site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   29617 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

On the bird site (or is it the letter site now?) I'm seeing increasing calls to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay. Famously, during her recent Congressional testimony she was asked this question:

"Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?"

Her memeworthy reply was: "It can be, depending on the context".

This of course, is pretty weak sauce considering that Harvard is ranked dead last out of 245 institutions for Freedom of Expression according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. It would appear to an outside observer that Harvard's standards of what is acceptable speech vary greatly depending on who is doing the speaking.

Bill Ackman, billionaire and Harvard alum, didn't pull any punches tweeting "Resign in Disgrace".

Predictably the scandal has caused people to dig into Ms. Gay's academic work, and accusations were made that she plagiarized parts of her thesis. Nevertheless, many have come to her defense with more than 650 Harvard faculty signing a letter of support for Dr. Gay, who became the institution's first black President earlier this year.

It would appear that Harvard is in a no-win situation.

  • If they fire Dr. Gay, they will have fired a black, female President and will enrage the social justice left who constitute the vast majority of Harvard's students and staff.

  • If they don't fire her, they will have proven that Harvard has no consistent free speech principles and, furthermore, that calls for genocide are acceptable as long as they are against the appropriate targets.

  • There is perhaps a third option, in which Dr. Gay cracks down hard on anti-Semitic speech and makes an example of a few students or staff who crossed the line, thus blaming it on a few bad apples and going back to the status quo.

Whatever happens, I think that Harvard's reputation has been damaged by this incident. There is an opportunity for another school in the elite ranks to set itself apart as the "sane" alternative and perhaps capture Harvard's crown at the top of the academic food chain.

As always, I believe that donations to elite institutions are harmful and the donors should be laughed at, taxed, and shamed.

I don’t want to start another antisemitism thread and this will do but an interesting survey came out recently on Holocaust denial.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/1-5-young-americans-say-holocaust-was-myth-twice-many-democrats-republicans

43% of the under 29 age group believe the Holocaust is a myth or heavily exaggerated.

Personally I thought Holocaust denial on TheMotte was a fringe group representing some 1-3% of the overall population and largely alt-right. Turns out it’s rapidly becoming the dominant view of college students and a normie belief for the next generation.

My understanding of popular opinion on the issue was completely off and one of my worst beliefs. It’s probably a sign I am just not up to date with the young kids. I can take comforting in being completely wrong because it is a fringe belief in older age groups.

My gut would say places like ADL completely missed this too. One could right off all the right wing bashing as a pivot to justify their existence because existential antisemitism was gone and everyone agreed with it in the last generation. Will be interesting to see if they pivot back to their primary purpose and start approaching Ackman types for cash to attack Holocaust denialism.

Fundamentally I think issues l should be viewed in the following light:

  1. Israel and Israel’s supporters (primarily American Jews and evangelicals), want the us to give Israel 15 billion dollars.
  2. This will enable Israel to expand their activities in the Gaza Strip and possibly invade Lebanon again and could easily end up involving the us in the region again.

I and many other Americans who don’t have any affiliation with Israel are asking if this is in our national interest. Many more democrats than republicans do not think it is and Democratic support is required to make this pass. Rather than debating this issue on its merits the adl and other Israel supporters are doing their best to make it a conversation about anti semitism. In my opinion suggesting that universities are antisemitic places is even more preposterous than suggesting that they are racist places and anyone who cares a wit about freedom of speech should should be concerned that the wealthy donors have this much influence over public institutions (by which I mean u penn.). I can’t believe that I am actually in support of something Harvard is doing (this is probably the first time ever), but it sort of refreshing that their endowment is so big that they can ignore these kinds of donor demands.

By any definition that people like me get accused of being white supremacists, fascists, pick your label, etc - these schools are far past the line I’m judged by on their antisemitism.

I think being pro-Palestine after what they did is very very tough line to draw before your antisemitic. You Can asks for mercy from Israel and things like that but what happened was really bad.

I’ve seen a lot of reports that most young people saying “river to the sea” don’t actually know what that term means and change their view when they realize it means Jewish genocide. But Harvard students aren’t some stupid kid at a directional state school. They know geography and what that means.

And I disagree with you that Israel isn’t strategically important to the US. 30-50% of scientific output comes from the Jewish population (nobels so boundary pushers not the grinders pushing others ideas to implementation). The US having a technological edge on China etc completely depends on the Jews. Nukes were invented by Jews. AI led by Altman (a Jew) is the next big military tech. The Jews matter as allies.

For every Bill Gates and Elon Musks there is a Mark Zuckerberg and Sergei Brin/Larry Page.

I think you’re completely missing my point which is that it’s questionable that giving Israel a lot of money to destabilize the Middle East is a good idea (not the least of which is because you are mostly propping up Netanyahu). The us needs to be preparing to compete with China, not wasting our energies on regional fights in the Middle East and

As for Israel’s alleged strategic importance, every example you have was of Jews working in america. Israel itself is not particularly productive or important.

I’d also encourage you to look at the domestic Israeli political situation, before advocating American political involvement.

“Destabilize the Middle East” is doing a lot here and unfounded. As far as I can tell no one in the ME likes Palestine and a lot of them do like Israel.

43% of the under 29 age group believe the Holocaust is a myth or heavily exaggerated.

The event is solidly out of living memory now. Anyone old enough to properly remember the lead-up to the Holocaust (let's assume they had to be 10 to properly appreciate what Kristallnacht was) is 100 years old now, so there would be... 600 survivors, assuming a centenarian proportion of 1/10,000 and 6 million victims.

Charitably, there's correspondingly less incentive to bend truths and exaggerate the scale (outside of the usual political actors); less charitably, nobody left who can fact-check them. Moral panics and social justice issues have a half-life, and that seems to me (using other things as a barometer, like absinthe prohibitions and how long those took to disappear from the books) to be about 4 generations, or 80-100 years.

That is absolutely insane. I don't know what else to say...

