinity for trans people, and my liberal family thinks this kid is nuts (we found out he's also a furry a few years back, because of course he is), and he is always dead named when he comes up in conversation, which isn't often.

As for Anthrocon, I haven't been downtown during the convention. I see them on the news, but that's about it. I occasionally see weirdos working at gas stations but I'm honestly not paying enough attention to speculate about their personal lives.

It's almost as if he's entirely unfamiliar with the concept of white trash and assumes that the rural poor are all hear-working, God-fearing, upstanding Americans. Does he not know that this is the epicenter of professional wrestling viewers and Jerry Springer guests? Has he never been to West Virginia? Does he not know where the fentanyl epidemic started?

There is something to the point that white trash are somehow aping fashion cues from hipsters from 2010, but I don't think it says anything about their politics. Gas station Leroy in 2000 was rail thin, wearing metal t-shirts and jeans, smoked or dipped, had a buzzed head or mullet, and had a questionable tattoo or two. Gas station Braeden in 2025 is covered in tattoos and piercings, is oddly bloblike* (not just overweight but obese and carrying the weight in a strange way), and has weird-colored hair cut in a strange way. Leroy might've had kids (possibly by several women), Braeden doesn't.

*among the underclass/criminal class, it seems like the only thin ones now are the methheads.

dingeroth

Sounds like a location in World of Warquest, or something of that kidney.

or something of that kidney.

If you have dingeroth in your kidney you should call a doctor immediately.

There's two Paris Baguette locations in Morris County. It wouldn't be that surprising to find a pierced-and-tatted clerk in Morristown proper; it's the more trendy (i.e. lefty, though Morris County is in general less left than most of NJ) area, and though that particular trend is kinda dated, it's not surprising for the hinterlands to be behind the metropole.

If it was the Rockaway one it would be quite surprising.

(and yeah, piercing and tatting is a case of "degeneracy" trickling up, not down)

I think you misunderstand. You and Forney seem to be assuming that tats and piercings and the kind of persona described in the article are an extension of trendy urban liberalism. My point is that this isn't necessarily the case. I grew up in the Mon Valley, which is about as trendy as Rockaway. If I saw a girl like that in Monessen 25 years ago I wouldn't have thought that she was some emigre from the South Side of Pittsburgh (which was trendy at the time) but simply a white trash local. Girls like that in Slipknot t-shirts and cargo pants were a dime a dozen back then, and there was nothing remotely political about it. Most of those people probably couldn't tell you the difference between Democrats and republicans if you put a gun to their head.

Girls like that in Slipknot t-shirts and cargo pants were a dime a dozen back then

the good ole days

In Morristown I would expect that tats and piercings would be an extension of trendy urban liberalism, because Morristown is a place where trendy urban liberals go if they can't live in NYC for some reason, even if that aesthetic was picked up from "white trash" some time ago.

The Rockaway location would be more likely to have "authentic" white trash pierced-and-tatted locals.

It turned out that "Moses of his people" routinely raped underage girls including another famous activist Dolores Huerta.

Well, maybe. I've often heard (from people on the right) that Chavez was, shall we say, an unpleasant person, in various ways. But as far as I'm concerned if you keep something major like that quiet for 60 years (and over 30 after the death of the perp), that in itself is strong reason to disbelieve you.

Yeah, we have the right to a trial for a reason. It's kind of stupid to cancel people in the court of public opinion for dubious "unreported" crimes that are decades old. But hey, at least Chavez is dead and doesn't care any more, unlike when that happened to Kavanagh.

It does seem weird that this didn't come out with the #metoo movement.

The victims were all members of the movement and have said that they kept quiet for so long because they didn’t want to tarnish his memory and in so doing hurt the Cause (possibly rightly so). They don’t gain much by coming out with accusations now, and “the cause”, in as much as it still even exists, isn’t really tied to his memory anymore. If you’ve hidden something like that for such a long time it’s easy enough to just keep on keeping quiet, but by the sound of things, one now-old-lady ex-activist decided she couldn’t take the truth to her grave, and then the floodgates opened.

Regarding the dinergoth article, I wonder if the author considered the possibility that the surging popularity of anime in the US may have something to do with the remarkable lack of (preachy) wokeness that characterizes it.

I mean it may also just be having good story lines. Everyone seems to like japanese cartoons; when the French(with their own very robust culture making apparatus which is different from our own) gave their youths a stipend for cultural materials they spent it on manga.

I meam, how many copies of Asterix can one really buy beford you need to spend that stipend on something else?

Note that I'd originally included Lucky Luke, but that was Belgian, right? Like Tintin?

Can't speak for the public in general, but that is absolutely why I got into Genshin Impact. (Which is Chinese, so technically not anime, but it's absolutely free of woke BS and performative virtue signaling.) It's so refreshing playing a game (or watching a show or movie) where I don't immediately know who the bad guys are because they're white and male. And where girls are allowed to look sexy, and heterosexual relationships are allowed to exist.

Interestingly, the English voice actress for Paimon (who is the most important character in the game, basically voicing 50% of the lines) actually was a woke lunatic, complete with performative "neurodivergence", an online persecution complex, and claims of being "non-binary". Finally HoYoverse had enough, and 4.5 years into the game's release, they actually replaced her with a proper professional actress. I couldn't imagine a Western studio doing that - if anything, they'd applaud her "bravery" and try to get her on staff permanently to fill out their quotas.

Oh is that why they changed it? I thought it was her squeaky whiny voice. The new one is better though.

I guess it's entirely possible that was part of the reason! I actually kinda liked Paimon's old voice, but I know I'm in the minority. The new actress is doing quite a good job - the voice isn't too different, but definitely less grating.

In Washington DC, Polymarket just opened the world's first bar dedicated to monitoring the situation.

We've all been debating this here and have concluded it's not a real bar. It's a "pop-up" being hosted in another bar that will last for one weekend, i.e. a themed party. Kudos to them for the viral marketing bit, everyone wants to go.

TL;DR: Wokeness is not dead yet. It might be wobbling at the top, but it is marching triumphantly across America.

Not only is this not wokeness as such but it's appeal to the lower classes makes it less likely to succeed at the top. Woke is downwardly mobile, the upwardly mobile will all adopt some new signifiers. This is just what happens when a movement burns through society.

I should've seen how prediction markets would go. The promise from the rationalists and other groups that pushed them was that they'd provide market signals about how likely major events are to happen. But it seems to have instead just created betting apps that can bet on literally everything and a way to insider trade on pretty much any non-public knowledge.

they'd provide market signals about how likely major events are to happen.

They do this successfully though, and I don't think rationalists ever really claimed there would never be frivolous markets, that just isn't the part they really cared about. There are relatively high liquidity markets for a lot of topics that I find more credible than any expert claims.

True, but I also don't think they seriously thought through the downstream effects of having betting apps for literally everything.

Example: in 2024, Zvi updates on the damage caused by sports betting.

Sure, I think there were some downsides that weren't adequately accounted for. Although there really isn't any law of the universe that says we need to allow sports betting in particular. I'm just saying the rationalists were right on the upside promise, it's played out just about as expected.

There was a proof of concept that Robin Hanson, at least, should have been aware of and was not. Legal sportsbooks in the UK (which are ubiquitous - every high street has multiple betting shops outside the most salubrious areas) can take bets on anything (except the results of the National Lottery draw and the outcomes of court cases), as can UK-based betting exchanges like Betfair, so prediction markets are effectively legal. The only non-sports markets that attracted any liquidity were election results and "celebrity specials" like royal baby names.

In Washington DC, Polymarket just opened the world's first bar dedicated to monitoring the situation.

So you can literally go to a bar to scream "it's happening" while getting draunched in beer? Nice.

I'm going to say something I can't truly back up but I'm noticing the belief forming so I'll throw it out there

It turned out that "Moses of his people" routinely raped underage girls including another famous activist Dolores Huerta.

This is bad. Imagine if it came out that MLK raped Rosa Parks. That bad.

It says something about the psychology of this particular ideology that so many prominent lefty leaders turn out to be rapists and/or pedophiles. It genuinely now seems like there are fewer such leaders, political or otherwise, in the last 100 years that DON'T have such credible allegations than those that do, now.

Likewise, look at the most credibly implicated parties on the alleged Epstein list, and note their overall political bent (Looking dead straight at you, CHOMSKY.)

Like, here's the most absurd way I can characterize it:

Even the Boogeyman of their entire political movement, Adolf Hitler himself, did not rape anybody.

I don't think Vladimir Putin has been credibly accused of rape either.

Trump has of course been accused of rape and other forms of sex assault (and yes, "grab 'em by the pussy" counts in its own way) but I am genuinely pretty sure he has never forcibly penetrated anyone in his life, I read him as his ego requiring him to believe he successfully seduced someone.

And how many male feminist types have been outed as sex pests in the last 10 years alone?

And no, I'm absolutely, positively not saying "right wingers are less likely to commit rape or practice pedophilia."

I think I'm gesturing off in the direction of "right wingers tend not to elevate rapists and pedos as leaders, and are certainly NOT prone to censoring or rewriting history to cover up such traits in their leaders." And perhaps a side of "Right wing leaders tend not to use their power to indulge that particular cruelty, despite the various other atrocities they will impose."

Happy to accept some correction on this point, but Googling (in an incognito window) terms like "Did Pinochet/Franco/Napoleon/Bolsonaro rape anyone" usually turns up results related to torture tactics used by their regime and not acts they themselves were known for.

