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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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You can argue the label if you like, but "person who believes in meaningful racial differences in intelligence, and thinks it's a good idea to implement racial discrimination on this basis"

I don't think that describes the ordinary HBD type, though it does describe some of the louder ones. The ordinary HBD type believes in meaningful racial differences in intelligence and thinks it's a bad idea to implement racial discrimination to correct for this.

I don't think that describes the ordinary HBD type, though it does describe some of the louder ones. The ordinary HBD type believes in meaningful racial differences in intelligence and thinks it's a bad idea to implement racial discrimination to correct for this.

It's probably worth making a distinction between "political HBDers" and "factual HBDers", but as you say, the political ones are the loudest here, by far. I don't think this says anything about the factual HBDers, other than that they're relatively invisible in most conversations where HBD comes up, so they aren't the central example of an HBDer that comes immediately to mind.

I used to use the label "alt-right"; it was a snappy, effective label, and there was a time when one could reasonably argue that the 1488 types really were a small minority within it. But the media and the 1488 types worked together to grant the latter de-facto control of the label, so I stopped using it. I could make a strong argument that the 1488 types have no claim to the label, but at some point other fights take priority.

I'm in Nybbler's "ordinary" category, and I've just mostly stopped engaging when like clockwork you make yet another one of those "actually people who purport to believe in HBD are Stormfronters" subthreads. It is tiresome to have to repeat the same arguments (against the backdrop of the affect-loading "actually they are eugenicists which is progressive" "Hitler was vegan" etc chorus that tends to come out of the woodwork) when it seemingly generates no correction or even acknowledgment from you.

I am also in the ordinary category, modulo small amounts of uncertainty. I disagree with some of the other "factual HBDers" in that I don't think the knowledge actually benefits anyone, but it or something very much like it appears to be straightforwardly true. I certainly do not think that I or you or the other people objecting to my use of the term are stormfronters. I don't remember most of these people talking about HBD all that much either; judging from my own experience, it seems to me that there's not all that much left to say. If we're not going to use the knowledge to discriminate, and we don't have gene therapy for intelligence yet, and we can't use the knowledge to publicly argue against our current racial politics because for fear of instant incineration by normie society, about all it does for us is give us high confidence that attempts to "fix" a misunderstood problem almost certainly won't work.

On the other hand, I don't recall making threads about HBD like clockwork; maybe you're refering to the long-running debate over whether the WNs are descended from conservatism or progressivism? And I definately remember seeing a bunch of threads about how HBD means that racial discrimination is a good thing, though again not from any of the people responding in this thread.

For what it's worth, this thread has demonstrated to me that using "HBDer" as a shorthand for WNs is a bad practice, and I'll try not to do it in the future.

about all it does for us is give us high confidence that attempts to "fix" a misunderstood problem almost certainly won't work.

There's a profound epistemic benefit to learning about HBD as a scientifically sound framework. It gives a man grounds for confidence about two very important matters, namely that a) despite disagreeing with the apparent common sense about some observable facts, he is not insane or evil, and b) a near-totality of respected and publicly visible people, in a highly transparent, individualist and relatively very democratic society, can be gaslit or intimidated into perpetuating a regime of blatant lies; even though those lies were not so long ago known to many to be just that.

This is quite sufficient to justify informing people of it.

I have an extremely strong revulsion for gaslighting. I viscerally experience it as intrusion into the brain, and into that which brain exists for; tentacles, spider legs, ovipositors, horsehair worms, larvae with mechanically clicking jaws, the assertive writhing mass of wiry, greedy, fecund alien appendages trying to violate soft tissues of my mental organism and remake it into a host for its own designs, into a consumable devoid of inherent worth. I dimly guess that's how many victims understand rape.

I think lying to people, with a serious intent to mislead them, is wrong, though this definition covers too much to use heavy words. To mislead them about themselves is, generally, an evil act. But, worst of all, to make them stop believing in a significant real facet of their goodness and ability to appreciate good and true within and without themselves – this amounts to an act of gratuitous violence; an attempt at mutilation worse than crippling the body. I feel that Christians get it right when they identify the principal source of evil and misery and distortion in the world as The Father of Lies, and exactly for this reason.

I've rewritten this section several times now; I seriously don't know how to express my attitude, except simply: when I notice a person trying to knowingly gaslight me (or even someone else) about anything not utterly trivial, I start thinking of a suitable pretext to kill that creature. I give up always, but not because I believe that impulse is wrong.

Alas, you and Hlynka (and to an extent Amadan) are now, it seems, erecting your own regime of gaslighting here, what with these «political HBDers» (rather, regular White Supremacists) advocating for racial discrimination all over the place; so pervasive that simply gesturing at the subreddit name suffices to make the argument.

Well gosh, dude, I'm sorry that I inspire in you an impulse to kill and I'll try not to take it personally.

Alas, you and Hlynka (and to an extent Amadan) are now, it seems, erecting your own regime of gaslighting here, what with these «political HBDers» (rather, regular White Supremacists) advocating for racial discrimination all over the place; so pervasive that simply gesturing at the subreddit name suffices to make the argument.

I literally don't understand what you're saying here. I feel like there is some sort of disconnect here, between you and I and @aqouta and several other folks, and I am self-aware enough to consider that if several people are misreading me, the problem may be me and not them. Still, I really don't know how you got from "Amadan thinks HBD is probably real but we shouldn't racially discriminate, and a lot of HBDers do want to do that" to "Amadan wants to gaslight us about the reality of HBD."

