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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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I specifically invoked the rich American history of pre-60s communes on purpose, so it's a bit entertaining to me that you seized on hippie nudist communes anyways. These communes don't always follow a neat left-right divide on that longer timescale. For example, I'm Mormon - early Mormon communities went through at least two separate phases of highly communitarian living in the 1830s and 1860s and also didn't neatly fall into a nice grouping (and obviously religion itself if not consistently right vs left coded historically). Again not all of them are going to be explicitly "we have common property" but developing a tight-knit smaller community that rejects popular standards in various ways inherently requires a high degree of local coordination that is often extremely similar. "Communitarianism" doesn't actually require common property.

For example right now there are a few strains of various types of this "commune" type thought:

  • You have eco-crazies, who try and find carbon neutral or negative ways to live in harmony with the land and sustainability

  • You have a strain of modern liberals who want to set up the kinds of super-walkable, livable utopic urban centers, some of which promote "cohousing" and might pool childcare, meals, tools, greenspace, etc.

  • You have a few offshoots of various Christian hospitality houses, halfway houses, charities, etc. which can in some cases form loose communitarian associations

  • You have deliberately "trad" Christian and other non-religious conservative communities that pool homeschooling, might generate a local mini-economy, and emphasize physical closeness, homogeneity, or even exclusiveness

  • You have associated prepper types who gather together for the obvious practical benefits of living off-grid but with a little bit of community redundancy

  • You have a few libertarian projects that are technically diametrically opposed to collectivism but for practical reasons find it helpful to cluster together in order to consistently enforce (or decline to enforce, lol) norms friendly to libertarianism

  • You have the liberal-ish (OK I think this is mostly libertarian but I think it draws from the slightly left-leaning crowd within them) aligned "startup cities" like Prospera in Honduras

  • Some more extreme versions of "polycules" start to look awfully familiar to a longer more historical kind of "free love" society, even if they are inherently smaller-scale

Donald Trump himself suggested selling private land to "Freedom Cities" that aren't necessarily communistic but fit the vibe of "designed community/society" which isn't far off, during the 2024 election.