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 -
The alt-right, with its emphasis on race and replacement, is fringe and represents a small fraction of Republicans.
The anti-Trump "moderate" Republicans poll poorly in primaries, and Trump's approval rating remains sky high among Republicans.
What do the above two assertions say?
They say two things.
Trump is not alt-right, never was.
There is a massive swath of Trump-loving voters who are off the radar of the media by being neither fashy-racist nor anti-Trump "moderates".
[Jerry Seinfeld voice] Who are these people?
I'll tell you who they are. They are the Rush Limbaugh crowd. Or wherever they are now. I grew up with them, they are my people. I listened to Rush in his final year, and listened to his callers, and the vibe of his following (which was massive) was the same as I remember it. On median: They are hardcore Trump supporters. Yet they find the emphasis on race of both the left and the fringe right distasteful. In fact they itch for national unity and an end to civil strife and they saw in Trump the best hope for unity. The whole idea of Trump being divisive they saw as media propaganda, e.g. to them Trump's stance against illegal immigration is in fact about illegal immigration and not secretly about "brown people". In their eyes Trump had the back of anybody with a Social Security card. They think Hitler was, in fact, evil af and love to relate their parents' or grandparents' stories about kicking his ass.
They have an essentially Reaganite attitude toward American politics. They see taxation as fundamentally a seizure of the productive elements of society and while they see it necessary they think it should always be done with great solemnity and respect for the taxed, whose sweat fuels all government projects. They saw Trump as the obvious candidate for anybody into Reaganite politics and are beyond infuriated that the left's propaganda painted them as Hitlerian for wanting the obvious best candidate for policy positions that had nothing to do with race.
Etc etc.
I don't know where this crowd is at now. But if anybody deserves to be called "silent majority" (if only among Republicans) it's them. Not that they were silent on Rush's show, "ignored" may be a better term for them, ignored by media and its focus on the battle between crazy fascist racists and the nice wholesome Cheney family.
I really think there's a massive, massive amount of these people and yet I don't hear these particular opinions being expressed basically anywhere.
I think there are plenty of people who are worried about brown people who are not alt-right. There are plenty of racists who are not fascist, just as there are "Eat the rich, man!" people who are not socialist in any narrow sense (nationalisation of industry, state planning, or even egalitarian outside of putting some limits against huge inequality).
More options
Context Copy link
We’re working our 40 hr/wk jobs, or doing whatever has taken up our schedules since retirement, and coming home tired to watch Fox News not talk about the election fraud Dinesh discovered. We’re listening to podcasts by Jack Posobiec and Charlie Kirk and wishing we were young enough to be in TPUSA. We’re sending 5-year-old memes to our families on Facebook, never noticing they’re not promoted outside five or ten people. And between all that, we’re trying to avoid being called racist to our faces for holding the same pro-American colorblind ideals we have since The Cosby Show became our favorite sitcom in the 80’s.
I say “we” because I got my start in politics watching the short-lived Rush Limbaugh TV show with my dad before high school. I still consider myself a Rush/Reagan Republican, a libertarian in all but party affiliation. My parents are described above too.
Thank you for the post. I feel seen.
EDIT: another poster has given a more left-friendly explanation for “where this crowd is at now”: quietly coexisting with their liberal friends, and “hiding their power-level” as 4chan would say.
More options
Context Copy link
They are called religious conservatives. They have pretty much accepted defeat in the public square, and thus only make their voices heard in their own communities and on election day. Can you even imagine someone openly saying they oppose homosexuality "because it's immoral" or "because God said so" in any respectable institution in 2022?
That's a subset, not the whole set.
More options
Context Copy link
This would happen if someone did that in 2022
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/25/mastriano-danger-pennsylvania-governor/
They'd create attack ads that basically just quote his statements directly, because they genuinely believe that those are losing positions. I expect that they'll be surprised on election day.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Whats the alt right? Personally I would include the motte as alt-right. I thought the alt right included a lot of groups and not just the bad Charlottesville hard core racists. I’ve always included the pick up artist community in the alt right for example.
