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 -
I don't fully understand the Israel conundrum.
The ideological stake over the issue hasn't been divided merely between the left and right, but within each aisle too. In recent years, it seems as though liberals have fallen out of love with them and many of them believe that (on principle) Israel shouldn't exist. While others believe in the two state solution. The mainstream media has been louder about the IDF's excesses in occupied territories (like this one, a cursory search). Tankies over at GrayZone and related websites are convinced that western mainstream media is still defending Israel. I don't get this position, are they arguing that western media isn't criticising Israel enough or that the media is silent altogether? The right seems to be divided too, many of them enthusiastically support them while others don't like that billions of dollars of taxpayer money is sent to Israel every year and they're convinced that their lobby in the US is most supportive of liberalism and progressivism and the war machine.
My questions are what drove the evolution of these views into what they are, exactly how influential is the Israel lobby in the US, why do tankies believe that Israel doesn't get criticised in the media, are the liberals starting to decouple from Israel, are there any other reasons besides the treatment of Palestinians that the Israel question takes up so much oxygen in the foreign policy room?
I strongly agree with RandomRanger's recommendation of The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
But to go in a slightly different direction, part of the issue is that Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn't neatly match on to the left-right divide in Western politics.
Israel has elements that appeals to both the right and the left. Israel is a relatively liberal democracy when compared to its neighbours, and for progressives, Israel has the most advanced LGBT rights within the Middle East. Broad elements of both the left and right sympathise the history of Jewish oppression and the horror of the Holocaust. More cynically, charges of anti-semitism have staying power on both the right and the left. The Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism that often accompanies local opposition to Israel are often opposed by both the right and left. For some of the religious right, Israel is seen as sacred. Some on both sides of the aisle might support Israel as a purely pragmatic foreign policy move to have a powerful ally in the region.
Similarly support for Palestine, or opposition to Israel (they are largely conflated), has elements that that can appeal to both the right and left, though it is generally more left-coded. Liberals support Palestinians for human rights reasons, while the hard left/socialist types see an oppressed class that need to be liberated, and oppose Israel for its association with US imperialism. The right is more complicated. The more isolationist, anti-MIC and/or libertarian right sometimes oppose Israel because it represents US interventionism, the worst excesses of US foreign policy and aid, and globalism in general. This is even more true for the right outside of the US who may oppose the US-Israel relationship for a whole host of reasons. And if we want to go there, there is also the anti-semitic far-right who oppose Israel for obvious reasons. Again, some on both sides might also support Palestine/oppose Israel for what they see as pragmatic reasons too - it antagonises many Muslim/Arab nations in the region, is a drain on US finances, and is worsening conflicts in the Middle East.
Complications will obviously arise when people try to map what is at its core a ethno-religious conflict between two groups on the other side of the world to Western politics. It doesn't really map at all! My sense is that Western support for either Israel or Palestine is far more driven by political convenience than any real principled ideological stance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link