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 -
How about some culture war? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/30/how-gang-violence-took-hold-of-sweden-in-five-charts
While I imagine the Guardian is persona non grata around here, this seems to me to be pretty stunning. Sweden, long the darling of the left, is now “… in the grip of a rise in gang violence and shootings that has taken citizens and leaders by surprise. In the words of the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, this year: “Sweden has never before seen anything like this. No other country in Europe is seeing anything like this.””
I’m leery of rephrasing the article excessively, but it does note that gun crime and narcotics have been rising since 2013, and that the gun murder rate in the capital of Stockholm is now 30 times that of London.
The fairly standard claim (this is the Guardian, after all) is that this has to do with poverty, not migration.
So… Is the solution, now that mass migration has been accomplished, to make sure that they have just as much money as the original Swedes? Given the Swedish welfare state was already extremely generous, which drove all the immigration, is that feasible?
How long are normies and Conservatives going to continue to accept this tripe? At what point is accepting the reality of the situation going to stop being "Far Right" or "Dissident Right" and just be "the right?" I would say someone like Hlynka represents the absolute boundary of a Conservative who should know better by virtue of intelligence and exposure to arguments that thoroughly destruct the narrative embodied in this report, but remains indelibly committed to prevailing grand narratives of liberalism and Judeo-Christian civilization.
A European identity is inevitable, it's only a question of when it goes from being a "far right" to just "right" wing position. There have already been recent election victories around stopping mass immigration and demographic change in Europe, so when can we stop calling sensible people who oppose demographic replacement of European people in their homelands "far right?"
Of course a European identity is going to be racialized. The existence of non-white or mixed race people in Europe isn't going to change the gravity of the situation.
I think it will depend on country and won’t be pan-European. Places that essentially have one large native bloc and one (overwhelmingly) Muslim migrant bloc with no intermarriage will see different dynamics to those with many minority groups, many of which aren’t Muslim and have higher intermarriage rates with natives. Easy to imagine UK wignats taking the step of overtly allying with Hindus and possibly Sikhs if tensions deteriorate further, for example; French ones probably don’t care much about the Vietnamese. Opinions on Jews will vary, as will those on growing numbers of Latin American migrants in Iberia and increasingly elsewhere (eg. Ireland).
I think there are going to be many different movements, gambits, compromises and so on, and what happens in Ireland or Norway won’t be neatly repeated in Italy or France.
If you extend "wignats" to include the populist right of the Tory party, this has already happened - the first time a Tory made a sectarian appeal to Hindus was Zac Goldsmith's 2016 campaign for Mayor of London. 2nd-generation immigrants from Christian Africa are also ingroup for similar reasons. Looking at photos, the Tory front bench is darker-skinned than the Labour front bench, and I don't think this will change in my lifetime. (After the next election, I expect Priti Patel and Suella Braverman to rejoin the shadow cabinet, and Kemi Badenoch and James Cleverly to stay in it). Priti Patel is also the leading Hinjew in Britain - and that alliance is getting stronger every time a Pakistani joins a pro-Palestinian march.
Across Europe, the nativist right movements that are appealing to younger people tend to be single-issue anti-Muslim. "The Poles are taking our jerbs" focus-grouped as a losing message in the Brexit referendum, which is why Cummings and Farage didn't run on it.
I don't think this is a conscious (from the POV of the candidate) 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' thing with the Tories though, e.g. Zac Goldsmith had a bizarre set of views that didn't line up neatly with Hindu voters, but the PR/election gurus presumably realised that was the way to go.
I think it's generally underrated how the British class system is sort of race/ethnicity neutral- the upper crust were (and are?) MUCH more comfortable in the company of a Maharajah or a Chief of the Whatever tribe vs. Steve from Sunderland or Paul from Poplar. And related, I think it's underrated how the British imperial light-touch multicultural divide and rule system that was used in e.g. the Raj has basically been transplanted to modern multicultural Britain.
Regardless, the main point is that it is pretty circumstantial that in modern Britain we have this Islam-Labour, anti-Islam (Hindu, African Christian) Tory alignment. Go back to say 1920 and the British intellectual class was fascinated by Persianate literature, the Mughals were seen as the civilising force etc. etc. It is almost certainly down to the fact that (mostly) Gujarati East African Indians or the initial waves of upper class Nigerians are incomparable to say the Mirpuris who dominate Bradford. One is a market dominant minority, the other largely rural labourers. Of course in 2023 this isn't necessarily true- many Hindu or African Christian migrants are working class and so forth.
It isn't that far away a world where the initial Muslim migrants to the UK were Nehru/Zanzibari types and the non-Muslims were Dravidian peasants. And I imagine in that world the left-right, Islam-anti-Islam alignment may be different.
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