This is almost entirely non-whites and blacks and Muslims are massively over represented. Non-white people just see Jews as another type of white people oppressing POCs and bombing brown people. The ironic thing is that the Jewish community played a huge role in the Civil Rights movement and liberalizing immigration laws. Meanwhile, groups like the ADL spent all this time antagonizing the biggest supporters of Jews and Israel, which has eroded support for Israel and Jews on the right with young people like the Groypers and Nick Fuentes. Israel is about to have a massive legitimacy crisis in the coming decades if things don't change. If you go on the teachers subreddit, it's filled with millennial and gen-x teachers shocked that young people, especially non-whites, think the Holocaust was funny and make jokes about Hitler being based.

43% of the under 29 age group believe the Holocaust is a myth or heavily exaggerated.

No, 20 % think it's a myth and 23 % think it's exaggerated. They were separate questions on the poll, and probably have a lot of overlap.

I think you are right on that sorry combined them for simplicity.

I believe it said 30% aren’t sure if it’s a myth if I’m reading it right so that still gets a combined 50% between myth and don’t know.

Aggressive antisemitism is often an urban black thing, which is consistent with the polling data regarding holocaust denial. This isn't new, it was a feature of black integration into Jewish neighborhoods during the Great Migration, and the groups have never gotten along all that well. I have a very difficult time treating the ADL's emphasis on right-wing antisemitism as being entirely good-faith given how historically obvious black-Jewish strife is.

I would note polling shows Holocaust denial doesn’t exists over 65 and very small over 45 so even most of the older black community doesn’t believe it. And I think they rightfully believed that urban blacks weren’t a political threat to them.

There is perhaps a third option, in which Dr. Gay cracks down hard on anti-Semitic speech and makes an example of a few students or staff who crossed the line, thus blaming it on a few bad apples and going back to the status quo.

Why not take the mirror image of this third option, where Dr. Gay and other Harvard leadership make commitments not to crack down on all "hate speech" that is similar to the antisemitic stuff we see today, just directed at other, less acceptable targets, while continuing to let the antisemitic stuff go free? This would be my preferred option. Making a credible commitment here is likely to be difficult, so it would have to be costly, though, like liquidating entire departments both administratively and academically.

I think this falls under the old meme of “why we can’t have nice things”. I would take the deal you offer but it’s not a winning position.

Hanania I believe gets it correct. We aren’t going to get some free speech movement. But we can use victimology and in my view the current people in charge awful views on antisemitism to kick out the old guard and replace them with people who will allow more speech on things I think should be in the Overton window.

It’s easier to just do a power play and in my view kick the bad people out than try to get everyone to agree to free speech.

https://twitter.com/richardhanania/status/1734628629211168821?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

I don’t care about supporting people who want to support Hamas free speech rights but getting rid of the pro-Hamas people is good for me.

If I went all free speechy and was like I support Ms. Gay right to her beliefs and help her keep her job I have zero faith she would be my ally when the mob comes for me.

It was a manipulative question. It’s akin to, “does calling for the rape of women violate Harvard’s rules on domestic assault?” Of course it wouldn’t, because inappropriate statements against the values of Harvard are not in the category of domestic assault, but a different category of infraction. In the same way, bullying and harassment are targeted actions against individuals or groups of individuals, and not every infraction is in the category of harassment. So Gay’s answer was correct, and also morally correct. The pressure of billionaire Jews and the World Jewish Congress to make people lie in front of Congress is a horrible look. Calling for the genocide of Jews would be against norms of every major university in America, but that doesn’t mean that it constitutes “harassment” any more than it constitutes tax fraud. Not to mention, it’s a new type of crime that hadn’t had time to be adjudicated. (“Miss Gay, does calling for Armenians to eat so many hot dogs that they internally implode violate Harvard’s rules on harassment?”)

Tbh I think you're partially correct in the first part. But 'asking manipulative questions' and 'pressuring people to lie in politics' isn't an exclusively jewish thing.

So Gay’s answer was correct, and also morally correct.

Can we compare this with other examples of hate speech from the past few years? Slightly right-leaning speakers were stopped from speaking because they were a threat. Didn't people putting up 'It's ok to be white' signs get investigated by the FBI?

It's the blatant double standard being enforced that's getting me ...

Well the FBI thing is irrelevant. The university professors are telling the senator what (to the best of their knowledge) constitutes bullying and harassment in the code of conduct, which they did not write.

because they were a threat

Note that this would not fall under bullying, nor harassment, in the code of conduct.

It was a manipulative question. It’s akin to, “does calling for the rape of women violate Harvard’s rules on domestic assault?” Of course it wouldn’t, because inappropriate statements against the values of Harvard are not in the category of domestic assault

To continue the analogy, this happened after Harvard claimed that calling for the rape of 10 other categories violates the rule. (It's a hypothetical, so pretend that those categories exist.) If the president of Harvard refused to answer when asked specifically about women after agreeing for everyone else, the question isn't manipulative, it's just exposing hypocrisy.

If you claim that calling for genocide is not harassment, that's fine by itself. But if you do it in the context of all the other things that Harvard does consider harassment, it isn't.

If Harvard said "calling for genocide of Jews isn't harassment or bullying because that's the wrong category," the next question would be "how about 'it's okay to be white', or anti-trans positions?"

Where is the part about the rape? I can’t find it searching through the CSPAN archives

The analogy was comparing supporting rape of women to opposing rape of hypothetical groups, and the real world counterpart would be comparing support of anti-semitic comments to opposing anti-X comments. The rape is part of the analogy (and it was an analogy that you started), not a claim that they actually support rape.

Okay, so do you have proof that these Ivy League schools have disciplined “it’s okay to be white” or similar remarks as bullying or harassment per the code of conduct when it occurred outside the context of teaching? You are making a claim that this occurred. (The “outside the context of teaching” is essential, because the question was asked so broadly that it includes any single context involving the employee of the university. A self-published work, a comment to an agreeing party, an article in an obscure journal…).

The allies of convenience created by this controversy are farcical. DR guys defending the affirmative action hyper-woke presidents of Harvard and their commitment to free speech, now I’ve seen everything.

