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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Also, this isn't motivated primarily by ethnic tribalism, it's motivated by wanting to save the downtrodden from harm, hence the 13yo example.

Come on. And what was the ethnicity of that 13 year old carjacker? When we are discussing 13 year old carjackers in the US, we all know exactly what ethnicity we are talking about. Also, white people aren’t allowed to be considered downtrodden. Too much charity here

Brianna's activism isn't mostly for 'ethnic spoils for my tribe', it's mostly for 'pls stop killing us racists :(((('.

Also, white people aren’t allowed to be considered downtrodden

There's clearly a racial component, but people like brianna are more than happy to complain about police violence, poverty, or the opioid epidemic among poor whites, and try to help them with policy.

I think there's a thing here where, in order to 'fight the left' while still maintaining progressive moral values, people rhetorically twist the left's actions into what the left calls evil - so "white genocide", "black ethnic tribalism", "the left wants us dead", etc, even though those are not accurate. Considering the idea of 'should carjackers be killed', outside the context of 'if they are black' or 'if they are 13', is more useful - and brings up - is every life 'of equal value'? Where does the 'value' of human life come from?

When someone claims a leftist is doing "blood libel", most of the claim's power comes from claiming they hate white people or are malicious somehow, as opposed to a subtle claim of hypocrisy. And I'm claiming the application isn't particularly fair, but even weaker than when the leftists do it.

It would be very easy to ask those questions! For some reason, they don't get asked

Well, those questions have been asked in influential works of moral philosophy and politics for centuries. But the ways they're answered generally don't justify shooting carjacking black 13yos.

"Carjacking" is a form of armed robbery. Whether there is justification for shooting an armed robber while he is committing armed robbery is something that has very often been answered in the affirmative in politics.

I think the topic was karon blake's shooting? And he doesn't appear to be armed.

Although my last paragraph in GP is ... rather poorly phrased, to the extent it's basically meaningless. What I meant is that, if all lives matter equally (but at the same time each life is unique and incomparable because trading one life for another is bad), it's difficult to justify killing someone for a crime that doesn't involve killing others (as a non-armed carjacking probably wouldn't).

What would you call it if a criminal runs up to a car at a stoplight, yanks the door open, drags the driver out, gets in and drives away? That seems like a carjacking to me, but no weapon would be involved. I'd say carjacking is forcible robbery, whether that force is armed or unarmed.

OK, I guess there are strongarm carjackings as well as armed ones. Either way, you can find justification for shooting robbers, though you can probably find more justification for shooting armed ones. But Karon Blake's case, as described above, wasn't carjacking. Might have been vandalism and/or theft from vehicle, both of which are property crimes.

'ethnic spoils for my tribe', it's mostly for 'pls stop killing us racists :(((('.

False claims of being killed, are called "blood libel", when the defamed group is Jews. It is considered not in anyway lesser form of antisemitism than advocating for a Jewish quota.

This claim is a particularly absurd, as it inverts of the reality of interracial murder: there more Black-on-white murders each year, than white-on-Black.

people rhetorically twist the left's actions into what the left calls evil

Not twist, apply to all groups equally, instead of picking and choosing which races getting persecuted counts as "racism".

There's a difference between the claim being incorrect, and the claim being an accurate description of why brianna and liberals do what they do. They aren't motivated by ethnic spoils! They're motivated by a desire to stop poor, oppressed, forced-into-crime-by-poverty-and-racism black people from being killed.

How would you tell the difference?

Most liberals, being white, aren't motivated by selfish ethnic spoils for blacks. Things like 'not using racist language that might hurt black people' are well explained by 'really worried about people being hurt by racism in unfounded ways', and poorly explained by racial spoils.

So that leaves black people - what are they motivated by? Probably a lot of poor black people are partially motivated by something that's closer to 'ethnic spoils' - like, vote democrat for welfare (A liberal would say: yeah, if you're poor, you're voting to alleviate poverty, how is this bad??). If you're a petty criminal, you'll probably prefer dems who aren't tough on crime. But Brianna "earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School", "Gray supported Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign and joined his 2020 campaign as his National Press Secretary", "Since Sanders' 2020 Democratic primary campaign ended, Gray returned to her role as contributing editor at Current Affairs in addition to co-hosting the Bad Faith podcast with former Chapo Trap House co-host Virgil Texas". She's stewing in the same left/socialist ideas all those white people are in - she supports Black Lives using the exact same rhetoric, and in the exact same ways, that high-status white socialists do.

from whining's post, on brianna: "that you have a moral obligation to allow yourself to be victimized by her tribe"

That it's "her tribe" isn't particularly relevant here. American ethnicities are complex historical accidents - nothing's innately black about defending a criminal underclass, and white criminal underclasses have exited at points in history. Nothing really stops libs from defending a hypothetical italian mafia in a country where POCs are the model minority.

Most liberals, being white, aren't motivated by selfish ethnic spoils for blacks.

Again, how would you know? There's definitely nothing contradictory between these two things. If you buy the "original sin" approach to racism, giving ethnic spoils to other group fits right in.

So that leaves black people...

Nothing you wrote answers my question: how would you tell the difference, if that is what she actually wanted?

Isn't being able to rob cars without risking getting shot a form of ethnic spoils?

If shooting a car-robber makes one a criminal, what should be the appropriate punishment for such criminals according to Briahna? Restorative justice? Immediate cashless bail? Benefits like in Richmond CA?

I think the implication is that Brianna being black is a main driver of her support, like, if she was born Indian or White, or if she was Black but hispanics were the primary "poor race forced into crime by socioeconomic factors" group, she wouldn't make a big deal about it. But when we see Brianna's white friends, or harvard-educated friends, be similarly outraged about BLACK BABIES being killed, that doesn't work? What does the word 'ethnic spoils' mean? I'd expect it to either imply a person is 'nepotistically' attempting to help their co-ethnics (falsified by black wokes being about as mad as white wokes), or that the wokes are giving 'spoils' to an ethnic group in a direct, political-machine like exchange for support (but 90% of blacks aren't criminals, this works for welfare but not 'no kill black kids').

If shooting a car-robber makes one a criminal, what should be the appropriate punishment for such criminals according to Briahna? Restorative justice? Immediate cashless bail? Benefits like in Richmond CA?

sure, libs are hypocritical and dumb, that doesn't mean their motivations are 'ethnic spoils'

I don't remember the exact quote, but she makes a point that joyriding is a common, and rather innocuous activity.

I doubt that a white liberal would claim that.

I saw similar claims from black twitter users that a cop should not have shot a black teenager(?) that was actively engaged in stabbing another teenager(?) because knife-fighting is a rather common and harmless activity that young people engage in. I doubt that this is a viewpoint that makes white people comfortable.

The way American media presented it was by cutting the bodycam video at the point where you can see the black perp dropping the knife. If they thought that knife-fighting was a harmless past-time that would not turn down their sheepish viewership from supporting BLM, why did they cut it?

My understanding of the white support of BLM is that they have a poor understanding of the actual violence cops have to deal with in the US. If they are advocating for violent criminals to be straight up released, they are not asking for that in their own neighborhood.

Here's an example

But when we see Brianna's white friends, or harvard-educated friends, be similarly outraged about BLACK BABIES being killed, that doesn't work?

They're insulated from black violence. Sure they'd love to see fewer black babies harmed, in a vacuum, until these black babies are literally holding them at gunpoint, then they'll demand the police, or the federal marshalls

Federal Judge Susan Dlott wrote the book on racial profiling in 2002.

“There’s three black men with guns at our house,” Dlott told a 911 operator after she escaped the home invasion and ran to her neighbor’s house one mile away.

That’s Racial Profiling 101: Identifying the criminals by race, as if that had something to do with it.

Some of these people don't see themselves as white, and see themselves as on the same side as the blacks, which is why they are demanding ethnic spoils. Demanding ethnic spoils for another tribe is performative, a form of Law of Jante, but for the blacks like Briahna, it is straight up 'taking what's ours'.

Not that all blacks necessarily believe that, but that's a commonly observed sentiment, and it's not like American culture in general provides any sort of pushback against the idea that 'blacks are owed everything'.

I don't remember the exact quote, but she makes a point that joyriding is a common, and rather innocuous activity.

I doubt that a white liberal would claim that.

I wasn't able to find any examples of white (or black, aside from a journal article from 1990) people defending joyriding, so I can't really test this directly. But ... how is this different from when white liberals defend homeless drug users, petty thieves, or black criminals who are victims of police brutality? Combine that with relaxed approaches to accuracy and mistakes in casual speech, and it's well within distribution.

The way American media presented it was by cutting the bodycam video at the point where you can see the black perp dropping the knife. If they thought that knife-fighting was a harmless past-time that would not turn down their sheepish viewership from supporting BLM, why did they cut it?

you're mixing together several groups of people and motivations, and finding a contradiction in it. but they aren't unified! "The media" and "white liberals, generally" are different - someone (as some 60s-80s gay rights activists did) who believes that pedo rights are a part of LGBT rights can still suppress the pedo part of LGBT activism to aim for mainstream palatability. Dishonest editing attempts to play to the public's values, not the values of your team. Even then, 'a black person claiming police shouldn't intervene in knife fights because they're common and relatively harmless' could be race-specific without brianna's attitudes being race specific. And even if it wasn't race-specific, that doesn't mean all liberals (and therefore 'the media') believe it, just that some do as part of the broader tendency i'm arguing for.

