site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Take 2.

I posted and deleted this because I don't want to get banned, but if I can't talk about the things I want to talk about then I don't see much point in caring about the account, anyway. Still, I'll try to be subdued.

The Robert E Lee statue from Charlottesville has been destroyed. Liquidated, actually, and slated to be replaced with some statue for black people, which is striking symbolism of how Americans are being liquidated to be replaced by foreigners.

I'm posting the reactions on twitter, because there are dozens of two-sentence sentiments that I share. I'll quote a couple, for posterity, and you can get the gist of the other side from the WP article.

Columbia Bugle

Disgusting. Why not give the Lee statue to a museum? Because people might enjoy visiting it, or one day decide to restore it. This is a reminder that the Left wont stop after displacing historic American heroes. They want to deface, destroy and replace them with their own ridiculous idols.

Jack Posobiec

Columbus is next. Followed by Teddy. Then Jefferson. Then George Washington

Jack again

Glenn Youngkin let them do this. His AG too

Never forget it. These squishes aren't built for this fight

Maarblek

people with no heroes and no accomplishments doing the only thing they know: crying to the courts to allow them to turn beautiful things that other people made into garbage

BlueandGray1864

"We'll put them in museums", it was always a lie. The destruction of historical artifacts has begun. Shame on anyone who supports this.

God Bless Robert E. Lee

Spencer Klavan

“How delightful it was to smash to pieces those arrogant faces, to raise our swords against them, to cut them ferociously with our axes, as if blood and pain would follow our blows”

Pliny on the destruction of Domitian's statues. The relish and vindictiveness in this process isn't an accident: it's a symbol and an effigy, an expression of violent hatred.

That last one is really quite striking, given this line from the WP article:

It was a grim act of justice and a celebration all in one.

Really, you should read the article, too. In it, I saw the genocide of my race, and it scares the hell out of me. I suppose this must be how the Jews feel.

So, is it justice? Is it vengeance? Should it be celebrated? Should it be destroyed?

And does the symbolism of liquidating the statue of a white man apply to the declining white population in America? Is the deliberate melting down of this statue a parallel to the deliberate replacement of the American race?

ETA: One more tweet from this morning, just a few hours ago:

GigaThaad

Literally my ancestor. We carry the Lee name as a first/middle in my family

While I didn't need a directly insulting gesture to tell me that my kind is hated and many seek our extinction (the implicit cues were strong enough) I appreciate this image making it absolutely clear.

Elon Musk

They absolutely want your extinction

Musk, as a white man born in South Africa, should know what it looks like when your native country changes and now wants you and yours dead and gone.

which is striking symbolism of how Americans are being liquidated to be replaced by foreigners

I'm trying to be charitable here, so can you explain what you mean by liquidated? The phrasing here seems to imply you think Americans are being deliberately killed/destroyed/geocide-ed in order to make room for foreigners or immigrants and I'm just not aware of any evidence of that. If you're referring to falling birth rates, well, it isn't the foreigners' fault that Americans aren't having enough unprotected sex.

EDIT: Typo

seems to imply you think Americans are being deliberately killed/destroyed/geocide-ed in order to make room for foreigners or immigrants and I'm just not aware of any evidence of that

You haven't been watching demographic ratios, fertility rates, or any of the other things that could count? Demographics

If you're referring to falling birth rates, well, it isn't the foreigner's fault that Americans' aren't having enough unprotected sex.

No, I suppose it's not their fault, but they're the ones I want kicked out of my country, so they're the ones who will suffer for it regardless. So it goes.

Have you read or heard of Left Behind in Rosedale? It's not intended to be, but it's a very good chronicle of the ethnic cleansing of whites in the post-civil rights act America. That's not birth rates, it's rape and murder and racially motivated predation of primarily older whites by younger black men.

If you're unaware, it's because you're not paying attention to the kind of people who have been telling you about it.

I think you know that's a rather markedly atypical use of the word "liquidate". I'm inclined to think you are trying to be deliberately inflammatory, and (poorly) pretending otherwise.

"Ah you see officer, when I said on twitter that Hamas should liquidate all the Jews I simply meant that they should be provided with refreshing beverages!"

How is purging American cities of an entire generation of white people anything but liquidation? Especially when you're lied to and told it's white flight and not ethnic cleaning.

"Liquidation" usually involves wholesale killing. I agree that what was called "white flight" was mostly ethnic cleansing. Philly War Zone, discussed a few years ago on one of the predecessors of this place goes into it also, and growing up I heard similar stories about Baltimore.

Yeah, I used liquidation because they're melting metal into liquid, and I genuinely believe that whites are being ethnically cleansed as much as is possible. It's not possible to completely eliminate whites, but the salami is being sliced every day, every year. It's wordplay.