site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

As discussed below, no Europeans think of themselves as white in a politically relevant sense. We think of ourselves as English/Irish/German etc, like to think we can distinguish different European sub-populations visually, and find the fact that some of the lesser breeds without the law (Kipling was talking about the Boers here, not the blacks) have the same skin colour as us morally irrelevant.

Historically the superordinate identity that Europeans reached for when they wanted one was Christendom, not whiteness. (Whiteness didn't work, because the actual outgroup was Muslim Arabs and Turks, who are no more swarthy than southern Europeans). There is now an alternative left-coded superordinate identity - the EU is a political community that can be the locus of civic nationalism. But neither Christian nationalism nor EUism are popular among European nationalists compared to the nationalisms of individual countries or secessionist regions. (Single-issue anti-Islamism is, which could be considered an extension of Christian nationalism) White nationalism is an American invention, developing in a context where you wanted to outgroup 15% of the native population but couldn't reasonably claim they were foreign.

The wogs do begin at Calais, but Christian (and post-Christian) wogs are not enemies by default. Heck, even the snail-munching, sexual deviant frogs have been on our side for 120 years now.