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 -
The Origins of Woke has not become a best seller. As of this writing, the top non-fiction book on both the Publishers Weekly and NYT best sellers lists is The Democrat Party Hates America by Mark R. Levin. While I haven't read Levin's book, I'm sure it's as disposable as any other political tract by a Fox News host, while The Origins of Woke is legitimately the most important conservative book of the last 20 years.
Argument: It's not selling well because of the Huffington Post article that exposed his old blog posts to the masses. Counterargument: Conservatives are the target market, and they tend not to "cancel" people over things like this.
Argument: It's not selling more copies because the name is cringe. Counterargument: Donald J. Trump Jr's book "Triggered" became a best seller.
Argument: It's not selling more copies because Hanania isn't a celebrity. Counterargument: Andy Ngo doesn't host anything or do many public appearances, but his book was still a best-seller.
I don't care whether Hanania is personally successful, but I really, really want the ideas in this book to gain widespread recognition. Hanania offers provide a plausible-enough plan to defeat not only wokeness, but also all of the ideologies that have gained popularity in the wake of Conservative Inc's failure to stop wokeness, including white nationalism and NRx. Speaking as a former white nationalist (or whatever you wanna call VDare readers), people with moderate temperaments adopt extreme beliefs because the mainstream hasn't offered any believable alternative.
Ben Shapiro says that we should just argue people into adopting our views because it'll suddenly work, even though we've been trying for years and it hasn't worked. Peter Brimelow says we should close the border and have white babies. Curtis Yarvin says that we should put a dictator in charge, or at least whatever FDR was. Caldwell says that we should repeal the Civil Rights Act, even though it's as much a part of our national identity at this point as the Constitution.
Hanania's proposal is essentially a modification of Caldwell's that takes political realities into account. Instead of repealing the Civil Rights Act, we should just re-interpret it in an originalist light and repeal the modifications made in the decades afterwards.
I can't say for certain why this book isn't making bank, but I theorize that it has to do with the fact that no mainstream conservative figure like a Ben Shapiro or a Steven Crowder has reviewed it or interviewed him. They're ignoring him, even though his politics are totally aligned with theirs, because they don't want to platform someone who was once a racist. National Review hasn't even reviewed The Origins of Woke.. and they reviewed Christopher Caldwell's Age of Entitlement!
So, here are three questions I have in no particular order.
Disclaimer, I haven't read Origins of Woke yet, partially because my understanding was that Hanania's solution boiled down to trying to bring white people into the fold of Civil Rights as you described. But one thing I don't get is why Hanania's argument is different from the Ben Shapiro, conservative "let's just change people's minds with arguments." Who exactly is going to buy an Originalist argument for including white people under the umbrella of Civil Rights protection? Almost nobody.
Originalist arguments have some power, the Federalist Society has its influence and many in its sphere are undoubtedly motivated by a commitment to Constitutional Originalism. But that certainly hasn't stopped Wokeness. I find it completely impossible that a so-called originalist interpretation of Civil Rights which calls to provide legal protections for White people, an interpretation which was absolutely not shared by those most influential in its creation, to be convincing to anybody except White Nationalists.
It manages to be not radical enough and too radical at the same time, which is not a compliment. I agree that the Civil Rights Act is "as much a part of our national identity at this point as the Constitution", and let's just say our Constitutional Originalist Libertarian friends have nothing to contribute to dismantling Wokeness, so a fake "Civil Rights Originalist" libertarian sounds even worse.
Trying to make laws that are based on motte and bailey between pretensions of equality but actually it is about screwing white people or men, or whatever non progressive group is an obvious way forward.
The only way it might not work is because some of the politicians calling themselves conservatives in addition to the leftists are unwilling to do this whatsoever. In that case, nothing that can work, will work. Pressure can still get more of them, but the right has a gatekeeping problem and infilitration by the left.
Hanania take that wokeness comes in part due to the law and what politicians voted for and enforced is true. Fundamentally what happened is that leftists voted for laws that preffered left wing groups and screwed the right, and supposed right wingers failed to oppose this or even joined with it.
More attention paid on this phenomenon is good, but we really need to promote much greater gatekeeping. The final evolution ought to be to be intolerant of leftists too who are too far to the left and are progressive supremacists. All this is possible, it just requires elite will to do so. And it might require some other meassures to the extend the NGO complex which was itself created and didn't exist overnight, favors one of the two outcomes. Corporate America for example acording to Bloomberg hired over 90% nonwhites. The same corporate america which sided with BLM which actually lead to a rise in murders in black community.
If the same applied against non whites, the leftists here would be advocating for the goverment to regulate and punish the people running corporations. Fundamentally right wingers need to be more aggressive and more willing to enforce justice while not buying the gaslighting of leftists who defect but want the right to be pushovers so they win. The left also should be more just and not be of te form the left is today. We need to gatekeep against that as well, rather than respecting progressive supremacist as an acceptable opinion. It's not. We can have pluralistic debate within a more limited overton window that includes valuable views and excludes the progressive supremacists.
Since you mentioned white nationalism, my take as someone who isn't a white American (I am not American and don't want to give at this point too many details about where I am from) is that some level of tribalism for white Americans being allowed is what you have if you don't have a racist antiwhite society. Unlimited white identity politics can become racist for the same reason the unlimited identity politics for Jews, blacks, women, trans, etc while no identity politics allowed for white americans, men, etc, leads to obvious prejudiced paths. So, even if someone supports multiculturalism white identity politics are a part of that, and it is insane racist bs to want zero white identity politics, when other groups, including broader categorizations with racial elements like Hispanic, Blacks, Asians, etc have theirs. Limiting the tribalism for progressive groups is the big thing if you want to make American society less racist.
I really can't take seriously at all someone who thinks zero white tribalism while allowing quite more tribalism for other groups is the solution to racism. Rather this is the kind of racist concern troll who should be gatekept. Both in a nation state and in a multicultural society, there ought to be tribalism for the majority group but with limits. Even in a nation state too much arrogance can lead to trying to take land from neighbors, etc. lack of tribalism leads to letting others take over, mass migrate, discriminate against you, and the vacuum is filled by the people who supposedly don't have tribalism adopt the tribalism of other groups, anyhow. There is a sweet spot.
So presenting things and pressuring in a direction that rejects the false dichotomy between far left extremism (that pretends of being moderation) and super far right boogieman, is important as to allow people to choose the superior moderate path of justice.
Trying to get the right in this direction is going to be more successful than trying to have a right that purity spirals and accepts the exact way of thinking of the more edgy, hardcore rightist types.
Yeah, unfortunately many commenters here seem to think that there is no hope for the modern right to ever gain ground back without going full defection, all out aggression against progressivism. Salting the earth and all that. While I do understand the impulse given that progressives have been playing that game for a while, I think it makes the already incoherent right-wing position even worse.
If the standard conservative position in the U.S. is to promote Christian ideology with the core virtues of hope, faith, and love, how can this naked war-mongering really fit into it? White identitarianism? Come on. The religion that many right-wingers profess to be defending is the origin point of the progressive ideology in the first place. I'd like to see the right promote more intellectualism within right wing spaces, the failure to do which I think has lead to many of the defeats today. Instead many just want to double down on populist aggression tactics.
My impression is that white identitarianism is most commonly advanced by atheists, so I think this one is a miss.
I think there's plenty of intellectualism in right wing spaces, and claiming otherwise is one of the progressive aggression tactics.
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.
That's not true either. A lot of the same people have substacks too:
Auron Macityre
The Distributist
Alex Kaschuta
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 think you're being silly. If you wanted text only you should have said so from the start.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link