site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   17976 thread views

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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Mass Migration (Invasion?) Flashpoint

The biggest news of the week is the ongoing Moroccan invasion of Ceuta, Spain. Ceuta is not on the European mainland but on the North African continent. Most recent estimates put about 60,000 migrants having crossed into Spain's North African territory, and the footage of the invasion is catching worldwide attention.

Given footage of Morocco's Royal Gendarmerie standing by while truckloads of men unload and rush the border, and the lack of any apparent effort by Morocco to prevent or control the situation, the situation seems to have been coordinated with Pedro Sanchez describing the situation as an "attack."

Amid the outrage on Twitter, old tweets resurfaced from Yair Netanyahu calling on Arabs and Muslims to invade Ceuta in 2019:

Dear Arabs and Muslims. Want to free occupied Arab Islamic lands? Here’s a good start!

Let’s make a deal, we won’t fund NGOs in your country calling you to give away Ceuta and Melilla, and you will stop funding NGOs in our country that calls us to give away Judea and Samaria

Spain's left-wing government has been extremely hostile to Israel since 2020, with Netanyahu saying in April that Spain will "pay an immediate price" after Spain denied port to cargo ships containing weaponry for Israel.

Spanish diplomats and political commentators have begun alleging the support of Israel in facilitating the Moroccan "migrant" crisis. Morocco is an ally of Israel and the United States after having signed the Abraham Accords in 2020.

Although on the face this may seems like a stretch, Israeli government officials and the Israeli Foreign Ministry sent out tweets congratulating Morocco for its "Throne Day":

To the Kingdom of Morocco, its leadership and its people, we extend our warmest congratulations on the occasion of the Glorious Throne Day.

And from the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs:

Congratulations to King Mohammed VI of Morocco as he marks the 27th anniversary of his accession to the throne. Under his leadership we are working to further cement the ties between our two countries.

It is quite these officials heap praise on Morroco on that day of all days. Other Israeli officials were more direct in tacitly supporting the attack as a punitive measure against Spain for their opposition to Israel's wars. Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations tweeted:

Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy.

Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.

And Ben Gvir tweeted:

My congratulations to the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, for his profound commitment to welcoming immigration and "human diversity."
As someone who demonstrates great concern for Hamas and the residents of Gaza, I call on you to translate words into actions: open the doors of Spain and grant refuge to the residents of Gaza who seek to emigrate. This is an excellent opportunity to contribute a little more to Spain's "human diversity."

Aside from the veiled threats and gloating coming from Israel in response to this migrant invasion of Spain, what was most surprising to learn was that this exact situation was proposed and supported by the American Enterprise Institute thinktank earlier this year. Michael Rubin, a Jewish Zionist who was a lecturer at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote on March 12, 2026 in an article tilted Madrid Bashes Israel, but Spain Is the Colonial Power:

President Donald Trump ended his first term by recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, righting a historical wrong that had chaffed Morocco for decades. As Spain turns against the West and doubles down on anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should right another historical wrong and formally recognize Ceuta and Melilla as occupied Moroccan territory. Sánchez will not do the right thing voluntarily, but perhaps his legacy nevertheless can become the end of Spanish imperialism in Africa.

You might say, ok that's interesting but it's not like it's an endorsement of what happened yesterday, except Michael Rubin wrote a follow-up article on March 16 2026 titled Morocco Should Send a New Green March into Ceuta and Melilla:

With Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez embracing the language of decolonization, Mohammed VI should reclaim the spirit of the Green March to finalize the expulsion of Spanish colonists from Moroccan soil. Ceuta and Melilla might be relatively tiny towns, but they represent illegitimate beach heads and are home to approximately 170,000 Spanish settlers. They are a weak spot for European security since African migrants regularly rush the fence to claim asylum.

