site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What do you propose happens to the 61% Israelis who are Jews ethnically cleansed from other Middle Eastern nations in the past 100 years? Where do they go back to?

French Algeria is not a good comparison, because the French have a France.

French Algeria is not a good comparison, because the French have a France.

Eventually the French will not have a France in the current trajectory and unlike the Israelis they are politically not pro French today in the way Israelis are pro Jewish.

We don't live in a world that the argument in favor of respecting a people's right to exist as a majority in their own homeland is taken for granted. Or to continue to exist in general without demographic replacement and threat of persecution in their own homeland. Especially not by the pro Jewish lobby in western countries which has an isolated sensitivity to the possibility of Jews being oppressed that it doesn't apply to various other groups such as Palestinians, or indeed the French. Do you support France remaining French and the homeland of the French people?

In accordance to the person you are responding to, Israel's occupation makes it unsustainable, especially as Palestinian demographics increase. So the Jews living in Israel have the option to remain to Israel but abandon settlements and the occupation and still have a homeland. Stopping the settlements doesn't stop Israel from existing.

There is also the option of a transformation of Israel into a civic state that is multi-ethnic that grants equal rights to Palestinians even if eventually the Jews become a minority. Jews can have equal rights and live there. Another alternative is a state that is even suspicious of Jewish nationalism in the manner western societies are more anti their own ethnic group's nationalism than those of minorities and is pro mass migration. This wouldn't be a genuinely equal and just society but it would fit with the template of what mainstream liberalism and most influential Jewish ngos support in western countries and under their definition would be anti-racist.

Either scenarios can be be opposed to legitimately, if one consistently oppose such experiments by having reasonable worries in other cases, but not if they aren't. But the first scenario especially does exist in the table as an alternative.

The important issue is that Israel as a Jewish majority state can coexist with respecting the rights of non Jewish minorities in Israel and in Palestine. So it is a false argument to claim that Israel's current course is about its existence, when it is about an extreme nationalist agenda to dominate non Jewish Palestinians, ensure demographic dominance in the future as well and get control and land. Religion and the idea that all of that land and more is God promised land is also not irrelevant to this conflict. It would also be nice if Israel tried to police some of the religious intolerance towards the Christian community living in Israel and punish those spitting on them.

It's also worth mentioning that Christians have been ethnically cleansed from most countries in the Middle East post WWI.

Lebanon was a majority Christian country until quite recently.

I wonder why the mainstream press in the West almost never covers those atrocities? Just this year, an enclave of Armenians had their homeland stolen from them and had to flee.

The outrage over Gaza is not a principled objection to violence or to ethnic cleansing.

I wonder why the mainstream press in the West almost never covers those atrocities?

No you don't.

You know full well why. As much as the secular progressive who identify as "woke left" and the secular progressive who identify as "dissident right" may hate each other, they hate Christians and Jews more.

The casual hatred and desire for destruction expressed by @BurdensomeCount and others in this thread is not the exception it is the norm.

Lebanese Christians aren’t primarily a minority because of ethnic cleansing but because they have lower birth rates than Muslims. In addition it’s likely that colonial censuses undercounted the Muslim population, so the Christians never had the demographic advantage they (and the French) thought they did.

Christians in Lebanon are mostly anti-Israel, and a majority of them supported the October 7th attacks. I'm not sure they blame Muslims for their diminishing numbers in Lebanon.

Israel is a strong ally and the main weapon exporter to Azerbaijan.

So the big question is, why are christians in the west so eager to support the country responsible for bombing christian churches in Gaza and help a muslim country ethnically cleanse one of the oldest christian communities in the world? The whole thing has a "chickens for KFC" feeling about it.

Christians in Lebanon aren’t big fans of Israel, but I’m pretty sure most of them do not like their Muslim neighbors much either- as in ‘had a brutal civil war with them in living memory’.

Christians in the West are also major weapons exporters to Azerbaijan and primary clients of its oil industry. Meanwhile, the Armenians were staunchly allied with the Russians until Putin inevitably screwed them over. Meanwhile Iran allies with Armenia against Muslim Azerbaijan for fear that a corridor with also Muslim Turkey would compromise it strategically. It is what it is.

I think you missed my point.

I'm not trying to assign blame. I'm showing that few people actually care about ethnic cleansing. Or, at a minimum, they don't care enough to learn a basic amount of history or geography.

They care about tribalism.

This seems like an isolated demand of rigor. Would you say people can't show outrage over the October 7th attack unless they read up and condemn every atrocity that was committed in the region leading up to that date?

Would you say people can't show outrage over the October 7th attack unless they read up and condemn every atrocity that was committed in the region leading up to that date?

Yes. More specifically, I think the scope of caring should be scaled to the level of the atrocity.