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 -
Rupert Lowe has published on twitter, The rape gang inquiry report
A quick introduction is that for decades in the UK, Pakistani Muslims have been systematically raping young white girls. The police have ignored this at best or helped cover it up at worst because this highlights an inconvenient-to-the-narrative reality about this group of people.
The claims from this report are not some of the most horrific things I have ever read, but by far the most horrific things I have ever read. It's not close. Imagine the worst, most fucked up things you can imagine seeing in "2 girls 1 cup" adjacent abuse porn (I don't know if there is a name for this, but like...where the point seems to be the humiliation and degradation, and often physical harm of the women involved), and then imagine that this was being done at scale to young white (specifically white) girls in the UK for decades by Muslims men from Pakistan.
The report estimates approximately 250,000 young white girls (again, specifically white, they were specifically targeting young white girls) were raped by these men.
Here are my questions/thoughts on this:
Are the men of the UK the most absolutely cucked human beings to ever exist on planet earth ever in the history of time? Is there another time in history where this would have even been remotely tolerated? You allowed a foreign rape-brigade to rape an entire generation of your children, and the response has been essentially nothing.
Is this actually true? I admit I don't know who Rupert Lowe is. Is this a serious person?
What will happen as a result of this? I can't honestly believe that it's nothing, is it?
What should happen? How do you even begin to prosecute something of this scale in a way that doesn't resemble some of the darkest times in human history?
To that point: is this the darkest point in the history of the UK? What would be worse than this?
The police in the UK have a very bad track record of caring of what happens to the UK's poor and vulnerable. This is more about class than anything else.
As a comparison there's the case of Fred West and his wife Rose West. They raped, tortured and killed and dismembered their victims. It is the most heinous criminal case I know about, that I stopped listening to true crime after hearing this one. One victim went straight to the police after being raped, but because she didn't want to press charges the Fred West was fined 50 pounds. The police failed not just once, not only several dozen times, but more than a hundreds of times to do their due diligence.
I don't recommend reading the details of what they did.
The women that Fred West and his wife killed came from the same crop as Rotherham case.
With how global the world is it can be easy to forget that there's a lot of people being forgotten right here, and what's being done to them.
Fred West's count topped out just over a dozen, and he was a native son of the land. Meanwhile the Muslims victimize 20,000x the number of girls as Fred, and they have no reason to be there in the first place.
There's a scale here that you have chosen to pretend doesn't exist. And then there's the point that we tolerate from family what we don't from neighbors or strangers.
And my point is that we need to stop doing that.
If everyone follows an ethic of 'lenient rules for Us, strict rules for Them', humanity falls into the abyss of endless conflict. It is only with a universalist ethical system, in which the permissibility of an action does not depend on race, religion, or rank, that we stand any chance of reaching the stars.
And if everyone but whites follow that ethic, and whites are the only ones that don't, then what happens?
I do not live in the world we ought to have. I live in the world as it is. And as it is right now, there are literal hordes of foreigners who will gladly swarm over my homeland and have no compunctions about protecting their own and exploiting the outsiders.
Nobody else thinks this way, and if you're the only one that does, then it's suicide.
By setting a good example, you convince everyone else to follow, bringing us to a world where people of every colour and creed work together for mankindish goodgain.
That may seem like a long shot to you, but the odds are a damn sight better than they would be given the eternal existential zero-sum racial warfare advocated for by the failed painter.
This is fantasy. It is simply not true, and you have no reason to believe it's true beyond faith and hope.
I'm not saying you can't change people's behavior, but it isn't going to be be example alone. It must include punishment and consequences for failure. You will never convince everyone, and so you must, eventually coerce.
I don't know how you can look at the world, see what's happening in Australia and Ireland and France and every other white country, and then repeat this dreck. It's willful ignorance, it's head in the sand. It's a long shot, so long as to be impossible, which is why I'm not betting on it, and certainly not relying on it for the future of my children and grandchildren and descendants.
I'm not saying it's guaranteed to work; I'm saying it has a possibility of working, whereas the chances of a good outcome from a constant battle between racial groups are as near as makes no difference to zero.
If you go into a casino and bet on a single spin of a roulette wheel, you probably won't win if you bet on any of the numbers from 0-36, but you'll definitely lose if you bet on 93.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Then why not start by telling all the feminists and progressives of various stripes, that they should be at least as outraged about this as they were about Harvey Weinstein and George Floyd (arguably as much as both combined)?
I have. I have never supported cultural relativism, and have long argued against the pernicious notion that a vile act done by a white man somehow becomes excusable when done by a Person Of Colour.
I stand against anyone, alt-right or ctrl-left, who claims that a thing forbidden one person ought be permitted another, solely on the grounds of their respective race, class, gender, religious affiliation, &c., or that blame for the misdeeds of one person ought fall on others sharing the aforementioned characteristics.
Where? I haven't seen you trying to convince progressives that they should be as upset about this as they were about #MeToo, and what you describe in the following sentences changes the subject completely.
More options
Context Copy link
Sure. That’s all well and good. But importantly most of the grooming gangs weren’t full of white people. And yes, white people act terrible. But the rape gangs were specifically racially and religiously homogenous. We shouldn’t bury our heads to this.
If Fulan al-Fulani commits numerous acts of of sexual assault and grievous bodily harm, we shouldn't bury our heads to it, and Mr al-Fulani should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law; I do not disagree with you on this.
However, if Dhuhath al-Dhuhathi has not committed any such crimes, he does not deserve to be treated as bearing responsibility for the actions of Mr al-Fulani.
I would not want to be held accountable for things I didn't do, merely because the people who did them all looked like me; therefore, the Golden Rule precludes subjecting Mr al-Dhuhathi to the same fate.
So let’s say you are designing an immigration system. Let’s say you want some small amount of immigration but a lot of people are coming to your country.
Are you going to make decisions based on limited info and discriminate against the group who commit crimes at massive rates or will you “treat everyone like an individual?”
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