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 -
Yes, at length and escalating from treating it as context-dependent around to becoming presumptively 'hateful' and/or antisemitic in more recent years.
I can provide examples of older stuff that's not really tied to Jewish issues, or more recent willingness to lump actual Nazis and annoying trolls in a pile, but this seems like about as distilled evidence as possible (context here). The question is not whether the ADL will expand past its traditional focus on attacks against Jewish people, or even if once doing so it will get any meaningful traction; it has already extracted major policy wins against one of the best-known and most-played video games on the planet, where even by its own metrics "Hate speech largely targeted sexuality (e.g. f*g homo) and gender (e.g. b*tch)."
This isn't to debate whether these are good policy decisions individually, or to discuss whether ADL's adventurism is necessarily wrong or even bad as a policy matter. But for all I might have once had high hopes that a principled 'except for Nazis, because fuck Nazis' exception might be possible -- there was a day where RPGnet moderators carefully evaluated the difference between UKIP and BNP before they slide right down the slope to this -- I'm very skeptical than any of the extant groups with power could or even wants to try.
Good to know, I don't follow the ADL. Thanks for the links, I'll admit I was wrong about the "globalists" point.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link