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've removed this post as it was just a copy-pasted article. Please remember:
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.
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.
It is too much to ask if those discussions crowd out everything else.
Just on a practical level if white nationalist talk floods the forum, it will cease to be an interesting forum to non-white nationalists.
There's a genuinely difficult problem here when it comes to creating an open discussion forum. If everything is allowed, at least some percentage of that everything will be vile. Many people don't want to be in a space where vile discussion occurs, and therefore will avoid it.
If there's a position that, by virtue of being included, will automatically lead to other positions self-excluding, then including that position may actually reduce the range of potential discussions. How to handle positions like that?
I can already hear the complaint - isn't this just giving a veto to the censorious and intolerant? And certainly it doesn't seem like a good thing to optimise for just having as many people as possible. The goal of the Motte isn't to get as many people as possible, so it definitely makes sense to just go ahead and let 'normies' feel uncomfortable if that's the price of attracting intelligent people with controversial ideas. However, even intelligent people with controversial ideas may not want to associate with certain ideas. So there should be a line, it seems to me?
The line shouldn't be placed at zero, where everything that offends anyone in the majority is banned. But neither should it be at one hundred, where literally everything is permitted including the guy who just likes to scream 'DIE N---ER DIE'. Where should the line be? If we want to curate a healthy, vibrant garden of ideas - where are the borders?
I know this will be interpreted as a call to censor. That's honestly not where I'm trying to go. My preference is to try to maximise the interchange of interesting ideas. It's just that how to do that isn't an easy question. It isn't resolved by just picking an an absolute principle like 'everyone is welcome full stop' and standing on that.
Anticipating an objection does not make it invalid.
You got there anyway. You appear to be trying to erase sharp distinctions (screaming "DIE N---ER DIE" versus discussing white identitarianism) in order to create a continuum where you can play the old game of "you have no hard and fast principles, we're just arguing over the price".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link