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Let's talk about the Örebro Party: (Swedish) lefty socialists except they support remigration.
Key quotes from Wikipedia (emphasis mine)
They've made headlines recently (and got on my radar) because Mullvad's CEO donated €452,000 to them.
My perspective on remigration:
People should live in their own communities. I remember reading an article about a tradcath community, and presumably the article wanted to criticise and mock them, but I thought they had decent values and the world is better with them. Or the furry community, even though they can be weird, sometimes produce amazing works like this. Or the unique cultures from other countries and ethnicities...hence the appeal of reversing immigration.
Immigration has ruined communities. A massive problem with today's culture is that it has become one monoculture: everything is becoming gentrified, secured, and impersonal. Translation tools, ethnic stores, etc. are accelarating this (despite otherwise being positive by granting me interesting new cultures and vice versa), by making every culture adapt every other culture's most viral aspects (which aren't necessarily good, like arguably convenience food and tipping). LLMs are accelarating this. But immigration is perhaps most accelarating this: some immigrants are even beneficial, but immigrants who don't know or respect the culture's customs, don't socialize with the rest of the community, take more than they contribute (without an apparent excuse), commit much more crime than the existing community, and don't even speak the language...break community members' unspoken understanding, friendship, altruism, trust, and communication with their neighbor.
But remigration isn't a solution. First, because I can't imagine how to do it remotely ethically. Comparing anything right-wing to Nazism is an overused cliche, but it fits here: AFAIK Nazis initially planned to just deport the Jews somewhere (Madagascar), but ended up brutally overworking and exterminating them, because their end goal was to get rid of them and that was easiest. How would you get rid of immigrants if Somalia etc. won't accept them? What if it's too expensive? What if it's dangerous for them? What about women and children?
These are difficult questions not only morally, but the infrastructure (military tactics) to effectively implement remigration is dangerous for your own sake. It risks broadening persecution, creating a fascist state, an ugly monoculture...the exact failure it seeks to prevent.
So what to do? I don't oppose moderate immigration reform, like:
Honestly, I don't think these are enough to reverse the decay of culture and public resources, and they may seem like a waste of resources for unwanted immigrants, but I think too much immigration/remigration would be worse (for culture and public resources). A real solution must be broader than immigration. Fixing the other issues: making LLMs more diverse, further improving translation tools and incentivizing ethnic stores to include more cultural nuance, and increasing nationalism as a side-effect of addressing the elephant in the room: convincing most of the population to like their government (maybe by having it do something notable for the public and advertising it, and electing new parties with less out-of-touch politicians, even Örebro if they tone down remigration).
Arguably the above essay is another milquetoast thought experiment with the same conclusions everyone already knows: obviously government should not be so corrupt, etc. So another point of discussion is why Örebro decided to focus on this as their stand-out policy. Is it just marketing and they plan to implement something much more moderate (I realize I'm bad at marketing, but I'm skeptical this would work for a generally leftist party). Is it a radical idea to appeal to the working class? Is it only the media that's focusing on this policy, and Örebro themselves consider it a less important part of the agenda compared to the socialist policies? (Probably all of the above, especially the third.)
I do think we need some radical solution to fix societal decay, although it may emerge outside policy, like a technological breakthrough, or just younger generations replacing older ones and having a drastically different culture. I don't think it's in immigration. Maybe the Örebro party will get elected by arguing for remigration, but if they actually want to improve Sweden, I believe the bulk of their implementation must be in their other policies.
This runs into problems, because one of the things the public wants from its government is to be against immigration, which many governments can't be.
It also has deeper challenges because the government of European countries seem to have people who believe - with some justice - that nationalism is a reactionary force that can organize people against immigration and the new multicultural state. This is on top of their general tendency to see it as a bit low class and cringe.
This is why Starmer's attempts to seize patriotism rang a bit hollow; his supporters would be the ones to write worried op-eds about the spread of English flags in public. Before him, I don't think Sunak cared at all either way, that's why it didn't occur to him that missing the anniversary of D-Day would be an issue.
Why would younger generations replacing new ones not accelerate the cultural decay? Older people can maintain a good status quo as well as a bad one.
Nationalism and immigration don’t need to conflict: nationalism and large-scale immigration can’t work except with a large suppressed underclass, but a small ratio of immigrants can be patriotic (towards their host) and the host culture’s identity and cohesion can remain.
A large ratio of the population supports at least some immigration (the Swiss referendum to cap the population failed). My understanding is that most people are unhappy because their economy is failing, institutions are overwhelmed, culture is broken…all problems worsened and maybe primarily caused by immigration, but I doubt extreme remigration will solve them. Reducing corruption, improving police enforcement, and moderate immigration reform would at least improve them.
On the other side, politicians who believe nationalism is intrinsically bad (or anti-immigrant) are wrong and should be voted out. Starmer’s image is ruined; unfortunately for him, the best way for a leftist party to get nationalist support is to publicly disavow him and other Labor politicians, or at least publicly disavow his failed policies.
National identity and imports must be balanced for culture: too much national identity creates a waning culture of nostalgia, too much imports creates an incoherent diluted culture, only a good amount of both creates a culture that improves over time.