Calling for genocide is obviously “harassment”, in the same way that citing statistics is “harassment”. On a regular day, harvard students ‘feel unsafe’ when confronted with mild antagonism and unfamiliar ideas, and the administrators use this ‘harm’ to justify censoring offending speech. Now I’m not invested in this line of thought and I’m not that kind of guy, but it should be obvious to anyone that such a vulnerable person would feel even less safe by hearing calls for their genocide, than by hearing a random unorthodox talking point like abortion should be illegal. For harvard, it's a little late to try to catch the first amendment train.

I’m defending precise language when under oath to Congress, which everyone should be doing regardless of the surrounding details.

Calling for genocide is obviously “harassment”

How can speech that is not spoken to someone, or even in earshot, constitute bullying or harassment?

citing statistics is “harassment”

In the context of teaching students, it may, but not in the context of a published work or some other context. In other words, it depends on the context.

Why are you talking about published work, or speech that is not in earshot of anyone? The context is speakers at protests.

It was a new speaker’s turn to ask questions, and the question was

Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?"

This broad question exists outside of any previous context, and had the speaker wanted (she did not and succeeded in her actual desire) she could have qualified her question relevantly. The Collins American entry simply defines it as demand, but I think the actual definition of “calling for” in an academic context is “desiring / hoping for the action to be completed”. Greta Thunberg can call for lower emissions, and that’s really what she’s doing, with “demand” not accurately conveying that a call for something can be totally wishful and ineffectual. Academics and politicians do this all the time, eg “we call for an equal number of black astrophysicists” does not imply an effectual action or completed action.

The other reply is correct. They haven’t held these standards in the past that it’s something something free speech absolutism which since free speech applies only when it’s talking about genociding Jews it does make it just antisemitism.

So that’s a strong form and probably closest to my actual opinion of the situation.

A weaker form is she very easily could have said free speech without specific threats is fine but then brought down the hammer in condemning the students actions.

You could just say “Even extremely vile speech such as advocating for genocide of Jews which we have seen on Harvards campus does not violate our Honor Code as harassment if it is not directed at a specific person”

It’s a manipulative question because it’s designed to elicit a certain answer, sure. That said…

The ‘spirit of the first amendment’ defense (as invoked by Harvard, Penn, etc) is invalid because it does not apply to criticism of favored groups like transgender and black people, or when it comes to controversial topics like HBD. As FIRE has extensively documented, lawful conservative or reactionary speech clearly does violate Harvard’s code of conduct enough for the administration to take (extensive, in the case of BLM) action. In addition, most American universities’ approach to Title IX policy since the Obama administration has been to build an entire infrastructure of kangaroo courts that explicitly exist to prosecute and punish students for alleged behavior that does not amount to an ‘official’ crime as investigated and charged by the police and justice system.

On this basis it is therefore fair to ask why these colleges retreat to the ‘spirit of the first amendment’ defense with regards to Israel/Palestine when merely adhering to constitutional and legislative standards clearly isn’t sufficient for them in other cases.

If what you’re saying is true, there should be a case of someone being disciplined or fired specifically on the grounds of bullying and harassment for making an anti-black or anti-gay comment entirely outside a teacher-student context [eg, in a professor’s own self-published work]. I do not know of any case of this happening, but if you know of a case then it would prove your argument.

Carol Hooven was, as far as I can tell, forced to retire from teaching at Harvard within the last two years for making the controversial statement that there are two sexes while promoting her book about testosterone and its effects.

Actually, this proved the exact opposite. Hooven was never disciplined by the university at all, and instead was “boycotted” by graduate students.

https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Carole-Hooven-transcript.pdf

I feel like the topic of the discussion has moved from “Gay’s comments indicate calling for genocide is okay” all the way to “statements about Palestinians reclaiming land count as genocide and should be punished”. (The Hooven thing was supposed to prove that someone was punished according to the rules mentioned in Gay’s answer, but that did not happen.) This wasn’t really my interest, but can you see why it is problematic to punish Palestinians who want their land back, or a one-state solution, or to have a West Bank free from settlements per international law? We would also need to punish Jewish students who verbalize support for settlements, either in West Bank or Golan, if we are intent on punishing students who verbalize opposition against them, both counting as genocide. Or any Jewish student who supports Likud (who believe “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty”).

But sure, I mean, if some Palestinians are shouting “from the river to the sea, there will be no Jews”, that should certainly be punished and classified as call to genocide… but is anything like that happening? I don’t know of every protest call that’s happened this year, but I’m going to say no.

Ordinarily I have little sympathy for people who get hauled before committees because generally they deserve it. And a bunch of presidents of extremely wealthy universities who have spent the past few years licking the shoes of the wokies gets even less sympathy from me.

But that was a real "have you stopped beating your wife?" question there.

There's two parts to it, and the answers are "yes" and "no" respectively.

"Is calling for the genocide of Jews... bullying and harassment?"

Well, yeah. Who (apart from the usual suspects) is going to stand up in public and say "I'm all for genocide of the Jews, me!"

The second part of the question, though, is "Is what is going on with campus protests calling for genocide?" and that is the Remains To Be Proven part.

In which case, a bunch of idiot kids chanting slogans does not "violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment", so the answer there is "no". Because if it is, then all the idiot kids (and lecturers and professors) chanting slogans and marching in protests over the past few years about White Supremacy and the rest of it is "calling for genocide" and there were no committees investigating that.

It can't be "it's okay if it's about whites, but the Jews are special" unless you want to open a whole can of worms about The Global Jewish Conspiracy and puppetmaster elites pulling strings and so forth.

The condemnation, as Nybbler says (and again this is in Ackman’s Twitter post) is because they’re unwilling to actually commit to freedom of speech. They want their exceptions for discourse around trans issues or HBD, but then when it’s POC vs Jews, they want to be able to sit back and say they’re just following the spirit of the first amendment.

