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 -
In the dark recesses of the internet I frequent there seems to be uniform cynicism about the inevitability of the great replacement, white genocide, etc. Does no one think about what is going to happen when Whitey decides to fight back? (Whitey here as a linguistic placeholder for the amorphous, undefined whole of whatever "white" is in the Anglosphere today.) Despite Fukuyama's erstwhile claim to the contrary history has not ended. This is just the middle of one of the million cycles of this story. Group A ascends, group A gets comfortable, group B takes advantage, group B ascends, group B gets comfortable, group C takes advantage, group C ascends. And sometimes it's A, B, A, B for hundreds of years with of course continual morphing of factions and players. We even see these dynamics play out on small scales. If there's any truth to this adage, "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times," it's fairly obvious where Whitey is in this cycle.
But the stereotypical white traits so handily collated by the National Museum of African American History and Culture that saw Whitey culture both create and dominate the modern world haven't lost their power. When Whitey bands together and decides to fight back his enemies better look out. In this instance Von Neumann was undoubtedly right: for those who wish to see Whitey gone from the face of the Earth the preemptive strike is the only final solution. If his enemies continue as they are, i.e. ever encroaching half measures, always stopping just short of "the line", those strong men are going to reappear. And once Whitey at large starts to view his lot in the culture as hard done by - i.e. receive social justification and approval to stand up for themselves - the oppressor/oppressed hierarchy is going to reverse. And when that happens the ideas of those strong men of these hard times are going to take off like a rocket ship.
Because right now shame is the superpower of Whitey's enemies. In fact, that's ultimately their only power: social. They've made it impossible for Whitey to feel socially safe and justified in defending themselves. But the former satanic scare of the "alt right" is currently metamorphosizing into the dirtbag right and in the process starting to attract and build some counter culture social cred. In a short few years "White Power" is going to be the new "No Fat Chicks" on tinder profiles. Ten years from now when the current generation of wokescolds have come to be viewed as highly uncool schoolmarms by Generation Alpha I strongly suspect White Supremacy will be the ultra-hip counter culture and I fully expect to see white supremacist rock stars who are ethnically black. Twenty years from now I predict White Supremacy will be the new normal. Unified Whitey, with his emphasis on the scientific method, protestant work ethic and future orientation have always been and will likely always be an absolute force to be reckoned with.
The great replacement is such a concern for americans right now because huge portions of the country's white people are counted as hispanic, black, or asian. This will not happen indefinitely; light skinned mexicans are already starting to be seen as more of a "white" group.
I'd be curious if we codified early English colonial stock as a "race" whether the Great Replacement hasn't already happened one or more times.
Yep. Most ‘white Americans’ outside of the south are some combination of German/Irish/Italian/polish, none of whom are American founding stock. In New York City the founding stock was a minority fairly early on.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This sort of idea, which had been spouted by the right since about 2014, is the political equivalent of a bullied child going bright red, putting his head down and clenching his fists by side. "Oooh you just keep pushing me see what happens, the backlash is coming any day now!" You are being pushed because you can be pushed. (I suppose is this analogy somone like the Christchurch or Brevik is the school shooter ie someone who snaps and achieves fuck all).
White people as a group are so completely demoralised that a significant portion of them believe that any sort of defence of themselves, even verbally, is "problematic". This gets worse when you look at the elites where the attitude towards whites could be charitably described as disdainful.
This also ignores the demographic outlook. No only do white people refuse to have children, but when white (lets be honest) women have them they increasingly decide to have mixed ones. In my experience mixed raced people overwhelmingly identify with the non-white side of their identity even if they look completely white and often have very negative views of white people. I'm not exaggerating when I say that most of the people I've met with a genocidal view of whites were themselves half white.
When you combine these things, the outlook for whites looks just as bleak as it did for the Romans a few generations before the fall.
Europe in 200 years will probably be devoid of Europeans. Most likely the new populations will be illiterates living in mudhuts burning Shakespeare for warmth and maybe in a thousand years they will, like the Germans before them, aspire to the greatness of the civilisation they destroyed. But probably not.
In the interest of honesty this seems to be false. Not just in my experience, but also what data aggregation from dating sites indicate: https://miro.medium.com/max/990/0*iBEmVIhn0nhkqBQ5.png
More options
Context Copy link
If trends continue, Europe will have a large contingent of people who are white Europeans who are a few shades darker than their ancestors. To state otherwise is to admit the inferiority of European culture to middle eastern islamism, and I've always found that wanting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Or maybe the Civilization/Barbarism moral axis population will be stripped of any penchant for color by the time it picks up arms.
The vast majority of Americans honestly believe they are against racism. The tokenism and Afterschool Specials of the 80’s grew into the acclaimed dramas of the 90’s, and both eras have tremendous nostalgia and cultural cachet for GenX. “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings,” was the motto of Optimus Prime, a marketed moral stance of the Hasbro corporation, but that makes it no less philosophically valid than “I have a dream…” or “love thy enemies like yourself.”
I do not wish to crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentations of their transwomen. I wish to see their pride turn bitter in their mouths and their people turn from their wicked ways. I reject being othered into an ethnic identity when my physical and political ancestors spent all their political capital trying to decouple race from politics, only to see it turned on them in the most vicious way. I will not pick up that sword in particular, and neither will the vast majority of Americans, willingly.
More options
Context Copy link
The problem with whitey is that I was born on a rabbit farm in communist Poland and don't have anything inherently in common with a Frenchman, a dude from Cali, a Swede, nor a guy from Northern Florida whereas oftentimes, people with black skin seem to feel some sort of absurdist kinsmanship with other people of their skin color - most especially in the US.
I'm sure there's many good and valid reasons for this but for a simpleton like me it seems absurdly racist.
So I don't see a 'rising' of whitey but I also don't feel very strongly about being correct here. I see myself being pushed into the white sphere by what I consider anti white racism - which in turn makes me understand the brotherly plight of the American black better.
Is it so? I heard that recent African immigrant communities in the US often don't feel much kinsmanship with African Americans (descendants of slaves).
Also by white/whitey they don't tend to mean Poles, but people descended from colonizer nations and empires, who are mostly Western Europeans (by ancestry).
Maybe (maybe but I don't believe it) they don't mean Poles but I've been living in America for the last 30 years - pretty sure I'm invited aboard the white hate brigade.
More options
Context Copy link
Observing their behavior, which is to me clearly different than the behavior of native blacks, I can certainly believe in this. However, as far as the behavior of their children is concerned, I must say that they assimilate into standard American black culture very well.
Do they really? I've noticed african african american children tending to mostly behave like white americans with an ethnic flavour- kind of like chinese americans.
More options
Context Copy link
And if a rabbit farmer Pole moves to the US presumably his kid will also feel like a generic white dude in California or wherever.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This seems to be written from the curious perspective that white people can only have white children. I assure you, this is not the case.
You might notice the OP predicted "white supremacist rock stars who are ethnically black".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link