site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 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.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Can someone give me an analysis on who Abdul El-Sayed actually is as a person? He gave a weird interview where he said trans is a made up issue because your daughter has an I-Phone in her pocket so she will see dicks all the time anyway.

The first impression is he’s some sort of Muslim Brotherhood type. My second impression is pegging him as similar to brown friends I know whose parents do something science (medicine/engineering), are fairly wealthy, follow zero Muslim codes, hate white girls but probably slept with a few dozen in their twenties. All of these types are/can be fully assimilated into America. Half seem like they really do assimilate. The other half to me seem like they have a chip remaining on their shoulder that their people couldn’t build America.

My guess is he’s that type that still has a big chip on his shoulder to fully white people. So thinking things like sexualizing normies is perfectly fine for him in the same way a westerner might go to Thailand for a holiday and not view Thai’s as his people.

My second impression is pegging him as similar to brown friends I know whose parents do something science (medicine/engineering), are fairly wealthy, follow zero Muslim codes, hate white girls but probably slept with a few dozen in their twenties. All of these types are/can be fully assimilated into America.

Why the hell would we want them?

Regression to the mean is tough, but not that tough.

Intelligent, honest, and hardworking people are generally good beyond the direct economic benefits of their current careers, and foreign affinities, cultural mismatches, and racial differences aren't necessarily enough to counteract that.

One question is: why not just take an Egyptian Copt instead?

Islam is disproportionately represented in terror attacks, and the European experience is that illiberalism doesn't dissipate in a couple of generations. How do we make it so those aren't concerns besides favoring non-Muslims?

It's a serious problem for me personally, and for any country with a mass migration program that must skim from 2 billion Muslims.

El-Sayed is obviously whatever Hannania liked to promote as Elite Human Capital. If you are filtering for talent he’s the far right tail of Egyptian ancestry people and there probably are not many Egyptian Copts above him.

So he fits perfectly with America should take in the top .1% of shithole third world country people.

So that is why you take him. Culturally though America is always going to be a weird fit for him. The uncultural fit for people like him is to completely drop religious identity and join the global homo NYT reading blob. A lot of America still has a lot of Christian influence and being Muslim or atheists doesn’t weld very well to those places.

El-Sayed is obviously whatever Hannania liked to promote as Elite Human Capital. If you are filtering for talent he’s the far right tail of Egyptian ancestry people and there probably are not many Egyptian Copts above him.

Is he? What makes him ELITE instead of "fairly smart Muslim boosted like hell in the DEI era".

DEI complicates it. Did he qualify for DEI? As far as I know he would be a white male bucket. I believe in the American system Egyptian counts as white.

On the plus side I have him for: Double engineer parents, charismatic, above average looking, Columbia Med School.

Rhodes does do too much individual DEI and is meaningless in modern day.

Mid: UMICH. This is my midtwit line between EHC and Average. The smarter grads are fine especially as a white male

If he got into Columbia as a white male then he’s 100% elite EHC. If not he’s probably just smart.

I believe in the American system Egyptian counts as white.

Nope. I personally know Egyptians roughly that age who had academic career ending scandals swept under the rug and then were given massive career boosts by the Obama admin. "Muslim outreach" was a huge deal during his years.