site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 9, 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.

Accelerationism is bad and never works. There isn't some perfect uber-Chad President waiting in the wings to take us to the promised land.

It's not that hard to just vote for the most right wing candidate in every election.

I think the people encouraging "based" right wingers to vote Democrats are probably mostly funded by the left. It's a good bit. And notice how the left wingers would never, ever, even once, encourage someone to stay home or vote for a Republican.

In any case, all problems except demographic change can be fixed. Even communist countries can turn around within a couple decades. Trump will be gone soon enough. But immigration will never be reversed. Other than AI, it is the only issue that really matters.

And notice how the left wingers would never, ever, even once, encourage someone to stay home or vote for a Republican.

Radical pro-Palestinian activists were doing exactly that in 2024. "Genocide Joe" was the meme.

They said to vote Trump to teach the Dems a lesson? May I see it?

Ethnic Arabs/Muslims in greater Detroit voting for Trump over Gaza

I can't find links to regular blue white leftists doing this in the general - Google wants to keep sending me stories about blue white leftists not voting for Biden in the primary. But there are numerous press stories after the election, mostly featuring push polls by pro-Palestinian groups claiming that voters staying home over Palestine cost Harris the election.

Dem post-defeat analysis says Gaza did cause people to stay home

Yeah I will grant you that one. Dearborn went 80% for Trump in 2024 and then 99% for El Sayed in 2026. Don’t you love ethnic voting blocks?

"I never thought the leopards would eat my face" says ethnic machine politician who delivered the bloc vote to the Face-Eating Leopard Party.

I have very little sympathy for Trump voters who are suffering because of Trump policies, but there are two groups which provoke negative sympathy. One is people who voted for Trump because Biden was insufficiently pro-Palestinian - I mean WTF, but they did. And the other is small business owners who employ illegal immigrants. What did you think "Mass Deportations Now" meant - vibes, papers?

To be fair, it is very very common in the US for republicans to run on illegal immigration crackdowns and then send a strongly worded note requesting that jail wardens refer undocumented prisoners to ICE, before then calling it a day.

I'm with you here. Zero sympathy.

But can also just say that ethnic machines in general are bad? The Dearborn Arabs were somewhat unique in that they voted for the Republicans one time. Maybe there are a couple other niche groups that do to.

But generally ethnic machines go left. Unfortunately, in our newly diverse society, Republicans will also have to play the ethnic spoils game. This will not result in an improvement in our governance.

Also, darkly funny that the Chaldeans (Iraqi Christians) fled to Detroit to get away from the Arabs who were ethnically cleansing them and now the Arabs were like "hey, we followed you!"

Ethnic machine politics sucks, but my experience growing up in London in the Loony Left era was that public employee union machine politics sucks worse (my understanding is that SF and NYC are the main victims in the US). Ethnic machine politicians have a mandate to provide good public services to their ingroup, and the nature of urban local government is that often (but by no means always) means providing good public services that benefit everyone in the borough.

To avoid both you appear to need competitive partisan local politics, which is difficult in a world where politics is nationalised and urbanites and right-wingers consider each other permanent enemies on culture war grounds.

True. It is kind of funny that, in some case, ethnic spoils can actually lead to improved development. For example, in British Columbia, first nations are using their special rights to get things built that would never be allowed otherwise. I wouldn't be surprised if this loophole started getting used a lot more in the U.S. as well, particularly when involving data centers.

Another example, although I might press D to doubt, is that the Italian Mafia was supposedly able to keep Italian neighborhoods relatively safer from black street crime when cities had abandoned other areas.

So I guess ethnic spoils aren't all bad. Wish that my group was eligible.

More comments

And notice how the left wingers would never, ever, even once, encourage someone to stay home or vote for a Republican.

Not true. In 2016 there was a nontrivial push among the Bernie left to stay home. There might not have been much of that in the press, but Hilary and Kamala were the media establishment candidates, so of course they wouldn't; in real life, like at universities, it was a very common sentiment.

But of course, any left winger who wants to smack down another left winger advocating for a more cooperative or long-termist strategy can nutpick right-wing posts like yours to in turn argue that right-wingers would never even once encourage someone to stay home or vote for the left-wing candidate.

No, do not vote for the most right wing candidate in every election. Vote for the most right wing candidate who can win. Learn from the Arizona GOP(Texas was mostly sunk by this being a very very blue year, but the TxGOP not learning this lesson is a legitimate possibility going forwards).

Yes, very much so. I was assuming that in my comment but I should have spelled it out directly.

What I am arguing against is voting for the left to "teach the right a lesson". To the extent that this galaxy-brained attitude exists, I assume it is mostly an op.

With democracy, I think the only way out is through. I will not conserve a democracy. If the demos did not want to be replaced, they should not have voted for it. If the demos are sorry that they know not what they vote for, then they should have never revolted against the aristocracies to begin with. It all seems just to me, that the West would end up this way.

If the demos did not want to be replaced, they should not have voted for it.

They aren't trying to replace the demos, they're voting to expand it, by allowing people to become members even if they were not born thus.

I'd believe this more if many of the same voices pushing "expand" hadn't also been loudly anti-natalist for as long as I can remember. Not saying those are connected, but they certainly look suspicious together.