Well, there are allegations against a dude named Franco but he's yet another of those male feminists.

And I DID turn up some credible claims about Mussolini. We could probably argue for a few hours about whether he's truly right wing, but I will not push that button.

Women are flat-out attracted to power and wealth, which the right can embrace as both aesthetic and fact. The modern left can't do that, seeing it as gaudy and patriarchal. But men are men and still wanna sleep with them, so mental gymnastics. Evidence to support your theory is the fetishization of authoritarian and wealthy men on the part of women, as exemplified in Fifty Shade of Gray and perhaps the entire smutty novel industry. No one is going around fetishizing male feminists. It's not a coincidence that leftist sex pests have power and authority because women are attracted to that and not the rank and file loser allies. The only difference is that ideological blinders prevent them from seeing the obvious motivation right in their faces.

No one is going around fetishizing male feminists.

Evergreen quote from PJ O'Rourke: “No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal”

Although given the aesthetics of the Red and Blue tribes in 2026, dressing well increasingly constitutes dressing like a liberal. Plenty of women have fantasies about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by a man dressed in a way die_workwear would approve of.

I'm going to say something I can't truly back up but I'm noticing the belief forming so I'll throw it out there

You should use the feedback you are getting to appreciate the Motte for its true purpose, which is to test (and sometimes discard) your shady ideas. Because as a number of people have pointed out, the right is not lacking in sexual predators, or the tendency to close ranks to protect their own.

What you are noticing is that leftist sexual predators are of a particular type, which is somewhat different than rightist sexual predators. Right-wingers who like to do a little groomin', rapin', and molestin' generally don't make excuses for it (unless it's part of some religious cult thing); they just do it (if they can get away with it) and hide it (if their followers would not approve). Whereas leftists will try to wrap it in their ideology, hence all the "male feminist" sex pests, hence all the grooming by professors and creatives and academics and the like of adoring female acolytes (though this is not a lot different than "grooming" of groupies by rock stars back in the day), hence the current wave of "polyamory"-related implosions.

So you aren't wrong to notice that there is a... kind of thing that is particular to the left. You're just wrong to think that this kind of thing is part of the fundamental psychology of leftists, and not just the same thing fundamental to the psychology of basically all amoral people with means, motive, and opportunity, but styled in a particularly leftist way.

"hence all the grooming by professors and creatives and academics and the like of adoring female acolytes (though this is not a lot different than "grooming" of groupies by rock stars back in the day)"

I don't deny that this sort of grooming happens, but I wonder why? I mean surely these sorts of people have the pick of the litter, if they asked girls out on a date or flirted normally surely they'd get alot of sucess.

It's not really 'grooming' it's these women not getting the relationship they want after sleeping with him. Right wing leaders being pressured to follow through on (even implied)relationship promises more often is probably a big part of having fewer sex scandals.

I don't deny that this sort of grooming happens, but I wonder why? I mean surely these sorts of people have the pick of the litter, if they asked girls out on a date or flirted normally surely they'd get alot of sucess.

Because it is usually not "grooming" in the sense that they are intentionally preying on these women from the start. Rather, it is usually more that the women become infatuated and initiate the sexual interest (eg, through flirting), they eventually catch feelings and lose the will to maintain appropriate boundaries, and the women discover their infatuation didn't lead to the (unrealistic) desired relationship so they blame him for their original behavior rather than accepting responsibility themselves. The entire situation boils down to society refusing to treat women as adults with agency.

Because it is usually not "grooming" in the sense that they are intentionally preying on these women from the start. Rather, it is usually more that the women become infatuated and initiate the sexual interest (eg, through flirting), they eventually catch feelings and lose the will to maintain appropriate boundaries, and the women discover their infatuation didn't lead to the (unrealistic) desired relationship so they blame him for their original behavior rather than accepting responsibility themselves.

I basically agree with this, but I would add the following:

If you are a man, it's pretty nice to have desirable women approaching you. And that's what typically happens if (1) you are a man; (2) you are in a high status position in an organization or institution; (3) you have regular contact with desirable women in the organization or institution; and (4) you are at least mediocre in terms of physical attractiveness.

The alternative to having desirable women approaching you is to seek them out yourself. Which consumes time and energy and more often than not leads to the unpleasant experience of being rejected.

The entire situation boils down to society refusing to treat women as adults with agency.

I think that's not entirely true. Rather, women pivot back and forth between "helpless child" and "adult with agency" depending on what's convenient. A society that truly refused to treat women as adults with agency would put substantial limits on their autonomy. As a small example, it used to be common for girls' college dormitories to have curfews and to not permit male visitors after a certain hour.

I think that's not entirely true. Rather, women pivot back and forth between "helpless child" and "adult with agency" depending on what's convenient. A society that truly refused to treat women as adults with agency would put substantial limits on their autonomy. As a small example, it used to be common for girls' college dormitories to have curfews and to not permit male visitors after a certain hour.

We give them the appearance of agency and then step in when that gets them in trouble, much like we do for teens. And since women's status is so heavily based around appearances, for many that is all the agency they desire. And likewise since men's status is so tied up in saving women, a lot of men are more than happy to give them just enough agency to get in trouble that they need to be "saved" from...

I feel like there is a very broad strokes claim that "the Right thinks that systems exist to work around the failings of individual humans, while the Left thinks that humans have to to work around the failings of systems" here. The deviance in individuals would seem likely manifest differently. But I suppose "power corrupts" is as true as it always has been on all sides here.

This isn't really a fully coherent hypothesis, I'll admit.

It says something about the psychology of this particular ideology that so many prominent lefty leaders turn out to be rapists and/or pedophiles.

I think it's more that left-of-center people are significantly more likely to care if a prominent member of their organization turns out to be a sexual predator. A remarkable number of right-wingers seem to think that banging dubiously consenting 16 year olds and sexually harassing your subordinates is just the Big Man's due (and are generally significantly more prone to dismissing/denying claims of sexual abuse).

The fact that these interrogations are being carried out even against dead icons suggests there's an actual principle at play - pushes against living figures could be argued to be power plays, and going after the other team's heroes is just playing politics, but there's really no reason to go digging up these kinds of skeletons unless this is something you actually care about.

I think I'm gesturing off in the direction of "right wingers tend not to elevate rapists and pedos as leaders, and are certainly NOT prone to censoring or rewriting history to cover up such traits in their leaders."

Umm... ah... what?

Let's leave aside the allegations against Mr. Trump or people like Matt Gaetz for a moment. Remember Mark Foley or Dennis Hastert? The fact that a long-serving GOP Speaker was a pedophile has been largely consigned to the memoryhole. How about Roy Moore? The Catholic Church has had a parade of scandals (though they're woke now, so idk if that counts anymore). Southern Baptist churches have been subject to a slew of sexual abuse scandals. I know I could do some actual research and come up with more examples, but the point is less to establish who has more pedos and more to illustrate the existence of a history of right-wing leaders getting caught up in sex abuse scandals and the conservative movement downplaying or forgetting about it.

The actual pattern I can discern is that if you put men in a position of power, influence, or prestige, a significant subset of them will try to exploit it for sex (whatever prior commitments they may have re: celibacy or marriage). Of those, many will get outright coercive or direct their attentions towards inappropriate subjects (e.g. minors, subordinates).

Let's leave aside the allegations against Mr. Trump or people like Matt Gaetz

Let's look at the accusations against Gaetz. Gaetz may have had sex with a 17 year old who was introduced to him by Greensburg, an FBI informant who was cooperating with the FBI to target Gaetz and others. Greensburg is known to have procured fake 18+ IDs for women he was involved with.

Gaetz claims he only had sex with a 19 year old introduced to him by Greensburg. I can't say he didn't fuck a 17 year old, but it seems unlikely that he did so knowingly.

There was also an FBI linked extortion scam targeting Gaetz happening at this time. Relation to the Greenburg thing is unclear.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/florida-man-sentenced-5-years-prison-attempting-defraud-matt-gaetzs-family-25-million

Gaetz may be a degenerate but his degeneracy seems limited to consensual group sex with hookers he believes are 18+.

Greensburg, an FBI informant who was cooperating with the FBI to target Gaetz and others

The technical term for this is an "investigation".

Gaetz claims he only had sex with a 19 year old introduced to him by Greensburg

What do you expect him to say? "Yes, I did have sex with a 17 year old prostitute?"

If this was a case of Gaetz being a pedo (rather than a horny guy tricked into fucking a 17 yo), I'd have expected the DOJ to actually press charges. That they did not suggests either a) no evidence or b) they don't want stuff to come out at discovery.

As examples of (b), consider things like the Whitmer "kidnapping plot". Would any 17 year olds have been fucked absent FBI involvement?

The actual pattern I can discern is that if you put men in a position of power, influence, or prestige, a significant subset of them will try to exploit it for sex

I think that there's significant nonpartisan crossover between the types of personalities that gravitate toward positions of power over others in terms of political/business/civic roles and the types that seek power over others in terms of vices. There's a degree of sociopathy at play in any "maverick" who bucks the system rather than follows the rules that is totally unsurprisingly aligned with the sociopathy that is into taboo sexuality, bucking the system of common morality. Power also allows one to engage more freely in otherwise difficult vices, which is why a lot of pedos gravitate toward roles as teachers, pastors, priests, cub scout leaders, etc.

In our zeal to attack "the other side's" examples of this, we often fail to really grapple with whether or not these failings mean anything substantial, or are just easy targets for oppositional demoralization.

