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 -
I hope that this comment doesn't get me banned, because I'd like to talk about a very inflammatory subject, and no matter how impartially you discuss it people tend to get angry about stuff like this. I'm hoping that the culture war thread in the Motte is a place where we can talk about such difficult subjects from a purely intellectual strategic perspective without getting emotional.
I think one of the major failures of our democracy is that it easily allows foreign intelligence agencies to easily game the system. For example, it's obvious to anybody who examines the evidence that Epstein was a Mossad asset. Not only was Ghislaine Maxwell's dad Mossad, but on top of that all of Epstein's money came to him in suspicious ways. Supposedly he was a wealthy financier, but I'm currently trying to start a hedge fund myself and I can tell you all of these investment companies leave a long paper trail. If you have more than ten investors in a single state, you need to register with the Fed. And at the scale of money that Epstein had, he would need to register with the Fed anyway regardless of the De Minimus exemption.
Another example is George Soros. His influence on politics is undeniable, and he actively sabotages Western nations for profit. Unlike Epstein, it's much harder to prove that Soros works directly for Israel, but the web of influence he has spun is undeniable.
Here's where the controversial part comes in: I think the only actionable solution to this problem is to nuke Israel in a way that is plausibly deniable. Obviously we couldn't do this openly, since Israel undoubtedly has nukes hidden in some American cities in case Mossad blackmail ever fails disastrously (which is currently happening thanks to the preponderance of DeepFakes making all blackmail material irrelevant). I believe that Netanyahu had referred to this failsafe in the past as "the Samson doctrine" (which is very poetic, I have to admit). This is why the nukes would need to be deniable. Some of Russia's old cold-war era suitcase nukes would do the trick. Maybe one planted in Jerusalem, and another in Tel Aviv. Is this an atrocity? Sure. But I would argue that by supporting a government which allows its intelligence agency to use pedophile rings like Epstein to blackmail their "closest ally," the Israeli people are themselves committing an atrocity, and they should be held responsible for the actions of their government, which they themselves elected. Just like the German people elected Hitler - and paid a price for it - the Israeli people elected Netanyahu, and so they should be held accountable for any crimes his government commits. It's pure game theory, that's all. If you don't punish tribes that cross ethical lines like this, their behavior will replicate, whereas if you punish them with extreme prejudice, other nations will learn that this kind of behavior is absolutely not tolerated. (I don't want to get into the subject of Gaza - that's WAY too controversial a topic to even touch. I am purely talking about the crimes the Mossad committed by using Epstein as an intelligence asset, which I feel is easily provable and fairly defensible.)
Anyway, despite their low yield (probably a mile in diameter) the suitcase nukes will work because they don't need to blow up the whole city, they just need to cause enough infrastructure damage to cripple Israel, and the secondary blast radius will force most of these cities to be evacuated and unusable. At that point, the surrounding Muslim countries (most of which are hostile to Israel) will sweep in and finish the job. Even if their governments hold back, the armed extremist groups who hate the Jews will definitely act. Then the remainder of the Epstein files can be leaked, revealing Mossad involvement. While Israel is crippled, the general public population of their "greatest ally" will be calling for revenge against them.
Netanyahu is unlikely to activate the Samson doctrine because he will need American support to deal with the exodus of Jewish refugees fleeing the now shattered nation. If he activated the Samson doctrine, then every Jewish person outside Israel's borders would undoubtedly be seen as a potential Israeli agent, and in that kind of environment, what started as the destruction of Israel would undoubtedly end up as the extermination of the entire Jewish race. After all, what government would tolerate the existence of a Fifth Column religious group that smuggled nukes into their own cities at the behest of a hostile foreign power? Anyway, Game Theory suggests that even if Israel IS stupid enough to activate the Samson doctrine, it's worth taking the hit in order to eradicate them and teach all other countries that sponsorship of Epstein-style assets is a red line that they absolutely should not cross. If we lose L.A. or D.C., frankly I don't think that would be such a great loss from a societal perspective. Obviously it would be a tragedy in terms of the lives lost, but in terms of the "Greater Good" I think it's affordable.