You can't divorce the discussion from the fact that Israel is slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians, and it's especially rich that Jews have been able to force the discourse on an alleged call to genocide with a run-of-the-mill propaganda slogan like "Palestinians will be free in Palestine," when such slogans are common to every war in human history. We should be left in awe that they've been able to steer the discourse to pearl-clutching around that slogan while they openly endorse an ongoing ethnic cleansing. None of the hypocrisy you are trying to identify here between "POC vs Jews" on the free speech question can possibly hold a candle to the hypocritical Elite support for Zionist brutality. The fact this has been made an issue proves Jews are on the top of the pyramid, above and beyond the POC, and the kvetching over this controversy is just proof of that fact and not at all proof that Jews are put upon.

Israel is slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians

This is bullshit. Sure, some civilians in Gaza are dying, but Israel is not intentionally killing them. They're dying because the Hamas faggots are standing next to women and children when they fire their rockets. They're dying because they support the terrorists stockpiling machine guns next to their kids' school supplies. Whatever the beef with Jews, it's Hamas and its supporters who are killing the people in Gaza.

an alleged call to genocide with a run-of-the-mill propaganda slogan like "Palestinians will be free in Palestine," when such slogans are common to every war in human history.

How else do you interpret “from the river to the sea”? That slogan clearly includes both Israel and Palestine, and Hamas’s original and 2017 charters both indicate that their ultimate goal is to wrest control of the entire area from Israel.

Look, I’m no fan of Israel’s actions, especially the settlements in the West Bank. I even argued here last week that we shouldn’t be supporting Israel in this conflict. But just because Israel isn’t a saint, it doesn’t mean Hamas is. Everyone who chants “from the river to the sea” while knowing what that means (most Americans don’t, including the ones chanting it) is mouthing support for genocide.

ETA: You can substitute “ethnic cleansing” for genocide if you prefer.

How else do you interpret “from the river to the sea”?

It could be interpreted as call for genocide, it could be also interpreted as call for one state solution, creation of one state where Palestinians and Jews would live happily together as equal citizens with equal rights (this means equal right to return to both Jews and Palestinians).

Could such state work?

Combined total population of current Holy Land is 12,8 million split roughly equally between Jews and Palestinians.

Outside of the land, total number of Palestinians is about 6 million, while Jews outside of Israel eligible by Law of Return to immigrate are about 17 million.

Assuming everyone returns home according to the plan, total population of the Holy Land will rise to respectable 36 million. Divided by 25,500 square km of land, it gives population density of ~ 1411 ppl/km2.

Hellish nightmare, you might say, just little less hellish than Houston, TX.

How would be Mega City Mideast governed? We are in the 21st century, democracy is out and absolute rule by Dictatorate of Supreme Judges is in. We are destined to dystopic future anyway, why not pick the cool British one?

Assuming everyone returns home according to the plan

How likely do you think that is to actually happen? And failing that, how do you prevent this single-state solution from undergoing Dan Carlin's "conquest via democracy"?

Assuming everyone returns home according to the plan

Ha. Not bloody likely.

Israel: slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians

Nazi Germany: those Jews died of typhosis

Slaughtering, to me, seems like a highly incorrect use of the word. They are incidentally killing people in Gaza, some tiny percentage of which are civilians, most of whom are in the crossfire because they are being used as human shields by agents of Hamas, a foreign military operation that just conducted an act of aggression in Israel.

It seems rather likely to me that a large percentage are civilians, given how much Hamas tries to hide itself with civilians and inside civilian structures. Which doesn’t make the IDF’s collateral damage any less moral, in my opinion.

Oh I disagree. You can't have such a standard practice without willing participation of the vast majority of the population. Almost everyone over age 10 knows why they are there and is agreeing to it.

That may well be, but supporting the military doesn’t make you a combatant, or else the civilian/combatant distinction would be virtually meaningless in the vast majority of cases.

Yes I agree that the civilian/combatant distinction is useless in the vast majority of cases. I further assert most people asserted to be Palestinian Civilians would fail all but the most lenient tests if given a questionnaire with a perfect truth detector.

More comments

You can't divorce the discussion from the fact that Israel is slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians

Can you divorce from you mind the mass rape and murder of Oct 7? Wasn't that called exhilarating by a few groups on Oct 8?

The fact this has been made an issue proves Jews are on the top of the pyramid, above and beyond the POC

Well ‘the Jews’ just failed to oust Harvard’s WOC president despite making up a majority of its most generous donors, which would suggest otherwise. Israel isn’t ‘slaughtering’ Gazan civilians, casualty rates in Gaza are within expected parameters for fighting in a dense, highly populated urban environment and don’t suggest any large scale targeting of non-combatants unaffiliated with Hamas.

Not only do Hamas’ own casualty figures fluctuate in a deeply suspicious way, but even if they were accurate they’d suggest a less than 1% civilian death rate, which again is extremely low in historical terms for the invasion of a dense city (or even in general). Gaza’s population is three times that of Dresden before it was bombed, and yet in two months of heavy bombing and a ground invasion, even Hamas argues that fewer died than did in a single allied bombing there.

Gaza’s population is three times that of Dresden before it was bombed, and yet in two months of heavy bombing and a ground invasion, even Hamas argues that fewer died than did in a single allied bombing there.

Dresden was firebombed and the majority of the city was outright annihilated by the resulting firestorm. The firebombed japanese cities, or for that matter the nuclear bombings, would be similarly poor examples for comparison. Why not compare to casualties from the bombing of Britain, or some other example of indiscriminate bombing, adjusted by weight of bombs dropped? Presumably Israel is dropping guided weapons; if they are producing more casualties per ton of bombs dropped than examples of indiscriminate bombing in WWII, that seems like it ought to be recognized as a significant result.

The bombing of Britain wasn't a war crime (or at least isn't widely considered one), so the comparison wouldn't really demonstrate anything.

Presumably Israel is dropping guided weapons; if they are producing more casualties per ton of bombs dropped than examples of indiscriminate bombing in WWII, that seems like it ought to be recognized as a significant result.