Moroccans should gather, send bulldozers to the border, and then enter Ceuta and Melilla unarmed to raise the flag. Sánchez and the Spanish press bleat, but they have no grounds to act. Nor, for that matter, would NATO, even if Moroccan forces entered the towns to restore order and organize the dispatch of settlers across the Strait of Gibraltar and back to Spain.

...

Sánchez should do the right thing: make good on his anti-colonial rhetoric, and end Spain’s occupation in Africa. Meanwhile, authorities in Cádiz should begin preparations to receive displaced Spanish settlers, whether Madrid acquiesces or not.

With Yair Netanyahu's threat to "fund NGOs in your country calling you to give away Ceuta and Melilla", Michael Rubin as a Zionist operative in the American NGO apparatus has done exactly that.

Gates of Toledo

Both Latin and Arabic sources record that Jews of the city "Opened the Gates of Toledo" in 711 to the Arabs that conquered the city and ultimately began Al-Andalus. Although this comparison is being widely made on Twitter, I think Israeli and American motives here would the multi-fold:

  • Weaken, likely collapse left-wing Spanish government that has been the biggest European thorn in Israel's side.
  • Animate European Nationalism against Islam.
  • In doing so, aim for higher coupling between Israel and European Nationalist movements, posturing both as opposing the same threat.

While the first motive is the clearest with the most immediate tradeoff, I expect greater expressions of solidarity between Israel and European nationalist and even nativist movements, with Islam as the targeted common enemy.

Edit: Telegraph reports Morocco ‘facilitated migrant crossings’ into Spain, noting that "Western intelligence sources" believe the crisis was facilitated by Morocco as "diplomatic punishment" for its diplomacy with Algeria.

Morocco facilitated the sudden influx of 60,000 migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, Western intelligence sources suspect.

Sources told The Telegraph that the surge could have served as a punishment amid diplomatic frustrations with Spain.

“The displacement of such a large number of people from Morocco to Ceuta could not have taken place without the Moroccan authorities knowing about it in advance or without them allowing such a phenomenon to occur,” Haizam Amirah Fernández, the director of the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies in Madrid, said.

Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, said: “Is it possible that the abrupt, mass movement of young men from Morocco to Ceuta is being engineered or facilitated by Morocco?

“Morocco does not recognise Ceuta as part of Spain. It has referred to it as occupied territory and has in the past used the mechanism of allowing illegal migrant movement into Ceuta as leverage to gain concessions from Madrid.”

The article notes that it was the single biggest day of migrant arrivals in the history of the EU, at least 5xing the highest number of arrivals in a single day at the height of the Greek migrant crisis.

Therefore, it stands to reason diplomatic scheming on the part of Morocco and its allies created the crisis, rather than an organic migration of people who heard about last month's court decision in Spain.

I struggle to see the Israeli angle. Looks like a gleeful twitter reaction to an ongoing migrant crisis than a Israel led Muslim invasion.

Israel did not force Pedro to grant amnesty to 500k immigrants. A perceived openness to illegal migrants leads to more illegal migrants. It's not rocket science. Biden's weak stance on border control prompted the migrant crisis in the US, and Trump's stance led to freeze. In either case, the mechanism of entry and the law did not change. It's perceived incentives......

(I wrote this comment before seeing who wrote the post. I should know better)

It's just strange you struggle to see the angle when the angle is directly laid out by Israeli newspapers, and Israel is even doing directly what the article recommends. Why did ultra-Zionist Michael Rubin, representing influential US policy NGOs, directly recommend this back in April? Do you think Rubin being a Zionist Jew had nothing to do with him calling for Morocco to do exactly what it did yesterday, even though Rubin directly cites Spain's enmity towards Israel as justifying his position?

Or to frame it another way, do you think Morocco was involved in orchestrating the crisis? NYT reports being told by multiple migrants they were directed by Moroccan security forces to cross the border.

Ok, so if you admit Morocco was directly involved in the event, then you think it happened totally independent of their military alliance with Israel and totally independent of the enormous enmity between Spain and Israel?

