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 -
The left is more likely to restrict language because they understand the power of language, yet also has many members that continue to use maximalist inflammatory language with terms like "defund the police" and "Islamophobia" and "trans genocide" and labeling their political opponents as "fascists" and "nazis" as well as pushing slogans like "words are violence". And I have not seen much pushback against this type of rhetoric from people on the left, but instead I've seen those on the left play defense for usage of these terms. And why would they stop? They face little to no consequence for it and it only serves to push their agenda and rile up their supporters.
Can you get more intelligent left leaning people to acknowledge that they don't actually believe those terms literally? Yes, but it seems to me that there are enough supporters that actually take those terms literally enough to have real world impact. Defund the police actually did defund the police instead of reforming police like the apologists argued it would and only after it's disastrous impact lost nearly all support. It's likely that type of language played some role in Tyler Robinson's decision to shoot Kirk. We've also had multiple assassination attempts on the President and this has been met with cheers from many of his detractors. Conservative speakers literally need extra security if they want to host an event at a college/university and there are at least several examples of events being cancelled due to security concerns.
It turns out many people are prone to being influenced by the messaging they constantly receive, and that most of their beliefs are not derived from first principles. It's why they cannot adequately defend the positions they hold and why it's often easy to find contradictions in their belief system - they never had to consider it before. Or if they have, they choose to ignore it because it's easier to pretend the contradiction doesn't exist than grapple with the possibility that their beliefs are wrong.
Actually a really great observation, since a lot of leftist beliefs on issues hinge on the idea that the problem is systemic in nature, so perhaps it is a major contributing factor to the left being less prone to conspiracy theories. There are likely other factors such as where these ideas can fester and how much push back these ideas usually get that can contribute to the growth and existence of conspiracy theories.
Also I think the term conspiracy theory itself is often used to dismiss ideas without discussing their merits. Alex Jones was right is a meme for a reason. The idea that Covid was leaked in a lab (and many other issues around covid), or that Hunter Biden laptop story was real, or that government was pressuring social media to suppress speech, or that the investigations on trump (e.g. Steele Dossier) were politically motivated and conducted via improper means, were just some of the "conspiracy" theories from the right that turned out to be true or had elements of truth within the claims, but were instead dismissed by opponents by labeling them as conspiracies. How many "conspiracies" from the left turned out to be right? I can't think of any from the last 10 years, I asked AI and the examples were all from the previous century. Maybe you can count the Russia 2016 election interference theory as having an inkling of truth to it? The lack of examples is to be expected since the left has much less conspiracy theories for the reason stated previously, but I think this is a contributing factor to the right's propensity for conspiracy theories, since some of the most impactful of them have turned out to be true.
Speaking of the worst argument in the world, I think it also applies to labeling Jan 6th as a coup, which is something Hanania does in his article.
Doesn't that just shift the conspiracy up to who created and maintains the system? In the same way that a lot of conspiracy theories get tied back to Israel/Jews, only this time it's White People/Men?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link