Not really; when you make more precise bombs you generally also make them smaller (some of the big bunker-busters being exceptions). The proper measure would be civilian casualties per some measure of military effectiveness.

Not really; when you make more precise bombs you generally also make them smaller (some of the big bunker-busters being exceptions).

Hence per ton of bombs dropped.

Works the wrong way. If I used to drop 100 tons of bomb to destroy a target and it killed 5 civilians (destroying the target but mostly hitting other stuff) and now I drop 10 tons of precision bomb and it kills 1 civilian (destroying the target that the civilian was at/nearby), going by tonnage makes the second one look worse.

Israel isn’t ‘slaughtering’ Gazan civilians, casualty rates in Gaza are within expected parameters for fighting in a dense, highly populated urban environment and don’t suggest any large scale targeting of non-combatants unaffiliated with Hamas.

Israel is slaughtering Gazan civilians, it is building settlements to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. It is Apartheid by any reasonable standard, with Gazans as functionally less-than second class non-citizens of Israel. Using Dresden as a benchmark for whether or not we can consider there to be a slaughter of civilians is revealing of just how motivated you are to deny the reality of the situation.

Why not just embrace the Richard Hanania approach of supporting it rather than denying that it is actually happening?

On the one hand, you don't think we can call this a slaughter of civilians because the death toll isn't at the level of Dresden, but on the other hand you are Very Concerned that students on campus are saying that Palestinians should be free. Like I said, we should be left gasping in awe at the inversion of reality we are watching unfold at the pinnacle of the Ivory Tower, and even here.

Using Dresden as a benchmark for whether or not we can consider there to be a slaughter of civilians is revealing of just how motivated you are to deny the reality of the situation.

Dresden is considered a controversial case and had a casualty rate either an order or multiple orders of magnitude higher than the current conflict depending on who you believe, sure.

But that reminds me, you’ve argued that extraordinarily high civilian death rates on the Eastern Front in WW2 were merely sad realities of warfare (rather than any deliberate extermination), but less than 1% of Gaza’s population (a substantial part of which is armed combatants) dying in an invasion is a “slaughter”? More Jews died at Iasi in a few days than civilians have died in Gaza since October 7th.

If killing sub-1% of the civilian population in collateral damage during an invasion is a “slaughter”, then the term applies to almost any major military action to the extent it’s almost redundant.

Why not just embrace the Richard Hanania approach of supporting it rather than denying that it is actually happening?

I’m not Israeli, but if I were I’d be far harsher and less compromising. Perhaps that would make me a bad leader. I advocated right here, as I recall, that Israel should start executing fighting age men until the will to fight back is eliminated, for example.

you are Very Concerned that students on campus are saying that Palestinians should be free.

Not at all. I have few real opinions about freedom of speech, given neither I nor those I consider hostile to me support it. But, as a citizen of present day America, I would run a university as the presidents promised this week (or last, I forget) in Congress, without any restrictions on legal speech by faculty or students.

I have never contested that the high mortality due to war reality, reprisals etc. certainly constitutes a "slaughter of civilians", and again, I don't know why you insist on pointing to particularly notable examples of this and insisting they are a minimum benchmark for acknowledging the reality of what is happening on the ground. What is happening right now in Gaza is a reprisal.

I advocated right here, as I recall, that Israel should start executing fighting age men without charge until the will to fight back is eliminated, for example.

You don't appreciate how fragile Israel is. It only exists by the pathological grace of European people. It's been an albatross around the neck of the White world. The Jews haven't built an inspiring outpost of civilization. It's an embarrassment in every regard: politically, ideologically, aesthetically, geopolitically. It's been a massively destabilizing force geopolitically, it has costed the United States immense wealth, blood, and prestige on the world stage to such an extent as to actually threaten its hegemony.

The real reason why propaganda slogans are so threatening is because they threaten an erosion of Western support for Israel, which is absolutely terrifying for them, and rightfully so. It has nothing to do with "muh genocidal rhetoric". It's about clamping down on campus opposition to Israel.

You don't appreciate how fragile Israel is.

If the West stopped caring either way about Israel tomorrow, what do you suppose would happen to it?

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran successfully invade?

More comments

You can't divorce the discussion from the fact that Israel is slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians

Israel is, as far as anyone can tell, following the laws of war on protection of civilians, although I suppose they could just let Hamas attack them again instead.

with a run-of-the-mill propaganda slogan like "Palestinians will be free in Palestine," when such slogans are common to every war in human history

This slogan is 1) blatantly false(Palestine will continue to lose) and 2) actually is ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, which implies an end to Israel. Israeli Jews will get genocided or ethnically cleansed if that happens. So yes, it is an implicit call for… something unpleasant.

Israel is engaging in an ethnic cleansing, the "legality" doesn't matter as that is simply a function of the support of the United States. The legality of settlements or blockades doesn't matter either. It's an Apartheid state... It's everything the managerial elite claim to oppose. But the real problem is a fucking slogan saying Palestinians will be free? Give me a break, seriously. It's a testament to their penchant for narrative control that they make a fucking slogan the big Controversy of the Day, and even people here take the bait by claiming that this shows how Jews are just so put upon by Academia. It's completely absurd.

Something tells me that the Jewish donor class that pushed out Liz would support ending Apartheid, regardless of the consequences for white South Africans, while also supporting Israeli Apartheid in order to safeguard Israeli Jews. And then, to cover up their monumental hypocrisy, they will drum up controversy over a slogan like "from the River to the Sea" to claim they are the victims of "genocidal rhetoric" while they actively support an Apartheid regime engaging in ethnic cleansing.

Israel engages in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, but the Gaza operation is a military operation with military targeting, not ethnic cleansing. The settlements in the West Bank are bad and should be condemned, they don’t justify even more ethnic cleansing in return.

Gaza is its own country though...

"Is calling for the genocide of Jews... bullying and harassment?"

