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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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British RAF describes applicants as "useless white male pilots" in leaked emails.

In a bid to increase its diversity, an organized and systematic discrimination of white men was implemented. Leaked emails from RAF staff include vehemently racist and sexist remarks, reports have revealed.

Under a subject line entitled: "BOARDING PROFILE", a squadron leader wrote:

"I noted that the boards have recently been predominantly white male heavy, if we don't have enough BAME and female to board then we need to make the decision to pause boarding and seek more BAME and female from the RF. I don't really need to see loads of useless white male pilots, lets get a focussed as possible, I am more than happy to reduce boarding if needed to have a balanced BAME/female/Male board."

The emails date back to 2020. But even before then there had been a focused anti-white anti-male effort to discriminate against white men in a bid to get women and browns into service. The full article linked above gives further account to the full extent of the conspiracy that kept multiple white men applicants out of service and further discriminated against those that managed to enter. In contrast with women and browns who were fast tracked through the process.

As is noted in the article, the conspiracy was temporarily halted as Group Captain Elizabeth Nicholl resigned from her post in protest to what she thought were unlawful hiring practices back in 2022. Voicing disagreement with Air Vice-Marshal Maria Byford, the RAF's head of recruitment. The row led the RAF to claim that no discrimination was taking place, as a Ministry of Defense inquiry was launched into the nature of Nicholl's resignation.

"The Royal Air Force will not shy away from the challenges we face building a Service that attracts and recruits talent from every part of the UK workforce. We will continue doing everything we can to increase our recruiting intake from under-represented groups within the provisions of the law."

And at the time the evidence for 'strict' discrimination was lacking. As then leaked emails only noted anti-white sentiment in propaganda creation:

'Gents, do any of you have a "pilot who is preferably not a white male" who would like to be the "RAF" face at a press event for the release of Top Gun 2? Shy guys get no cakes so shout quick as offer has also gone out to other units.'

Nicholl's replacement, Group Captain Dole, saw no issue with furthering the conspiracy of active anti-white discrimination and went on to be awarded an OBE in the 2022 New Years Honours List. As the RAF proudly met its target of 20% women, 10% browns. Thankfully a part of the racist and discriminatory process by which the goal was reached is now out in the open.

Contrasting this anti-white conspiracy with last years report that China was "luring" UK pilots to train its pilots, what exactly does a white person owe a state that actively discriminates against them?

what exactly does a white person owe a state that actively discriminates against them?

Maybe ask these guys?

  • -16

Why? China is the Nazis now? I don't get it.

If I'm wronged by someone I don't particularly care to modulate my response to what some Japanese megacucks did in the 1940's. Should I? To turn the ingroup/outgroup distinctions on their head a little: How far should jews have submitted themselves to the Third Reich? Does it reflect as a good or a bad on the character of the jewish people who allegedly sold their fellow jews out to nazis?

some Japanese megacucks

This kind of thing just degrades discourse.

Banned for a week.

A week? That's ridiculous, it wasn't even a swear word.

I think you banned him because you know he is one of the few motters who could and would eloquently and persuasively defend that position.

A week? That's ridiculous, it wasn't even a swear word.

What fucking difference would that make? It's not the words you use, here--it's how you use them.

I think you banned him because you know he is one of the few motters who could and would eloquently and persuasively defend that position.

I think I temp-banned him because next time I want him to lead with the eloquence and persuasiveness you seem to think he has at his disposal. I have quite had my fill of people getting moderated and then responding to me with eloquence and persuasiveness--or at least, with the evidence and effort they declined to furnish in the first place.

I want people to do that before they get moderated, and if they fail to do that often enough, then they're going to eat a ban. That's how this works--as you well know.

Then I think you are being extremely unfair, and not just because you led with "degrades discourse". I assumed you were giving him a slap for badmouthing a group most of us consider heroes, in which case a week seems excessive, but I understand the reasoning. But if it's about his whole post, then I'm at a loss. I don't know what else he was supposed to write in response to a four word post using those guys as a gotcha. But hani did, he demonstrated that the gotcha didn't work on him, and he then continued by explaining his positions. And while a lot of people were venting in that thread, I don't think hani was, I sensed conviction behind his posts and I wanted to see where those arguments went. Has he been dinged for this kind of thing a lot? I didn't think he'd been modded much at all, but I don't have the same data as you.

Are we talking about being unfair or being incorrect?

Hey now, you're supposed to be on the user side now, no hints.

More seriously, unless I am mistaken about hani's interactions with the staff, I think one week was excessive, very excessive. And if I am wrong about that I will distract from my error by asking if anyone knows how one would go about setting up the ban list again.

Thank you for upholding civility standards.

Does it reflect as a good or a bad on the character of the jewish people who allegedly sold their fellow jews out to nazis

Badly of course, but principally because selling people out to send them to their deaths is wrong whether those to whom you are doing it are your ingroup or not. They are no worse (though both are still abhorrent of course) than French or Dutch gentile collaborators who assisted the prosecution of the Holocaust.

