site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 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.

How did Zionists do it?

Most people nowadays have a non-white friend, family member, partner, or work colleague. White nationalism would mean severing these important relationships. In sum, white nationalism is dead on arrival as a political movement.

They don't have to come. Moreover, if they do have a non-European partner, their children are not going to be Europeans, so that family would not qualify. Typically people in these situations are not interested.

There's perhaps 10% of the population in any given historically-European country that would not see an issue with living among other Europeans. Some of these people will have to move to another area, to regroup.

It would not be unexpected for people living in certain localities with existing policies like "catch and release" for (non-European) murderers to move out to more hospitable locales.

Currently these locales are strictly gatekept by financial means but other options exist and will develop themselves in less authoritarian countries than the West, where freedom of association does not exist.

The more pressure is put on existing mostly-European communities to integrate, the more successful the independence movement can be, until we simply run out of Europeans.

In 50 years, every single European child will be born from a right-wing extremist family by today's standards. Perhaps they will simply integrate into some order-minded, economically-advanced Asian country in the future, before disappearing.