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 -
When normies hear "ethnic cleansing" they think of ovens and Auschwitz. Hanania's (psuedonym's) actual phrasing there is much less inflammatory ("get them to leave") and while I'm sure you can find any number of progressive sources, ideologically captured historians, etc, who will claim that these things are identical, I don't think most people are going to buy it.
Per the core definitions used, ethnic cleansing is explicitly "get them to leave" as distinct from "destroy them" entailed by genocide. This is common across most sources. See eg:
That's one of the major reasons to have separate terms for the two! They're often paired in history, but it's not weasel-wording to use the actual definition of the phrase as it's actually and deliberately used in practice.
If using a term as it is defined, but relying on the fact that everyone reading it will interpret it very differently isn't weasel wording, what is?
I'm going to disagree here, I think "ethnic cleansing" is commonly understood as forceful displacement rather than actual genocide. It's obviously not an entirely clean distinction - making an entire ethnic group leave an area is almost always going to require a lot of violence - but normies are not going to look at a Kosovo situation and say "that's not ethnic cleansing, there's no gas chambers".
More options
Context Copy link
I'm prepared to bite whatever bullet is here and say "those who read it and interpret it differently are wrong." It's a useful phrase with a clearly defined meaning. I use it as appropriate and if someone overinterprets it I'll correct them. I'm looking to describe a set of events that happen sometimes, not encourage overreaction.
I would say "You're welcome to suggest another phrase for the process of deliberate removal of a group of people from an area by any means necessary," but that feels silly. We have a phrase for that. It's ethnic cleansing. We don't need another. If people are overstating it or overinterpreting it, they should knock it off, since the word "genocide" already exists for that purpose.
Imagine my confusion when I saw this out of context in the comment feed, and assumed it was posted in this thread instead.
More options
Context Copy link
I appreciate strong definitions too (although it's a war we have thoroughly lost, because strong definitions mean accountability and the mainstream can't abide that) but ethnic cleansing isn't the term I am looking to define - weasel wording is. What is weasel wording if it isn't relying on fuzzy definitions to push an agenda while maintaining plausible deniability?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In that case I don't understand the objections when that word is used to describe what happened to white ethnics in urban cores in the sixties.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm going to echo @raggedy_anthem except I'll go further- plan A of "get them to leave" is inherently bloody minded and unworkable in the USA because a given value of nobody wants to live elsewhere. Unless you're planning on offering a pension for life conditional on relocating to someplace conveniently far(and, ideally, cheap and safe), with no right of return, there will be no takers. Even then, you're not getting all of them, or even most, although sure you're disproportionately throwing out the laziest. The far right twitterati plan of "blacks get ~$100k to move to Liberia with no backsies, but we pinky promise there won't be any coercion" is inherently unworkable no matter what multiple of Liberia's annual average income the amount is. Americans know there isn't another country as nice as the one they live in, and they especially know the countries that even come close won't take people America is paying to leave, even if they have an 85(or 75 or whatever) IQ.
This isn't actually true. A vast number of these people are illegal immigrants who don't require anything more than enforcement of existing law to remove. Thanks to both sides of government wanting these people to be a cheap labour source there wasn't actually any real enforcement of this, which meant that a lot of illegal immigrants became activists or otherwise engaged with the system. The pre-existing panopticon can just be turned on, you stick "is an illegal immigrant" into XKEYSCORE and have the results sent to the enforcement agency on a per-state basis - that's a huge swathe of them gone in one go. Beyond that you can have a bunch of people go and audit the actual citizens and determine if there was any grounds for an appeal or revocation. Finally, you can implement a bunch of procedures and rules which make life so much worse than their home country that they will actually self deport. Cutting down on immigrant welfare/subsidy abuse, harshly taxing remittances, language requirements, etc.
Being an actual citizen of the USA in good standing is definitely worth a lot (though I wouldn't take the deal - I'd rather live where I currently do than the USA ceteris paribus) but being a fugitive unable to access any and all banking/financial services, unable to get employed etc would absolutely incentivise a return to their nation of origin. And if you're a HBD believer, you don't even need to do anything more - just implement some eugenic policies and the migrants you don't want will be gone in a few generations anyway due to disparate impact alone.
Who are "these people" exactly? Are you not including the 40 million African Americans, or...?
I was basing it off the original quote, so "these people" actually means "post-1965 non-White migrants from Latin America".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’m intrigued that you conflate “HBD believer” with “believer in coercive eugenics.” Seems like there are a lot of people in this thread defining that term in very telling ways.
Huh? Where did I say "coercive eugenics"? I didn't have any coercive eugenics in mind at all, unless you believe that failing to continually subsidise the reproduction of the intellectual underclass counts as "coercive". I even said "a few generations", implying that these efforts would take time. If I was suggesting coercive eugenics the underclass would not be sticking around for a few generations.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Also important to note that black people in practice are American As Fuck -- the idea that they are the true descendants of both the Borderers and Cavaliers has some merit.
And part of being American As Fuck (especially if you are a true descendant of the Borderers and Cavaliers) is "it's a free country, if you don't like me you are welcome to fuck off to Liberia".
So yeah, extremely unworkable -- even the National Divorce suffers from this issue, as many Red states do contain a lot of Black people.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link