That's not relevant to the point. I doubt you think that getting racially discriminated against is right. So from the perspective of a UK pilot who gets treated like some sort of subhuman by his government, is his allegiance to said racist government admirable?

If we are not venerating the loyalty of a subject to their country, what exactly are we doing? By what metric is loyalty to a country that doesn't value you and racially discriminates against you good? Do you just not like China?

megacucks

I know it is probably a waste of time to engage with someone who uses such terms, but I would like to suggest the possibility that real men undertake the hard work of trying to get those with power to live up to their ideals. It is children who respond by running away, be it to China or elsewhere, or who take the easy road of engaging in violence. Martin Luther King was a man; Huey Newton was a child. And, not uncoincidentally, King was highly effective, while Newton was counterproductive.

  • -12

Actually the Stern Gang and Irgun were full of people who just went directly to the easy road of engaging in violence and they got their country. They were extremely productive and former members of those gangs of violent extremists were elected to high office in the country that they won. History is actually full of examples of men who went and took the road of political violence and were richly rewarded for it, so I'm afraid you might want to retract that suggestion.

I was making a normative claim (as was OP, of course), not an empirical claim about what methods are likely to be successful.

That being said, there is apparently evidence that violent strategies tend to be less successful than the alternative.

And while of course there are examples of men who were richly rewarded for using political violence, there are obviously far more examples of men who were not so richly rewarded. More importantly, I was referring to strategies for social change, not personal success.

Finally, I am skeptical that the Stern gang and Irgun can be credited with the establishment of the state of Isreal, given the Balfour Declaration, world opinion after the Holocaust, and the fact that every League of Nations mandate in the Middle East became independent at about the same time.

And I'm also making a normative claim - turning to violence is not the easy option reserved for children, but a difficult and sometimes necessary path. Violence is a tool that works in some situations and doesn't in others, and trying to claim that it is the reserve of children and the incompetent is just, from my perspective, wrong. That said it took me too long to reply to this so please feel no obligation to respond.

trying to claim that it is the reserve of children and the incompetent

I certainly did not say that it is the reserve of the incompetent. I merely noted that there is "apparently evidence that violent strategies tend to be less successful than the alternative." I intentionally worded that as a relatively modest claim.

As for children, yes, I probably overstated the point. I should have said that it is children who respond with violence as a first resort, or that those who valorize vioIence as the only "manly" response to perceived injustice and who deride those who respond otherwise as "cucks" are children. But I continue to assert that, as a general rule, responding with violence is the easier path, in part because it is the most natural path. That, IIRC, was a central claim of Gandhi/MLK/whoever initially developed the theory of nonviolence.

The people in power are already living up to their ideals. The ideals of western civilization are that white men are racist oppressors who need to be removed from power to make way for minorities.

The people behaving like children in this situation are the ones saying "We hate you, go away" to highly trained pilots and making a shocked pikachu face when they leave.

"I don't like this institution and have determined that I will not achieve career success in it. I'm becoming a mercenary instead." That's not a "child running away".

Unelected bureaucrats don't answer to me and you. There's nothing you can do to stop them from implementing terrible policies. Your high minded point about "real men" is irrelevant given modern bureaucracies.

If you will support your nation only when times are good to begin with, you were always a mercenary to begin with; it just so happens that the truth got revealed a little more dramatically in these cases.

There is quite a big difference between "it's bad times" and "my country is creating bad times for me in particular".

To push back a bit: this hypothetical mercenary was denied a career or career advancement in England due to his sex and skin. Having been denied success there he sells his skills elsewhere.

I suppose he could "support his nation" by not flying anything anywhere, since his kind aren't wanted flying for the military in his nation. But at that point I'm not going to denounce this hypothetical former pilot as a childish traitor if he flies somewhere else after being denied in his birth country.

There's nothing you can do to stop them from implementing terrible policies

Except there have been countless instances of enormous shifts in the behaviour of the state apparatus?

Your high minded point about "real men"

I am not the one who initiated the "cuck" discourse.

Okay. Neither am I.

Did the Japanese who fought for the US change it in any way? Or did they get to watch their ethnic kinfolk firebombed and incinerated via incendiary and nuclear weapons? Is Japan, under the fading soft power occupation of the US, thriving or is the nation slowly withering away?

The high road was taken by former Group Captain Elizabeth Nicholl. She left in protest to what she was ordered to do. Her replacement receives an award for doing what she was unwilling. She didn't run to China, she didn't flee, she did the maximum amount she could to draw attention to the situation without incriminating herself as an insubordinate member of the RAF. But with the world being how it is, there is no incentive for anyone with power to step away from their racist ideology that ultimately demands white displacement.

As an exact contradiction to the situation MLK found himself in, there is very little fertile ground for white victimary discourse in mainstream politics. It doesn't matter if it's white men or boys getting snubbed from education and employment, or little girls getting raped by the thousands by newly imported browns. MLK wasn't special and he didn't talk to the people. He talked to media and he talked to elites who rode him as a prize horse for a victory lap over the dead south. White people in the UK have no such backing. When they do organize they get ridiculed and ostracized with the full force of the media or they get outright banned and imprisoned.

