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 -
Wokeness, victimhood and how right wing associated groups "not caring" about being victimized makes you non woke.
This is such a common claim especially here that it deserves to be addressed in general.
What is wokeness about? Its simply the ideology, of lbierals, leftists and those fake conservatives that have been colonized by this ideology that denies any level of legitimate victimhood to its right wing outgroup (the epitome of it would be right wing white christian straight men) and promotes excessive rights and victimhood for its left wing associated ingroup. That frames the left wing ingroup as permanent legitimate oppressed and right wing outgroup as illegitimate oppressors who can never challenge the status of the first.
Its what the ADL, Soros pushes. Both pushing the mantra of white christians as threats to minorities and promoting an onesided hateful narrative and discriminatory policies including totalitarianism and dracognian very one sided hateful hate speech laws. And of course supporting mass migration because it would lead to the extinction of their ethnic outgroup. And do not allow dissent from this mantra and in fact portray all dissent as white supremacy.
Wokeness has plenty of common with certain extreme nationalists of every type and obviously with not only religious Judaism, but the ideological extreme that retains aspects of religious judaism the secular combo of progressive extremism and Jewish ultranationalism has been one of the most key parts of it. And various fellow travelers of that. The one that denies Jews any blame whatsoever on how they treat others except perhaps other intersectional tribes and does not allow any negativity and frames it as antisemitism. Since this is the biggest taboo, I find it important to focus upon it more and I would focus upon a different tribe if I gotten there more pushback. If you are SJW only for the Jews then you are still part of this especially since powerful Jewish organisations like the ADL are important players.
When even Fox News attacks Musk when he tells jewish organisations to knock it off with their antiwhite racism, and entirely denies this you know that the end result of Fox News influence is not going to bring things to jewish organizations with this ideology knocking it off. End of wokeness should mean end of the narrative of the eternally oppressed Jews who should now as lord ordains rule others. This ideology should not be tolerated and Jews should adjust their religious and secular self conception to abadon it. People of any faith can still believe in their religion but should respect the rights of others. If this means their Christianity, Judaism, Islam lacks a certain vision of conquest that existed in the original text, then so be it. And this applies to those supposed secular atheists who seem to have retained aspects of the religion, relating to excessive nationalism.
Are right wing related identitarians like white identitarians then woke? Well, no because they have a different who/whom. It is possible for them to be equally extreme to be similar but not necessarily the case.
Are all victimhood related arguements woke and only abandoning the issue makes one antiwoke?
Not again. Victimhood is actually directly related to justice. Recognizing accurately victims is a necessary component of justice. Excessive victimhood for the ingroup and 0 victimhood for the outgroup is of course injustice and why the woke are unjust. Its what every criminal wants, to get maximum sympathy and get away with it and their legitimate victims to not be seen as victims. And this is why you are part of the woke if you argue like the woke, for zero victimhood for the right wing outgroups.
The argument that the only antiwoke way is to not recognize rights and to concern troll right wing associated groups to not care by people who are in fact sensationalized towards right wing racism is preposterous. We know this argument isn't promoted in good faith for those who subscribe to it don't have a stance of never caring about victimhood ever, nor are they tolerant to what would seem as hardcore right wing racism. More than that, you see this political coalition be sensationalized in opposition of left wing associated victimhood proponents like MLK and civil rights movement even though that movement too like modern woke had its element of seeking excess. MLK argued that USA should treat blacks especially better for having treated them in the past especially bad and used both pressure of sit ons and threat of violent protests to demand that organisations upped black representation considerably treating it as evidence of racism where blacks were underepresented. Lyndon Johnson also considered Herbert Marcuse influence as very important to the civil rights act. key civil rights remaining figures have promoted this party line and with their activism caused multiple race riots too. Modern wokeness is a continuation and part of the progressive hued "rights" movements of the past who had all these elements there too.
If you have a completely hagiographic attitude to said movements, yes you are way is the way of the woke.
Victimhood politics for any tribe tends to increase sympathy for them and can reduce sympathy for others. This is why a political environment where certain tribes are sacred cows and other tribes have no victimhood, is one that will inevitably be extremely racist in favor of first and at expense of the later. The racist hateful people who promote this hateful dogma then pretend to be antiracist and slander others which is an additional injustice.
Concern trolling right wingers and identity politics of the right wing outgroup is wokeness 101 and those who do it are part of it. It is blatant racism to oppose people being opposed to racism because "victimhood politics" i.e. opposing you being victimized is "woke". Such distortion of reality is amazing to witness.
Another false claim I have seen even by right wingers is that adopting the mentality of the woke for your own group would be ethnomasochistic. But the woke are not masochists, they are extreme identitarians and they have gotten plenty of what they want. You could oppose being exactly the same, although some level of tribalism for your tribe too is obviously justifiable and complete lack does not lead to justice but you being preyed upon. The primary arguement against being as selfcentered as the woke would be that is an unjust dishonest mentality and the second arguement that it causes unecessary conflict and the third that it is paperclip maximizing dominance over other things that matters. That is that the woke way is the way where their end point is racist supremacy and their boot over others face, which is both a bad end and results in conflict and could wreck civilization.
I guess one could oppose intersectionality right wing style too on basis that it makes compromises with other tribalisms.
Also, if your group is being mistreated, noticing and opposing this is actually promoting justice and can not be opposed on the primary problems that wokeness has that a) its unjust b) that it alienates unnecessarily others and causes conflict in that way c) that it is a totalitarian vision that never ends that is indifferent and leaves no space for other important considerations.
There is a title for people who support racism against Christians or white people and oppose any opposition. Of course, I personally have a less strict definition of racism. I don't consider all restrictions of any kind racism. I believe we should act in line with reality. In fact I consider say migration restrictions to be anti-racist and mass migration anti nativist racism that leads to genocidal colonization as one example. Just like I consider property rights to be less classist in the ways that matter than a marxist society even though the marxist considers the first classist and his attempt to destroy the class enemy as end of classism.
Plus, I don't aknowledge that some of the things that people whining about isms are problems we should give a fuck about and can be good too, while in a consistent manner other things that might fall under this label are serious problems relating to injustice (treating others unfairly). For example, it is admirable for parents to care about their children first and put effort to raising them right and not Kin-ist and unfair to other children, but it would be evil if for the sake of your family and children having a bigger property you stole your neighbor's house or behaved like a mafia, became Walter White supposedly to provide for your family. I guess in this manner I also oppose this idea from some on the right that there is no such thing as racism, although I approve not taking seriously all the things in a very one sided manner that are called racism which ironically would make you a racist at your own expense, if you did take them seriously. I do think it is foolish not to prioritise the most pervasive racism of our time, especially when right wing associated legitimate grievances are denied by the use of all sorts of dirty tactics. When it isn't this type of concern trolling, the typical other way is to put a smear label of far right, or worse.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that unfortunately for right wingers who want to be exactly like the woke and not be called unjust, that this type of one sided fanaticism would be unjust for any tribe. Any right wing tribalism is not like the woke however, as it can be of a moderate form and pushes back at it in our current political environment where we have excessive tribalism for progressive stack tribes and too little for right wing associated groups. We don't live in a society where even most real right wingers demand that any left wing tribalism is abadoned, in fact you see even them often compromising with opposing real victimization of left wing associated groups and compromising with respecting identification of left wing associated tribes with left wing associated broader tribes of religious, racial, and ethnic nature.
There can be gray areas. What isn't a grey area are massive double standards and a greedy totalitarian mentality of the woke. Who would never have had the success they have if they were just a few kids at college. The concern trolling the right wing outgroup so that it doesn't promote victimhood by opposing racism at its expense is directly a very key part of wokeness and it is a mistake to buy into the self identification as non woke of those who with their influence are promoting this ideology and at best inconsistently promote limited hangouts. Those concern trolling the right wing outgroup should be more honest and say that they are racists.
What should be done about the woke movement? Well plenty can be written, to keep things for once short, I would say that as wokes abuse their power and use both goverment and private institutions to impose their ideology, screwing principles, law, precedent, that the way to go is to ban their NGOs, which includes ethnic supremacist organisations of left wing associated tribes too, not just general left wing organizations, and to not allow the woke to run any institutions and to be intolerant towards their ideology from the perspective I promote here that it is a fundamentally unjust ideology due to excess tribalism for ingroup and lack of due consideration for the group rights of the outgroup, that is no respect for tribalism of the outgroup. And treat all individual branches of the tree the same. The goal should be to stop this ideology from being enacted and to deradicalize people so they abandon it.
As the @thenether said, while I'm pretty sure you're being sincere this post and several of your replies downthread read like a satire/parody of how a woke freshman poli-sci major would imagine their opponents think.
