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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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I've removed this post as it was just a copy-pasted article. Please remember:

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases.

In other words, this is a place for discussion. If you'd like to discuss this essay, you may link to it, even quote from it, but then you have to do the work of offering some evaluation or insight of your own. There is no minimum word count, but "low effort" is something that is often evidenced by a low word count.

On a somewhat meta point, this isn't the first case of a low-effort repost of some white nationalist rant on the Motte, is it? I'm starting to feel a little concerned that the Motte has been identified as a possible recruiting site by people in that sphere.

I'm starting to feel a little concerned that the Motte has been identified as a possible recruiting site by people in that sphere.

As Naraburns points out in another comment, if you want to stick to spaces where white nationalists are not allowed to attempt persuasive arguments in favor of our positions, you are welcome to try everywhere else on the entire internet. Can you let us have this one teeny-tiny space where we can actually have a respectful and open dialogue with people, allowing them to weigh our arguments without multiple layers of reinterpretation and misrepresentation by media gatekeepers? I do hope that’s not too much to ask.

I think there's a difference between an open dialogue and low effort link spam.

I agree, but you did not express concern with low-effort link spam - your expressed concern was with white nationalists trying to “recruit” people. Given that this is your concern, shouldn’t you be more worried about white nationalists using sophisticated and high-effort argumentation in order to make our side look respectable and interesting, rather than posting shitty low-effort links, which makes us look lazy and bad-faith?

shouldn’t you be more worried about white nationalists using sophisticated and high-effort argumentation in order to make our side look respectable and interesting

I personally think attempts to recruit by stating and a clear thesis and defending it by engaging with the central points of the counterarguments would be a significant improvement over the current trend, which seems to be "copy/paste kinda incoherent rants and hope it resonates with someone".

I’ve been here for years making effortful posts with clear theses in defense on my views, and I think I do as good a job as anyone else here of responding to counterarguments. There are a number of other equally effortful and sophisticated posters here with views similar to mine who have been active for some time here and who post regularly. You are pointing to the poor behavior of one specific guy, posting under various ban-evading alts, and acting as if it’s a representative example of a larger trend.

You are not the main problem here, no. Although I don't know who you're referring to as someone who both substantively agrees with you and also engages with difficult questions (rather than e.g. changing or dropping the topic when challenged and then coming back with the same points a week or two later).

Edit: or at least I don't consider you to be the main problem. I don't speak for everyone.