site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35545 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Part 1: Da Jooz totally did it (Negro communism edition)

Prologue: David Cole Stein has a wonderful post on how conservatives do best when they 'notice': "Hey look at all the deranged homeless people screaming at you on the subway", but are limited by their own stupid tendency to also promote grand theories for why things happen: "The dems are brainwashed by Chinese communist propaganda". When you combine an observable and undeniable fact, with even a plausible but unprovable theory (and for the record I think CCP propaganda theories are psychotic), you provide people with a social license to dump it all in the trash. Some (Kevin McDonald cough) might find that a small price to pay to be considered Sherlock Holmes. Well, Motters, I'm not gonna let you get off that easy.

Thesis: Jewish elite overrepresentation in destructive cultural movements is not explained by their higher intelligence. It is also a critical factor, perhaps the critical factor in setting these off and shaping the direction these take. When Jewish elites act, they are representing the values of Jews in particular, not merely elites generally. Jews are always willing to go further than general elite opinion.

The Jewish Public vs. The Comparable Gentile Public

The civil rights movement immediately led to a continual orgy of violence and mayhem (the OG summers of Floyd), and that the American public begged someone to put an end to it. This was Nixon's silent majority. Here are the voting patterns of Whites with college degrees - at the time corresponding roughly in IQ to the average Jew, and Jews:

WHITE COLLEGE GRADUATES - NIXON - 80 - 82% ___ VS ___ JEWS - HUMPHREY - 81%

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-voting-record-in-u-s-presidential-elections

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-may-become-the-first-republican-in-60-years-to-lose-white-college-graduates/

The harmful role of Jewish Elites

  • The Abolition of freedom of association (Shelley V. Kraemer)

In 1948, The US government joined a black plaintiff and their black lawyers in suing to abolish restrictive covenants, which limited the sale of homes to Blacks. Note critically, that restrictive covenants were private agreements between private homeowners; and thereby entirely outside the scope of any plausible interpretation of the constitution. Of course, by US government I mean; Jewish solicitor general Philip Elman, four Jewish lawyers and not a single gentile lawyer. This great dose of Jewish overrepresentation was obscured on the advice of Arnold Raum (take a guess) who said:

It's bad enough that [Solicitor General Philip] Perlman's name has to be there, to have one Jew's name on it, but you have also put four more Jewish names on. That makes it look as if a bunch of Jewish lawyers in the Department of Justice put this out."

The Supreme Court sided with the US Government, and the only mechanism protecting tens of millions of Americans, including 80% of homes in Los Angeles and Chicago; from the carnage that was to follow, was rendered unenforceable. This was single most important battleground of the civil rights movement, and it was won by the enemy before people knew the war was going on.

RETRACTION NOTICE

Boy have I screwed the pooch here. As @Gdanning notes, Cohen was actually arguing for the company's ability to conduct IQ tests, not against it. He also alleges Jewish support for opposing racial quotas in Bakke v. California. I'll verify and update accordingly.

  • School segregation and the other standard civil rights cases**

Here Jewish representation tends to be more balanced, corresponding well to their representation in the American elite generally. Critically however, Jewish lawyers never appear on the anti-civil rights side of a case.

  • The murder of IQ testing (Grigg's v. Duke Power Company)**

Here again, the US government joined the black plaintiff in requesting that the Court establish the precedent that promoting based on intelligence tests would be like providing equality of opportunity "merely in the sense of the fabled offer of milk to the stork and the fox." In other words, presumptively discriminatory unless you could prove otherwise.

Perceptive readers will note that by US government, I mean Lawrence M. Cohen speaking in the name of the US Chamber of Commerce.

Response to Objections:

Readers may note that all of these decisions required the cooperation of a majority gentile supreme court. This is a fair objection but I would note that SCOTUS judges are immunized from repercusions by their lifelong tenure and high status. No one was gonna turn down offering a job to any SCOTUS judge afterwards, regardless of what he did. A lawyer who forcibly integrated your neighbourhood, was a different matter. I don't doubt that there were a few non-jews in the office of the solicitor general who supported Shelley, but only the Jews had the sheer guts to pursue it.

  • -18

The civil rights movement immediately led to a continual orgy of violence and mayhem (the OG summers of Floyd), and that the American public begged someone to put an end to it. This was Nixon's silent majority.

Immediately? Is that immediately after the Montgomery Bus Boycott got started at the end of 1955? Or immediately after the Little Rock desegregation protests in 1957? Immediately after the sit-ins that lasted, in various places, from 1958 to 1962? Immediately after the 1961 Freedom Rides? The Ole Miss riot? The Birmingham campaign? King's march on Washington? Freedom Summer 1964? The passage of the Civil Rights Act? Passage of the Voting Rights Act? Up until 1964 most of the notable riots of the Civil Rights Movement were instigated by whites. Even when the first significant urban disturbances happened in 1964 they didn't result in conservatives ascending to the presidency. By the time of the first serious rioting in 1967 and 1968 the first wave of the Civil Rights Movement i.e. what everyone thinks of when they think of the Civil Rights Movement was pretty much over. Dr. King wasn't even alive during the Long Hot Summer of 1968. Your concept of immediacy is sorely lacking, or at least at odds with any reasonable definition of the term.

Note critically, that restrictive covenants were private agreements between private homeowners; and thereby entirely outside the scope of any plausible interpretation of the constitution.

Well, no, that wasn't the ruling. The ruling was that the court couldn't enforce the contract because doing so would constitute state action under the 14th Amendment. The idea of contracts being technically valid but ultimately unenforceable isn't exactly novel in law; for example, a court wouldn't enforce a contract between two minors.

Here again, the US government joined the black plaintiff in requesting that the Court establish the precedent that promoting based on intelligence tests would be like providing equality of opportunity "merely in the sense of the fabled offer of milk to the stork and the fox." In other words, presumptively discriminatory unless you could prove otherwise.

The point of Griggs wasn't so much IQ testing as it was that you can't enforce arbitrary standards in a transparent attempt to technically comply with the law while not actually complying with it. No one seriously thought that a Southern company that had simply barred blacks from certain positions outright just a few years prior and decided to admit them only if they passed education or testing requirements that had no bearing on the actual job but happened to disproportionately disadvantage blacks was making a good faith attempt to comply with the civil rights act. It's as if a black-owned company decided to screen employees based on knowledge of BET programming and rappers you've never heard of (and no, you can't study for it, because the kind of rap black people in the projects listen to isn't the same kind of rap that gets talked about much in mainstream publications).

The 1964 civil rights act, or something else in the early 60s was the tipping point.

Here's murder:

https://cdn.mises.org/homicide.png

Here's violent crime generally:

https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/violent-crime-rate.jpg

And the Ghetto riots start in 1964.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto_riots_(1964%E2%80%931969)

By 1969 there's also a doubling in the burglary rate which climbs continually since 1960. I can't quickly find a comparison point to the 1950s.

https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats