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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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It's worth noting that attempting to build consensus is explicitly against the Motte's rules, and the top post of every Culture War thread says:

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.

So when I object to 'recruiting' I am objecting to something that is already forbidden here.

I am not objecting to people being honestly persuaded of things.

I acknowledge that the line between trying to convince someone of something and trying to recruit someone into a movement can be pretty hazy. "Here's why I think Marxism is true" isn't that far away from "you should become a Marxist and join the class struggle" - indeed, if Marxism is true, then becoming a Marxist and joining the class struggle may logically follow from that. But I still think there's some value in trying to allow the former type of post but not the latter, even if the borders are unclear.

To take this specific example, I think cake's posts are very clearly on the recruiting side of the line. He's not coming in here with an idea to discuss, including the possibility of genuine give-and-take or being convinced by his interlocutors, but rather with a manifesto to share. He's since reposted the link here in a more acceptable format, and gone on to make posts that clearly read like political recruitment - I take comments like these as aiming at building a coalition.

So what's my ultimate position?

I don't want a screening test where we ban anyone who might fit a definition of 'white nationalist'. That's impractical and foolish. However, I do want it to be clear that cake-style white nationalist recruiting is unwelcome, and I'd like a more proactive approach to our rules against recruiting and consensus-building. I'd particularly note that rules in favour of kindness, against weakmanning, and in favour of writing like you want everyone to be included seem like they implicit rule out a number of white nationalist arguments anyway. I do see posts here that come off like "so, fellow white people, how do we deal with such-and-such problem?", and those definitely seem inappropriate to me.

"Recruiting for a cause" is "Hey join my organization" not "my team's ideas are great and you should adopt them because they're great".