site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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.

40
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So, out of curiosity, I looked at the r / hungary subreddit, which is yet another very obvious example of leftist platform capture through the actions of biased admins, meaning that it can be counted on to provide a good summary of the generated oppositional outrage. I was a bit surprised by the narrative that there's apparently an ongoing local epidemic of helpless women getting brutally raped and impregnated by, I don't know, hairy alt-right incel gamer programmers or something (we're supposed to assume they are all White, of course), therefore this new law will mean that hordes of women already deeply and tragically scarred by the psychological trauma of incel rape will, if they elect to undergo abortion, be forced by Nazi shitheads to undergo the additional trauma of having to listen to heartbeat of the rapist's "baby" (clump of cells, or something), which is, like, super terrible.

...huh? What? What % of female rape victims even get pregnant?

Is this theory also imported from US culture warriors? I really want to know.

...huh? What? What % of female rape victims even get pregnant?

Despite being 0.13% pregnancies, rape pregnancies constitute for 50% anti-anti-abortion arguments!

I just checked a few threads and can't see such stuff on /r/hungary. Even for that sub, what you describe would be quite fringe .

(we're supposed to assume they are all White, of course)

According to Wikipedia the demographics of Hungary are 83% ethnic Hungarian, 15% undeclared, 3% Romani and trace amounts of others.

Most of the "undeclared" are Romani, and their proportion is even higher among the younger cohort. Statistics can be misleading.

Also for what it's worth the overwhelming majority of Hungarian immigrants to the Czech Republic that I met when I lived there were Gypsies

If Orban just copy-pastes American conservative rhetoric to Hungary, it is expected that opposition will pursue a similar strategy: not indigenous leftism, but an American imported one unadjusted for local conditions.

Do leftists in Hungary take American frames for opposing Orban, or do they go at it from a more indigenous cultural frame?