You are saying that it's just a coincidence that Israel's ally Morocco did the thing Israeli advocates and commentators said Israel should support Morocco doing. It's fine to take that position but weird to say you don't see the angle when the angle is corroborated directly from multiple sources.

Italy has suspended Spain from the Schengen Zone, there is going to be huge blowback to the left-wing Spanish government, with elections upcoming, which has been the sworn enemy of Israel for years. To say you don't see the angle makes no sense to me.

A lot of people would disagree but I’ve come around from thinking you are crazy to believing you have been fundamentally correct on Jewish influence. Atleast as far as the Holocaust was used as a means of convincing western society that any form of racial identity was bad. Maybe that was even a good thing for a while. Plus my gut says 40% plus or minus 10% of the top .1% of wordcells are Jewish so they tend to win a lot of arguments.

I hope now that you are seeing a possibility of the right and Israel having a lot of shared interests against third worldism that we can work together now.

The problem with Zionism is they seem to have had an interests in both promoting ethnonationalism for Israel and erasing nationalism in western society. In the current world I think Zionism should be seeing a lot of benefits to promoting nationalism globally.

I think Jews are overrepresented in the top echelons of a lot of business and intellectual fields, partly due to intelligence and partly due to a bunch of ingroup factors. However, I've always felt that people assume that these Jews are way more monolithic and unified than they actually are. 'There are Jews who are hardcore zionists who want to drive the Palestinians into the Med' and 'There are Jews who laid the groundwork for a lot of modern international moralizing' are both true but I think the actual overlap is minimal and those groups both don't get on particularly well.

This is further emphasized when you notice how low-functioning people who are simultaneously hardcore Zionists and hardcore SJWs tend to be, as they're often socially oblivious enough to have wandered without noticing into a set of beliefs that's extremely unpopular in both circles of the Venn diagram it's in. Sort of a similar pathology to true TERFs, that is, those who are simultaneously hardcore feminists and hardcore anti-trans.

Hardcore feminist-only feminists are usually antitrans, it's SJWs which hold to feminism along with dozens of other beliefs which aren't.

You might think that the pro-trans SJWs lack the credentials to be proper man-hating feminists for various valid reasons, but they are nonetheless overwhelmingly the center of gravity of political actors who conceive of themselves as proper man-hating feminists today.

However, they do not conceive of themselves as man hating feminists first and foremost. They see themselves as primarily opposed to heteronormativity, of which patriarchy is one manifestation.

More comments

Sort of a similar pathology to true TERFs, that is, those who are simultaneously hardcore feminists and hardcore anti-trans.

How is that at all contradictory? If anything hardcore feminists should be true TERFs and not give a shit about nonsense males wandering into their spaces. Trans stuff being wedged next to Feminism and Sexuality issues (and Islam half the time on top of it) does produce a bunch of contradictory stuff but I don't see how anybody can find TERFs contradictory to Feminism if they can just reject the femininity/possibility of transition.

I'm not pointing to an ideological contradiction, I'm saying that they’re the overlap of groups that barely overlap.

True though the Rowling case seems indicative that TERFs are more likely to die on that hill/be proactively purged even if generally aligned

The above poster said Jews don’t act as a monolithic but I think when you say there are a group of Zionists who are also SJW that is a strong indicator that most Jews do have a sense of Jewish interests. Being a Zionists and a SJW still fits fine within Jewish interests historically even if some of the ideologies of the two beliefs are inconsistent.

I would probably argue at this point SJW is against Jewish interests but pre-Oct 7 those fault lines hadn’t been exposed.

You will never get 100% agreement in a tribe but I do think the tribe had gut instincts on rough directionality of their interests.

Did they just not notice or are they simply sticking to their principles even though it comes at a cost?

I'm all for sticking to weird unpopular principles; the problem here is that the principles are incoherent and the rhetorical stance is an appeal to popularity.

the rhetorical stance is an appeal to popularity.

I didn't understand this part.

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats