This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
- 1849
- 20
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Apparently some left wing organizations are revealing themselves. Here is an X account claiming to represent “BLM Chicago” implicitly (but very nearly explicitly) declaring their support for the terrorist attacks: https://x.com/BLMChi/status/1711793142742073573?s=20
My questions are:
Who actually runs this account?
Have they tried to articulate what they actually mean by this?
I’ll be honest that my opinion of BLM, especially after the 2020 riots, is quite low. This seems to fit a little too well into the right wing hatred of them.
Ok the other hand: are there any stories in Jewish folklore about creating a monster and then having it turn on you?
The post below seems correct that you can always find a person in a group with wrong opinions to smear.
That being said I never once wavered on BLM is not good even when that was a heretic position. The group always lacked numeracy. There just isn’t enough unarmed black man dying. It’s a small issue compared with more important things like figuring out how to reduce prison populations. Besides they always had vibes of trying to use racism for back door Marxism. Which has always been apparent in their writings. They would always take the Palestinian side because they are the side Russia took under Marxism.
I mean, BLM being bad was never not the only real opinion on this board.
Other than the BLM supporters? Even ignoring Darwin's absolutely embarrassing showing, there were more than a couple honest advocates.
The dark old days when we still had users who actually had different opinions.
And they're free to post here and now. Unless they feel such unbearable mental pain from seeing other posters' contrary opinions that they ragequit.
This is perhaps ironic on a thread where the OP is still frustrated years later by hearing a single user disagree with the dominant narrative here.
I've got a long memory on a lot of posters, and point out that he was far from the only user to have a different opinion on that topic. And, uh, the previous poster was asking about things that happened three years ago; by necessity any honest discussion will necessarily be about people saying things years ago.
My frustration with Darwin wasn't that I disagreed with him. In no small number of cases, I actually don't -- and almost all of those made it tempting to respond "stop helping me". Whether I agreed or disagreed with his object-level position, he'd argued it primarily and sometimes solely through strawmen, insults, insistence that clear facts weren't proven or unknown matters must have happened in the most convenient way, standards of behavior or evidence evolved and deployed and denied and recreated within the context of single arguments, outright falsehoods, so on and so forth. He'd call basic legal terms deceptive rhetoric, could not imagine what Jim Crow looked like, and made random claims that couldn't fit a basic timeline.
That wasn't universal, and there were rare times where he could make decent arguments and I'd point out that out well before his actual permaban. But given that one of his biggest 'contributions' ever was slamming people over not commenting on the Smollett hate crime, it's hard to comment about BLM support without mentioning him, and also not fair to the BLM supporters here to use him as the first example.
You're not the problem Gatt, you're a quality and civil contributor. But neither is this isolated - just the previous week I saw you call out someone for being the lone poster to defend Ibram Kendi's book. I genuinely don't think this kind of pubic shaming of people who dared to buck the majority even years ago is conducive to having non-echo chamber debates here.
But like I said to FC, my parent comment to yours was lighthearted, not a declaration of conflict. I don't care all that much or I would have left.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Reading through the thread, I have no idea which post you are attempting to reference.
The comment mine is responding to, gattsuru’s on darwin
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
My recollection is that even the few progressives we had at that time were ambivalent at best about them.
... I've had a discussion on The Old Site where a moderator put out the challenge to find a half-dozen posters who "(a) are "regulars" here (b) leftists, and (c) have celebrated or turned a blind eye to violence", and I got either four-and-a-half or five depending on who you ask just by looking at BLM-related ones.
Support for BLM as a movement in general while either carefully ignoring the violence or at least saying it was bad was far broader, even at the Motte.
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