However, for such a plan to work, we need a good smokescreen, so that our nukes have plausible deniability. This means that Israel needs to be at war, big time. If Iran gets nuked, it's highly likely that any suitcase nukes that hit Israel would be attributed to extremist groups in the Middle East doing a revenge bombing. This is why I supported the U.S. getting involved in the war with Iran on behalf of Israel. It's not because I'm a fan of Israel, it's just that the more the situation in the Middle East escalates the more likely it is that any suitcase nukes that hit Jerusalem and Tel Aviv will be attributed to Muslim extremists rather than us.
Anyway, that's my Ted Talk. I'm curious about what the rest of you think. I'm not interested in debating the morality of this, just the logistics. If this is too controversial a topic even for the Culture War roundup, please let me know and I'm happy to delete this comment.
I don’t know if you’re trolling, or specifically 4d chess trolling to make critics of Israel look retarded, or if you’re trying to get the forum taken down by “fedposting” about the logistics of a suitcase nuke. I think mods should probably insta-remove posts that ever mention “plan” and “logistics” in relation to this kind of stuff, even if it seems ludicrous and completely schizo. This kind of posting seems like the easiest way for a bad actor to get ISPs to ban the website.
Long ago some troll would make new accounts "just asking questions" about the Holocaust. Not making positive claims but clearly fishing for wrongthink. For some inexplicable reason someone wants to snipe us.
I don't even get the point given SecureSignals is allowed to get on their soapbox.
SecureSignals got modded for making a post once a week on things that he found interesting that related to the holocaust and zionism.
What I don't get is, who is getting sniped and how? This isn't reddit. Do ISP's in the US, or wherever this site is hosted, ban Holocaust denial?
This is not true. You know this is not true.
As for trolls (@naraburns has already pretty effectively answered your blinking doe-eyed "confusion" as to why a troll-post from a burner account proposing we nuke Israel got banned), it's true we don't get "sniped" in the way we did on reddit from leftists trying to get us evicted. Now that we are on our own platform, it would be more effort to go after Zorba directly or our upstream hosts, and it doesn't seem likely anyone cares about us that much. Nonetheless, we do periodically get sniped and trolled by the JAQers and the accelerationists and giggly edgelords. Why? Why does anyone do these things? For the lols, or maybe to screenshot the Motte's greatest hits for sneerclub entertainment.
I am sure they appreciate your much more sincere efforts.
It is true, and you insinuating that I'm knowingly lying is the kind of stuff that makes you inconversable. Along with uncharitable characterizations and snark.
Naraburns didn't answer my comment per se, though he did reply to it. He just wrote the comment he wanted to write. I can instead of getting him to the point of contention just pretend along with him that the reason the 'Nuke Israel' comment got reported and modded was because of the 'consensus building' from a sock account, and not the 'Nuke Israel' part. Saltminer is certainly not the dream defendant.
Now, I'm not sure you maintain that pretense, so feel free to clarify. My point was that the standard I believed Naraburns was acting on when modding the comment was at best inconsistent. If this place consistently took issue with genocidal or otherwise grotesque rhetoric or sweeping unsupported statements, the examples I posted would be rule breaking. Naraburns tells me I'm completely off the mark, the modding in this instance only happened due to the nature of the account and how rhetorically out of tune it was. Making a comment about the validity of nuking Israel from a game theory perspective is not forbidden. In fact, if this poster had done a better job there would be no issue to contend with from a mod perspective. So why care about the nuking Israel part? It's just a burner account using out of tune rhetoric.
Now, I just don't believe that's true. But even then, if the same poster ever raised the issue again or built off of that point in future posts I believe the mods would find some excuse to get them to stop. Which is similar to what happened with SecureSignals.
SecureSignals's profile is public, as is the moderation log. Why don't you share some examples of him getting modded merely for the act of "making a post... on things that he found interesting that related to the holocaust and zionism"?
