site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It would be more comforting if people actually applied a theory of mind to others instead of uncritically imagining that the outgroup is just a gang of monsters that exist on an emotional spectrum completely different from you and I. Worse yet is making the realization that your enemy is not like in the cartoons, and drawing the conclusion that this makes them even more evil. So evil, in fact, that it's hard to comprehend. The cartoons simply don't do it justice. It's very reminiscent of the 2007-12 internet atheism days where guys like Steve Harris and others would create scientific tests and moral theories about the inherent differences between the 'religious' and those who were not.

It's genuinely disheartening to see just how moronic peoples baseline sense of being is and how ineptly it is applied to other people. If evil is so banal and atrocity can be made so mundane, where does that potentially place your banal and mundane existence? The 'vegans' have the answer, we are all monsters because of factory farming. And so to does any group that cares a lot about X.

A more functional and useful view of this moral framework is that any group that has the power to dictate the moral framing of any issue can make these arguments. jew lives don't actually matter more than the Ukrainian lives jews exterminated during the Holodomor. All the Russians that died during the siege of Leningrad, all the Germans that suffered and died post-war. Comparatively they get no movies, no museums, no monuments.

The only factual realization that can be drawn from the everpresent bombardment of jewish victimary narratives is that jews care a lot about themselves in a way few others do. Simply put, other nations don't do this weirdo shit of constantly reminding everyone of how big a victim they were. It's weird. And in the few cases where it is being done it's for obvious reasons. Like Poland perpetually trying to bleed more money from Germany due to WW2. Or Russia grandstanding and accusing everyone else being fascist nazis. It's transparent and fake and people don't hesitate to point to the obvious motive behind it.

This jewish cause, and by extension the character of the jewish people insofar as it is perpetuated by them suffers greatly for this incessant propaganda. Not just for its weirdness, but also the history of lying about it to an extent that defies most peoples knowledge of history, despite how much the Hollywood made Holocaust makes us emotionally invested in the suffering of an insignificant number of semitic nomads.

Simply put, other nations don't do this weirdo shit of constantly reminding everyone of how big a victim they were.

Not a "nation" in the sense of a nation-state, but as commenters below have noted, the only genre of period film approaching Holocaust dramas in sheer numbers is films about slavery/the South/the civil rights era, or more broadly films in which anti-black racism is a plot point (even if those films weren't necessarily directed or written by black Americans). So I would argue that black Americans could be said to constantly remind everyone how big victims they are to a comparable degree.

I think a mainstream film about the Holodomor would be a marvelous thing to say. Maybe a pitch-black comedy (in the vein of Dr. Strangelove or Four Lions) about the Thick of It-esque machinations that led to Lysenkoism becoming public policy.

I do not agree with either statement.

Yuh; there is a whole range of man made terrible shit that didn't involve directly killing people we should probably memorialize a bit more.

Eg, Holodomor, the great leap forward, the Bangladeshi Famine(s), the indian famine(s), the potato famine, the french famine, etc.

They are less sexy to film than a good 'ole genocide ala hotel Rwanda, but when they happen they are bad bad.

There has been at least one cracking film made about the Famine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_%2747_(film) Highly recommended.