To be clear, there is some attitude of 'racial solidarity' among some blacks that opposes policing or law enforcement on blacks, and supports things like welfare, on the grounds of opposing 'them predating on us' / police brutality / racism / 'snitching'. But that isn't the only or main contributor to blm support among blacks, and isn't even close to significant for brianna specifically (again, graduated from harvard law, co-hosted a left-wing podcasts with "Virgil Texas").

As a harsher contrast to the characterization of white and black motivation, consider the weather underground - here we have white people participating in black power bombings! Along with black people! How does this fit into the 'radical black progressivism is black ethnic tribalism'? If it quacks like a duck, probably it's a duck - but if the pigs and goats are quacking too, it's worth checking.

Are you denying that there is a racial component to 'black lives matter'? Instead of a less racially charged name like 'End police brutality'?

Where was Briahna when Ashli Babbitt was summarily executed by Capitol police for trespassing unarmed?

Where was Briahna when James Fields was charged multiple life sentences for hitting a car in front of him during a protest with no law enforcement control?

In the same exact video Briahna even mentions Rittenhouse in a disparaging manner.

By Briahna's logic, nobody should have attacked Rittenhouse. He may have committed some kind of offense by 'crossing state lines' with a rifle or being at a riot or what not, but that does not justify attempting to murder him with a gun or a skateboard!

(again, graduated from harvard law, co-hosted a left-wing podcasts with "Virgil Texas"

I don't see how this informs her motivation for decreasing law enforcement against her kin.

Here is the quote:

'Joyriding is very common, people joyride in all kinds of communities, teenagers go and try to find open cars, ride around and abandon them on the side of the road. You can look up statistics about how common this is...'

My prior is that this is an unexpected statement coming out of a Harvard's graduate's mouth.

It seems that they're letting all kind of riffraffs in these schools now.

Good for diversity right? We need more prosecutors and judges that are familiar with petty criminals, career criminals, otherwise, how could they possibly do a good job?

Virgil Texas also looks like the kind of guy that would hate the white tribe and would stand for black criminals over white families.

Here she is in that video claiming that police violence affects blacks disproportionately.

Which is not true, black people interact more frequently with the police, due to the whole committing half of the violent crime thing, they are not disproportionately killed when adjusted for frequency of interaction.

She even says at 17:36

What specifically are you as a politician going to do for black people? Which is a very reasonable question to ask.

Imagine somebody claiming that it would be reasonable to ask politicians

What specifically are you going to do for white people?

Seems like she wants people to go out of their way to do things specifically for her kin.

here we have white people participating in black power bombings! Along with black people! How does this fit into the 'radical black progressivism is black ethnic tribalism'

Some whitish people identify with the black tribe, or at least against the white tribe. There are a number of articles written by whitish journalists out there that essentially amount to 'white people are terrible'. That does not say anything of black people's motivations for supporting their own tribe and selectively demanding more relaxed law enforcement.

That was 50 years ago and these people are still around, some of them barely did any time for terrorism.

Susan Rosenberg was involved in BLM for example.

The default of American society is to favor blacks and disfavor whites, at all levels of government.

We are all complicit in this anti-white system, again, that does not really say anything about the motivation of black people themselves.

If violence, such as killing a 13 yo kid is a bad thing, then surely, black criminals committing ~50% of the violent crime is a bad thing.

If one wanted to alleviate this issue, and a more violent police was found to reduce the rate of violent crime, wouldn't that be progress, according to Briahna?

If the police killing 10% more innocent black kids every year was able to reduce the violent crime committed against black kids, to reduce the overall total black victims of violence, shouldn't BLM support that solution?

The murder rate is currently rising in majority-black cities in the last couple years, and this is associated with the police pulling back due to public outcry over brutality.

I don't know if causation can be found, but it seems that the public outcry against the police is hurting black people.

I believe that Briahna should stop advocating for more safety for black criminals.

even though those are not accurate.

Hold on, is inaccuracy grounds for dismissal? In that case why hasn't "'pls stop killing us racists :((((" been roundly dismissed?

Grounds in what sense? There isn't some lib in this conversation whose hypocrisy is being exposed by differing standards here. Why should I lazily believe dumb ideas just because people I dislike believe dumb ideas?

Are the people you dislike libs? And by that do you mean left wingers?

My political views are, in an absolute sense, far-right - I just care a lot about detail, so I can find disagreement with most points, including ones that point right.

Inaccuracy is grounds for dismissal for my views, even though it isn't for the left-wingers, and no amount of me disliking them (in a political sense) should change that.

You made a distinction between liberal and left wing in last week's thread, is the main reason why I asked for clarification, although I was/am confused about your political alignment, and because of that same post.