More options
Context Copy link
Yet we are conversing, because you know you can say things like this and I may be annoyed, I may even be annoyed enough to respond to you, but you are allowed to carry on your own personal crusade complaining that we unfairly censor criticism of Israel (we don't) or that SS and other people riding a hobby horse are told to cool it because they just "posted about something they were interested in once a week" (please) and all you get is maybe a "snarky" comment or two.
Okay, I'll play. I think you're being disingenuous, but I'll pretend this question is asked in honest confusion and good faith. (This is always a mistake. Trying to explain moderation never, in my experience, results in the person we carefully and patiently indulge saying "Okay, that seems reasonable. Thank you for clarifying.")
First, your examples of "genocidal rhetoric" are basically people saying "Palestinians suck." You know, like you and SS regularly say about Jews. And yet you are not banned.
That's correct. If someone wrote a serious post arguing for nuking Israel from a game theory perspective, they would not be banned (at least by me). You and SS regularly talk about how we should consider Jews an existential threat to Western civilization. People here have proposed stripping civil rights from women, reenacting Jim Crow, and making it legal to fuck children, and they weren't banned for arguing those things. We have demonstrated for years that merely making abhorrent (to some of us) arguments does not get you banned. Every last Joo-poster complains that we forbid Joo-posting after years and years of Joo-posting which we didn't stop. But when you actually push it over the line and get modded, you say "Hah, I knew you were covering for the Jews!"
But yes, a burner account showing up to argue that we should nuke Israel, or proposing that the age of consent is stupid and it's only natural for men to want to fuck 13-year-olds will probably be banned. Not because the argument in itself cannot be made, but when we see a fresh troll arrive to spout trollish opinions and without having established any credibility whatsoever, we know it's a troll. Not here for conversation, not here to genuinely test their "nuke Israel" or "fuck 13-year-olds" idea against people who will thoughtfully engage with them, but to giggle at the turd they dropped on the floor. What you don't see is all the posts that never appear. As @naraburns said, usually we just wouldn't have let a post like that out of the filter. I assure you, almost daily there are posts like that that we just delete and don't let out of the filter. Now and then, by accident or to make a point, one of them gets through, and then we make a public mod post, and people like you get all het up taking umbrage because how dare we mod in such an inconsistent manner, obviously we are just trying to prevent criticism of Israel.
Depends on how he presents the argument. You keep mentioning SecureSignals as if we banned him. You will notice (you are well aware) that he is not banned. He was told, once, to occasionally post something that isn't about Jews. He kinda sorta complied, briefly, and now he's back to posting about Jews 95% of the time. And yet we haven't banned him. If we were being so vindictive, biased, and particular in our moderation, why haven't we? I can think of several posters who, almost always, are going to post about how one or more of: (a) women; (b) black people; (d) foreigners; (d) liberals, should be killed/deported/disenfranchised. Sometimes they get modded. Mostly we let them ****-post. It's adjudicated based on the individual post, trying to be as consistent as we can be.
You know all this. You've known it for years. You're just angry that you have to follow some rules when expressing how much you hate your enemies.
I am inclined to believe that there are like 1-or-2 actual Joo-poasters, and 10,000 socks puppeted by that one guy who's been around for years prosecuting his unnatural (for someone who doesn't live there or in a neighboring country) obsession with Israel.
I don't know. The population of rabid antisemites who are still cogent enough to hold their own in a Motte discussion is probably quite small - but we probably ended up with ALL of them. It's the classic witch effect.
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
I can understand the mod twitchiness here, if nothing else because we live in a Lovecraftian universe and the bulging-eyed stranger suddenly bursting into your town square and screaming "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!" is a different trope from the loony old Miskatonic professor who compulsively injects non-Euclidean geometries into every discussion. We don't know what exactly the boundary is after which all webhosts and banks mysteriously start refusing to do business with you giving a variety of vague excuses, but it's too late after we find out; and this particular stranger behaved as if he was aiming for that boundary and knew more than we do, or at least was quite determined to learn.
That being said, I do find these sorts of edgy hypotheticals much more fun to discuss than the nth iteration of "I am tired of having to pretend that our Lord Jesus Christ is okay with trannies", and wish we could have more of them instead.
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