site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I mean this unironically - can you please link a right wing space that has intellectual discourse? This is the first and only place online I've found.

EDIT: also with regards to white identitarianism, fair point. I suppose I should say that I think white identitarianism is foolish because without Christians the right has practically no real cultural or political power. Not to mention consistency.

Their podcast circuit is pretty good, some of the ones I check out:

If you're looking for a community where you could debate, that might be harder because I'm not really sure where they gather online, but maybe you can try basket weaving.

Agh, yeah maybe that's my issue. High quality right wing content is almost always suggested in video or podcast form and I just... don't enjoy those mediums. I bet there's a reason why the right has such a strong disdain for the written word, at least in a more intellectual sense.

I try not to judge but I genuinely do think that podcasts and videos tend to pander far more to the lowest common denominator, and select for poorly thought out on-the-fly arguments.

why the right has such a strong disdain for the written word

That's not true either. A lot of the same people have substacks too:

There's a bunch of magazines and think tanks that I ran into over the years that also seemed ok, but I'd need to search for them.

I try not to judge but I genuinely do think that podcasts and videos tend to pander far more to the lowest common denominator, and select for poorly thought out on-the-fly arguments.

I think you're being silly. If you wanted text only you should have said so from the start.

Thank you for the links! Yeah I probably should've specified text - although in my head when I said 'intellectual discussion' that typically means text. Definitely a foolish heuristic.

I mean this unironically - can you please link a right wing space that has intellectual discourse?

4chan.org

That said I don't think this is really the kind of answer you're looking for, because there's a lot of non-intellectual discourse on there as well. But without qualifications, it does indeed qualify as a right wing space with intellectual discourse on it.

Ahh, yeah I can't be bothered to wade through that sort of dross. It destroys the human spirit.