site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Why are Moroccans flooding into Spanish Ceuta?

Is it because the Spain:

  • makes it hard to remove them
  • gives them all citizenship and money
  • is generally a much nicer place than Morocco

OR

Is it because:

  • a bunch of random jews post things on twitter
  • jews in 711 betrayed Toledo to invading Arabs

Jeez, I don't know!

If you had managed to build up as much hate for Der Ewige Jude as Mr. SS has done, you would have sniffed out the correct conclusion, no matter how unlikely it seemed on the surface.

If you want to have some fun at his expense for being monothematic, fine.

If you want to act like "tee hee, this is all purely organic, no further explanation necessary", that's deranged. Take Israel out of the picture for a moment, do you think when thousands of Iraqis were trying to cross to the EU by way of Belarus, that was also completely organic, no further explanation necessary, or does the sudden appearance of multitudes of migrants from the middle east in one of the most authoritarian countries in the world imply that there was a certain amount of dark scheming (on the part of Belarus and Russia) to screw over Europe? Similarly, do you think that people being shipped by literal truckloads might imply some amount of dark scheming on the part of Morocco?

monothematic

I think "monomaniacal" would be more apt.

I am sure there is much scheming on the parts of Morocco and Belarus, I don't think that's really contested by anyone. So I don't really get what point you're trying to make.