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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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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.

No, I'm arguing it's symmetrical in the respect that 'if you ask people about the phrase in polls, they'll disagree with it in a way that doesn't reflect their broader views, because the phrase is mostly used as a political slogan divorced from the plain meaning'. Not symmetrical generally.

The responses to these statements go beyond polls, we've had entire discussions on them. Again, your response is extremely progressive.