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 -
In death, Charlie Kirk reaped what he sowed.
It's the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. On his death, there were many in the Right who believed he could serve as the martyr that would finally force the Right to "get serious". This meant very different things to different people from retaliating for cancel culture, to aggressively implementing Trump's immigration agenda, to turning the US into an outright dictatorship and instituting the Day of the Rope. In the end, none of this happened since his death got bogged down in endless conspiracies.
It's no secret that the Republican party under MAGA really likes conspiracies. They let you substitute wishcasting for evidence. Kirk pushed a lot of conspiracy theories from big ones like [The 2020 election was stolen] to [Aghanistan's collapse was engineered to import D voters] to [J6 was instigated by the FBI/Antifa/BLM]. He also pushed smaller ones that are closer to simple misinformation, like implying the Covid vaccine makes you blind and paralyzed. But for Kirk, all of these conspiracies were instrumental. They all pointed in the same direction: helping the Republican party, or more specifically Trump.
But conspiracy theories have a tendency to mutate. When you let in epistemological rot like this, some of it might end up being turned against you during the course of factional infighting. That's exactly what happened in the case of Kirk's death. Sure, the official report from the mainstream media (bah!) is that he was killed by some rando named Tyler Robinson. But... isn't that just a little too convenient?
Tucker Carlson eulogized Kirk by presenting the Biblical narrative as a story powerful people in Jerusalem “sitting around eating hummus,” adding that “there’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I can just hear him say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Let me just kill him.’”
Candace Owens opened her show the day after Kirk's memorial by mocking Erica Kirk and claiming Charlie had been "betrayed" by someone within the TPUSA, either Jewish donors or Erika Kirk herself because golly gee, didn't Charlie's wife seem a little too enthused about going on camera after his death?
Hanannia is just a troll now. His old schtick is troll the right wing regardless of whether he agrees with what he is saying. He’s completely posts-truth now and just playing for whatever he thinks generates the most musks bucks.
I don’t think he’s truly a left-wing Democrat now. Probably votes straight Republican but he thinks he gets the most money now trolling. I don’t think he’s worth reading anymore.
More options
Context Copy link
Both sides' independent media pundits are captured by conspiracy theories because they pay the bills. This is just the new normal, not something that Kirk especially sowed in his career. The admin failed to use his death in a productive way, and we don't know why.
To me, Tyler's motives, to the extent that we've understood them, are more personally motivated rather than political. Of course they're political too, but he strikes me as someone who was protecting the honor of his partner more than he was sending a political message. Why not go for Trump instead?
It seems to be hard to react to these kinda things for modern conservative movements. Australia's Bondi Beach shooting has definitely moved the overton window electorally, but actual investigation/outcomes seem to be less than zero for conservative causes, since even ideas around increasing investigation into radical groups just led to immediately trying to use them on Australian Far Right groups rather than really censuring the Islamic community.
More options
Context Copy link
Conspiracism isn't nearly as big of an issue on the Left today compared to the Right. At least not without sneakily changing the definition of a conspiracy theory to "partisan fact I disagree with", which is different.
Antisemitism, with all the conspiracy theories and blood libel that implies, is more openly practised on the left than it has been for decades. The sitting mayor of New York City openly claims that the NYPD have only committed police brutality because they were trained to by the IDF. The New York Times uncritically ran an opinion piece claiming, with no real evidence, that the IDF trains dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. Leftists are disproportionately likely to claim that the October 7th attacks were false flags, or that most of the civilians were actually killed by the IDF as part of the Hannibal doctrine. Leftists seem just as likely as groypers to believe the specific conspiracy theory that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent, and that the only reason for continued support for Israel among American politicians is because Mossad is blackmailing them using footage secretly filmed on Epstein's island.
Outside of Jew-hatred, American leftists are disproportionately likely to believe that a literal genocide of trans people is either imminent or already ongoing. They believe that numerous people have been successfully acquitted of killings they admitted to committing using the "trans panic" defense. Some would not characterise the BLM narrative as a conspiracy theory, but I think it bears a strong enough familial resemblance to be considered an honorary member at the bare minimum.
Obviously, there's the whole Russiagate thing. Many leftists believe that the assassination attempt against Trump was staged.
Many popular conspiracy theories (the moon landings were faked, vaccines cause autism, JFK was killed by the government) are equally popular among Democrats as Republicans.
I think conspiracy theories are at least as much of a problem on the American left as on the American right. The average American believes that at least one of the last three Presidential elections was illegitimate.