Well, yeah. Who (apart from the usual suspects) is going to stand up in public and say "I'm all for genocide of the Jews, me!"

How about "Calling for the genocide of Jews is disgusting and distasteful in the extreme, but it is absolutely protected speech under Brandenburg v. Ohio and does not in itself constitute prohibited bullying or harassment." That's what I would say if I was leading a public university and being grilled. The University of Pennsylvania guarantees students "The right to freedom of thought and expression", so I'd say something like "...but it is expression permitted under the University of Pennsylvania Code of Student Conduct." Harvard, however, has no such out.

"Yes or no, Mr/Ms President. That's what I asked: yes, or no?"

They won't listen to your explanation of "yes, but"; they want a gotcha.

You don't start your answer with "yes" or "no". If the questioner starts bullying tactics like that you don't have to play along.

How about "Calling for the genocide of Jews is disgusting and distasteful in the extreme, but it is absolutely protected speech under Brandenburg v. Ohio and does not in itself constitute prohibited bullying or harassment."

Harvard can't say that because all the other things that they do claim are bullying or harassment keep them from being able to say it honestly.

If they say that, the next question would be about whether Trump support, Islamophobia, etc. are prohibited bullying or harassment.

Yeah, Harvard can't, as I noted. Penn could. They'd be lying, but they at least have a student conduct code which clearly backs it up. Harvard doesn't, because they hedge around with stuff like "Moreover, it is the responsibility of all members of the academic community to maintain an atmosphere in which violations of rights are unlikely to occur" and "the rights of individuals to express their views within the bounds of reasoned dissent" (emphasis mine).

Ackman seems like the mob leader. He says they haven’t fired her because he’s making too much noise.

The obvious issue with her and her plagiarizing is affirmative action. Like that’s the best you can find for Harvard? She appears well below the average Motte posters ability. And atleast a few of us probably wouldn’t mind the position.

The second thing I’ve been thinking about is whether anyone is going to NOT attend Harvard. Where would you even going? MIT seems in the same boat here which at one point would have just been the pragmatic engineering school. All the Ivy’s are the same. Perhaps University of Chicago, Notre Dame, and Cal-Tech, after that whats out there flagship state schools? Yeshiva?

The degradation of Harvard won't begin on the side of the applicants, but with elite employers and the families who run them. Whether or not this week's scandal has any permanent effect, the headlines have absolutely put a microscopic chip in the edifice of Harvard's reputation. The failing is ultimately not the president herself nor the answers she gave, but instead the amount of criticism that has been able to exist without loud pushback from the Left. The fact that Progressive mouthpieces haven't gone full Propaganda Mode to defend the integrity of the Ivy League at all costs indicates something has already started to crumble in the Ivies-as-Progressive-Temples mindset. If any of this has long-term implications, it's likely toward the end of the current top post in this CWRoundup: to shave the wildest edges off of Wokeism in the interest of waterproofing Progressive positions (both professional and ideological) for the long haul.

And don't forget that the Chinese (at the very least) are actively looking for ways to degrade Harvard's (and other Western universities) reputation. English, Japanese, Chinese, French, Swiss, South Korean, etc. universities aren't going to cry if Harvard gets knocked off its perch. There's a whole world out there waiting for a chance to step into the prestige circle.

They pointed out, fairly enough, that the university presidents' answers were in fact accurate statements of their Codes of Conduct - even broadly in line with free speech jurisprudence.

That is not fair considering the universities do not follow that code of conduct when it comes to speech targeted at groups they favor. If the Code of Conduct is only pulled out to defend inaction on some hateful speech but not other hateful speech, what's fair is to look at the difference and see what the true criteria are, not to take the CoC at face value.

FIRE types are under no illusions about which situation they're in. But they're the minority. Ideally, we're observing the start of a widespread awakening.

Jesse is also a hypocrite when it comes to hate speech against whites. A couple of episodes ago he was faced with the example of Saira Rao, who called Zionists “bloodthirsty” in one tweet, but rails endlessly about whites. He sputtered out nonsense trying to justify why her real sin was crypto-antisemitism but overt anti white tweets are kosher. Groups that are scared get priority over groups that aren’t his. His principles have their limits. Katie is much more of a freethinker.

Episode 192: 00:17:00

Groups that are scared get priority over groups that aren’t his

What?

sacred

(Poor poetic execution of an idea) His justification for Jewish particularism is their trauma, but also they are a group he conveniently belongs too. His feelings that “it’s creepy” are entirely subjective, and he’s granting his own group special status based on it.

Sacred, not "scared," I'm assuming.

He has seen these institutions treat mild to moderate social aggression as a threat to the existence of various minority groups. And here he is, hearing loud and clear that words aren't violence when directed at his ethnic group. None of it counts when you do it to Jews.

How is any of this surprising at all? He has been cataloguing the exact same system of social aggression that is being turned not on Jews qua Jews, but on White Nationalist jews. Antizionist jews aren't just applauded, they're celebrated by the left for entirely consistent reasons. If you advocate for an ethnostate for white people the fact that some of those white people wear funny hats and don't like Santa Claus doesn't change the fact that you're a white nationalist in the eyes of the left, especially when there's a daily feed of photos of brown people getting blown up and killed. It isn't like the left has been hiding their views on this situation, and while I don't pay for his content I have a sneaking suspicion that Singal has actually got a bit of first-hand experience with the modern left (and may in fact make a living talking about it).

Israeli Jews are majority indistinguishable in phenotype from Palestinians and Israeli society is ethnonationalist, but it’s not that ethnocentric and racist- Arab Christians in Israel have better educational and labor market outcomes than the Jewish majority despite being Arab. Muslims do worse, but that’s probably partly HBD and partly cultural dysfunction.

Israeli Jews are majority indistinguishable in phenotype from Palestinians

In my experience this is extremely incorrect and I can tell the difference fairly quickly. I'm not going to confuse Yair Netanyahu for DJ Khaled anytime soon.

Muslims do worse, but that’s probably partly HBD and partly cultural dysfunction.