It's not exactly disabusing me of the notion that "woke-left" and "dissent/wignat-right" are two sides of the same coin, and in some cases literally the same people.
I am not part of the dissident right although there are some ideas where there is crossover, as is to be the case to anyone opposing the prevailing racism of our time and standing for the rights of groups associated with the right. Your crossover with the woke is quite much closer though.
And obviously the people who agree with the woke like you, do not allow victimhood politics for right wing identity groups but you do tolerate and allow it for left wing identity groups, and you directly attack those opposing this distinction. Your ideas fit directly with the woke. Your constant attacks towards any victimhood/identity politics for white people in particular is obviously racist especially when there are no white identitarian groups with substantial influence, and much more of other groups with said influence which promote a racist agenda. This is a very extreme and also very ahistorical agenda. It has only been promoted as the way to eliminate tribalism among moden far left and American liberals, who often don't realize how radical they have been.
I deliberately argue that unlike the woke we need to actually try to separate legitimate victimization with illegimate excess promotion of a group as victims where it is unwarranted. That accurately recognising victims and perpetrators is a key aspect of justice, which is undermined by various people not just you who try to argue that caring about victims of the wrong tribes is inherently evil and is dissident right-esque as you try to portray it. Which is a blatant circular argument. Its evil because you define those arguing it as evil.
In reality the moderate position that is in line with justice and the truth is that identity groups associated with the left, need to knock it off with their victimhood politics and hatred and come to tolerate and compromise with respecting the rights and identities of groups associated with the right like white christian straight middle class men. And of course those who have a self hateful mentality which is blatantly unjust should do likewise for their own group.
I even argued against right wingers adopting the same mentality as the woke and gave specific reasons of why, rejecting the claim that it is slave morality for the right to adopt that kind extreme supremacist tribalism. My specific argument was that it was unjust, caused unnecessary conflict and was a totalizing vision. So unlike you, I manage to distinguish my position with an extreme one in favor of any group. And I leave room for moderation for left wing associated groups too. I do think that both tribalism to a point and promoting legitimate victimhood to a point is justifiable for different groups and also explicitly for any identity groups associated with the right.
Especially those associated with the right, in the time where progressive extremism that disregards their rights is the more pervasive movement.
What is satirical is how you twist things and paint yourself as someone in the middle or as a "conservative" who somehow focuses much more on attacking the right than the left. Especially when the left wing tribalism is dominating by denying the right wing groups any legitimacy, which is an agenda that you completely fit into. In your David French-esque world it is Hlynka and those fake conservatives like the Torries who actually implemented the far left agenda in policies such as hate speech laws, mass migration, intolerance to native identity politics and AA that represent the true conservatism, while actual opponents of it are "woke"!
Apparently, these ideas are too incoherent for various people here to give a damn, which is convenient for those like you who try to muddy the waters.
Either various people here have a problem with their comprehension. And they tend to be those who previously have shown the same lack of comprehension and promoted this concern trolling argument. Or they actually can comprehend this distinction fine but like to pretend they don't.
In any case, the argument in favor of concern trolling white people, Christians, right wingers, men, whoever, is a blatantly false and easy to undermine through basic logic. The fact that so far it hasn't been sufficiently attacked and ridiculed is itself insulting for those who failed to do their duty and weaken a horrible argument that is pretty key part of the worse behaviors in politics today. There is clearly in certain spaces a shameful lack of conviction in areas where strong conviction is fully justifiable, but would challenge the basic premises of the woke/progressive stack faction. Worse than that the excess of conviction exists in trolling those who actually try to undermine these pervasive today fallacies.
Hi there, I've been posting in rat-adjacent spaces under this pseudonym since the fall semester of 2012, yet clearly you are unfamiliar with me. If you were you would already know what my reply is going to be.
I see your claim that "unlike the woke we need to actually try to separate legitimate victimization with illegimate" and raise you. We need to reject the entire victimhood narrative/framing device wholesale. It's all illegitimate. Hegel's whole schtick about oppressors and the oppressed is a crock that bears only a tangential resemblance to the real world. Likewise, the entire concept of "slave-morality" is what the kids these days call "a cope" a desperate attempt by 19th century leftists to rescue their narrative from the increasingly overwhelming evidence of history. Amusing when viewed in light of the post about Napoleon's legacy up thread.