The premise of alt-right is that the non-alt Right, with its dictums of sovereign individual, race-blindness, low taxes and such, does not represent them and has no incentive to, and is particularly disinterested in addressing their collective existential concerns – chiefly anti-white racism spanning the spectrum from zoological prejudice to nuanced denunciation of white-coded but not clearly ethnically contingent cultural traits and value systems, pro-immigration policy driven by this same anti-white and anti-Republican sentiment, and «Weimar-style» social decay aggressively promoted by mainstream Democrats mainly due to nudging from ever-changing, hard to pin down ideological movements on leftist fringes labeled as Frankfurt school, something something Marxism, CRT, whatever. In a sense, alt-right was an intuitive attempt to emulate such dynamics on the right, only starting with grassroots.
The overwhelming majority of those who got dragged by the alt-right/dissident right wave around 2016 were not edgelords by their nature, and did not wish to go to the extremes: they were disaffected Republicans. Their inchoate sympathy for designated enemies of the liberal West (Putin, Kim, Orban) was also informed by this disaffection. The edginess of firebrands, too, is nothing unusual historically: new European Right is the same, as have been dozens of radical movements in Israel, where the preoccupation with existential threats and liberal traitors carrying water for committed enemies is embedded deep into the collective psyche. In Europe and more so in Israel, however, there exists an explicit way of negotiating a compromise. It's called parliamentarian democracy.
In the US, these people were offered a cope-out in the form of Trumpism and, seeing as he was recognized by both wings of the Establishment as a threat, gladly accepted. Now that this attempt has failed and Trumpism is discredited, they're being sold on DeSantis.
More options
Context Copy link
But why?. The mayority may lean right in the politics spectrum, but there must be a sizable left population in that community, right?.
They popularized females as having I guess you would call it a hive mind. They promoted gender differences an alt right position. And found females to be psychologically pliable.
They might not be right on say abortion or taxes etc but in terms of gender differences they are extremely alt right.
By those terms, feminist professors declaring their undying hatred of men but who disagree with transgerism would also be included in the alt right.
(And they are. I have heard more than one young feminist describe ters as alt right or far right.)
More options
Context Copy link
Do you mean sex differences here? because gender differences or differences in gender roles is a mainly Leftist Idea, so it reads really weird if you mean that.
No clue what your talking about. Left seems to promote that there aren’t gender differences. Right promotes things like male masculinity and female staying at home etc.
why are you conflating sex with gender (Gender roles)?
Just proved my point.
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
More options
Context Copy link
nah, it was a pretty big deal from late 2015 all the way until early 2018 and involved a lot of people. It died out in large part because its members kept being banned from everywhere, both online and IRL. Social media companies and payment processors went on red alert after the 2017 Unite The Right and it got worse from there.
More options
Context Copy link
There was a brief moment when "alt-right" just meant anyone broadly right-wing but outside of the Republican establishment, and it included a lot of dissident right figures from social media that are still going. However, the broader meaning didn't last long.
Breitbart published a taxonomy of the alt-right circa 2016, right around the time it entered the news cycle. It’s still valuable in recognizing how much has changed since then.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ideologically and in other respects, conservatism is broad/diverse and seems to be always evolving whereas liberalism is more like something being stretched, in which the original shape is still the same.
Rush was a morbidly obese ideologue who had his heyday in the '90s and 2000s, especially during the Obama era, but since 2016 and especially since 2020 during Covid, his type of conservatism has been in decline online , imho, replaced by the likes of Rogan, Peterson, etc. who have more of an emphasis on self-improvement and salubrity (being healthy, working out, intellectual curiosity, etc.) while still opposing the far-left. Since 2021 I have also observed the rise of a sort of civic nationalism conservatism which combines 'Trumpism' with 'Roganism'. In keeping with the civic aspect of it, it's not necessarily opposed to diversity or immigration as long as said diversity holds anti-woke values. I think this is a tad overoptimistic given the tendency of second and third generation immigrants to vote left. I think this new brand of conservativism is very powerful and has considerable online support, and stands good shot at beating Biden.
It's hard to say what Trump is/was. He's not alt-right yet much more nationalistic than the typical conservative. His push for tax cuts early on is consistent with the mainstream GOP platform though.
In one of my blog posts I describe how the GOP has evolved and its likely direction:
'80s up until 2008-2013 Reaganomics, supply side
2008-2013 split or weakening cracks on the foundation of immigration and globalization
2014-2015: rise and fall gamergate, precursor to the IDW and trump-right
2016-2020 Trump and split between 'the base' vs 'the establishment', rise of civic nationalism
2016-2018 rise and fall of alt-right
2018-: rise of the IDW , which is related to the anti-idpol left
2020-: hybridization/amalgamation of civic nationalism ,self-improvement, and anti-woke populism
You're missing the rise of the Tea Party in 2010, which was the polite precursor to Trump support later on. The Tea Party had some accomplishments, but mostly ended up providing further education to the Republican base as to the extent of their problems, both inside and outside the R party. Mitt Romney in 2012 was the R establishment's "we've learned nothing" response to the Tea Party (and Jeb Bush, even more so, in 2016).
yea, tea party fits in perfect
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Some of these were a lot more high profile than others, e.g. I suspect that most Republican party members have never heard of gamergate. The IDW and Rogan are more well-known, although I still would try hard not to underestimate how much of the Republican party is made up of Not Very Online people who have at most a passing acquaintance with Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan etc.
possible but I see DeSantis as being someone who taps into online sentiment. Rogan is popular enough that he's drawing in a bigger audience than mainstream media. I think Peterson is getting there. I think the distinction between 'always online' and real life is shrinking or blurring.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
(Fat-shaming? He did slim down majorly from his obese heyday.)
His ideology was anti-progressive, anti-Democrat, and when woke started to be a thing, anti-woke. His personal nemesis was Hillary Rodham Clinton, the exemplar of everything he spoke against. He was against them because he saw them as trying to tear down everything he was for.
He loved the America of the myths: the good giant astride a continent, founded by freedom-lovers who risked everything, always striving to become better. The big picture, the legend of America the Great, was what he poured his heart and soul into keeping alive. He was the great civic nationalist, supporting legal immigration and calling out racists of any color.
His counterpart in Washington was Newt Gingrich, and he fully supported the Contract With America. His death by cancer has left us with the likes of Posobiec, Kirk, D’Souza, Gorka, and Hemingway to hold onto his bombastic America-loving conservatism.
It's not fat shaming. That's literally what he was. All that is true and made him special for that era. I think bombastic conservatism has two things working against it: more competition and change in tastes. It will always have an audience but Rush had way bigger relative audience share in the 90s compared to before he died. There was no YouTube, no podcasts, no twitter or substack back then . He was not just the voice of American conservatism but in some respects the only major voice..this was even before Fox News became as big as it is. .
In many ways, Rush was the proof-of-concept for Fox News, the blogosphere, podcasts, substack, etc. He demonstrated that there was a severely underserved market for broadcast media that wasn't ideologically D. I can't think of anyone who accomplished more for the cause of diversity in news and opinion media than Rush Limbaugh.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Trump isn’t more nationalistic than the typical conservative though, given primary election results (and the fact he, yknow, won a national
Election as well). Conservatives in america are fundamentally nationalist
his rhetoric at least seems more nationalistic than the typical conservative , and also some of his initiatives such as his plan to return manufacturing jobs to America, which at best had mixed results but this seems like a departure from the Bush administration .
George W or George H. W.? The former was pretty protectionist and tried fairly hard to appeal to the American working class:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_United_States_steel_tariff
You could plausibly argue that that Trump was more protectionist, but free trade vs. protectionism has rarely been a simple Republican vs. Democrat issues.
Also, the Bush administration also had a lot of anti-elitism in their rhetoric, like Trump. While Bush was obviously from an elite background, he tried (successfully) to be portrayed as "One of the guys", in a way that his father, Bob Dole, or Mitt Romney did not. Quite an achievement for a teetotal, Ivy League educated, son of a wealthy family.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'd say the majority of the alt-right isn't even Republican, but properly speaking, "Republican-leaning independent." In other words, "I've got reasons to dislike both parties, but if I have to choose a candidate that's got a shot of winning, I'm voting R."
(Tangent: this comes up in polling a fair bit, but there's a big difference between "Republican-leaning centrist" and "Republican-leaning independent." The first group could conceivably vote for a candidate of either party, but more often votes R; the second doesn't identify with either party, but is closer to R than D. The important distinction is that a large chunk of the second group considers Rs to be moderate squishes, and are even further right. The phenomenon is symmetric; there are "Democrat-leaning independents" who consider themselves further left than the D party. "X-leaning centrists" are a subset of "X-leaning independents," but far from the whole picture.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link