As I've mentioned in discussions on this topic before, good luck convincing the left that disparity in outcomes between white people and people of colour are due to brown people having genetics which make them dumb, violent criminals.

You’ve mentioned this a few times, including the bit about HBD likely explaining the different outcomes between Arab Christians and Muslims. Do you have any idea how that could have come about historically? My possibly incorrect understanding is that Jews and Christians were ineligible for public service and positions of authority under the Ottomans and various previous Islamic states. They could remove this handicap, and many did, by converting to Islam; they’d also avoid additional taxes that way. Under those conditions, I would have expected the most ambitious (and therefore possibly more intelligent? I’m not sure how well correlated those two traits are) to have converted to Islam over the centuries, leading to a slightly dumber Christian population. Do you know of anything I’m missing?

Christians in the Middle East are a well-educated, relatively wealthy minority everywhere, and when there’s separate IQ data it’s higher. This despite often fairly severe discrimination.

Exactly how this came about is the sort of thing that has lots of different explanations. I personally think Islamic law is dysgenic, but you’ll also notice that 1) the groups are not ‘different religion, same ethnicity’ like northern Irish Protestants and Catholics- there’s over a thousand years of divergence and 2) it’s been hypothesized that the dumbest Christians were unable to afford the jizya and were enslaved, melding into the general Arab Muslim gene pool.

The other elephant in the living room is consanguinity- Arab Muslims have close to triple rate of cousin marriage that their Christian neighbors have- but I don’t think that explains the magnitude of IQ gap(in Israel, the lowest to highest performing groups on college entrance exams, which are probably pretty close to an IQ proxy).

The cousin marriage thing completely slipped my mind. I think you’re probably right that that plays a role, perhaps even a major one.

By white nationalist Jews, are you referring to Zionists? They are certainly Jewish nationalists, but they are demonstrably not white nationalists; see the Mizrahi and Maghrebi Jews.

Yes, that's who I'm referring to. Some of them having darker skin is not actually an argument against them being white nationalists - The Daily Stormer's readerbase doesn't get to go "Oh we're not white nationalists, we have a Sicilian division". Israel is essentially viewed as a colonial settler project on the left, with a bunch of white europeans coming in and oppressing a bunch of people of colour. Don't forget that "blackness" in the modern left is contingent upon being a leftist as well.

What views has the left not been hiding? Their opposition to a movement they perceive as white nationalist?

Yes! This support for Palestine and opposition to Israel isn't some surprise that was sprung on the jews after they reacted to an attack, but a core part of left-wing political ideology for the past few decades. They have been saying loudly, for years, that this is what their response would be.

What "sneaking suspicion" of Singal are you talking about?

I was making a joke - it is extremely obvious that Jesse Singal would have first-hand experience of what it is like to get Blocked and Reported.

Perhaps this by itself is not, but surely their broadly welcoming stance toward non-European co-religionists is. So too is their explicit policy of using Judaism, not whiteness, as an eligibility criterion.

Christian nationalism is largely thrown into the same bucket of deplorable ideologies that good leftists are duty-bound to oppose, and the religious aspects are often derided as simply cover for ethnic chauvinism. In the case of Israel it is actually just naked ethnic chauvinism, and 90% of the jews that modern leftists encounter are going to be white ashkenazim. Nobody is ever going to believe that Amy Schumer and Jerry Seinfeld are people of colour, and so when they see people like them advocating for an explicitly racist ethnostate they're going to call that white nationalism.

The whiteness of Jewish people is a matter of debate among the kind of left- and right-wingers whom I find distasteful,

I also find that interminable quibbling to be distasteful, which is why I largely don't engage in it. I find that categorising ashkenazim as a sub-category of white people is the most useful approach when it comes to discussing politics, so that's the approach I take. I don't really have an opinion on the actual question because I don't think it matters at all.

Zionism advocates for an ethnostate for Jewish people. An estimated 30 - 45% of Israelis are Mizrahi. The Venn diagram of Jewish people and white people is not a circle.

"We want an ethnostate for a people who are 55-70% white" pattern matches directly to white nationalism in modern politics, and I don't even think people are being particularly wrong or incorrect when they call that ideology white nationalism. When you look at actual Israeli policies (settling Gaza, surreptitiously administering contraceptives to black people, discriminating against muslims) that initial judgement seems totally correct from a left-wing perspective.

This is true, and recent polling suggests that the left, particularly the youth, no longer regard Jewish people as a historically or currently oppressed minority.

And why should they? The idea that Lloyd Blankfein is a victim of discrimination is just farcically wrong, and when you try to talk about how oppressed poor Harvey Weinstein was people are just going to laugh in your face - and they're correct to do so. If they actually are an oppressed minority, then that would show up in the data the same way statistics reveal discriminatory treatment towards black people... But when you look at the statistics you get the opposite result, which suggests that they are actually the opposite of oppressed. HBD answers (higher average verbal IQ translates to better outcomes in a society that rewards higher verbal IQ) can provide an explanation, but good luck getting the left to agree to that (and I'm not even entirely convinced that HBD covers all of it, I feel like there's at least some element of ethnic nepotism that contributes as well... but that just might be genetic too).

Sure, fair enough, Jewish progressives could maybe have predicted that the leopard would eat their face.

The only real surprise to me is that people are actually surprised about this - I was under the impression that most Jewish progressives in this case considered themselves part of the metaphorical leopard.

You don't believe it matters if Jews are white,

Correct. I'm not a white nationalist and don't think that "white" is a strong enough basis for any kind of group identity. Whether or not individual jews qualify under that umbrella is just not a question I care about because I don't think that information is useful at all. But when I'm talking about politics at a broader level, jews absolutely fall under the category "white" as defined by the modern left and it isn't even a question.

you also believe that progressives inevitably - and correctly! - regard Zionism as a white nationalist project because only 35 - 50% of Israelis are nonwhite? (Note that Mizrahim are not the only non-white Jews in Israel.)