Some of this is just The Worst Argument in the World, more than it is conspiracy thinking.
I think if you tried to drill down into what American leftists thought a "trans genocide" meant, they wouldn't bring up death camps or an imaginary Kristallnacht, but some states banning youth gender medicine or banning trans student athletes, or black trans prostitutes who meet bad ends, or the federal government switching to birth sex for ID's. They're catastrophizing more than they are imagining vast conspiracies.
I think BLM is based on a number of false assumptions, but I don't think it's a conspiracy theory exactly. More like a moral panic, similar to the AI datacenter panic, or fracking, or Dungeons and Dragons in the 80's. There's definitely a mistake being made, and a warped interpretations of the facts taking place, but it isn't about projecting a conspiracy out into the world. (In the case of BLM this is especially true, because advocates usually assume the issues are systemic, and not the result of a shadowy cabal, which is what a conspiracy would require.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Are you sure about that? Leftist conspiracy theories are arguably much worse because they tend to be held by people in positions in power, compared to the powerless yokels who have right-wing conspiracy theories.
Example conspiracy theory: African-American test scores are the result of systematic racism. And the higher you go up in the Democratic Party structure, the more common this belief is.
Dingbats like Tucker and Candace, on the other hand, have low status audiences.
That's not exactly a "conspiracy" though, is it? It might be wrong-headed or incorrect, but where is the shadowy cabal who planned everything out?
Like, if the 2020's election was stolen, it was stolen by a specific group of bad people, who could, in theory, be rooted out or put on trial. I think believing false things about how the world works is slightly different from a conspiracy theory. There's probably some better word for it, at the very least.
More options
Context Copy link
Republicans hold power approximately 50% of the time in the US. Like... uh... you do know who's president now, right?
Not a conspiracy, as I explained to FCfromSSC
They're big audiences though. Tucker and Candace are regularly near the top of the biggest podcasts in the US. They're very influential within MAGA.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"Trump is a Russian asset."
"The police routinely kill unarmed, innocent black men."
"The wage gap is a real measure of sexist discrimination."
"Billionaires control the government."
"Billionaires got their money by stealing it from ordinary people."
"Appropriating Billionaire wealth could pay for all/most/any significant number at all of good things people want."
"High health care costs are a conspiracy by greedy capitalists."
"Capitalism is at fault for [insert social problem here]."
Or is it time to convolute the borders of "conspiracy theory"?
These largely aren't conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories are typically things that allege multiple actors secretly coordinating for malign purposes, while concealing the real plan from the public.
Some of these like "Trump is a Russian asset" are borderline I suppose, where weak versions are just normal partisan attacks while strong versions definitely do veer into conspiracism.
Pam_they're_the_same_picture.jpeg
More options
Context Copy link
...Not convoluting the definition, but leaving it to obviously include most of the examples given while simply asserting that it does not fit them is also a strategy, I suppose.
"Trump is a Russian Asset" alleges that Trump and many members of his staff are working for the Russian government, their cooperation being secured through some combination of kompromat, bribes and ideological alignment. There is no way you can spin this claim where it does constitute a highly central example of "multiple actors secretly coordinating for malign purposes". This is your reminder that this particular conspiracy theory was a paid op by Hillary Clinton, that Obama appears to have been at minimum aware of it and declined to intervene, that Obama's senior officials were directly involved in its implementation, and that it was pushed to the hilt by every major media organization in the country for multiple years, with devastating political consequences and zero accountability.
"The police routinely kill unarmed, innocent black men" claims that police routinely cooperate to murder innocent black men and then to cover up these murders as legitimate police actions, aided and abetted by other elements of the criminal justice system such as judges, prosecutors, etc. There is no way you can spin this claim where it does constitute a highly central example of "multiple actors secretly coordinating for malign purposes". Engagement with this conspiracy theory is universal within Blue Tribe, and conformity is policed viciously.
"The wage gap is a real measure of sexist discrimination" claims that business owners secretly coordinate to violate black-letter federal anti-discrimination law, artificially depressing wages for women by 30% economy-wide and with sufficient cunning that they never, ever get caught doing it, because they hate women and want to exploit them. There is no way you can spin this claim where it does constitute a highly central example of "multiple actors secretly coordinating for malign purposes". Less prevalent that the racialized conspiracy theories at the moment, Feminism peaked early and largely exhausted itself, but we could tack on "Rape Culture/Believe All Women/Justice Kavanaugh is a rapist" as further examples as well.
"Billionaires control the government" claims that Billionaires have secretly subverted democracy through various legal, quasi-legal and illegal actions to put themselves beyond the reach of law and bend the government to their will. It universally involves claims that multiple actors are secretly coordinating for malign purposes, while concealing the real plan from the public. How could you possibly argue otherwise?
"Appropriating Billionaire wealth could pay for all/most/any significant number at all of good things people want." This one does not fit your definition of conspiracy.
"High health care costs are a conspiracy by greedy capitalists." "Conspiracy by greedy capitalists" is literally in the belief-statement, and is by no means a straw-man. Millions of people observably believe this, and are willing to endorse murder as a plausible solution.
"Capitalism is at fault for [insert social problem here]" likewise observably involves claims of malign coordination by rich villains in a large and highly central proportion of real-world instances.
I do think /u/TheAntipopulist is wrong, but I would only class the following as conspiracy theories:
Those are the only ones that really require secret coordination by a small group. The others are just false beliefs about reality. Like, where is the secret coordination mechanism for police killings or the wage gap? Even advocates of those ideas think they come from unconscious biases picked up over a lifetime of living in a racist and sexist culture, not because of specific coordination on the parts of the actors doing it. Similarly, the idea that billionaires are stealing money is often based more in the Labor Theory of Value, which is wrong but not a conspiracy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"Trump is a Russian asset" is a definitive example of a conspiracy theory, given that it's directly borrowed from one of the most famous conspiracy films of all time. People who believe this conspiracy theory are not shy about where they got their inspiration from.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Hanania:
The institutions didn't always lie. They just suddenly omitted facts while promoting others, and they did so at scale, and they did so at the intentional expense of a certain group they deemed as oppressors. Our entire societal "truth" apparatus suddenly decided to retell history and the present, and then tell us that the truths they deemed uncomfortable weren't truths at all, but some sort of "-ism". The untruths they wanted to be true were injected into the mainstream and anyone who thought otherwise was labeled accordingly.
It's true that there is a large amount of retardation occurring on the right: Tucker asking what algebra is, pretty much everything Candace Owens says, Trump constantly saying stupid things. All of these people have a massive following. That's what happens when your institutions attack the largest demographic in the country and turn them into political nomads. They earned this.
More options
Context Copy link
There are also abundant conspiracy theories about 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination. Stuff like this just brings the crazies out of the woodwork.
Somewhat ironically 9/11 trutherism seems to have legitimately fallen out of style. "Bush did 9/11" was a meme for a while, and you still occasionally see "JET FUEL CAN'T MELT STEEL BEAMS" but now few people even think or talk about Bush much, although the guy is still alive. Although it has dovetailed back in with antisemitic conspiracies.
I remember Zeitgeist being a big deal when it came out. Some stuff like the collapse of Tower 7 still bugs me a bit but honestly I do find the facially presented story is probably mostly true, with some probability reserved for how much or little certain governmental figures, particularly U.S. intelligence, were aware of and 'allowed' to happen.
??? It’s true that there’s not a lot of ‘nanothermite insider trading with ties to the bush family’ style trutherism these days but ‘Israël did it’ is more mainstream than ever, and that was always a big chunk of trutherism.
More options
Context Copy link
What's more interesting is the trading activity on 9/10. Evidently it was investigated and the findings were classified. All they released was "We have determined it wasn't Al-Queda."
The pentagon situation has also bugged me ever since, but it's rarely discussed.
What's your understanding of the "pentagon situation"?
Oh, this is not a hobby horse of mine and I can barely remember.
Something to the effect that the damage to the side of the building was not consistent with a plane collision and that the wreckage on the lawn wasn't either; that it was all covered up (as with literal fabric covers) and disposed of immediately with almost no extant photos.
Something to the effect that the, uh, side of the pentagon that was hit was shut down and devoid of personnel, just by happy circumstance -- but also that it was being used to store records about large amounts of missing money; the records themselves also going missing in the event naturally enough.
I remember the government releasing some incredibly bad security camera footage that showed nothing at all. An unidentifiable blur in one part of one frame. I also remember news media loudly declaring that the evidence was in and the matter could be put to bed, and no one pushed back at all.
Stuff like that.
I don't know much about it because there's not much to know. As I said, it's rarely ever discussed. Building 7 gets much more play.