"Amadan thinks HBD is probably real but we shouldn't racially discriminate, and a lot of HBDers do want to do that"

Do they?

The disconnect, if that's how you want to put it, is a very simple matter, I think. I'll ping people to let them refute me if I'm wrong.

Me, @The_Nybbler, @aqouta, @fuckduck9000, @curious_straight_ca and perhaps others who are pressed to identify as «HBDers» variously accuse you of or are questioning reasons behind you lot's (@HlynkaCG, @FCfromSSC, and you too) misrepresenting the distribution of opinion around these parts, in a way that amounts to slander. Denying that slander when directly asked, but then repeating it as a generality, is a very irritating pattern.

We believe that what you present as a non-central, relatively unimportant case and specify with the qualifier «factual», i.e. an HBD-recognizing belief system that does not advocate for racial discrimination against any group (please let's not get off track with some inane "is canceling affirmative action not discrimination" debate, this clearly isn't what you mean) is the central case here, to the point it needs no qualifiers. It's a coherent position, in many/most cases motivated not so much by object-level theory of human trait variability, nor by normative ethnocentrism (I don't even identify as «White» and look down on you hajnalbots), but by opposition to systematic deceit, anti-white racism, unjustified redistributionism and leftist ideology writ large.

Notably, «political HBDers» that exist are a somewhat separate club. They are few and they include people like @parrhesia (and I suspect Matthew Yglesias) who, in effect, call to proactively brain-drain the world and put genotypic IQ above any other merit of a citizen. On this account they, too, are invulnerable to Hlynka's gotchas, even though they are, in a meaningful sense, progressives.

Back to the main issue, in these spats you do not point to a sizable constituency of what you inappropriately call «political HBDers» i.e. generic White Supremacists who don't much care who scores what. Instead, you speculate about them hiding behind the veneer of the merely factual opinion, just-asking-questions to support a preconceived bigoted ideology with an arbitrary self-serving table of ranks for different groups.

Hlynka:

The problem for the dissident right types is that the dissident right only really exists as a subset of the woke. In my experience the average HBD is even more of an ardent true believer in the correctness of progressive talking points than the average democrat. For all the talk of combatting wokeness it's clear at a glance that these people don't want to see wokeness defeated, they just want to reorder the intersectional stack so that thier favored groups are on top.

FC:

You can argue the label if you like, but "person who believes in meaningful racial differences in intelligence, and thinks it's a good idea to implement racial discrimination on this basis" is a notable cluster here

You:

Modern HBDers, by contrast, are at best indifferent and at worst hostile to the plight of non-whites. Their approach is not one of trying to improve race relations or the human race. They're tribalists, and HBD offers a convenient narrative why Our Tribe is superior and Their Tribe is awful.

You refuse to say «$username, I call you out on actually, secretly adhering to this ideology». But you always bring it up when arguing with any of us.

And crucially, the very act of creating those boxes, identifying people as «HBDers» of any sort serves to distance yourself from the toxic belief and the whole cluster of associations that it evokes. You, Amadan, do not think of yourself as a «factual HBDer» or some other variant species – you just happen to think HBD is a fact, because you are capable of generic reasoning about facts, but it does not define you like it ostensibly defines us. With these classifications and distinctions you put us on the spectrum from I-Fucking-Love-Science race realists to 1488 genocide enjoyers, but you do not inspect your position on that spectrum, you look at it from a comfortable vantage point of «reasonable opinion»; you condescend to «factual HBDers» with platitudes to the effect that, facts being what they are, racial discrimination is still wrong – instead of admitting that there is no difference in opinion between you and us. This is what drives @fuckduck9000 mad here, and what I perceive as gaslighting.

Because if there is a difference in opinion, what do you think it is exactly? And why does it apparently call for these incessant remarks about «Dreaded Jim» and deporting all blacks and other shit, and rhetorical questions like «sooo, what do you think follows from these oh-so-important Facts, Mr. HBD»?

Do you think you deserve that treatment for believing the same things?

Me, The_Nybbler, aqouta, fuckduck9000, curious_straight_ca and perhaps others who are pressed to identify as «HBDers» variously accuse you of or are questioning reasons behind you lot's (HlynkaCG, FCfromSSC, and you too) misrepresenting the distribution of opinion around these parts, in a way that amounts to slander. Denying that slander when directly asked, but then repeating it as a generality, is a very irritating pattern.

Speaking personally, neither you or any of the people you listed were who I've had in mind. I'll humbly decline to ping people at a third party's demand, but feel free to do so yourself if you find it warranted. I was referring to posts like this, this, or this. It seems to me comments like this are frequent, and having had them pointed out to me, I notice them quite a bit now. It also seems to me that they used to be a whole lot more frequent in the old days, and I consider the decline in frequency to be an unequivocally good thing and would like to maintain it.

If you like, I'll start collecting them when I come across them; it's entirely possible that their prominence is an example of whatever bias it is that makes you notice things you've previously noticed. On the other hand, there's also the bias where people pay more attention to things they disagree with strongly, and less attention to things they disagree with less strongly, which I've noticed cashes out here in the sharpest hunting for holes in arguments coming from people on the opposite side, and the laxest treatment coming from people, roughly speaking, on the same side.

In any case, this thread has convinced me that labeling the pattern of using HBD as a fully-general explanation for any and all behavior "HBD" is a bad idea, for what it's worth. It clearly rings up people I had no intention of ringing.

Thank you for explaining your perspective concretely, this clears things up.