site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I don’t understand what Jews have to do with it. They were removed from Europe so how can you blame European problems on the Jews?

The argument is mostly that Europe imported third world shitty immigrants that hopefully the reich would have blocked. Plus concerns that the War killed off all the masculine males so Europe lost their genetic upper class and hence why Europe became so feminized.

Plus Nazis weren’t worse than the Soviets the west didn’t gain anything eliminating them.

Plus Nazis weren’t worse than the Soviets the west didn’t gain anything eliminating them.

Nazis weren't significantly worse in total, but that's in part because they had less than two decades to be awful and the Soviets had the majority of a century. The Nazis were worse faster and were planning to get much worse in total if they hadn't been stopped in time. Abandoning Eastern Europe to the Soviets was a tragedy (on a fractal scale, full of sub-tragedies and sub-sub-tragedies), but even that wasn't as bad as abandoning them to the Nazis would have been. And since even the Soviets wouldn't have been dumb enough to trust the Nazis with a peace treaty twice, stopping the Nazis required totally defeating them. Soviet democide also never completely stopped, but it wasn't accelerating, and it at least greatly slowed after "De-Stalinization".

And of course, the west west gained even more by totally defeating the Nazis. France and Norway, obviously, but Italy and at least West Germany ended up better off than they would have been during continued Axis rule. Hitler's "start a land war in Asia as a second front right before General Winter returns to duty" plan was not just a weirdly poor exception to a string of sensible practical domestic policy decisions.

Yes it would not have been good for the Slavs. But the argument is that’s still better for W Europe than the Islamification we have gotten.

You can probably assume some mellowing out over time like China embracing capitalism.

I don’t view Europe as even existing anymore as a player. So anything that gets Europe off that path is probably better.

Our timeline did not work out for Europe. The continent losts agency. So rolling the dice on what the Nazis would build seems reasonable.