Because the decay may be caused by most people having the opinions of zoomers and millennials, but living under gen X and boomer status quo, thus feeling oppressed.
I agree, but it's unlikely to be much relevant. Large scale immigration is going to be the policy, because industrialized populations stopped having kids. This is one reason the ruling class feel they cannot stop. There is not going to be any sort of post-Ellis Island pause-and-assimilate because the demographic conditions are just going to get worse and worse.
Similarly, the demands of the asylum system make large scale immigration the most likely outcome, and immigration from adversely selected migrants at that.
I'll grant it. But A strong plurality want significantly less immigration and you should also factor in the fact that most people aren't political junkies and don't actually know how many migrants are being let in. IIRC, in Harper's time Canadians consistently underestimated it and being informed, dropped their support for immigration. When Trudeau made it undeniable it nearly destroyed the Liberals.
Britain has consistently voted for right wing parties and causes, people simply haven't gotten what they wanted.
I'm sure plenty of people would like some moderate solution that resolved the issue without maximal unpleasantness, but that's not what happens. Now they're trending more and more to the extremes to resolve it.
You're just asserting this though. It's not always about something else, sometimes people just don't want migrants. Now, Westerners know that it's taboo to say this but it's not actually odd. Outside of the West nations like Japan take far fewer migrants than the Bryan Caplans of the world insist would be good for them. South Africans complain about Nigerian migrants. Britons complained about Polish migrants who I bet they'd now take gladly. People also just don't like migration and the sense that their culture is slipping away. That's a part of the equation that can't be written off to talk about other things. The left-wing view that all problems that come from tribes interacting are just atavistic interpretations of an underlying material issue is an ideological precept, not a fact.
This is precisely why the pro-migrant establishment is not trusted by nationalists: a nationalist cannot say "I just want my country to stay similar to its past and to continue to primarily represent my group", they will be told what other, more legitimate reasons they can have to complain.
But even on the purely material plane there are issues that would be solved by just strangling the importation or removing certain groups. It is a matter of fact that many immigrant groups never pay for themselves due to disproportionate welfare usage.. Removing them would solve this fiscal problem, preventing more of them would ameliorate it. Many immigrant groups have a higher rate of crime. Removing them would resolve this problem.
It's also a bit strange to act as if You Can Just Do Things, when immigration changes the very nature of the government. Is it possible that the reason one cannot fix these issues is that immigrant voting blocs can veto things they don't like? Is it possible the UK police behaves in what seems like absurd ways because the existence of ethnic blocs (and the risk of being considered racist towards them - which would be of lower salience in a more homogeneous country) make the "two-tier" behavior the path of least resistance?
If immigrants are changing the level of resistance you would face doing a thing it doesn't make sense to say that you can just improve things anyway while getting more immigration. They've manifestly failed to do that, and the more migration you have the harder it is.
I mean, this is just a case-in-point of the problem: immigrants vote too, and people are able to understand that white guilt politicians are better for their interests. Obviously, for now, you can vote the Starmers out. Surely at some point that stops being viable? If so, how does that factor into your proposed solution of migration-but-more-moderate?
You're going to have to give me some example of the dangers of this supposed nostalgia, and maybe show why those dangers are worse than losing any sense of shared destiny/creating mutual ethnic strife and so on that we already see.
People who intrinsically dislike immigrants: I don’t appeal to, but I’m sure they’re the minority, even prominent anti-immigrant politicians have immigrant friends/family (e.g. the AfD leader’s Sri Lankan wife).
People who don’t want a majority of immigrants in their community: I think that’s fair, and I’d support an immigration policy that caps number of immigrants at some ratio of the population (even refugees, because too many will overwhelm the system and there are other safe countries).
Although as you mention, small-scale immigration may not happen, in that case I doubt remigration would either.
A culture can survive without foreign imports, as this is what the “culture” of the entire planet does.
But:
It can’t compete with cultures that take the best advancements from others
It can’t focus too much on nostalgia. Some is OK, but it must experiment and evolve new characteristics. Otherwise it’s the nation equivalent of “peaked in high school”, guaranteed to become incompatible with the rest of the changing world
They don't have to intrinsically dislike immigrants. They can just dislike mass migration. Or mass migration from certain groups. "Immigrants" flattens things too much. Many nations took Ukrainian refugees with much less noise than would come from taking Somali refugees. I assume there're reasons for this.
I mean, case in point.
Fair. I don't think so either. But it's not that I don't think, if the government was magically replaced by Stephen Millers, it wouldn't work.
How would you rate the East Asian countries like Japan on these criteria?
Japan took inspiration from other cultures: manga and anime are directly inspired by Western comics and cartoons.
Yes, I know. That's the point: you don't actually need immigration to compete economically or have a vibrant culture. So I'm not sure the relevance. Seems like a false dilemma. You can learn how to make a croissant without importing Paris.
That's true.
There's still some relevance: if you import from other cultures, it's less likely you oppose immigration from them (at least the experts of whatever you imported). But I admit it's possible.
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