Pick your #1 issue, whatever it is, and ask yourself if your mind would be changed .000001% on that subject if it turned out that the leading voice for that issue was also a pedophile. Most likely not, I suspect.

The actual pattern I can discern is that if you put men in a position of power, influence, or prestige, a significant subset of them will try to exploit it for sex (whatever prior commitments they may have re: celibacy or marriage). Of those, many will get outright coercive or direct their attentions towards inappropriate subjects.

Yes, for a bunch of supposed noticers, The Motte is kind of doing gymnastics to avoid noticing the most obvious pattern and conclusion. Irrespective of ideology or movement, an enormous percentage of men simply want to have as much sex as possible and are willing to abuse power to do it.

Irrespective of ideology or movement, an enormous percentage of women simply want to have as much power as possible and are willing to abuse sex to do it.

Indeed; that's exactly what we're seeing here, just like every other time a woman complains about not getting that power in exchange for the sex she had 50+ years ago.

That just the baseline reality that everyone already baked into their model of the world. The question is, why do some ideologies appear to have more of this kind of abuser in leadership roles than others? Of course, that's either a trivial question (answer: because what things appear to you is primarily determined by your biases, rather than underlying reality) or a loaded question (i.e. the question is implying that this "appearance" correlates with reality), and so the "clean" version of that question would be: "Do some ideologies actually have more of this kind of abuser in leadership roles than others, and if so, is there something about the psychology of these ideologies that leads a difference in prevalence of this?"

Which is an interesting question to at least speculate about, though any actual conclusions would be completely unwarranted.

The fact that a long-serving GOP Speaker was a pedophile has been largely consigned to the memoryhole

How many statues to Dennis Hastert are out there? I genuinely don't know. I assume zero.

How many streets are named after disgraced Catholic priests?

How many streets are named after Catholic priests at all?

If society mostly celebrates characters that we interpret as left-wing, it stands to reason that most rapists society celebrates are also left-wing. You have not made a case that P(rapist|celebrated left-wing hero)>P(rapist|celebrated hero).

I'm not really sure how that's relevant to the question of whether or not left-wingers are uniquely prone to elevating sexual predators to positions of authority.

(Also, Hastert did have stuff named in his honor. Not so much any more).

How many streets are named after disgraced Catholic priests?

Technically a ton, since MLK was named after Martin Luther.

CLEVER. I laughed.

Of course, MLK is one of those lefty heroes who might have been okay with rape I was thinking of. The proof is not dispositive there.

Actually care? Left wing spaces also let you leverage claims like this a lot harder for your own future publicity and credentials.

I do agree that there's a general Hallmark of power that guys will push the envelope. On the other hand, women will also tend to be attracted to power and prestige. Consent can be retroactively withdrawn if the encounter doesn't live up to expectations.

I think it's more that left-of-center people are significantly more likely to care if a prominent member of their organization turns out to be a sexual predator.

Eventually. Maybe. Decades later. And only if they're heterosexual.

there's really no reason to go digging up these kinds of skeletons unless this is something you actually care about.

As you gesture at, it's resolving the tension between the principle and the endless thirst for power- once everyone's dead and the consequences have happened, you can look back and say "well wasn't that unfortunate? Too bad we were all fucking cowards at the time and decided The Cause was worth a bit of rape!"

Pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

Eventually. Maybe. Decades later. And only if they're heterosexual.

I'm confused - are they not canceling people for sexual misconduct? If all the consequences are low probability and delayed by decades, why were so many people worked up about this?

The entire backlash against #MeToo only makes sense in the context of it actively going after currently prominent individuals.

I think the argument is that #MeToo accusations are strategically delayed to minimize harm to the left and maximize harm to the left's enemies.

If someone's in a position of power and supporting the left, the #MeToo accusations will be delayed until they're no longer in power or it can be guaranteed that they will be replaced by someone just as supportive to the left.

If someone's not supporting the left, the #MeToo accusations will come out immediately and be leveraged to their maximum extent to attempt to replace that person with someone more supportive to the left.

I'm not sure how much I agree with it, but this should be at least somewhat disprovable: there's gotta be some easy counterexamples.

Al Franken was a sitting senator when he resigned, but the accusations were from 2006 and didn't come out until 2017. And he did get replaced with another Democrat who won 76% of the vote, so it's plausible that it was timed to where they were sure the left wouldn't lose any power by it. But the accusations were from Leeann Tweeden, who has a few right-wing things in her bio: I don't know enough about her to know if that's accurate. "Left-wingers strategically get right-winger to accuse left-winger of sexual misconduct at a time where they're confident another left-winger can win the election" seems a little too complex for me to see as plausible.

I think the argument is that #MeToo accusations are strategically delayed to minimize harm to the left and maximize harm to the left's enemies.

My point is that's nonsense. These allegations most heavily impacted men in left-of-center spaces because those are the spaces where #MeToo-style accusations carried weight. Attempts to wield these kinds of accusations against right-wing figures by the left have largely been a failure.

Al Franken was a sitting senator when he resigned, but the accusations were from 2006 and didn't come out until 2017.

The allegations coming out when they did was probably what wrecked Franken's career. They were pretty tame on their own, but the Dems were presently trying to hammer Roy Moore down in Alabama and wanted to avoid the slightest appearance of being soft on sexual misconduct.

If someone's in a position of power and supporting the left, the #MeToo accusations will be delayed until they're no longer in power or it can be guaranteed that they will be replaced by someone just as supportive to the left.

As one prominent politician put it: "And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."

Notably, the Left still seems to hold Bill Clinton in high regard, despite a physical relationship with a much younger subordinate --- contra the TA and student elsewhere in this thread: intern and Most Powerful Man in the World. But somehow still allowed to be considered "consensual". And one direct accusation of rape. Also his wife who has long defended him against these accusations remains in good standing, as opposed to people who merely emailed Epstein a couple times.

Although the Chavez case could also be seen as an example of being willing to hold their own leaders to account: I generally have more respect for organizations that clearly abide by their stated principles. Uncharitably, I might not be surprised if we start hearing about how Chavez (famous union leader) was always a dirty right-winger because agriculture or quotes about immigration or that choice of flag.

always a dirty right-winger because agriculture

Apparently, true progressives photosynthesise....

or that choice of flag.

I'd like to see a story where one side has the politics of a certain Austrian painter wrapped in a soft pastel uwu aesthetic, while the other side has the aesthetics of the III. Reich and 1990's/2000's liberal politics. (In TVTropes terms, A Nazi by Any Other Name vs. Putting on the Reich.) Too many people, while they learned that the Nazis were bad, lack understanding of why, and treat it as an axiom; this is a house built on sand. Knowing that 'totalitarianism and racial narcissism are bad; the Nazis did those things; therefore the Nazis were bad' is the house built on rock.

Although the Chavez case could also be seen as an example of being willing to hold their own leaders to account: I generally have more respect for organizations that clearly abide by their stated principles.

Well, he has been dead for 30 years, so it might be a little late to provide feedback and steer his behavior.

And it seems like this was not an unknown thing before now, so I don't know how much credit I want to give: "abiding by your stated principles" is mostly impressive when it's chosen over maximizing your capability to attain your goals. Is denouncing Cesar Chavez now costing them much?

But, to be perfectly mirrored, we'd have to look at people that died in the 90s, were credibly accused of sexual misconduct, and were right-wing, to see if right-wingers are currently denouncing or at least not supporting them. Maybe they don't clear this bar.

Accusations that become culturally important scissor statements tend to be the ones that are delayed past the expiration of any possible proof or disproof. Like Brett Kavanaugh, how is he supposed to prove he didn't do something in high school?

That leaves everyone to fall back on their priors.

Less vague accusations, like those against Roger Ailes, don't make big waves.

Like Brett Kavanaugh, how is he supposed to prove he didn't do something in high school?

Well, he could have kept a detailed journal of his activities showing what he did and where he went every day, that covers the entire period during which the event where he was accused of doing the thing could have occurred. But who does that?

That was a moment in which I realized that people destined for that level of achievement are often different from the rest of us. Like, I didn't do badly at a good high school, but I wasn't logging my social calendar purely out of principle; I was playing video games and hanging out with friends when I wasn't doing homework.

Of course Kavanaugh seems to have gotten in plenty of partying too. Like I said, different.

The better view is that the right wing equivalent is religious leaders. I don't typically indulge in the priest jokes (except the funny ones), but it's a pretty universal problem:

‘Nearly 200 Christian leaders accused of child abuse in 2025’, says report

The Witnesses the Southern Baptists:

In response to an explosive investigation, top Southern Baptists have released a previously secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse. The 205-page database was made public late Thursday. It includes more than 700 entries from cases that largely span from 2000 to 2019.

The pattern isn't: Left Wing political leaders engage in sex abuse because leftist libertinism. The pattern is: Religious Leaders engage in sex abuse, Left Wing political leaders are religious leaders. Leftists like Chavez are preaching a religion, an ultimate truth about Life the Universe and Everything, and once you get in that deep the sex abuse starts.

If pastors preaching chastity can get handsy, it's not the values being taught, it's the power and the hierarchy.

If we want to make that comparison, then do public school teachers, too.

This "comeback" whataboutism sucks. Priests and political activists don't have limitless access to children for 8 hours a day, 300 days a year. Of course teachers fuck kids, but on a per-hour-around-kids basis, religious leaders are in their own special class.

