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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33828 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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Remember "creeping Sharia Law" that far-right hysterics were warning about 10-15 years ago? Of course it was always ridiculous, but now something pretty amusing has happened.

‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags

What stood out to me was the support of right-wing activists from nearby towns. So this isn't just a moslem issue, even white Republicans are joined up. Here in Europe, populists like Geert Wilders were often warning about how too many moslem immigrants would threaten liberal values but they've been supplanted by a newer generation of populists that appear to increasingly take a page out of America's right-wing playbook by uniting with moslems against the LGBT crowd.

For liberals it also creates a bizarre spectacle. They've been obsessed with white Christian "fascists" and often turned a blind eye towards immigrants. Many of these immigrants rarely had much in common with them on social issues. They just voted left because of economic interests and the fact that the white left is more likely to let their entire family back home settle in the West.

Another ironic twist is that the supposed "Great Replacement myth" is largely what facilitated this change. Moslems are now a clear supermajority in the city and the change happened relatively quickly. Liberals were demographically replaced by the people they brought in and now feel like they've been hosed. Can't feel much sympathy for those who use immigration as a political weapon against their domestic political enemies.

This is the exact kind of "gotcha" politics that I can't stand regardless of which side does it. What's the conservative takeaway supposed to be here? That we should restrict Muslim immigration because it's a threat to the LGBT agenda? Or that we should encourage more Muslims to come because they're natural social conservatives?

Conservatives should restrict mainstream Muslim immigration because (1) mainstream Islam is impossible to reform, (2) mainstream Islam believes that music is sinful, (3) there is no proven longterm assimilation of mainstream Muslims, (4) Muslim nations oppress Christians and so why on earth would we allow any to migrate to predominately Christian lands. Of course, this has nothing to do with LGBT stuff, but it’s vastly more important, isn’t it? Imagine a religion that would gladly burn every trace of Bach and Mozart. I would gladly burn any trace of that religion!

Because even with all the issues, they're better than the alternative!

The alternative is that we demand native birth rates to increase, or, you know, East Asians and Hindus and Igbos

I don't know what's been your experience with demanding things, but mind's not so great. If the elites want to do something, they will, even with massive populist sentiment opposing it.

Perhaps that there is a cost to the vaunted “diversity” mantra even in terms prog would agree with. And thus if diversity doesn’t always lead to outcomes considered good, that means there can be too much diversity.

Now whether I consider this outcome of “diversity” is good is irrelevant. I think there are pros and cons of diversity. But exposing the social desirability bias lie that diversity is necessarily positive is useful.

That we should allow immigration in quality and quantity in such way that we will be able to thoroughly assimilate them.

Dosage makes the poison.

Take 2 Tylenol, you’ll feel better and negative symptoms will subside.

Take 4 Tylenol, and negative symptoms will be eliminated but you’ll strain your liver.

Take 40 Tylenol and you’re fucked.

What's the conservative takeaway supposed to be here?

That the people crying online about the fascists were looking in the wrong direction. This is what theocracy looks like, if you want to take it that way.

It really isn't. They didn't ban the flag as such, they banned it on government buildings.

This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property...The resolution, which also prohibits the display of flags with ethnic, racist and political views

If anything, it's just good old fashioned secularism and color-blindness.

The Left has won more thoroughly than I thought if even the woke-skeptical Motte is just buying into their narrative that banning their religious iconography counts as theocracy.

They didn't ban the flag as such, they banned it on government buildings.

Which makes it the same type of ban as Florida's "book bans", which didn't actually ban any books, merely removed them from certain government buildings.

Steel-manning here, because I mostly agree with you, but theoretically any sort of "told you so" can potentially be used to

1: Convince the other side that you know what you're talking about and they should listen to you on other topics

2: Convince the other side that they're wrong on this particular issue and should change their stance in order to stop digging themselves deeper into the hole.

3: Convince third parties that the other side is wrong and stupid and they should join you instead of the other side.

1 pretty much never happens in politics ever. It rarely even happens in local personal interactions, although it sometimes does. 2 can sometimes happen, and that seems like the most feasible route here. Mass immigration and demographic replacement is bad, now the left has more of a reason to agree that it's bad, even if for completely different reasons than the right, and maybe pointing this out will make them more amenable to coming together to solve the issue. 3 seems plausible. Each person has a reason or a set of reasons why they're on the side they're on, and how wholeheartedly they're on that side. I'm center-right specifically because every time one side does some insane nonsense I try to distance myself from them, and both sides do it frequently but I perceive the left as doing more damage with their crazy schemes so I distance myself more. Although most people don't treat things the same way I do, I think there is some of this effect, especially in younger and more undecided people. Even if pointing out the insane hypocracies on the left is unlikely to change the minds of people who are firmly on that side, anyone on the fence can see that and, if they agree, be more likely to become right, or at least a more intelligent left that doesn't replicate that flaw.

The takeaway is more for liberals as far as I can tell. That there is a real cost to embracing a far group to short term own the outgroup.

Seems to me that conservatives should (and won't) take this lesson. Someone pointed out here in the past that it is okay for conservatives and TERFS to unite on the trans issue, because their beliefs are so radically different in every other aspect that there is no danger of cross-contamination (my words, not theirs. I can't remember who said it and where it was said, so I'm just writing the way I remember it).

Conservatives should learn from this that any ally whose only connection to you is that you have the same enemy is not an ally at all.

Working with TERFs is fine because radical feminism is an ultra-niche ideology that is in itself in decline, has limited institutional power, and advises things that will never attract most women like political lesbianism, separatism in general and so on. “TERF” in general is also used to describe a lot of libfems and even center-right women who are gender critical, so the number of actual TERFs is even smaller than you might think.

“TERF” in general is also used to describe a lot of libfems and even center-right women who are gender critical, so the number of actual TERFs is even smaller than you might think.

I was including this group when I wrote "TERFs", so the group is larger.

Why are they wrong? Are you suggesting that working with TERFs would give them enough power that it would be worse than not getting the benefits of working with TERFs?

Yes. I can see conservatives rallying behind an otherwise unsuitable candidate because they're against calling a trans woman a woman. And then being surprised when that candidate votes against their interests in everything else.

The # of TERFs is so low and the alliances I've seen are much fewer. But that is true.

"TERF" doesn't mean "TERF", it means "otherwise standard feminist who doesn't agree with the trans". They don't actually have to be radical feminists.

Sure. I still think they are currently a negligible sum of people. Women with heterodox value sets are very rare.

This is the exact kind of "gotcha" politics that I can't stand regardless of which side does it.

Same TBH. Like what do they expect guys like me to say? You reap what you sow.

Neither. This is simply enjoying the enemy experience a breakdown of their self contradictory system. Team red opposes muslim migration for various reasons, despite the fact that those migrants may help own the libs occasionally.

Team Red also brings up religious freedom in every conceivable context, usually to get an exemption from a generally applicable law. I don't necessarily disagree with this, but it's an odd position to take for a group that then specifically opposes migration based on religion.

Because it's not based on religion.

That is unless we are talking "civic religion", to quote the Bull Moose...

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all ... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic ... There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

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