So I'd ask again, what does a British male pilot owe the state that discriminates against him? Becoming MLK? Overthrowing the government and media hegemon? Or do a Mike Buchanan and speak into an empty jar for over a decade? Surely someone will listen...

did they get to watch their ethnic kinfolk firebombed and incinerated via incendiary and nuclear weapons?

Why do you think they care about their "ethnic kinfolk"? I assume, like most Americans, they were relieved that the invasion of Japan ended up being unnecessary.

Is Japan, under the fading soft power occupation of the US, thriving or is the nation slowly withering away?

Is this a joke? As if Japan did not thrive after the war.

He talked to media and he talked to elites who rode him as a prize horse for a victory lap over the dead south.

The Civil Rights Movement was probably the most successful social revolution in history. And it was not the doing of elites who were out to oppress white Southerners; elites would just as soon no one make waves. That is what elites do.

White people in the UK have no such backing.

No, but they are the majority, and they can organize politically, and politicians who want their votes will listen. Or have you never heard of the Moral Majority, or the Tea Party, or Ron DeSantis?.

successful social revolution in history

Successful it what sense?

It's not done much for black family formation.

was not the doing of elites

Have noticed the coincidence of the non-black founders of organizations like the NAACP?

Will you accept being "on the bottom of the progressive stack" if you'll have families?

Successful in overturning the social order that was Jim Crow, obviously.

Have noticed the coincidence of the non-black founders of organizations like the NAACP?

Have you noticed the elites on the other side? And, the NAACP was founded in 1909. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted 55 years later. That doesn't sound like society's elites were working very hard to advance NAACP's goals..

NAACP was founded in 1909

Yes and practiced lawfare and lobbying for 55 years prior to the CRA of 1964. It wasn't non-elites arguing these cases.

overturning the social order that was Jim Crow

If your criteria for success of an act of congress is that it makes illegal the behavior you don't like, I guess it's it's been a success.

More comments

Care to speak plainly? The rhetorical questions are getting tired.

It's pretty obvious what he's saying. Japanese-American soldiers fought for the United States in WW2 under a state that was persecuting them to a degree far in excess of what white Britons 'face', and no-one would deny that they were doing the right thing. If people who were being routinely interned can set that grievance aside, I think white Britons can set aside the grievance of a diversity drive in the RAF.

Thank you. I would argue that they would have been fully justified in not fighting for a state that had been actively persecuting them. In hindsight they seem virtuous and heroic because public opinion ended up reversing course on Japanese internment, but they couldn't be sure that that would happen two decades before the Civil Rights Act. They would have seemed foolish in a different timeline where the U.S. had remained a country where Japanese were seen as un-American and alien.

Same goes for black soldiers in WW2. Why volunteer to fight for a country that sees you as a subhuman? I think black draft dodgers during WW2 would also have been on solid moral ground.

I'm not denying that they were courageous, optimistic, and virtuous, but simply that their virtue was beyond what could be reasonably demanded in the circumstances. And so I think a young white British man would be perfectly justified in giving the finger to a system that apparently actively dislikes and seeks to diminish his kind. Pinging @Gdanning.

I think I would deny they were doing the right thing.

In fact I think it's pretty easy to establish, according to the American civic religion, that such a conduct isn't in fact, loyal, but traitorous and that they had a firm duty to rebel against tyranny. Especially when the full horror of Imperial Japanese rule was unknown to them.

If Miyagi was a true Patriot, he wouldn't have fought for the army of the State that killed his wife only to return to a country that still hated him, he'd been bombing recruitment centers instead.

If Miyagi was a true Patriot, he wouldn't have fought for the army of the State that killed his wife only to return to a country that still hated him, he'd been bombing recruitment centers instead.

With what end? All that would achieve is assisting an unambiguously far, far worse 'tyranny' in the war.

The survival of his kin sounds like enough of a motivation. And it's only unambiguous to you in retrospect.

It must have seemed fairly unambiguous to the Japanese-American soldiers at the time given that they were willing to risk their lives.

The survival of his kin sounds like enough of a motivation

I am glad that he managed to rise above man's baser instincts.

I'm not. On account of his sacred duty to his family that supercedes the one to the State.

He did not rise above anything. He took the path of least resistance.

I respect the idea of this sacrifice. But is is still a moral error.

He's plenty plain, rhetorical or not.

  • -12

I don't come to The Motte for wiki links and one liners. That's Reddit-tier discourse. If someone has a point to make, they should state it explicitly so the countours of the argument are plain.

Then you are on a different website than I am, because such comments are the order of the day. Constantly. They do not stop. To call out any single one without making it a hobby is a textbook isolated demand for rigor.

  • -11

FWIW I tend to downvote those, but I often won't engage since there's usually not even an interesting point to be made. I even report ones that are especially egregious, although certain posters on "my side" of the culture war seem to be allowed to get away with low effort snark that I think would get me moderated.

I agree with you that there are a lot of them and that they should be more aggressively moderated since they drag down the discourse.