site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I feel like, to betray something, you have to have declared loyalty to it and then abandoned it and/or sided with its enemies. The New Atheists criticized Islam but they didn't pledge loyalty to some notion of the West as being a place that must be protected from all Muslim immigration. There is no betrayal when a bunch of classical liberals simultaneously criticize Islam and say that a total ban on Muslim immigration is wrong. Presumably, they believe that the right thing to do is to first let at least some Muslims come over and to then try to convert them to secular liberalism, rather than stopping all of them from coming over. You can argue that this is an unrealistic plan, but to call the whole thing a betrayal seems inaccurate to me.

What does it even mean to betray "the West"? Which West? The West is a hodgepodge of many different societies, many of which fundamentally disagree with and often hate each other. There are certain things that a large majority of people in the West do agree on. For example, that people should not be put in prison without due process. Or that it is good to have a pretty large level of free speech compared to authoritarian countries (though people in the West disagree about how much free speech is good, exactly). But the New Atheists are not going against anything that a large majority of The West supports when they disagree with a Muslim ban. At best you can accuse them of being too stupid to clearly perceive the possible danger of being demographically replaced by people who are fundamentally opposed to the things that the West agrees on. But that would not be betrayal, it would just be a failure of perception.

I feel like, to betray something, you have to have declared loyalty to it and then abandoned it and/or sided with its enemies. The New Atheists criticized Islam but they didn't pledge loyalty to some notion of the West as being a place that must be protected from all Muslim immigration. There is no betrayal when a bunch of classical liberals simultaneously criticize Islam and say that a total ban on Muslim immigration is wrong. Presumably, they believe that the right thing to do is to first let at least some Muslims come over and to then try to convert them to secular liberalism, rather than stopping all of them from coming over. You can argue that this is an unrealistic plan, but to call the whole thing a betrayal seems inaccurate to me.

Sam Harris absolutely has explicitly said that some societies are better than others and the West - i.e. the secular liberal democracies spawned by Western Europeans and their adopted East Asian allies - is the best. This is one of his main arguments against leftists academics: moral relativism and the refusal to accept this. He is 100% on the "swore allegiance to 'the West'"

Sam Harris went around claiming that it was highly plausible that France would have a civil war that'd kill millions over Islam. This was more than a decade ago mind. To a lot of people at the time (including me) it seemed at best to be hysteria or even outright race war fantasizing you see amongst neo-nazis who are eagerly waiting for the day of days. Simply suggesting it was disqualifying.

But he felt it strongly and stuck to it, including citing Eurabia about the upcoming Muslim majority (which, btw, defeats your "he was too stupid to clearly perceive the demographic danger". Putting aside whether Eurabia is accurate, he thought he perceived the danger).

Taken with his general views on Islam - which the article accurately lays out* - it absolutely is a problem I don't think he's ever resolved conclusively. I was all over New Atheist forums: this is a point the left-wing enemies of Harris constantly made: his argument strongly suggests ethnic cleansing or at least anti-Islamic immigration despite his steadfast refusal to connect those dots.

And Sam reliably came out to tell us that all of the right-wing European leaders saying as much may or may not be bad, but the problem is that "grown-up"' European leaders really should just do their anti-Islam work for them and defuse them because if liberals don't do it voters will elect fascists to do it. One of the right-wingers he's feted is Douglas Murray, who has explicitly backed removing as many Muslims as one can (though he seems to have basically become blackpilled now)

Yet Sam decided to insist that Trump's behavior was just totally incongruent with anything he said when he won (but also see the David Brooks quote about fascists and borders). I'm sorry, but people are right to point out the issue (he isn't the only one to have this problem - the author of this book somehow always puts on his Tucker Carlson face when European right-wingers take him at his word and attack Muslims).

I mainly put it down to just how fundamentally disgusted Sam was by Trump and the dangers of even pretending to side with him on anything. The people Sam respects and hangs around with would likely defenestrate him. Harris is, as a matter of demographics, the exact sort to loathe Trump despite his disagreements with leftists. In terms of character you could hardly think of someone more offensive to Harris on a visceral level, if you know anything about him or what he's written. Just take his book Lying....

If we're being charitable, he learned something from Bush where he seemed to have sympathetic instincts when it came to the War on Terror but it only seemed to make things worse, and Bush was actually restrained in many ways (Harris' most-loathed phrase about Islam was popularized by Bush).

* The article is arguably generous in that it attributes the problem to modern Islam. Harris has often put on his amateur historian and exegete hat to say Islam is in its fundamentals problematic and what are typically cited as its successes - precisely to defuse people like him - like the supposed tolerance in medieval Andalusia are mirages or at least oversold.

Even when he was writing a book about reforming Islam with Maajid Nawaz, he couldn't help but continually point out the whole endeavor basically involved lying and was incredibly difficult for Islam specifically.