I remember my band teacher showing us a couple of photos she had taken of the Pentagon days after the attack. She claimed she was stopped by Pentagon security and made to stop taking pictures almost immediately, and I want to say they might have seized one roll of negatives (it was long enough ago that I don’t remember for sure). My family members were completely dismissive of 9/11 conspiracies, and at that age, I tended to defer to their judgment on such matters, but her story did strike me as lending some credence to the theories.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Hoping for a lively 9/11 thread tomorrow but I'm not currently in position to host one.
Hanania: Yes, America really did deserve 9/11
Then 2000 words about how the firefighters and cops who died are low status because they weren’t as smart as your average liberal Democrat
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I wonder what other motivations Hanania might have.
More options
Context Copy link
Does this strike you as charitable?
It's not uncharitable, Kirk is just a sore subject around here. In a place that loves to butcher sacred cows, no cow is above reproach.
More options
Context Copy link
In what way is it uncharitable?
Trivially, there's another side of the political aisle that's spent decades chasing conspiracy theories. Jet fuel can't melt steel beams, Diebold stole the 2004 election and Stacy Abrams is a competent governor who totally won, HIV was a Reaganite plot, Dan Rather was totally innocent and credible. This did not result in Gabby Giffords getting forgotten and unloved among the Left: indeed, it meant that even years after it was proven that the murderer was a complete nutjob, the central example of the mainstream media would still claim a Republican politician was really responsible, and never actually pay for it.
Just as trivially, we have a surfeit of other plausible and more likely explanations that the ground facts about Kirk's assassination don't seem to have drawn out a lot of their obvious consequences, as evidenced by the part where countless progressives and leftists who would not be caught dead (to be fair, a good choice!) listening to Carlson or Owens, who either have not commented about a major political assassination (hey, Trace!), commented only to say they don't care, or actively cheerlead the killing. It there any chance that the widespread support for violence on the progressive bench, and the broad supply of FUDD about Kirk's behavior and against ? For some strange and unforeseeable reason, you haven't considered a single one.
Hell, it's even just misleading on its own terms. Kirk had actual behavior that was bad enough, but in particular the description of Kirk's treatment of J6 is conflating observing a real thing (presence and prolonged concealment of informants, presence of a left-wing person cheering the violence) as something far broader than he actually did say.
More options
Context Copy link
Grave dancing on the anniversary of a young man’s tragic death (by assassination no less) is extremely poor taste.
We shouldn’t give people who write stories like this clicks. It’s despicable and he knows exactly what he’s doing. Remind me again why we are supposed to care about what this person thinks. As far as I can tell, his influence is zero, except for a growing cadre of haters.
That's not what "charity" means in the context of political discussions.
And I remember in the wake of his death that a lot of people on this site it was "too soon" to say anything negative about him. It's been a full year and that's still not long enough? He was a political operative, who helped accelerate the Republican party's epistemological decay. That's worth discussing at some point.
Fully fine to talk about him including negative things. I think the article is trash, but that's another issue.
The bigger issue is using an anniversary or something similar to get clicks. It's like, okay you think MLK was a bad guy who did lots of bad things? Okay, legit viewpoint, but maybe not something you want to write an article about on the 1 year anniversary of his death hoping to draw attention to yourself. It's just ghoulish behavior.
I would never suggest, by the way, that the mods should delete this or that people shouldn't be allowed to talk about it. Certainly not here.
But we're also free to have a meta conversation of why we don't like it.
The anniversary produces an upsurge of talk about the topic, and then some of that talk is negative. It's not unheard of, or even particularly uncommon to hear things like "MLK cheated on his wife" on Apr 4 (the anniversary of his assassination) or on MLK day.
I haven't looked into it but aren't there are allegations that are waaay worse than simply cheating on his wife?
MLK is still a sacred cow 58 years after a death and it's considered extremely taboo to mention bad things about him. And that's despite the fact that he was perceived very unfavorably by the public in the years before his death. The left's ability to canonize him is impressive and that power should not be taken lightly. Near total narrative dominance.
Nevertheless, I certainly wouldn't use the anniversary of his death or MLK day to write about all the bad things he did. We 363 other days to do that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"My sacred idols are holy and above reproach, your sacred idols are base heathenism and should be torn down and trampled in the dirt."
Do you extend a similar level of taste towards tearing down your enemies sacred ideas?
Yeah, if I was going to write something like this I wouldn't use the first anniversary of their death to get clicks. Hanania is famous for this sort of trollish behavior.
But respect for the dead shouldn't be a partisan issue. If some lunatic were to shoot Hanania himself, I'd find something positive to say about him or at least bite my tongue.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It seems charitable enough to me.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link