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 -
Below, there is a discussion of the civil war due to Robert E Lee statute being torn down. The other main event of the day is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I would say as a general matter the biggest supporters of Palestine in the US are progressives. Progressives also hate the confederacy.
Question is can you separate them? The south was arguing for their right of self determination? Of course, imbedded within that is they wanted to savagely deny that right to blacks held in chattel slavery. Likewise, the Palestinians claim the right of self determination but their stated intention is to kill the Israelis (from the river to the sea has a meaning).
So in both cases there is a legitimate claim to right of self determination. But that claim is bloodied by what those people would do with such right and at least in the confederacy context that “bad thing” was enough to invalidate their right to self determination.
My question then is whether the right to self determination is properly thought of as as a right? If so, it seems at best it is a contingent right. If it is a contingent right, what contingencies are unimportant enough to “trump” the right?
I think that progressives usually value other things more highly than they value national self-determination. So for example they would not support American whites creating their own ethno-state enclave. They see whites as the dominant ethnic group on the planet and it would probably take an enormous diminishment of white power in the world, beyond even the "the US turns into South Africa" scenario that many right-wingers fear, for them to see whites as an oppressed group that it is in alignment with progressive values to support against oppression. After all, one can argue that in South Africa whites still dominate the economy. Not that I think this is a very good argument, but my point is that South Africa would have to become even more significantly a place where white people are not on top than it is now for progressives to change their minds about it.
Progressive support both of the Union in the Civil War and the cause of Palestinian independence is explained by the fact that they view the Confederacy and Israel as two manifestations of what they see as their core enemy - white supremacist colonialism. They think of Ashkenazi Jews as being a type of white people and they see Israel as being a white colonialist project similar to Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa, or the French in Algeria and Vietnam. They think of Israel as being analogous to the Confederacy and they think of the Palestinians as being analogous to the Confederacy's black slaves. They think highly of John Brown and they would think highly of a pro-Palestinian John Brown. They think highly of Lincoln and they would probably also think highly of some national leader who used military force to get Israel to give the Palestinians concessions. If that national leader also oppressed people, well, there are ways to rationalize that, the simplest one being just not to think about it too hard. Lincoln himself was no great champion of civil liberties, anyway, except when it came to slavery, but oh well you can always argue that "can't make an omelet without cracking some eggs". So for example, forcing white people to risk their lives in the army for a few years is viewed as good if the army is then used to end the practice of forcing black people to pick cotton for their whole lives and their descendants' lives and so on. Although as a side note, to tell the truth I kind of doubt that most progressives (or people of any other political alignment, for that matter) are well-read enough about the US Civil War to even realize that the Union widely used conscription. But maybe Gangs of New York changed that, I'm not sure, I haven't watched it myself.
There is also a subset of leftists who generally just oppose the US government and its geopolitical adventures, seeing the US government as the current chief global manifestation of the great progressive enemy. This explains for example the subset of leftists who support Russia in the current war. Such open opposition to US global hegemony is common among hardcore leftists who do not necessarily think of themselves as progressives, at least not in the sense of what people nowadays usually mean when they say "progressives". Leftists who are closer to the Democratic Party view of things, on the other hand, feel little negative emotion about US global hegemony and have a lot of desire to use the US governing apparatus to promote the cause of social justice.
A question that progressives sometimes get asked is 'how can you be so against white separatists but still associate with black separatists?'
One answer is 'As we understand the situation, in the US at at least, most black separatists are talking about going somewhere new and founding a black-only community, and most white separatists are talking about expelling everyone else from where they already live, or just oppressing them until they leave.'
If people wanted to start new white ethno-state somewhere else, with no non-white citizens so no one is being oppressed, I would think they are very stupid and tacky, but I wouldn't have an extremely strong moral objection.
Neither would I. Unfortunately I think that many progressives would oppose even a white ethno-state that set up camp in some completely unpopulated part of the world, purely on knee-jerk reflex reaction. Many of them seem like they simply cannot imagine any large-scale situation in which white people are not dominant.
In an odd way, white nationalists respect non-whites more than progressives do. White nationalists are usually driven by a fear of being overrun by powerful non-whites, meanwhile most progressives seem to not even be able to imagine that this is possible on anything other than a very local scale.
More options
Context Copy link
The problem being, of course that unless you leave Earth entirely, people live everywhere. This make the idea of founding an ethnostate anywhere on the planet an exercise in genocide whether hard or soft. Find me an empty plot of land somewhere near plausible trade routes, with a reasonable climate, and there are people living there.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link