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 -
Some here may know of Keith Woods, who is a well-known figure on the Dissident Right. He had his Twitter account unbanned a month ago. Keith is Irish, and he made a tweet about an upcoming hate speech law being considered in Ireland:
Keith was retweeted by Elon Musk who replied "This is a massive attack against freedom of speech". He was subsequently retweeted by Trump Jr. and retweeted by Jordan Peterson.
So overall Keith's brief analysis of the hate speech law reached 11 million people, and sparked debate among opposition politicians and gave the law more public visilbity than it had before.
There's a very slim chance that any of those three know who Keith is or his politics. But it's still a good demonstration of why Twitter is important, and being banned from the public square really does shift the discourse. Of course that is the entire point.
New Florida hate speech law coming out of Jerusalem
After Trump Jr. retweeted Keith, Keith made a reply that was quite strategically intended to goad Trump Jr. into attacking Ron DeSantis for his recent trip to Israel:
You see, Ron DeSantis made a secret trip to Jerusalem (!) last week where he signed a new Florida hate-speech law which "aims to crack down on antisemitic and other heritage based threats." The press release, Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Legislation in Israel Further Combatting Antisemitism provides a summary, and one of the more significant parts of the legislation is:
In tandem with Florida, a couple of weeks ago it was reported that several people from the 2017 torch-light march in Charlottesville on the UVA campus are being charged with felonies on the basis of burning an object with an intent to intimidate. So there seems to be a broader strategy of expanding the definition of "intimidation" to mean "politically incorrect protest" and ban those displays from public universities.
Another significant fact of this Florida Law which was signed in Jerusalem is that it mandates that all manner of offenses, including minor litter (i.e. flyering) are to all be reclassified as hate crimes for statistical reporting. The ADL and various Jewish organizations were recently up in arms that hate crime data did not show enough of a rise an antisemitism, so there's a significant effort to expand the reporting of "hate crime" to include all manner of things.
I am unfortunately not surprised by this affair- an American hate speech law being signed in Jersualem. It goes to show that just because a conservative plays tough on some culture war issues does not at all mean they are an ally. The conservative establishment is not an ally, it's entirely compromised. Supporting conservatism is not an option for people who oppose this sort of influence. I would support Biden over Ron DeSantis at this point- I would be genuinely afraid of what Ron would do at the behest of Israel.
I'm not sure if you intend this to be hyperbolic, but it seems like a rather strange point to me. If we take it seriously, this means that the primary issue by far that you care about is our foreign relations with Israel. Love them or hate them, it's a pretty small fraction of our overall GDP and total foreign aid budget, and a fairly minor factor in our overall foreign relations. Even so, that means to you, it's far more important than any of:
Abortion rights
Gun rights
Tax and economic policy
Criminal justice
Overall foreign relations
Environmental policy
And any number of other hot-button issues that have far more effect on any American's daily life than exactly what our relations with Israel are like and how much money we give to them.
Freedom of speech is an important issue. There were high hopes that Trump would make real progress in promoting free speech norms as public squares on the internet. With DeSantis signing hate speech laws in Jerusalem, the "free speech" issue would almost certainly be worse under a DeSantis administration than a Biden administration. Let's say he becomes president and signs a federal law like this one in Jerusalem. Do you think that's a silly concern, and can you see why I would give that a lot of weight?
DeSantis is signing law that is going to be used to crack down on right-wing expression. If I'm on the right wing, why wouldn't I give that a higher priority than taxes or abortion?
Biden has been better at foreign relations than Trump. Biden actually pulled US forces out of Afghanistan, Trump never did. Trump's most notable foreign policy accomplishments were moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and breaking the Iranian nuclear deal. All indications are that DeSantis would follow the exact same pattern.
More important than the law itself is that this signals that DeSantis is going to be beholden to the Jewish NGOs that have been the most influential in changing content policies on internet platforms. So I would have 0 expectation that DeSantis would fight that influence in any way, this is a clear signal that he's going to work with them to fight antisemitism.
More options
Context Copy link
SS has been very consistent with that priority list, yes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link