If a Christian nationalist group arose with 40 - 50% non-white membership, and which demonstrably opened its doors to non-whites and made Christianity, not whiteness, its overriding membership criterion, it would be odd to insist that it was a "white supremacist organization." You can use words that way, but I confess the reasoning looks very motivated to me.

I'm not trying to be glib or motivated here, I'm basing my opinion on what I see people on the left saying and doing. Are you familiar with the Proud Boys? They were a right wing political organisation that was explicitly christian, and they've been called a white supremacist group as well... despite being led by a black cuban and not having any racial requirements for prospective members. It isn't like they're the one exception or anything - here's Al Jazeera saying that Zionism is "white supremacy" and not jewish supremacy. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/1/9/the-zionist-fallacy-of-jewish-supremacy Here's Newsweek talking about how orthodox-raised jew Jared Kushner's white supremacy "shines through" https://uscpr.org/jared-kushners-white-supremacy-shines-through-opinion/ (though Newsweek later edited the title to remove the term white supremacy, they didn't change the URL and the author kept the original title for his website).

I actually agree with you that this is a bad use of language, and political thinking is made less clear by simply terming everything "white nationalist", but that's the world we live in right now and that's the approach that the left has decided to take. If you want to go and tell the left that they're being a bit too free and flippant with accusations of racism and white supremacy, I think that's an admirable goal and you should definitely pursue it if you're rich enough that you never need to worry about working again.

More comments

The outcome of this dust up is not that Jews are white, it's that Jews need to rejigger DEI with an explicit cut-out for themselves. I'm quite happy to bet on this if you're interested

Ackman explicitly rejected that idea, which he said Gay offered. Perhaps that was just a negotiation tactic, but he could have been serious. Or he could have, probably correctly, figured the cut-out would wither away as soon as the heat died down.

It'd also be extremely hard to justify and explain. What would even be the argument here? "White people are all evil/privileged, except for jews, who are not privileged beneficiaries of racism because they are so rich and powerful that we can't piss them off by attacking them like this."

I don't think you'd have to wait terribly long for this cut-out to come into dispute, and there's no way you can even make it that doesn't just immediately fall apart under interrogation.

This is like saying feminists need to rejigger DEI with an explicit cut-out for themselves. It's missing the point, both groups already have their cut-outs, it's that they are not allowed to be self-determined groups. Their primary loyalty must be to DEI, and they are asked to prove it, hence no female only spaces for women, and no Israel for the Jews. If they give these things up they'll be free to engage in all the cis-straight-white-male bashing they want, and enjoy DEIs full protection.

Thank you Jesus for the expression 'cart before the horse.' All the feminists were Jews. Jews have been doing all the DEI stuff, quite openly. They can and have openly murdered 10's of thousands of innocent people and the consequences are more protection, more funding, more support, more philosemitism. Like I already said I'd be more than happy to bet on this

  • -10

"All the feminists were Jews" followed by railing about Jews is going to require you to provide more justification than just your unfiltered emotions. Feminism, Jews, DEI, and "murdering 10's of thousands of innocent people" are all fair game for criticism, but wrapping them all together in a frothy rant devoid of any argumentation, particularly for the more inflammatory statements, is not.

My bad bro, it was only 337 out of 400. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Feminists_by_ethnicity

Next time I won't say the snack bowl is all poisoned if it's only 84% poison.

I hate to break it to you, but "C" is supposed to stand for "category" and "P" for "Pages" (at each level of category). The names don't seem to overlap between levels, so to get the number of people at the top level, you need to count all the pages on that level, and then recursively add all pages from it's sub-levels.

Eyeballing it, "Jewish feminists" will have a total of around 400 entries under it, "European feminists" will easily have over 1000, possibly something around 2000. While (as usual) over-represented, it doesn't seem like the amount of Jewish feminists goes over 10%.

I could point out the logical fallacies here, but "all the feminists were Jews" was only one part of what was wrong with your post. Doubling down on the attitude does not result in the mods saying "Gosh, maybe I was too harsh and I didn't understand the very salient and reasonable point he was making."

Care to justify any of those claims? Ideally with a source that at least pretends not to froth at the mouth.

The nakba probably fits the second part of his claim, at least, although ‘all the feminists were Jews’ seems obviously falsified.

Simone de Beauvoir, for example - probably the most crucial figure in the formation of the second wave - was Jewish now?

Once you notice you do not un-notice

https://www.jta.org/jewniverse/2016/jean-paul-sartre-simone-de-beauvoir-loved-the-jews

Whatever their opinions, Sartre and de Beauvoir, as said, weren't Jews, contradicting the "All the feminists were Jews" statement.

More comments

All of them? Damn, and I thought Jews don't proselytize.

You're still missing the point. Yes, there are still feminists happily aligned with DEI, screaming at you about "patriarchy" as they gush over the stunningness and braveness of Lia Thomas, but it is a sacrifice on their part. One that not all feminists are prepared to make. Likewise, we might end up with a new type of Jew that will have to now happily chant "from the river to the sea"...

Like I already said I'd be more than happy to bet on this

I'm not, because I recognize there's a good chance you're right about the final outcome of this spat. I think I saw somewhere that Harvard already lost, or is about to lose, a cool $1 billion in donations, that should be enough to give pause anyone in the administration. On the other hand, this feels too much like testing the front lines for vulnerabilities. What is even the point of this theater if they've been running DEI all along?

All of them? Damn, and I thought Jews don't proselytize.

It's the reason Jewishness is inherited via mother's line. ;-)

Fully, entirely, and totally embracing the irony of this response, you're familiar with Golem meme, no? Might be more familiar to some as 'Frankenstein' where the master loses control of the monster.

But the master is still the master. And my master said we could only serve one master. And now I've gone and typed the word so many times it looks and sounds funny.

So... Jesus good, but Jews bad? Is that the point you're making?

More comments

If we're talking Golems, I don't get the terms of your bet. It would also imply that there's a decent chance the monster turns on it master, no?

More comments

You know what they say, when you lay down with dogs you wake up with fleas.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats