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 -
Is it your opinion that it was deserved and just to kill all those armenians? Your empire wasn't seriously threatened at the time, shit you went to war for two german tubs. Okay perhaps some light ethnic cleansing/population exchange was necessary in some sense, but referring to
genocideindustrial scale killing of civilians as just and deserved?I quite like the turks I know, but I chalk that up to he influence of their ‘father’, who rightly despised Islam. I thought perhaps the turks could secularize the rest of the muslim world, show them how it's done. But when Erdogan seemingly decided to roll back his influence, for me the prospect of letting turkey into the eu lost all appeal.
No I don't think so. But I also find the special place this event is starting take in European consciousness quite absurd. It was just an iteration in a very long and bloody series of ethnic violence that has been taking place due to dissolution of the Empire. Almost any ethnic group found themselves on the receiving and giving ends of the violence at different times, and it is still going on in some ways in Balkans, Caucasus and Levant. I wish my fellow countrymen could be a bit more honest about our near history but I am also aware that massive portions of my fellow countrymen were recent refugees of very cruel ethnic cleansings in Balkans and Caucasus at the time when these events were taking place, so the appeal of creating a safely homogenous country and their ruthlessness is not difficult to understand. The current push to recognize the events of 1915 as a uniquely sacred and punishable minor holocaust is politically motivated revisionism.
This is entirely historically illiterate so I don't know how to respond to be honest. Just to make it clear, the event that is considered the start of the genocide (the rounding up of Armenian intelligentsia and MPs in Istanbul) took place literally the day before the Allied naval operation to force through Dardanelles and decapacitate the Empire has started. At the time everyone in Istanbul believed the assault would succeed and the government would fall in the coming weeks with the victorious Allies partitioning the Empire along ethnic lines quite favorable to certain ethnicities. "Seriously threatened" indeed.
Sorry but it sounds like your love is more for a neo-con fantasy land rather than a real people.
The day before? Usually, consequences happen after causes. They had crushed an allied fleet the previous month. If they were finished and expected to be judged by the allies in a few weeks, launching a series of mass murders was not the best legal defense.
And they didn't have to go to war in the first place. The austrians and hungarians didn't kill minorities en masse when it started to look like their empire was on the way out. Choices were made, this was not self-defense against incomprehensible franco-english aggression. Turkey started the war stupidly, and then compounded it with great evil.
My 'quite like' is not some unconditional love for the people, regardless of what they do or believe. Are you denying that erdogan and his supporters have chosen to move away from the french model and towards the islamic model? I'd rather have a secularized turkey in the EU than nothing, but I'd rather have nothing than your usual muslim country. I expect future eu countries to broadly adhere to european values.
I will stop here because you are either not arguing in good faith or have absolutely no clue what you are talking about and just do cursory wikipedia checks before coming up with very confident responses.
Typically when the two most powerful navies in the World announce their plans to force themselves through your waterways and take over your capital, and then do months long build up of massive armadas, you don't learn about the event on the literal day it starts.
What are you even talking about? This isn't some internet gotcha fight between twitter anons.
Serbians, Russians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Croats, Romanians, and even Armenians themselves were very much killing minorities in their midst en masse wherever they managed to. Even the countries you are mentioning as "didn't kill minorities" literally formed the Nazi Germany/Axis 20 years later when they decided they got a bad deal, very much catching up on killing their minorities bit.
So 6 months before, they had declared war on the "two most powerful navies in the world", and now, they were certain they were done, before it had even happened? To anyone that is not a turkish nationalist, that is not a credible claim. This is the part where I ask for a source.
One thing I will say in your defense is that it’s likely the armenian genocide question is a pretext to keep turkey out, a PC objection covering for the more deep-rooted values difference I alluded to. The left doesn’t like to talk about european values, but they certainly can talk about mass murders. As you say, it’s hard to find a Volk with no blood on their hands. It’s likely that serbia will join the EU earlier than Turkey, and they don’t have a century’s worth of excuses to cushion the blow of their genovidal acts like turkey does. That said, it should still be denounced in stronger terms than ‘just and deserved’.
Anyway, let’s not leave on a sour note, we’ve had productive discussions before.
Did you end up losing your job due to russian sanctions, as you were predicting?
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