Catholic priests before the 2003 reforms(which cut clerical sex abuse cases down to a rounding error) did have near unlimited access to kids for enormous amounts of time, often long stretches of time.

That doesn't make sense. In what context were priests getting identical amounts of access to children as teachers?

Many Roman Catholic high schools were almost exclusively staffed by priests back in the day, so for the age range in which most of the abuse occurred, their level of access was identical. It was also common for priests to help run orphanages, institutions for troubled youth, boarding schools, youth camps, etc., giving those priests 24/7 access to kids. Most priests also have regular contact with child and teen altar servers still to this day, and it used to be unremarkable for priests to go on unsupervised trips and retreats with select male altar servers in order to help groom them for the priesthood. There were also plenty of cases of priests unofficially adopting youth from unstable homes—in some cases legitimately and in others just to abuse them. All that to say, while any individual priest might not have had as much access to kids as teachers do, there were plenty of cases where they had as much access or more.

But that's my point. Even pre 2004 the Catholic school systems I'm aware of had between 0-1 priests as teachers.

The only way to compare this is per capita hours/year with children. It's very popular on this forum to say "Public School Teachers!" As a rejoinder every time this is brought up, and it's not convincing at all.

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It doesn't even have to be a religious (including leftist-"religious" or other ideological) leader; whenever you have some group with motivations and ability to deny or cover up allegations, that group ends up attracting the sort of people who want to do things they'll need to deny or cover up.

Being part of any sacrosanct Noble Cause can do it, if the cause's actually-noble followers are afraid that making ignoble leaders' transgressions public would unfairly reflect badly on the Cause - this works if the Cause includes an "ultimate truth", but it also shows up in non-profits, charitable organizations, environmentalist organizations, police organizations... Even a mundane worry like "we don't want to scare kids away from the Boy Scouts just because of this one bad apple" can do it, for a while.

The inverse of power can be a form of power, if it attracts internal or especially external sympathy. Any group that feels marginalized has bad incentives, when members feel like other members' transgressions might unfairly reflect badly on them - there are cases among racial minorities, political factions, some religious groups where the abusers aren't among the leadership, some sexual orientations and kinks.

This is probably one reason why religious cults are such dangers; even if they're not showing any of they typical cult warning signs, any small religious group gets "feels marginalized" from being outnumbered by non-believers and gets "Noble Cause" from its religion, and so is doubly attractive for abusers.

Being part of any sacrosanct Noble Cause can do it, if the cause's actually-noble followers are afraid that making ignoble leaders' transgressions public would unfairly reflect badly on the Cause - this works if the Cause includes an "ultimate truth", but it also shows up in non-profits, charitable organizations, environmentalist organizations, police organizations... Even a mundane worry like "we don't want to scare kids away from the Boy Scouts just because of this one bad apple" can do it, for a while.

I pseudo-apologize pre-emptively for bringing up my favorite hobby horse/pet peeve, which is that these so-called "actually-noble followers" are actually not noble, due to their actions, i.e. prioritizing their Cause's optics over justice for the victims of their leaders. As you say, if you believe that the Cause has some "ultimate truth" that supersedes all else (which, IME, applies exactly as well and often to non-profits, charitable organizations, etc. as any other religious organization), you can justify this line of thinking.

However, the issue there is that no truly noble follower of any Cause would be ignorant of the pattern of people who have followed some Cause in the past; to follow a Cause without skeptically analyzing the forces that would lead you to being convinced by the Cause is something I'd consider unambiguously ignoble. And one pattern that any follower of any Cause must notice is that most people (likely almost everyone) in the past who was convinced by a different Cause was wrong. Therefore, anyone who believes strongly in their Cause can't actually conclude anything about the correctness of their Cause; their strong belief in it doesn't provide any meaningful information for determining its correctness.

If God came down and proved His existence and then declared that This Cause is the Correct one, then perhaps noble followers of This Cause would be just in allowing [bad behavior] as a necessary cost for accomplishing This Cause. Perhaps. But, AFAICT, God never did that (and never existed, but that's a different conversation), and so we live in a world where the stupid ignoble are cocksure about their Cause while the intelligent noble are full of doubt about their Cause.

Unfortunately, being unjustly cocksure about something tends to be more attractive than being justly doubtful about something, and so it seems to me that basically any Cause is guaranteed to attract ignoble people near the top.

I definitely worded that poorly, and you haven't written anything here I strongly disagree with.

But I think there's a steelman here that's at least worth some sympathy (albeit not agreement) in the bigger scandals. At least the little people caught up in these scandals really do seem to think the problem is just "one bad apple" who made "one mistake". Even victims often believe that they're alone! Until word leaks up to more central authorities, nobody is thinking about trading off The Noble Cause versus Justice; they're thinking about trading off The Noble Cause Everywhere And Everywhen versus Punishment After The Fact In Just This One Case. It's not like they can do anything that will cause that kid to be unmolested, right? All they can do is to try to avoid compounding the damage, and as long as they keep an eye on that "one bad apple", there won't be any further damage done! This is also one of the reasons why these sorts of stories end up breaking all at once: when each story goes public, then people who know about another story start to worry that maybe it's not just two bad apples and/or two mistakes, start to see the systemic problems that allowed multiple perps to get away with it and/or allowed one perp to get away with it repeatedly, and finally start to reconsider whether they made the right or wrong call. Then you get a chain reaction and everything finally comes out all at once.

to follow a Cause without skeptically analyzing the forces that would lead you to being convinced by the Cause is something I'd consider unambiguously ignoble

I'm pretty sure this criterion makes the median human being ignoble, if not a supermajority of us. I'm still not exactly disagreeing, but I'd suggest that the world is a better-understood (and in the end a better) place when we think of nobility as a continuum rather than a binary.

If pastors preaching chastity can get handsy, it's not the values being taught, it's the power and the hierarchy.

I think it’s just normal human sin. I don’t know the base rate, but as I recall pastors are significantly less likely to abuse children than school teachers.

That list was a weapon in the culture war. There are some progressive (by evangelical standards) people and organizations whose M.O. is to ignore base rates, ignore any exculpatory evidence, and accuse denominations or institutions of being shot through with sexual abuse, then demand checks and balances that subvert the denomination’s polity. The people they want to grant new power over doctrine and practice are consistently from the progressive wing of the denomination, and they always think that the right way to address sexual abuse is by moving the denomination closer to the broader culture.

To be clear, sex abuse in religious organizations is basically a solved problem and 'bringing in a bunch of left wing activists' isn't the solution. It's-

  1. Everyone involved loses their job in case of a coverup. Everyone who conceivably knew and didn't report gets fired, regardless of their level in the organization, regardless of peripherality, etc.
  2. Everyone is trained as a state mandated reporter.
  3. Chaperoning requirements and parental involvements have consistent policies and those policies aren't stupid. You also have common sense checks about who gets to be involved as a volunteer(eg checking sex offender registries).

Everyone is trained as a state mandated reporter.

I understand why a Catholic would draw that particular line in the sand. The bishops demanded discretion and then abused the heck out of it at the expense of the children under their care. The obvious fix is to deny them that discretion.

But this raises church-state and child welfare issues that are not theoretical. For example, spurious child welfare investigations are a real harm, and the mandatory reporter system guarantees them. (They are not on the level of clerical pederasty, for sure, but those who have been through them do not trivialize them.) Trust is another casualty: If you know a father whose temper shows too much in the discipline of his children, would you encourage him to talk to his pastor? If his pastor is a mandatory reporter, you probably shouldn’t; maybe this is less of an issue for Roman Catholics, where priests are rarely family men, but it is an issue for Protestants.

I understand why a Catholic would draw that particular line in the sand. The bishops demanded discretion and then abused the heck out of it at the expense of the children under their care. The obvious fix is to deny them that discretion.

I assume this refers to more than simply the Sacrament of Confession?

I am not sure whether you are asking about the problem or the fix, but I don't think the confessional is involved in either case. As far as I know, most states exempt the confessional from their mandatory reporter laws but not pastoral advice.

I don't think base rates are super useful for painting values differences. I'm not familiar with the numbers one way or the other, so you're probably correct about them.

But unless we're talking 10:1, or something like that, it's not indicative of "X is a trait of Y, but not of Z" so much "X is a trait of Y and Z."

Point taken.

“Values differences” is an interesting phrase, and I think the way you used it here suggests some differences in deeper underlying ideas, but I can’t quite get at them yet. I’ll think on it.

I think I'm gesturing off in the direction of "right wingers tend not to elevate rapists and pedos as leaders, and are certainly NOT prone to censoring or rewriting history to cover up such traits in their leaders."

Have you heard of this little organisation called the Catholic Church?

How many priests are Right Wing Icons? ( I can only think of Fulton Sheen, who has not been credibly accused of abuse despite being a bishop and a TV Star)

And how many of abusive priests in the Catholic Church were left wing vs right wing? From the demographics we have now, priests ordained between 1960 to 1980 are more likely to be Left/Progressive, younger priests are more likely to be conservatives. (see figure on page 5). Most abuse cases also peaked between 1960 - 1980 (see page 28).

There is an argument that has been made that the abuse crisis was allowed to proliferate because of an increase in progressive thought - primarily the attitude that sexual abuse was a psychological problem instead of a sin, that sexual urges are higher in the order of goods than they were typically considered in prior Catholic thought, and that after a therapist gave someone the all-clear they were good to return to ministry.

I don't have data to hand right now, but generally speaking liberal/progressive sections of the church have had a worse record about this than conservative/trad sections of the church, with some exceptions(eg Fr Maciel). The SSPX adopted the policy of 'report to the police first, then investigate internally after' long before anyone else, Benedict was the recent pope with the toughest record on sex abusers, etc.

How many priests are Right Wing Icons?

There’s Marcial Maciel, but he’s an outlier.

I was going to leave well enough alone, but I want to partly push back on your post and partly on FtttG’s. I am working from memory and partial understanding here, and I welcome corrections.

It’s important to note that a supermajority of Roman Catholic sex-abuse cases were sexually active gay priests canoodling with underage teenage boys. There were other cases and other victims, but those set the tone. So part of the coverup came from networks of sexually active gay priests, and some sexually active straight priests, who were already accustomed to covering for each other, and whom an investigation might implicate in adult but compromising sexual activity.

The other factor I can see is the social mores downstream of Roman Catholic ecclesiology. Rome teaches that, ordinarily, salvation is mediated by the church defined by properly ordained hierarchs in communion with Rome. To their credit, many of the hierarchs seem to take this seriously; it’s not just an excuse to gather power. One of the consequences of this is that anything with the potential to alienate someone from that hierarchy is a threat to his soul; even the R.C. bishops not involved in sexual immorality sought to lesson the scandal, in both colloquial and theological senses, and that often looked like a coverup. When Pope Benedict tried to restrict Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s public activities, McCarrick defied him, because – well, what could Benedict do without exposing his misconduct?

To be clear, this does not contradict R.C. ecclesiology, which would take a biblical or theological argument and not a pragmatic one. But I think the scandal is a strong practical argument against clerical celibacy, which led to such an overrepresentation of gay men in Catholic ministry, and which is a discipline imposed by a decision of the Roman Catholic church and not a dogma it is bound to.

It would be straightforwardly consistent with R.C. doctrine for pope and councils to allow the ordination of married men, as is routinely done in the Eastern Rite Catholic churches and occasionally done for married Lutheran and Anglican pastors who convert. I suspect that Rome could also allow already-ordained priests to marry without any change in doctrine, although I am not certain of this, and it may be unwilling to accept the hit to ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. (To my outsider’s eye, Counter-Reformation statements on marriage played pretty fast and loose with the distinction between illicit and invalid, and I am hesitant to draw too many conclusions.)

Marcial Maciel

Before he was revealed to be an abuser, my response to that name would have been, "Who? Quien?"

Otherwise I largely agree with your post, except I think there is good reason to give primacy to celibate priests. The fact that abuse has gone down dramatically since 1985 while the church has kept celibate priests seems to indicated that changing the practice is not needed to reduce molestation.

To be clear, 'sometimes priests wind up visiting prostitutes' was a known problem among the hierarchy, and most reports of sex abuse were buried by writing it off as this- despite the victims not being whores, and not being suspected of being them either. In the environment of the late twentieth century RCC(which had extremely lax and loose disciplinary standards) this was dealt with through 'rehabilitative justice', just like clerical alcoholism(rates are shockingly high)- and of course the extremely lax disciplinary environment in place doesn't exactly push towards rehabilitation actually working.

One of the main innovations on abuse response was to report to the police before opening a case(which you can cover up by miscategorizing). The police don't particularly care about prostitution; this is pretty low priority. But they do care about raping teenaged boys.

To understand the RCC scandals and their handling fully, you need to understand that the "environment of the late twentieth century RCC" was environment of severe priest shortage.

In developed world, class of dirt poor pious peasantry, where becoming badly paid celibate priest was major win for the whole family, died out. All people how had much better options, and the church was unable/unwilling to make priest career more attractive.

The alternative to bad priest was often no priest at all, and since in Catholicism priests are indispensable for sacraments, tough choices had to be made.

The abuse scandal peaked before the priest shortage was manifested and began to improve when the priest shortage was getting rapidly worse.

The church also doesn’t rely on dirt poor peasants becoming priests, including in places where there’s large populations of impoverished Catholic peasants(latin America, parts of Africa and SE Asia). The priesthood is, overwhelmingly, a later son career for middle class-ish families in towns or suburbs. The US church hit peak seminarian, anywhere ever, in the long fifties, and there were no Catholic peasants to recruit from(well, there were a few Cajuns and tejanos. But the US peasant population was overwhelmingly Protestant and Catholic peasant populations didn’t punch above their weight). What the US church had to recruit from in the long fifties was very large families of urban wage laborers and declining seminarians was mostly due to declining fertility and Vatican II.

This strikes me as a bit of a weaselly definition. The Catholic Church is institutionally opposed to abortion, homosexuality and divorce. Women cannot be ordained as priests. People have been characterised as "far-right" for much less.

How many priests are Right Wing Icons?

John Paul II, for one.

The institution has both right wing and left wing positions, like the preferential option for the poor. More than that, in the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of incoming priests were pro choice, pro homosexuals, and pro divorce. There were a lot of progressive activists inside the Church joining the priesthood for this purpose.

It doesn't seem weaselly to me to ask, were the people who were doing the abuse actually conservative or where they progressive activists? And if the answer is actually they were progressive activists, then it seems to be more of what @faceh was saying.

Edit: see figure 12 here: https://catholicproject.catholic.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/NSCPWave2FINAL.pdf

Maybe something about soft power vs hard power? These types of leftist leaders tend to attract a lot of poor people as followers. Chavez was leading immigrant farm workers, so he had lots of votes but not a lot of money. That also tends to attract a lot of young student types, and idealistic women. If I can speculate uncharitably here, that would put him in close proximity to a lot of young women who believe in his cause, but aren't really attracted to him personally at all. Same with a lot of the modern male feminist types- they might be politically popular, but they still look like dirty hippies or weaselly student activists.

With the right wing leaders, it's the opposite- they don't get nearly as many female followers. But when they do, they've got all the traditional trappings of power that make them more attractive to women, so they can easily find someone willing to sleep with them.

If I can speculate uncharitably here, that would put him in close proximity to a lot of young women who believe in his cause, but aren't really attracted to him personally at all.

Did you read the linked NYT article? This does not sound like the case at all. For instance, it quotes a letter written by one of the girls to Chavez:

But the paper trail of some of Mr. Chavez’s misconduct involving young girls can be found in the very archives built to preserve his legacy.

In one handwritten letter on girlish stationery imprinted with roses, Ms. Rojas wrote to Mr. Chavez in January 1974 at the age of 13, shifting between childlike school updates and swooning devotion. She said she wrote the letter more than a year after he first kissed and fondled her in his office in 1972, when she was a 12-year-old seventh-grader. “I’m really glad I got to see you & spend time with you, well not like that, but just to know I was near you was enough,” she wrote, adding, “I think of you all of the time. Do you think of me?”

And the article ends with

Looking back on it now, Ms. Rojas said she believed then that Mr. Chavez wanted her to be a real part of his life. He would tell her that they would move together someday to Mexico. He told her to stay away from other boys because he’d get jealous. He told her that the Flamingos song, “I Only Have Eyes for You,” was their song, and that every time she heard it she should “just remember that I love you.”

“I had love for him,” Ms. Rojas said. “He did his grooming very well. He should get an Academy Award for all he did.”

To take the Devil's Advocate position, the "paper trail" proves nothing. It's a note 13-year-old Rojas wrote which describes no inappropriate activity on Chavez's part, and reads like a crush on her part. The part about kissing and fondling is not in the paper trail; it's a recent claim.

I'm still getting up to speed on the details of this. But uh... grooming a 12 yr old is wildly different from winniing the attraction of an adult woman. What he did there was horrible.

think I'm gesturing off in the direction of "right wingers tend not to elevate rapists and pedos as leaders,

Feels like a failure of imagination. Monarchists are right wing. Haven't there been a bunch of scandals about kings graping people. Do we need to get into various the various pope scandals, or even priest pedo scandals? We have Trump showing up at Epstein island. I'm sure Saddam, or Gaddafi never ever raped people, and neither have various Saudi monarchs.

I think the much safer claim is that power attracts predators, and the revolutionary leftwing movements are no different.

EDIT: How could I forget about our "allies" in Afghanistan and their practice of Bacha Bazi, due to their strong conservative beliefs in Islam. Definitely not right wingers. /s

I'm sure Saddam, or Gaddafi never ever raped people, and neither have various Saudi monarchs.

Saddam might not have personally raped anyone, but his son and subordinate Uday did.

his son and subordinate Uday

Yeah these I know about, I imagine his son didn't fall far from the tree. I doubt lefties have a monopoly on sexual predation.

If 'showing up at orgy island' is your benchmark for rape I'm pretty sure Gadaffi would have had some lifetime sexual encounters of that ilk. Didn't he have an all female bodyguard squad?

If 'showing up at orgy island' is your benchmark for rape

Keep in mind its pedo-orgy island. Whether or not Trump really engage in it, he's at a similar level of guilt as the quoted Chomsky. Prince Andrew is definitely guilty and since he's royalty, albeit British, does the left or the right claim him?

Yeah Gadaffi likely got up to some extreme levels of sexual deviancy. You definitely don't have a hot female body squad, just because you are *checks notes * "A strong feminist Dictator"

I don't know how you want to count Dennis Hastert as far as a "movement leader" goes, but he was Speaker of the House.

How many streets are or were named after him?

Apparently that didn't stop Illinois residents from trying to rename "Hassert Boulevard", which was not named after him.

It says something about the psychology of this particular ideology that so many prominent lefty leaders turn out to be rapists and/or pedophiles.

