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 -
...and I don't think I was disputing that. I just think it's uncharitable in the simple sense that it is luring the reader into dismissing the position as flimsy or based on incorrect information, when it is neither (not flimsy in the sense that it would be easy to flip, nor based on incorrect information in the but-for causal sense of based on), using the hypothetical example of making a similar sort of assertion about the pro-Israel side. The majority of them can probably be accounted for by one of "Jewish with unapologetic ingroup preference", "actually hates brown people" and "have learned everything they know about the conflict from crazy posts on FB/Twitter", and I think for my lived-experience intersection of "American" and "pro-Israel" this is actually basically exhaustive (I can't comment on the Irish, because the last time I knowingly talked to an Irishman in the flesh was over a decade ago during undergrad); but I don't think that taxonomy would be appropriate either, because the crazy post people implicitly anchor their worldview in community leaders who do have a more interesting position and likewise would not be swayed from their position if you forced them to read some proper objective reporting.
I disagree about Hamas/Oct 7th. The "no longer feel any sympathy" thing is a bit more complicated, though I have to say I have not heard that in the wild from leftists (even those who fall into the former two categories) at all. If you do see it that way, are you willing to bite the bullet and say that the Russian depiction of Ukraine and supportive Westerners as russophobic and genocidal is likewise accurate, given the abundance of similar rhetoric about every Ukrainian hit on Russia? (If yes, well, props for consistency, although I still disagree; if no, I will argue that you seem to be treating Jews as a special category where ill-wishes upon some members and emotive expressions of hostility are treated as uniquely more serious than for any other)
I don't recall ever claiming that it is "moderate" or "reasonable"; I was defending it only against your implicit charges of being non-serious (or, to be precise, either non-serious or significantly more immoderate/unreasonable than this still), as I explained above. I believe that on this forum, at least, we ought to be more careful about pegging movements precisely, rather than doing the normie thing and throwing everything outside a fixed window in the "literally Hitler" (literally so, in this case!) pit.
More options
Context Copy link