site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 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.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"Cornell student Austin Franco was doxxed by Jewish business leaders after explaining that he “didn’t want to work for a Jew,” claiming his experiences with Jews were not “pleasant,” after a NYC startup he had applied to reached out to him three times.":

After one of the cofounders, Gabe Einhorn, posted Franco’s reply with his last name blocked out, Franco was quickly identified.

Einhorn said he did not “want to ruin his life,” but wanted to “raise awareness” of antisemitism.

Franco, in a now-deleted post, said that in his personal and professional experiences, Jews were tribalistic and vengeful, and tended to ruin and bully others who opposed them.

Franco stated, “I am sure that if you indicated you didn’t want to work for someone who was White or Christian this would not have blown up…”

Franco claimed that the actions by Einhorn and the Jewish community, posting his reply, doxxing him, and then trying to investigate and uproot his personal life, vindicated his concerns that Jews do not work with others politely.

Subsequently:

I was told that "woke is dead" but it seems cancel culture is alive and well on the kosher Right. How is one supposed to take any of the clowns seriously attacking "woke leftists" when they act like this? Why is "student doesn't want to work for jews" worthy of being elevated to international news?

I don’t know what to add to this thread other than to say that when I was much younger, and as recently as 5 years ago, I was always perplexed by anti semitism. I live on east coast so I know some Jews IRL. I was a big fan of Seinfeld, Larry David, Albert Brooks and dozens of other Jewish comedians and entertainers. I thought israel was a pretty badass country.

At some point thought, i guess i just started noticing too many things to ignore. Humans are excellent pattern matchers. Prior to Oct 6, I was already fed up with their behaivor. And I wasn’t singling them out. There’s lots of groups of people that are just so stereotypically antisocial that I’m crucial of.

After October 6 the volume was turned up significantly on their subversive antics. I’ve got zero love or respect for Hamas, but the Jewish and Israeli response to this was outrageous.

Then we get to this Iran Nuclear strikes and this war. Where I am at right now is israel is the single biggest external threat to the USA and my day to day life - bar none. More than china. More than islamists. More than europe. More than Russia.

I can only imagine how many others followed this same evolution. I’m sure there are some good Jewish people that would push back on all of this. And they may have some valid points. But the overwhelming amount of evidence on the other side of the ledger carries the day in my personal opinion. OPs story is just but one example. They are just so darn disproportionate in any response to a real or perceived slight.

Where I am at right now is israel is the single biggest external threat to the USA and my day to day life

How so?

  1. The have a very effective political lobby in congress that directly affects the candidates running and laws enacted in the country. Whether that’s Americans lobbying on behalf of Israel or Israel directly lobbying them is irrelevant. I think this should be uncontroversially true but examples abound. This influence appears to supersede regular Americans policy and candidate preferences and directly affects me in myriad ways.

  2. They clearly have the ability to influence our foreign affairs and relationships. Trump carries plently of blame for this war - but again, it seems plainly obvious to me that Israel is the reason we’ve attacked Iran twice now. There were no shortage of people telling Trump it was a bad idea. The Israeli agenda carried the day.

  3. Israeli concerns, preferences, and agenda repeatedly is shown to be more important than America and Americans. I don’t know what to make of USS Liberty other than that US military seems more concerned with Israeli outcomes than American lives or money.

  4. The USA and its citizens are reputationally impaired by #1-3.

  5. Israeli preferences and concerns are privileged in US media. CBS and Ellison seem to have an explicit agenda on this point. And then you have things like the Free Press and Bari Weiss coming from the other angle with “independent media” and podcasts. I put independent in quotes since I’ve seen reporting that she was bankrolled by the Israeli lobby.

I guess those are the big ones but I imagine I could come up with a few more. Additionally:

  • People may say that all this is driven by Americans and American preferences for Israel and therefore israel is not to blame. That’s really irrelevant to me. Maybe that gets around the law. But the outcome is the same. And I don’t put it past Israel to be exploiting every tactic available, legal or otherwise, to have their hand directly on the wheel here.

  • Chinese and Beijing do not have this level of direct effect on my day to day life - other than our easily manipulated politicians disrupting things trying to counter the Chinese superpower threat - a threat narrative that I find less than persuasive.

  • The threat of global jihad and terrorism seems to have been overblown or contained. Again, the only way this influences me is the additional security theater and tax dollar spent on that over the years. Maybe this issue was comparable back in the bush days since our whole society was oriented around terrorism. But I’m also pretty critical of the whole GWOT these days, but that mania seems to have died down thankfully.

It’s a pretty simple equation really. The US is well equipped to counter other foreign threats and none of these other “enemies” have the keys to our house.

None of that adds up to “more dangerous than Islam”. All you have done is shown a threat; not a relative threat.

No kidding. It’s my opinion. How would you suggest we quantitatively prove a relative threat?

We could look at things like terrorist attacks in the last fifty years. Or we could look at things like the UK where Muslims end up in large amounts.