site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

My read of the historical evidence is that, in this scenario, we probably would have gone Communist in the 20s-30s, and things might well have been considerably worse.

This somehow tracks on an historical level and yet it seems off.

I know that a homogeneous society can more easily sustain more social spending and higher taxation for public goods but I think that doesn’t necessarily translate into fondness for communism or more importantly, the ability of a communist party to successfully launch a coup.

And America has a lot of built up anti-communist antibodies in the form of our religion, our civic institutions, the shape and scope of our landmass, etc.

Jacobin-like Argentina is the closer analogue. Argentina was wealthier than France at the beginning of the 20th century and absolutely imploded in slow motion until it was an utter backwater and stayed that way and might continue to stay that way unless the supreme autist Milei actually gets a durable victory.

Argentine is almost entirely European and yet managed to fuck up an enormous economic lead and turned into a socialist shithole.

I'd be interested in an analysis to that effect, whether your own or someone else's. I know there was a major such movement at that time, and I don't think blacks had much to do with the Great Depression. I'd like to think some degree of American spirit would have warded off communism, but really don't know enough to guess.

To be clear it's not my contention that without blacks everything would have gone great. I'm not a believer in earthly Utopia. But this timeline is a specific kind of ugly and I wish I could even imagine what an alternative might look like.