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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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It's funny that FCfromSSC saying "hey, maybe violence is justified in self defense" is enough to send every leftist into paroxysms of performative denunciation and triggered a crisis that led to the schisming of the whole community.

You don't actually quote a specific post, but most of my posts that fit your description were not a central example of "justifying violence in self-defense". They argued that Blue Tribe had collectively engaged in organized political violence and gotten away with it, and that this removed most good-faith objections to Red Tribe doing the same. There was an exchange about self-defense specifically, but I'd be surprised if that was the one you were referring to.

Given the references to the schisming, probably talking about this event and this comment, referencing this post, which was about those good-faith objections.

That said, yakultbingedrinker's comment (that were also highlighted as "evil sentiment and a precursor to atrocities", and received more emphasis) were about self-defense; Tyre_Inflator may have confused you and him.

The comment I was thinking of was linked in your first link, here, which was about self-defense and Tracing Woodgrain's comment that Kyle should have just let his attackers beat him as much as they wanted and hope they had the mercy not to kill him, rather than fighting back.
yakultbingedrinker's comment was very similar though.

@FCfromSSC this was the post of yours I meant, which was cited as justification for the schism.

I think even later a strong case can be made against escalating to deadly force. So far, 32 people have died during these protests, four for reasons other than being shot. It's impossible to get a precise count of the number of physical confrontations that have gone on, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect many more than that. Could they have killed him? Yes. Would they have killed him? From a probabilistic standpoint, I'd give it maybe 1-2% odds at most assuming he was passive/compliant.

Trace’s argument is similar to the pro-russia argument that if ukraine had simply rolled over and surrendered itself into russia’s power, a lot of people who did not ‘need to’ die 'probably' wouldn’t have, even if ukraine had the right to fight. Although I don’t recall you or @FCfromSSC making that argument (as opposed to other pro-russia commenters).

Possibly because they're not against Ukraine defending itself. But if you want to point out inconsistencies, it's weird how you haven't brought up Trace making that argument re: Russia.

What do you mean? I don't have a database of everyone's arguments, I just have knowledge of both side's common arguments + sporadic recollections of commenter-specific ones.

I am pointing out an inconsistency in a hypothetical left-wing commenter who supports trace's argument here but denies it in ukraine's case just as much as his right-wing counterpart who does the opposite.

I'm gonna stop because the whole thing is petty one-up-manship, but I suppose pointing that out is precisely my point.

Probably best, because I’m very annoyed that I apparently can’t point out a double-edged inconsistency without being accused of left partisanship. If the blood spilled in avdivka is on ukraine’s hands, then the blood spilled in kenosha is on rittenhouse’s hands. I oppose all of these ‘utilitarian’ ‘yielding to the unrighteous’ arguments.

I don't think a single person here has ever argued that the blood spilled in avdivka is on Ukraine's hands. I don't think I've ever seen that point of view put forward anywhere, ever. It seems possible to me that you're arguing against a fictitious position, at least outside Russia itself.