The "don't report the rape because it'll damage The Cause" psychology of a certain kind of victim/attendant/etc is surely part of the equation too.

I don't think Vladimir Putin has been credibly accused of rape either.

Not that I’m aware of. In his youth he was probably something of a womanizing cad but in consensual way (hard to believe but as a young man he was something of a pretty-boy). Once he got into the higher rungs of power he quickly ended up married to the job, and he lost a wife and then two mistresses by being a workaholic.

(hard to believe but as a young man [Vladimir Putin] was something of a pretty-boy).

Considering that, as an old man, he's something of a pretty boy, I don't find that hard to believe.

True, most 70 year old Slavic men aren’t getting Botox.

Literally my thought.

I doubt he was having trouble finding consensual partners.

The equivalent right wing trope is the republican senator having gay sex in the airport bathroom stall.

He just had a wide stance.

It says something about the psychology of this particular ideology that so many prominent lefty leaders turn out to be rapists and/or pedophiles. It genuinely now seems like there are fewer such leaders, political or otherwise, in the last 100 years that DON'T have such credible allegations than those that do, now.

I mean, many things can genuinely seem some way without being true. I don't know that what you claim is in evidence, and certainly this one example of Chavez doesn't move the needle one way or another.

However, I do think there's a core truth here when it comes to the modern leftist movement which is and has been for about 1.5 decades, dominated by the movement that has been established as "woke." Not a unique characteristic, but certainly a defining one of "wokeness" is prioritizing identity over their behavior or speech* when it comes to judging the person in specific contexts where their behavior or speech would be consequential to the outcome. Combined with another defining characteristic of "wokeness" - automatic categorizing of all constructive criticism as bad faith malicious attempts at sabotage - this results in massive opportunities for people of the right identities to become leaders while engaging in horrible behavior, as long as that horrible behavior pays off in harm to people you don't care about.

Now, Chavez didn't exist in such an environment. He likely would have benefited in that environment, but he wouldn't have had enough oppression points to just get to the top without legitimate leadership skills. So I think his situation (and any others from eras past) likely had different causes.

* More accurately: having ready-available justifications for why to selectively prioritize identity or behavior/speech based on personal preferences.

It says something about the psychology of this particular ideology that so many prominent lefty leaders turn out to be rapists and/or pedophiles.

FWIW I think that modern Leftism is a magnet for various types of bad people (grifters, sadists, sexual abusers, etc.) who want (1) a shield against accusations of misbehavior; and (2) the opportunity to feel good and righteous and just as they inflict harm on others.

If I were a sociopath and I were mainly concerned about self-aggrandizement; sexual opportunities; and/or outlets for sadism, then 100% I would get involved in some Leftist cause.

As far as Nazis go, I would guess that it's the same principle in play. Perhaps not Hitler himself, but I think it's very likely that the ranks of Nazi leadership were full of sexual abusers, it's just that there isn't evidence available in the form of victim testimony, photographs, etc. But if you are a sociopath in 1930s Germany, of course you are going to join the Nazi party if you can.

Yep. "Positions of power will attract power-hungry sociopaths" is for all pursuits and purposes, a truism.

But it is notable that the ideology that claims to be about liberation, smashing of oppression and coercion, removal of hiearchies, etc. etc. has such poor antibodies against abusers achieving power.

To the point where they will actively coordinate to protect the reputation of the abusers in many cases, for the good of their movement.

And of course the libertarian movement, both right AND left, has a bit of a reputation for being pedo-tolerant to a fault, which points to the issue NOT just being about exercise of power.

But it is notable that the ideology that claims to be about liberation, smashing of oppression and coercion, removal of hiearchies, etc. etc. has such poor antibodies against abusers achieving power.

I would need to think about that one. Of course part of the issue here is that I absolutely despise Leftists so of course I am naturally biased towards any argument that they are more prone to be sexual abusers and such.

That being said, perhaps a factor is that -- in large part -- Leftist ideology is about reforming traditional norms. So perhaps the provides more of an opening for sexual opportunists and such. Certainly if I were looking to get laid, I would prefer to the head of the local PETA chapter, as opposed to being the head of the local chapter of Operation Rescue.

The libertarians are tolerant by definition in a way that feminism cannot claim to be.

Not that tolerating pedophiles is a good thing, mind. I just find that libertarians aren't the best example to pick here.

I'd make the connection between libertarians being open and tolerant (and leery of strict authoritarian rulemakers) and their susceptibility to letting questionable characters into their midst. They could stand to be about twice as judgmental as they actually are.

And lefties in general having that same tendency. They like to reject rigid rules and prefer more relativistic morals, and thus the are able to get to a position where "restricting children from having sex is oppression!" is a viable stance for many of them.

I don’t think Nazis had a lot of sexual abuses. Right wing orgs are different than left-wing orgs. Best example I have is there doesn’t seem to be many claims of pedophilia or sexual degeneracy in maga. Right-wing probably does select for profiteers etc but moral degeneracy I don’t think so. Like maybe Peter Thiel? There are some homosexuals in maga. But worst I’ve seen is Thiel having 20 something sugar babies.

The Nazis themselves were a claimed response to Jewish degeneracy.

MAGA seems fine with age-gap relationships and men using power to get sex from of-age girls. But I don’t think that’s the same thing as the child porn stuff popping up on left.

I have is there doesn’t seem to be many claims of pedophilia or sexual degeneracy in maga

This statement and this thread more generally is the biggest “we’re watching two different movies” moment I’ve ever had.

I don’t think Nazis had a lot of sexual abuses.

The national leaders seem to have been personally virtuous in this regard, but they were also willing to tolerate and promote men like Oskar Dirlewanger, who was notorious for his many atrocities, including raping, mutilating, and murdering scores of women and children.

That wiki is a horrifying read:

Acts committed by Dirlewanger include burning the genitals of women he abused with a petrol lighter, whipping them naked, and injecting strychnine into Jewish girls and then watching their death agonies in the officers' mess. Dirlewanger would often rape children, whether boy or girl, and then shoot them afterwards, with many of his victims being from the Lublin ghetto.

Jesus. CHRIST.

Morgen requested Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the Higher SS and Police Leader for the General Government, for an arrest warrant against Dirlewanger, but Krüger was blocked by Berger.

Sort of gets to the point, though, he would have gotten punished more quickly, if he hadn't apparently had a powerful protector.

Dirlewanger’s men were if anything more creative in their abuses, though I won’t describe them here. Himmler knew what they were up to, saying, “The tone in the regiment is, I may say, in many cases a medieval one with cudgels and such things.” Despite this, he told Dirlewanger, “I am very satisfied with your actions, as I recently told you personally.”

After Dirlewanger was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, the highest honor in the German military during WWII, he gloated to a friend,

you know as well as I do that I received this high award for the soldierly achievements of my regiment, among other things. With this, the last unwelcome voices from "higher places" about my unit should have faded away! My men have achieved superhuman things in this fight to the death and destruction and have earned themselves a place in the honor book of the German soldier by their sweat, blood, and heroic sacrificial commitment!

Among those “unwelcome voices” was that of Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the head of the SS in Poland, who threatened to arrest the entire regiment if they were not removed from his territory. Eventually even Himmler became alarmed at the grotesque behavior of the regiment, but only because he was concerned that they would eventually begin to attack fellow German soldiers and the Nazi leadership.

What’s particularly bizarre about the group is that Hitler seems to have initially ordered its creation as a punishment for the men involved—originally mostly poachers, whom the animal-loving Hitler hated. Instead, he gave a group of the most depraved sexual perverts, sadists, and psychopaths five years to enjoy satisfying their demonic urges to their hearts’ content.

When even the guy responsible for organizing SS genocidal tactics and supressing the Warsaw uprising thinks the guy is too far gone, that's really saying something:

"Guderian was supported by SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the overall commander of the forces pacifying Warsaw (and Dirlewanger's own former superior officer in Belarus)"

Seems like the difference between the guy for whom its a 9-5 and he's just carrying out his job working at the atrocity factory, vs. the guy who is doing his war crimes during his personal time.

MAGA seems fine with age-gap relationships and men using power to get sex from of-age girls.

See the case mentioned below, about the 26 year old professor and the 22 (or 20? I saw that age elsewhere) undergraduate. Oh, the age gap involved! Clearly he abused his power over her! A whopping 4 to 6 years difference!

Worrying about age gaps can get ridiculous. No, an adult man (or woman) should not be trying to get intimate with a child. No, 'X is 6 years older than Y' when they're both in their 20s or 30s is not the same thing.

To be clear that’s the left making that an issue. And specifically blue sky leftists.

I don’t think Nazis had a lot of sexual abuses.

I don't know about that. Of course I despise Nazis, so it's difficult for me to concede that they may have had any redeeming qualities. In any event, they surely had their share of sadists and psychopaths. And it's pretty common for men in positions of power to leverage that power for sexual access to women (or other men). So I would have to guess that there was quite a lot. Especially given that they were in a position to conceal much of the evidence.

I mean, I'm not looking for redeeming qualities. Right wingers have their goddamn share of atrocities to their names, even if those who were impeccably gracious in their personal lives.

Just making some observations about comparative evils.

Was defeating Hitler worth the huge amount of rapes committed by the Red Army? I think the lefties would say so. I wouldn't want to ask for an exchange rate, though. "How many rapes is worth one holocaust victim's life" is a horrendously taboo question.

Rapes by the Red Army are things that would have happened whether anyone in the West chose to fight Hitler or not, so I don't think that question means much. It's not as if someone could say "we don't want your help" and they'd go home.

The trouble with comparing Soviet and Nazi atrocities is that the Soviets did what they were going to do while the Nazis were stopped. There really isn't a serious counterfactual where the Soviets do a whole lot worse than they actually did. By contrast, the Nazis plans for if they won in the East involved tens of millions of deaths on top of everything they actually did, and we have every reason to think they meant it.

Not sure I agree. The mass rapes and executions (mostly) stopped after the war, but the purges and repression only got worse until Stalin's death. And these aren't small numbers; Stalin took millions of people as political prisoners. In fact, it's argued (not uncontroversially) that he was gearing up for his own genocide of the Jews shortly before his death, the fabricated Doctors' Plot being the opening move. (He'd already launched one major pogrom, but this was supposed to be much bigger.) The Soviet Union wasn't stopped, but Stalin personally was, and his successors happened to be more moderate. Who can say if the same wouldn't have happened to the Nazis after Hitler's death?

(Actually, a very similar story played out in China: Mao remained every bit the brutal dictator until his death, orchestrating the Cultural Revolution in his 70s, and it was only after his death that Deng managed to salvage a workable system from his insanity. It's an interesting thought, given the insistence down thread that killing individual leaders never works (vis a vis Iran). Both died peacefully, I suppose, so perhaps not that close an analogy, and the revolutionary government has already survived one transfer of power without moderating.)

I mean, I'm just asking it to be provocative. "If saving six million Jews meant 12 million women get raped, is it a net good?"

Can your utilitarianism save you now, rationalist?

I don’t think Nazis had a lot of sexual abuses.

Huh? Rape of concentration camp prisoners is pretty well documented, as are the brothels.

Isn’t that normal especially in war? Nothing about that is moral degeneracy - homosexuality back then or pedophilia.

Raping people from your own country is not normal in war.

There are plenty of examples of war between sides arguing over the definition of "your own country" (Ukraine, for a current one), many of which include the unfortunately standard set of war crimes.

Missing the metoo accusation by Megan Wachspress against Daniel Biss in his primary. It happened 20 years ago. He was an Associate Professor of Math at UC when she was an undergraduate. This sounds bad.

Turns out they went on a few dates. Made out. He was 4 years older than her. She’s now a law lecturer at Stanford. He’s now doing politics. Supposedly this race was very big in the progressive circles. He still ended up winning so all is now losts with crazies. Blue sky 100% takes her side that a bad thing happened to her. She blames it for why she didn’t become a math professor.

My hot take: they really should have just fucked and got married. Both are reasonably attractive for UC people back then. Both were good at math. Both ended up in wordcell professions. So basically they are the same person. It’s not great a professor dating his student but all of the actual details says it made sense for them to date.

I think this is basically an example where formal rules (which he broke) often don’t fit the nuances of a situation. Only crazy people have a problem with a 26 year old dating a 22 year old who have a lot in common.

Every time I read about one of these I think about A Beautiful Mind. Only John Nash WAS Alica's instructor.

It’s not great a professor dating his student

She wasn't his student no?

Seems fuzzy on that. But definitely TA.

Many streets, schools, libraries, parks etc. are to be renamed soon.

It's going to be darkly funny if it turns out that the final holdout using his name will be USNS Cesar Chavez. Article from last year; I never got around to a planned effortpost on ship renamings. But I could see Hegseth keeping it out of spite; I could also see him using it as an opportunity to purge all manner of other names.

When I talk about "wokeness", I'm referring to a worldview and set of tactics as described in, for example, Freddie deBoer's canonical article on the topic:

  1. Explicit endorsement of standpoint epistemology.
  2. Social destruction for petty ideological infractions, resulting in circular firing squads.
  3. Ideological infractions couched in abstruse vocabulary impenetrable to those not in the know.
  4. A fundamental failure to understand the is-ought distinction.
  5. A worldview which, taken to its logical conclusions, implies that "everything is problematic" and "almost everyone you encounter in contemporary society is a bad person".
  6. A fatalistic belief that the problems facing our society are so deeply entrenched as to be essentially impervious to resolution or amelioration: political Calvinism.
  7. A corollary to the previous point is that woke people react with hostility to the suggestion that certain of their pet issues have been meaningfully improved or ameliorated.
  8. An obsessive fixation on linguistic minutiae ("people experiencing unhousedness" vs. "homeless people") over issues of material, practical significance.

I am not referring to the existence of male people who wear women's clothes, or people who live in small towns who dress in a peculiar fashion and listen to Bladee.

I think when most people express a sentiment like "wokeness is dead", they mean that the ideas and tactics associated with the woke memeplex have much less cachet and influence than they did at their peak (2014-2022). I don't think they mean "no one wears cross-sex clothes anymore". A minority of people have been wearing cross-sex clothing for centuries before the word "woke" was even coined. So I truthfully don't understand the connection between the statements "wokeness isn't dead – here are a bunch of people who dress oddly". They seem completely uncorrelated to me. I'd even hazard a guess that plenty of these so-called "dinergoths" are not meaningfully "woke" in an ideological sense.

You are motte and baily-ing "Woke".

Much like when Charlie Kirk said "DEI", every comedian started foaming at the mouth, their pen setting their pad aflame, dude playing burning piano on the beach meme, "Those DEIs need to use different drinking fountains, DEIs in paris, DEI DEI DEI DEI DEI DEI DEI, I'm 200% DEI" before jizzing themselves unconscious.

Much like DEI means DEI but it also means Naggers but with a different vowel, Woke means the set of principles and tactics outlined above, but also anything that makes a someone with Chud aesthetic principles feel a little uncomfortable. "This person is not presenting gender in a way I like so my tummy hurt, therefore woke" type shit.

Much like the woke fucked up getting to call people they don't like racist and the Zionist lobby is currently fucking up getting to call people they don't like antisemites, Woke is either fully fucked or in the terminal stage of fucked.

Pretty soon all that fire and brimstone is gonna turn into your grandpa getting all het up about men wearing belts to church instead of braces; what barberism.

I don't know why but three leading much likes for three by three analogous statements pleases my brainstem.

but also anything that makes a someone with Chud aesthetic principles feel a little uncomfortable. "This person is not presenting gender in a way I like so my tummy hurt, therefore woke" type shit.

My partner's extensive strap-on collection says "not really?" Some people are always merely dense.

Pretty soon all that fire and brimstone is gonna turn into your grandpa getting all het up about men wearing belts to church instead of braces; what barberism.

And some of them are even trimming their beards during services!

Just for that, I'm editing it to berberism; they can be whipping up delicious tajins in the pews.

Well, I explicitly said "When I talk about "wokeness...". I'm aware that other people use the word in a different way, sometimes in a manner indistinguishable from how their parents would derisively call things "liberal". But I think my usage is closer to the standard usage than that one.

I don't know why but three leading much likes for three by three analogous statements pleases my brainstem.

What?

What?

I wrote the comment in a weird way to maintain symmetry.

Well, I explicitly said "When I talk about "wokeness..."

Yeah, I probably should have led off with a "People in general" instead of a "You" on the response comment.

Might just be my social circle, but I have solely heard Woke in the Wild being used as a catch all for shit like "This restaurant advertises itself as cruelty free".

They seem completely uncorrelated to me. I'd even hazard a guess that plenty of these so-called "dinergoths" are not meaningfully "woke" in an ideological sense.

As someone pointed out elsewhere "dinergoth" is not a term they coined themselves so is a bit of an awkward fit (though again: Freddie's point). The self-chosen term is probably usually queer in a generic sense rather than Truly Activist sense, which sometimes overlaps with woke but isn't interchangeable.

In my extremely limited experience of people that might fit the archetype to the extent it even is an archetype, it's more like 2020's version of emo or scene, it's an aesthetic with a few shared hobbies and fairly minimal ideological components.

No, you don't undesrtand. The problem of wokeness facing our society is so deeply entrenched as to be essentially impervious to resolution or amelioration. You surely cannot believe that wokeness has been meaningfully improved or ameliorated. In a sense, almost everyone you encounter in contemporary society has adopted woke narratives in some way.

Superb execution of Poe's Law.

Not sure if satire or serious...

Why would you take that to be satire?

At face value, it seems correct.

Well, because he uses the exact same language in the higher level post, lol.

Yes, thought that the direct connection made the satire obvious.

Not satire enough to not be seriously true.

Hence the (largely rhetorical) question. Imagine that Futurama meme on top.

More comments

I was surprised to learn that Matt Forney is still active. I haven't come across his name in years.

5/Woke culture files

You’re not hallucinating the great weirding of America

You’re in a small town in Wisconsin.

The transgender assistant manager at CVS has a septum piercing, a wolf cut, and a nametag that reads “Finn.”

TL;DR: Wokeness is not dead yet. It might be wobbling at the top, but it is marching triumphantly across America.

Dinergoth is the aesthetic of ruined suburbia and dying small towns.

They are the mainstream now, they are not weird anymore. You are the weirdo.

While I compliment the author of that piece for coining the word "dinergoth", I'm not sure that I would make the same connection to wokeness that you are making here.

My main objection to wokeness was always more about the tactics than the things they advocate for. There are plenty of groups that believe in and advocate for weird things that I don't agree with from the Scientologists to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Heck, I think the Fundamentalist demonization of Harry Potter, Pokemon and D&D was always pretty silly, but I don't care about it as long as they don't make it my problem and attempt to restrict my access to things I enjoy through law. Wokeness crossed the line by trying to force everyone to live according to their dictates through a number of underhanded and illiberal tactics, but a little-L liberal wokeness would be as unobjectionable to me as any of the other crazy things my fellow country-men and -women believe in.

More than anything as I read the piece, I kind of wondered where the author has been for the last 20-30 years. A lot of the trends he was noticing for the first time with his dinergoth girlfriend were already in motion decades ago, as any kid who had a high school classmate who was a little too into Naruto can attest. I also don't think "dinergoth" actually captures what I see as the cause, which is the proliferation of "extremely online" subcultures as a pan-American phenomenon. This explains the loss of regional accents (which were probably already in decline from the TV era and the radio broadcast era before that), and why "weird" things like anime, memes, queer culture and many other things are becoming more common everywhere in the United States at once.

I just think that the author is a normie yuppie, probably raised by normie yuppies, and he's making the wrong generalizations about the why and how of "weirdness" in American culture. I think even if many young people didn't feel down and out in America, that we would probably still see a lot of the same weirdness. I found it especially funny the way he threw together phrases like "Nintendo Hispanic", as if Hispanics enjoying one of the longest running and most popular brands of video game consoles was some weird and mysterious thing that could only be explained by American decline and degeneracy.

Wokeness crossed the line by trying to force everyone to live according to their dictates through a number of underhanded and illiberal tactics, but a little-L liberal wokeness would be as unobjectionable to me as any of the other crazy things my fellow country-men and -women believe in.

The distinction you make between the sort of coercive vs. non-coercive wokeness sounds good, but it hasn't held up in practice. We really don’t have to speculate about that either because we’ve already seen how it has played out. At a certain point, little-L liberal wokeness reached critical mass within our institutions and they stopped being one perspective among many and instead became the framework that shaped all the norms and policies that these places enforced.

The distinction you make between the sort of coercive vs. non-coercive wokeness sounds good, but it hasn't held up in practice.

I suspect part of the issue is that a lot of the time, wokeness is more about the tactics than the actual beliefs. In other words, for example, a large number of wokies (perhaps most of them) don't start from the premise that they desire racial equality and then start thinking about ways to work for racial equality. Rather, these wokies really like the idea of terrorizing other people with ever-changing language rules; taking over buildings on college campuses; blocking traffic; getting laws passed to punish and humiliate their out-group; and so on. Wokeness gives them a means to pursue these activities while feeling righteous in doing so.

Rather, these wokies really like the idea of terrorizing other people with ever-changing language rules; taking over buildings on college campuses; blocking traffic; getting laws passed to punish and humiliate their out-group; and so on. Wokeness gives them a means to pursue these activities while feeling righteous in doing so.

It's a bit disappointing the term CHORFs never caught on (outside the Warhammer fandom)

Cliquish, Holier-than-thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary, Fanatics.

The problem I see with vorpa-glavo's comment is that it comes off like they think wokeness itself isn't really something that needs to be addressed, and that it only needs to be occasionally dealt with when it gets out of hand.

I, on the other hand, think it's more of a critical mass thing. Once an ideology reaches a certain scale, it obviously starts to affect the population, and at that point it almost inevitably develops coercive or oppressive elements, regardless of its original intent.

I started to use vorpa-glavo's example of Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses to make that point, but then I stopped and kept my orginal reply short. Nobody really cares about a quirky subculture or religion with strange beliefs so long as it doesn't have political power and control over the mainstream. But imagine instead of there being 1 million Scientologists there were 50 million Scientologists and they disproportionately controlled academia, media, corporate HR departments, and other institutions that affect how we view reality. At that point it wouldn’t just be a quirky and harmless belief system. It would define what is acceptable and what isn't, and it would be influencing policy in drastic ways that many people would not like. That's where we are with wokeness. It doesn't need to be occasionally batted down when it oversteps. We're past that point. It needs to be rooted out and removed.

I, on the other hand, think it's more of a critical mass thing. Once an ideology reaches a certain scale, it obviously starts to affect the population, and at that point it almost inevitably develops coercive or oppressive elements, regardless of its original intent.

It seems to me that ideologies vary in terms of how oppressive or coercive they are. For example, consider what could be called "liberal democracy" or "social democracy" -- the sort of ideology that has been ascendant in much of the developed world since after World War II. It seems like it's possible to openly be a Marxist or Communist or Libertarian or whatever in such societies. By contrast, if Marxism is ascendant, it's much more difficult to be an open subscriber to some other ideology.

As another example, one can ask who is more likely to be disrupted: A conservative speaker on a liberal college campus or a liberal speaker on a conservative college campus?

And when you think about it, it kinda makes sense. One of the basic tenets of Wokeness is that white people, as a group, have committed a horrible crime against non-whites and continue to do so. And conservatives help to perpetuate that crime. This would seem to justify quite a bit of coercion and oppression.

According to the author's bio he is the creator of an AI wingman "dating assistant." I'm sure he views himself as not part of the problem, but...

To me, it's suspicious that all this stuff about Chavez is coming out now. I suspect that his actual sin was being heavily against illegal immigration (since they depressed wages), and the cancelers are only being opportunistic in exposing him for rape.

I'd heard this (and also, #MeToo reasons), but the timing still seems off. Why now? I can't remember the last time I've heard anyone mention "well, Chavez was against illegal immigration!" in an attempt to "pwn the libs," and even when that was a thing, it wasn't really a thing; it was even more impotent than "Hey kids, did you know it's the Dems that are the Real Racists!?" Neither does it appear that anyone calling the shots on the Left/Democrat side really seem to care about losing the support of labor unions. It just seems unnecessary, yet I know that the New York Times does not publish a story like this just because it's interesting news, or good reporting; someone benefits from taking down Chavez now, but I can't for the life of me think of who.

I'm surprised they're not canceling him for the United Farm Workers flag being too fascist.

I agree. I always thought it was weird that they pushed so hard to get stuff named after Chavez, but never really made much effort to explain who he was or why he was important. Of course they needed a leftest Latino American to go along with MLK and Harvey Milk in the sainted trilogy of street names, but it seemed like they just rushed out the first semi-famous name they could find, and only later had an "oh crap" moment when they realized how bad he was.

I don't know if "rushed" is the right word. The guy was dead for 30 years before anyone knew of these allegations, which involve events from over 50 years ago.

In surprising news, Kim Jong-un wins North Korea’s parliamentary elections with 99.93% of the vote.

I always wondered: who does the 0.07% of the votes go to? Do they pick a lucky volunteer tasked with running against Dear Leader? Is there someone autistic enough to actually try on their own?

My understanding is that voting in the DPRK happens as an "approval ballot" where ballots come pre-filled with a single name for every position. Voters can either cast their vote directly, or cross off one of the names before casting the vote. At least in theory, these %0.07 percent of votes that don't go to Kim represent voters who crossed of Kim's name before casting their ballot. There's defector testimony that these modified ballots go into a separate ballot box, and votes are cast simultaneously by everyone in your neighborhood, and so this is an obviously public act of defiance.

The real politics in the DPRK happens in determining who gets put on the ballot. The Worker's Party of Korea is in charge of preparing the ballots and selecting candidates. My understanding is that low-level candidates are determined by a process that would be viewed as more-or-less democratic by Western standards, you just have to be a member of the party to have a "vote" in the "primary" that determines who goes on the main ballot. About 10% of the population are members of the WPK. Being a member of the WPK is relatively prestigious socially and hard to do. I've mentioned here before that I used to teach in the DPRK, and I had a few students explicitly mentioned to me that their number 1 career goal was getting into the party.

There are two other legal political parties in North Korea, and they both get some number of seats in local and nation-level elections (maybe 5% between the two of them). The Chindoist Chongu Party is more or less an anti-Christian party, and the Korean Social Democratic Party is more or less what you'd guess from the title. They've historically had more independence than I would have naively guessed (which is not a lot---they are legally bound to be subservient to the WPK---but past party pamphlets would occasionally have remarks in them directly criticizing national level policies and human rights abuses). I never heard anyone talk about these parties while I was over there, though, and I have long wondered what type of person joins one of these parties instead of the WPK/how it affects their social standing.

The main way we know these things is by people going and visiting North Korea and interacting with "ordinary" North Koreans. But Trump in 2017 passed an executive order that Americans cannot travel there. I think this was a huge mistake because now we have even less insight into this already opaque country.

Being a member of the WPK is relatively prestigious socially and hard to do

I've never deeply understood how this works (I respect that it does) because in my jurisdiction, my party membership for the purposes of attending the local convention is entirely decided by which primary ballot I select at election time. I guess I could separately join and pay dues, but in the US I've never even heard of the idea that a party would reject someone from membership.

Very different worlds.

I think of being a member of the WPK as being equivalent to citizenship in the US. Once you're a member of of the WPK, you get a "meaningful" vote, can get a passport, and get all the other legal benefits that we give to citizens.

One of the reasons I'm against serve-your-country-for-citizenship-starship-troopers-style is that North Korea style governance seems like the only possible end result.

Nobody; they're people who, for whatever reason, couldn't get ballots in (working on fishing boats, working in a labor camp, etc.). Elections aren't contensted; you are presented with the candidate for each particular seat (as applicable), and your vote is either affirmation or dissent. To dissent, you must use a red pen at the ballot box to cross the candidate's name off; this is done in full view of Party observers.

Spoiled ballots, probably.

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