The oppressor/oppressed bit is aaaaa-bsolutely not a Hegel original. His contribution (founding contribution IMO) to the current sickness was that knowledge begins with a relation among things, which is where the idea of oppressor/oppressed ultimately comes from, but was not him. He wasn't exactly an old school conservative, but he also isn't clearly recognizable as a modern liberal or leftist in any way whatsoever.
Also, Nietzsche was also completely not a leftist. The slave morality is indeed supposed to be a cope, of a sort, not of the 19th century but of the 7th century, BC. An ideology reaction of the Jews to their conquest by virile, life affirming masters.
The Leftist affair with Nietzsche is not based upon his being in any way on their side. He wasn't. The Masters are the good guys in his telling, to the extent there are any. The horrible man-beasts whose pure will and lack of moral feeling are not Leftists. Their love of him is based on outright ignoring most of what he had to say in order to grasp at a sense of libertinism.
You misunderstand.
Nietzsche may not have been a leftist but Nietzsche's philosophy starts from a position that the primary axioms of the left are true. That Rousseau is Right and Hobbes is wrong, that the church are a bunch of stupid meanies wanting to regulate your behavior, and that personal emancipation and actualization are the greatest of all goods. When I say "the entire concept of slave-morality is a cope" I'm not saying that slave morality is a cope. I'm saying the entire concept is a cope.
That "The slave morality is indeed supposed to be a cope, of a sort, not of the 19th century but of the 7th century, BC. An ideology reaction of the Jews to their conquest by virile, life affirming masters." is the sort of lie secular left-wing continental Europeans tell themselves to avoid confronting the fact that they lost the great power race to a nation of shopkeepers (the British Empire) and their mongrel ner-do-well foster kids (the US).
No, it really doesn't.
Uh are you sure about that? Nietzsche doesn't really "start" with the idea that all men are created equal, and I don't think you're talking intelligently about him or his work if you make that claim.
I'm honestly not sure if this is just you reacting to a half-baked understanding of Nietzsche gleaned from a mixture of other people reacting to his work (and maybe some disconnected quotes) or an incredibly artisanal hot take, but I feel like stressing that Nietzsche's philosophy very much did not start from the axiom that all men are created equal.
Rousseau's core axiom is not "that all men are created equal".
Rousseau's core axioms are, that all injustice is a product of social structure, and that social structures are imposed from the top down. Accordingly, the first step to building a healthier and more just society must be to demolish and discredit the existing social structures/norms. It is this conclusion that both Nietzsche and the political left are starting from.
However, as @FCfromSSC observes, the logical end point of this sort of belief is that there is no such thing as morality or "a higher law". Everything is "the will to power" all the way down. And I would argue that is why explicitly secular progressive and technocratic governments have displayed a historical tendency to pile mountains of skulls that put the likes of Genghis Kahn and the Holy Roman Emperors to shame.
You'll have to forgive me, because I thought that's what you were referring to when you opened up with talk of the primary axioms of the left. Equality and equity are very big bugbears on the left, and that's what my mind immediately jumped to when you spoke about a core axiom of Rousseau in the context of core axioms of the left.
I don't even see anything here that Nietzsche himself would disagree with. My understanding of his stance is that morality is in fact just another expression of the will to power, and it isn't like he has a terribly big problem with mountains of skulls. I think he'd disagree heartily with the left on exactly whose skulls should be put onto the pile, but the existence of it isn't really a problem from within his philosophy. Yes people are going to die, and as long as they aren't great people, who cares?
That said, I don't think there's all too much aversion to mountains of skulls these days. If you gave rationalists a button which said "In exchange for 98% of Subsaharan Africans getting their skulls removed and placed into a giant pyramid you will receive a perfectly aligned AI and full implementation of your desired social policies" I think that there'd be more than a few willing to push it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
...I don't think @HlynkaCG is claiming that Neitzche starts from the axiom that "all men are created equal". He's free to correct me, but he seems to be arguing, correctly in my view, that Neitzche starts from the axiom that humans are in charge, that there is no basis for morality beyond the human mind, that there is no God and no innate moral order to the universe, beyond what we impose on it through our own will and nature. That, not equality, is the core axiom of Rousseau, in my view.
I can appreciate that, but I was under the impression that we're talking about the overlap between Rousseau and the political left - which is why my brain pattern-matched the way it did.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link