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 -
Actually I’d be willing to bet heavily that the average American normie, even the more peripheral blue tribe normie, still hates communists and has an instinctive negative reaction to things being labeled as communist. The great awokening didn’t go deep enough to completely hollow out Cold War memories or basic intuition about equality and human nature.
As you can see from blue tribers calling anything right of Bernie sanders “Nazi”, name calling and shaming your opponents actually does work if repeated often enough. It works especially if it’s at least sort of or directionally true: a modern progressive hardcore blue triber is much closer to a communist than a Beltway libertarian is to a Nazi, but that never stopped basically all left wing institutions for implicitly or explicitly calling libertarians and centrists Nazis.
Mincing about trying to get the exact precise verbiage to soothe delicate “mmmm acktually!” type light blue or grey tribers who are hyper-sensitive to PMC class anxiety that’s firmly in the hands of blue tribe is a big part of the reason we got here in the first place.
So I reject your entire premise.
Running around calling people “Third Worldists” or “Critical Theorists” or “Queer theorists” or whatever flavor of Marxist inspired leftist ideology that they subscribe to is neither more precise nor more effective. An octopus’ tentacle is still part of the octopus.
Survey from last month:
favorable/
unfavorable
views (%)
So this does support what I’m saying and I wouldn’t be surprised if you cut the electorate in half and just looked at the top 50% of voters that vote the most often it would be even more skewed against socialism / communism.
Pro-communist Americans live in a nearly airtight informational bubble and they’re so highly over represented in media & education that they started to believe that they really are way more popular than they are.
From a red tribe perspective most of the pro-communist Americans are either such a lost cause that no meaningful political conversion can be had or are a product of such a toxic academic & educational environment that the only way to actually combat them is to destroy the rot at its source: seize endowments, squeeze the institutions, aggressively prosecute rule breakers, etc.
Calling communists out is very good and very productive culture war from the red tribe perspective and its self reinforcing as long as the targets truly have trouble credibly avoiding the accusations.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link