This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
What exactly happened to us? As I understand it, you want "white people" to consolidate as a single ethno-national identity, but white nationalism is a modern construct. White people did not historically think of themselves as one tribe. So you're casting back for an identity that never existed.
I'd be fine seeing Judaism abandoned, but I feel that way about all religions. "Slave morality": very Nietzche, much edgy, but most religions preach some form of humility and service and other nasty things Ike mercy and generosity and also we are special to the gods because only we follow the rules correctly.
In the United States they absolutely did so, from the foundation of the country eligibility for citizenship was "White". And it turned on a dime. But the same applies to ethnic German identity or pride, or even ethnic British identity or pride. You can get arrested for being too enthusiastic in your identification as an ethnic Brit.
It is absolutely possible to Culture-War someone's identity into submission. Jewish identity should be analyzed and criticized in equal measure.
Yes, because they were very concerned about slaves, and slave (or freedmen) populations mixing with the white population. You're arguing we should use the racial anxiety of slaveholders as the basis of our ethnic identity. Unless you are literally proposing a return to slavery (or at least, something like Apartheid), this is not going to work, and it's still a very particular historical window from which you are deriving your notion of "white identity."
If you read a little American history, you will realize that while English, Germans, French, and Dutch considered themselves closer to each other than Indians or blacks, they certainly did not think of themselves as one people, let alone those barely-human Spaniards, Italians, Irish, and Greeks. Even under slavery, we had all the tribes described in Albion's Seed and more; they were anything but "Hello, fellow White People!"
You want to create an artificial and ahistorical white identity for political purposes. The modern "African American" identity is kind of like that, I guess, but their circumstances were quite different.
You won't see me defending the British legal regime, but you're gonna have to stretch real hard to put that on the Jews.
Your critique, though, is as useless as the people who think Chinese are all bugmen. Or the people who really do think "it's not okay to be white" (because we're all born racist and evil). It's a paranoid fantasy of a global Jewish hivemind.
Can we just appreciate that you don't think "White American" is a real thing when it was the original requirement for citizenship? You are just proving my point of how easy it is to use culture to convert something that was just plainly obvious for the vast majority of the country into an identity that doesn't really exist. You are the product of the cultural processes you are underestimating Amadan.
And where are they now? They are White. They don't cling to their ancestry in remotely the same way Jews retain their identity and organize on the basis of their identity. That's why it's a non-starter. If Jews want to assimilate into a White pro-civilizational ideology they need to free themselves from Yahweh. If they can't do it that means that they will continue to play the shell game of assimilation/assertion based on the convenience of the moment, for their group benefit and at our group expense.
"If you want to be one of us you have to be one of us." You can't retain identity with a superstitious desert cult on the basis of a blood-covenant with a jealous anti-civilizational god.
I do think "White American" is a real thing as a social category. I do not think it is a real thing as a unified ethnic tribe with uniform common beliefs and traditions. (It's kind of getting there but it's relatively recent.) You are playing a weaselly game of definitions here. "Hurr hurr you don't even think white people exist, you have been brainwashed by Da Joos." No, I think white people exist. I do not think "white people" have had the "racial consciousness" you assert and advocate until recently, historically.
Okay, but so what? Historically, the answer is that Germans, French, Dutch, English, etc. were able to assimilate and become part of the broader American "white" society in a way that was precluded for Jews. Your answer is that Jews are uniquely nefarious and Jewish culture and identity is uniquely malign. Market minorities exist in other places in the world and behave in similar ways. You simultaneously endorse shunning Jews-as-Jews from society but complain that, thus shunned, they continue to band together and maintain their own society. You can't tell people "We hate you and won't accept you, but don't you dare stick together out of self-defense."
Do Christians also have to reject their god? Are you a "Christianity is a Jew-cucked slave morality cult" white nationalist? Or are you a "Judeo-Christianity is a Jew lie" white nationalist?
Leaving aside the practicality of demanding people abandon a religion that's thousands of years old because you think that uniquely among all religions in the world, it's evil, I do not believe you'd actually accept Jews who abandon Judaism, and I think with good reason, Jews would not believe you. (And even if you are an unusually magnanimous white nationalist, as I said most of your fellow WNs are pretty open about wanting Jews to just... quietly and peacefully vanish to Mars or something.) There are atheistic Jews today with no connection to the Jewish religion, but you still accuse them of Jewing Jewishly. How many generations would they have to divest themselves of Judaism before you'd consider them no longer Jewy Jews? Your proposal is not sincere and not credible.
"Judeo-Christianity" is a term used by unserious Christians and dishonest Jews. The only surviving Jewish religions are those that defined themselves in opposition to the acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah. Modern day religious Jews can trace the history of their religion and language directly to the Pharisees and their rejection of Jesus.
The ideas expressed by the term Judeo-Christianity are incoherent to sincere believers of either faith, but that doesn't stop atheist and Jewish intellectuals using that term to smuggle in some kind of longstanding alliance between Christians and Jews.
I hear Christians use it more often than Jews.
The same Christians who accept immigrants, homosexuals, women's rights and support for Israel.
It's ironic. As a sincere Gnostic, I respect the mystical insights from Judaism, but I can just as easily trace it through the monotheistic Aryan Greeks. Outside of Jewish mysticism, their religion comes off as a massive cope for being biologically inferior to Aryans.
Read on for Gnostic proselytism:I can maintain my extreme racism because I believe in 1) reincarnation and progressive enlightenment of souls and 2) each Apostle had a more or less accurate message for more or less developed races. I got most of this from an active Gnostic group on the west coast. They claim to have an oral tradition that comes from Magdalene, her son, and their Celtic descendants (in contrast to Peter and Paul's Gospel that became Multiracial Empire Christianity). What they claimed got me curious enough to go down the rabbit hole of serious (secular) Christian scholarship and I think they have the most religious religion on the planet.
.
Actually, it is also used by conservative Christians who are not in favor of those things. (Except maybe support for Israel; most conservative Christians are pro-Israel.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link