It is unusual for a far right winger to so eloquently and accurately model left wing philosophy - none of the left wing motters objected to it, and it's not like them to leave a strawman of the left standing - while also strawmanning the right. Yeah, you said reactionary isn't the same as conservative, but you also set up a dichotomy presenting a sort of reasonable, rational version of left wing philosophy vs the absolute least reasonable and rational right wing philosophy. A right wing philosophy which has never been espoused on the motte, one you brought in from the stupider corners of the internet either to make the right look dumb or to make the left look good.

To be clear, knowing left wing philosophy in itself simply implies attention to detail, it is the dichotomy which makes your far right status incomprehensible. Are you just so deeply immersed in left wing culture that this stuff is invisible to you? This isn't meant as a dig, that's actually something I had to deal with in the past myself. I don't think you are a cuckoo, because it seems to me you have too much self esteem to waste your time pretending to be right wing to trick nobodies on obscure debate forums, but I do think there is a reason others consider you suspicious, and it's not paranoia.

Hm, how specifically are you saying I was strawmanning the right? If my guess is correct ("white genocide", "black ethnic tribalism", "the left wants us dead")

but you also set up a dichotomy presenting a sort of reasonable, rational version of left wing philosophy vs the absolute least reasonable and rational right wing philosophy

I think what happened is - people like Brianna really aren't primarily motivated by "ethnic tribalism". Attempting to act on that belief, whether by trying to persuade "open-minded progressives" of it or something else, is not useful. So I tried to argue against it So upthread,

me: Also, this isn't motivated primarily by ethnic tribalism, it's motivated by wanting to save the downtrodden from harm, hence the 13yo example.

mismembrance: Come on. And what was the ethnicity of that 13 year old carjacker? When we are discussing 13 year old carjackers in the US, we all know exactly what ethnicity we are talking about. Also, white people aren’t allowed to be considered downtrodden. Too much charity here

me: I think there's a thing here where, in order to 'fight the left' while still maintaining progressive moral values, people rhetorically twist the left's actions into what the left calls evil - so "white genocide", "black ethnic tribalism", "the left wants us dead", etc,

These weren't intended to be central examples of conservative thought, just areas where "twist right-wing idea into left-wing hole" is particularly jarring. More center-right examples look like "democrats don't really care about black/hispanic people, they just (racismly) use welfare/immigration/... to get their votes" and abortion, farther-right abortion as not-perpetuating-your-line-and-society vs center-right and popular abortion as killing-helpless-cute-babies-wtf. And the idea is - the center-right ideas are in significant ways correct, but end up confused and not really useful when molded with left-wing stuff.

"Black ethnic tribalism" I don't think is a strawman, considering the thread above. "White genocide" / "the left wants us dead" aren't common here, but are things I see daily (due to reading far-right stuff) and stark examples.

Saying "brianna is motivated by saving black children" isn't charity, it's just trying at accuracy. Her defense is still bad, because the

  • and her action can be dumb, degenerate, or anything else while that's true. Maybe caring about 'preventing harm to oppressed people' in a pure sense, as opposed to generically caring about the lives people have and

*tangent: I don't care about abortion as a context-free moral act, a 3 month old fetus is much dumber and feels much less than a pig, but abortion is bad to the extent it's used to block reproduction - i.e. an abortion as a way to not have children is roughly exactly as bad (and it is bad!) as birth control and voluntarily not having children. But picking on abortion as 'wtf killing babies!!!!' instead of 'the important part is creating more people' is a similar thing. It also makes it totally ineffectual, your anti-abortion crusaders put energy into protests outside clinics instead of having more kids themselves.

If this is true then you're the kind of far-right winger that sets Hlynka off on rants about how you're essentially a Democrat. Like, what kind of non-leftwinger doesn't know that the response to BLM was ALM, not some vague opposition symmetrical to the one towards "It's ok to be white"?

I agree with you that the poll results for the OK to be white thing are actually a pretty accurate reflection of reality, especially because I’ve never seen anything about “it’s okay to be white” outside of extremely online internet communities and maybe a Tucker Carlson segment so I don’t think the average black poll respondent is recognizing it as a meme/“dogwhistle”. But the normie conservative “all lives matter” is essentially the same thing as the vague jargon about dogwhistles and context that libs use to reject “it’s ok to be white”. The normie con correctly interprets the seemingly agreeable “black lives matter” as a Trojan horse for a much larger set of political demands. I would imagine if you polled republicans about Black Lives Matter they would respond unfavorably despite agreeing with the plain meaning of the phrase.

I'm not sure precisely what you mean in the second sentence?

I'm referring to this comment, and how you implied the liberal reaction to "it's ok to be white" is symmetrical to the conservative reaction to BLM. That's a relative common argument, but not for non-leftwingers.

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