I didn’t advocate for accelerationism. I advocated in my comment for competent governance. Trump is not competent and does more harm than good. We’re in this position because Trump did a bad job. He is the problem. DeSantis in 2024 would have left us in a much better spot. In a two party system, if the right wing party does a bad job, then the left will take power. That is what happened. Simple as.

Yes, I would also like a competent right wing government and I was a Desantis supporter in 2024. But that choice was not on the ballot.

Your comment implied that it was desirable that the Democrats won, even if that means increasing immigration. That would seem to indicate that either you are a left winger who supports immigration or that you think it's good that the left won to "teach the right a lesson". That latter attitude is indeed a form of accelerationism.

A third interpretation is that you are mostly rightist but believe the Trump administration is so corrupt that even a leftist, open borders Democratic administration is preferable. But are you not considering that the Democrats are also corrupt, in fact much more corrupt in terms of dollars wasted?

You are misunderstanding what I am saying. This was always going to be the outcome with Trump. So it’s best to just get on with it. He is maximally polarizing, corrupt, and incompetent with a hard cap on his national popularity so the left sweeping into power was baked into the cake.

I think Trump has done a lot more good than bad and we are in a better place because of him, but it is time to move on. I wish the Senate hadn’t gone so poorly, but that is just more evidence MAGA has to go. We have to live in reality. He’s not the guy, and if he wasn’t going to step aside, then him being discredited is a necessary evil. If it wasn’t a blowout now, 2028 would have been even worse. Maybe we can still keep the presidency if he gets out of the way. That is the white pill. Probably not though, and if that happens it’s 100% on him.

Thank you for the clarification. I did misunderstand you and I agree with your assessment.

My ideal would be Abbott 2032, sacrificial lamb in '28. He's effective, smart, good at politics, and seems to actually care about second order effects. I do not care about demographics as long as me and mine aren't discriminated against- although I have an aesthetic attachment to phenotypical Europeans, we're not going extinct anytime soon and have stabler demographics than any other group.

But that's not going to happen. He lost, and he's in a wheelchair. As an all powerful veep he's plausible. As a powerful domestic policy role he's plausible. I guess it's Desantis.

You can’t sacrifice 2028 because immigration is cumulative and the most conservative Supreme Court we will ever see in our lifetimes just voted 6-3 against repealing birthright citizenship. You can never remove anyone, certainly not anyone’s children, and remember the president can admit unlimited (yes, unlimited) legal refugees without. congressional approval.

Again, I am not a white nationalist. I care about the rights of social conservatives to continue to exist, a sane macroeconomic environment, and keeping the government out of my business personally. All of those would take more than a single democrat admin to destroy.

If my neighbors are all mestizos its fine.

I do not care about demographics as long as me and mine aren't discriminated against-

And that's why you must care about demographics. You'll find that racial tolerance is quite rare among non-Europeans.

While moral universalism is highest and ingroup bias is lowest among Western Europeans, I think that’s a too strong comment. Most African states have quite a diversity of ethnic groups. Most middle eastern states, India, and much of Southeast Asia involves societies where different meaningful ancestry groups coexist. Latin America has very meaningful colorblind cultural currents, and in many cases they are dominant.

I think racial masochism is also a bit complicated since it’s often a mix of genuine outgroup preference with wanting to stick it to “other white people I don’t like.” When blue tribe is muzzled, or is marginal like in many even minimally white Latino countries, race relations are a lot better.

Most African states have quite a diversity of ethnic groups.

Quite; may God grant us the stability and peace of Africa inshallah.

There was a time when it was rare among those of European extraction. They learned to be better; the rest of Adam's progeny can do it too.

(This is one of my pet peeves with the ctrl-left; Persons Of Colour ought not be excluded or held to a higher standard, but they ought to adhere to the same standards as a white person!)

They would say they are held to the same standard, adjusted for privelege.

And the alt-right would say that they're holding the more melaniniferous to the same standard, adjusted for genetic potential-for-regression-to-the-mean/descent from the pre-colonial peoples of Europe or colonial founders elsewhere/&c.

Both arguments are bollocks; the set of things a black person can get away with ought to be strictly coterminous with the set of things a white person can get away with; neither should be a single iota larger or smaller than the other.

I think so too which is why I think we need a 50 year moratorium on most immigration so that assimilation and ethnogenesis can happen.

Singapore seems pretty harmonious. Everyone being well-off tends to reduce animosity. You only start seeking scapegoats when you have something to scapegoat them for.

Yes, Singapore is a good of example of how to manage a wealthy, diverse country. It works in part because of authoritarianism, explicit racial carve outs, and a stable balance between the major ethnic groups. They don't have jury trials in Singapore because Lee Kwan Yew recognized that it was impossible due to ethnic fragmentation.

It would not work with lax law enforcement and unconstrained immigration like we have in the U.S.

The U.S. worked extremely well as a 90% white country. We're going to have to figure out how to thrive when that's no longer the case. Singapore is a good model, but Brazilian chaos is more likely.

But non-Europeans invariably hate each other more than whites.

True although Europeans have more wealth to steal. Whites will face discrimination in all cases because, uniquely, they discriminate against themselves. The best scenario, therefore, is to reduce the number of takers on the other end. Affirmative action was no big deal when whites were 90%. It’s a huge deal for young people today when the diversity slots fill up most the available places.