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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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This is probably too "boo outgroup", but given the direct relation I felt it was probably worth sharing.

Our once and former (?) moderator TracingWoodgrains has been called out as "a sociopathic troll" who exists to create anti-transgender drama. This is according to transgendermap.com, a pro-trans website which has built a list of communities toxic to the transgender movement.

The focus on Trace comes from their look at Blocked and Reported, and includes a list of ideologically affiliated subreddits, including:

“Rationalist”/libertarian:

CultureWarRoundUp

theschism

TheMotte

slatestarcodex

It seems that the move came at the right time, since if we weren't particularly noticeable before, we likely are now.

Ugh, this is one of the things that most alienates me from many transgender activist communities. It's pure BPD black-and-white thinking. Anyone who isn't a perfect ally is a sworn enemy. This also contributes to the movement eating its own (e.g. the truscum controversy).

It is simply pure Conflict Theory.

The transgender movement is, at heart, a radical leftist ideology, and so they work to identify enemies, isolate and smear them, promising to be tolerant, and then smashing them.

The transgender movement is, at heart, a radical leftist ideology, and so they work to identify enemies, isolate and smear them, promising to be tolerant, and then smashing them.

As you said.

Some other people might say that transgender movement is radical capitalist ideology financed by billionaires and big pharma that works to achive final frontier of commodification - turning even your own body into consumer product of choice.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers

https://archive.ph/XH5v5

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Pritzker_family

In capitalism, I can choose my food, my clothing, my place of dwelling, my job, my hobbies etc... why cannot I pick and select my gender identity?

YMMV.

edit: link fixed

I think this is where the distinction of socialism/capitalism breaks, given that in the original Marxist literature socialism and ultimately communism was supposed as an ideal against the reality of "capitalism".

In practice basically all radical left regimes collapsed into some form of what is called "state capitalism" - basically bigshots with political power call the shots and various corporations do their bidding. Of course there is also an incest with different "czars" of different parts of economy or bureaucracy using their influence or even direct ownership for political power struggle. But the state and politics have primacy, if powers at be decide to run "anticorruption" raid against your corporation or they decide to cut the corporations out of financial markets or regulate it to oblivion that is their prerogative.

The key understanding is that radicals do not have a positive plan, they have revolutionary zeal and faith that it pays off in the end. If corporations "wokewash" their revolution, that only means that "true revolution was never tried" and repeat. Filthy reactionaries won again, but only temporarily. To evaluate radical leftism by an outcome like "capitalism strong vs communism enacted" means adopting their own irrational logic. To many people with experience in such a situation across the world it is clear that these ideologies are unworkable and that having a new crop of cynical power brokers like nomenklatura is inevitable. Corrupt Chinese multibilionaires tied to political clans such as those of Xi Jinping or Jiang Zemin are a feature and inevitable result of Maoist revolution, not a bug.

In that sense rich and powerful using the new radicalism to get ahead and get wealth or power is nothing new.