site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I feel like we get too many holocaust denial type posts which not too many people believe in and isn’t all that interesting.

But I am starting to wander if the right might develop some serious antisemitism going forward but I don’t believe it’s coming from holocaust denial atleast as the gateway drug.

I think it’s coming from a lot of leftwing ideology that the right is internalizing. It’s from the woke class system and disparate impact policy where I am not even sure where the Jews fit in the woke class pyramid - maybe the top or not even a part of it.

Identity politics would seem to not be good for the Jewish community in so far as being more successful as a group as applied to general whites means your racists bad person. Then normie whites start to look around and see people of Jewish descent way disproportionately powerful and likely even more powerful in culturally powerful areas. All the advantages normie whites are accused of having (which they don’t) are very strong in some Jewish communities. Then you look at say some leading places accusing you of white supremacy like CNN being Jewish run and suddenly a lot of antisemitism doesn’t feel like a conspiracy.

To conclude identity politics and a lot of their arguments expose the Jewish ethnicity in a way that pre-2008 American culture on race did not. If I am to be judged for my groups success then should that not even more strongly apply to Jews?

Hopefully, we can go back in time culturally.

I think a lot of the latent antisemitism on the right was being masked for most of the last century by the popularity of dispensational theology. Now that dispensationalism is going out of style, and secularization has progressed to the point where even the right is being affected, you are seeing a lot of the antisemitism pop back up.

I think this probably overstates the influence of dispensationalism? As I understand it, dispensationalism never really made any headway outside of America, and even in America it was only ever a fringe, minority view? Dispensationalism was a minority within American Protestantism, much less Christianity as a whole.

(I wouldn't be surprised if it's now a majority in American Protestantism, given the collapse of the mainlines and greater prominence of Baptists and Pentecostals, but the growth of Catholics will still keep it down as a proportion of the whole.)

Keith Woods earlier this week got #BanTheADL as number 1 trending on Twitter, with even Elon Musk responding positively to Keith's posts and others from right wingers like this.

The ADL has gone too far, and I don't think the rank-and-file Left is going to go to bat to defend the ADL. The ADL have too contradictory of an ethos, being highly Woke when it comes to the West but radically right-wing and ethnonationalist when it comes to Israel. It opens them up to credible criticism from the Right with a Left that is not going to be eager to go to their defense.

Basically, the problem is that the behavior of the ADL opens them up to highly credible criticisms from both right wing and left wing anti-Semites, so their list of ideological allies is going to continue to grow thin.

I am likely picking up some thoughts downstream from that movement. I don’t get how they think promoting woke doctrines serve Jewish interests as I see those arguments as easily turned against them. Besides looking like hypocrites it would seem identity grievances should be something they would be afraid of spreading.

It’s from the woke class system and disparate impact policy where I am not even sure where the Jews fit in the woke class pyramid - maybe the top or not even a part of it.

Being Jewish counts for exactly zero in woke terms. If you're Jewish and light skinned or even medium-toned you're white (whereas a person with the same appearance who was Muslim might be "brown"). The fact that there's a lot of Jews espousing it doesn't have to do with wokeness favoring Jews; mostly it's about Jews being leftists. It wasn't good to be a Jew under Communism either (to be fair, it wasn't good to be anything under Communism), but that had a disproportionate number of Jewish supporters too. It's almost enough to make you question HBD.

Being Jewish ends up counting in woke terms sporadically. Whenever there's some right-wing antisemetic comment that happens, or even something that borders on being antisemetic or could be construed as being antisemetic through wild interpretation (like how Marjorie Taylor Greene's dumb comment got morphed by the left into being about "Jewish space lasers"), then the left always takes the opportunity to pounce and decry the right as antisemetic, and implies that Jewish people are oppressed by the Right. And then Jewishness gains a little bit of woke traction. But then it goes away again, mostly.

In invoking the oppression Olympics, blacks and Muslims are typically on the top of the hierarchy, followed by Jews and Asians, and whites always at the bottom. Meaning that anti-Muslim bias by jews will always get more attention than the other way around, which is almost always ignored. Trump being blamed for anti-semenitism , but some jews blamed for islamophobia, fits this model.