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 -
The Redpilling of the American public intellectual?
Being extremely online, using both X and Substacks and having used them for several years, I cannot not notice a process of redpilling of many US-opinion makers, both blue and grey tribe members.
Elon Musk and Marc Andressen are the first obvious examples, with both of them having directly followed and quoted members of the Dissident Rights (Andressen some days ago tagged Covfefe Anon in a post). Musk in particular speaks often with figures like Indian Bronson, Cremièux and Hanania, all of them supporters of the HBD and "liberal-racist" or "liberal-realist" (still fun that we are talking about an Indian, a Jew and a Palestinian).
Then we have the old New Atheism and IDW intellectuals gang like Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt and others. Their contribution to progressive criticism is not new, but from what I see on X, on the wake of the Harvard controversy, they are talking an harder turn. I cannot confirm because it is only an impression from who they interact with on X.
We have the "Silicon Valley Galaxy", the network of Musk-supporters based in California, with people like Mike Solana (another gay man) exorting the virtues of nationalism and communism-bashing on his wildly popular newsletter.
Nate Silver is a very fun example. A gay Jew who, in the last year, took an hard turn against progressivism because of Covid criticism and the purges that came from it, and now on his substack is attacking the left at every turn, attracting the very entertaining hate of the academic crowd on every post.
Also an individual like Noah Smith, while still completely faithful to the Neoliberal project, began to heavily criticize the progressives, saying that they are way more dangerous than the right.
I am sure that there are other names I forgot.
All of this to say that I see a change of opinion of public figures that, in the year 2016, would have been for sure allies of the Democrats against a Trumpian state. Obviously the change of opinion of twitter-based figures, online characters and academic eretics is not a change of opinion of the PMC at large, but for sure is more that the Dissident Right could have hoped for some years ago.
The true blue progressives- not their moderate hangers on, not the liberals, but the hardcore DSA people- are like actually crazy. That’s been apparent for a while now, but what changed was 1) it became apparent that their actually-crazy ideas have real world consequences 2) the general public doesn’t consistently distinguish moderate from hardcore progressives 3) hardcore progressives won’t moderate. Now could I have told you that soft-on-crime DA’s were a terrible idea? Yes. I could have. But it seems like the mainstream liberal consensus was legitimately that it would blow over before there were any serious consequences.
Gaza is probably the other elephant in the room. Whether you support Israel or not they’re patently not carrying out a genocide, support for Israel is a high-salience issue dividing the hardcore progressives from everyone else, and shenanigans like blocking highways are a pretty big deal that they’ve been allowed to get away with for a while on other issues.
Israel definitely wants to genocide Gaza and the West Bank
That's an obvious lie, neither Israel (as an official policy goes) wants it nor it's doing it. With overwhelming power superiority Israel has, if they wanted to massacre a million people in Gaza, or West Bank, that would have already happened. There's literally nothing that could prevent Israel from doing that, militarily. But Israel does not want to do it, and didn't.
And please, spare me out-of-context quotes from early 90-s where some Israeli politician said something like "I'd be happy if all Palestinians went to hell". It's not policy, and if you think it has anything to do with the official policy, you are not qualified to have any opinion on any Middle East policy at all.
Israel isn't going full auschwitz solely, by what I can see, because of goy morality and power. Without that all non-Jews would be either killed or cleansed into outside borders - whichever is more pragmatic. Any honest assessment of sympathy for goy/Palestinian civilian life in the greater Jewish/Israeli public results in basically nothing. They want these people gone and have zero interest in cohabitation. But even with Jewish subversion of the American government, a hostile USA and/or "West" would be an apocalyptic disaster. So PR still matters. Getting the South Africa treatment alone (even though they are objectively worse) would be catastrophic. If they only had nuclear arms alone to make an argument against Turkey curb stomping them, or even worse, a total unified middle east, it could be all over. Right now is a balancing game in how far they can go without critical consequences, with a heavy experimental lean towards killing as many men, women, and children as possible, while maximizing destabilization.
Now personally, I find the word "genocide" tiresome. It's overly political (in a bad way) and basically amounts to a modern version of what excommunication was in the middle ages. With all the subsequent pointless theology and dishonest motivated reasoning that comes with such.
That said, if we call the Armenian Genocide a genocide I don't see what is so different about Gaza. Only time and, again, the morality/power of the non-Jewish side of the USA is preventing it from even greater realization of the logical conclusion of their deliberate actions. Will they take responisbitly for a food/disease crisis they have created? Will they allow the rebuilding of hospitals? And if they drag their feet to x degree exactly how many statistical deaths will that result in? Time, and power politics within the USA will tell.
That's a libelous statement by itself - Israel is not going not only "full auschwitz", but neither 1% or 0.001% of it. There are no camps designed for massacring any Arab population, there are no official program of eliminating Arab population, there is nothing of the sort. There is a war, truly, and a war among dense built area where the other side doesn't bother with conventional things like uniforms or military identification (a war crime by itself, but Hamas is committing every war crime in a book, none excluded, so of course they do this too) and using schools, mosques and hospitals as military outposts - of course it will bring some casualities, and given that, as I mentioned, the only figures are coming from Hamas, and they don't bother with formalities, everybody except senior leaders which are officially known as Hamas are called "civilians". Hamas membership is not exclusive - it's like being a communist. You can be a doctor and a communist, a journalist and a communist, a truck driver and a communist. Only with Hamas, you can be a doctor in the morning and keep Israeli hostages in the evening. You can be a "journalist" in the morning and a drone operator in the afternoon. You can be a farmer and one of you farms would host rocket launchers shelling Ashdod and Tel-Aviv. That's all "civilian" population and that's what the IDF is dealing with now.
If by "honest" you mean "completely false and libelous". Nothing can be further from the truth - a lot of people in Israeli society are bothered with Palestinians, and presenting Jews as some kind of genetics-obsessed community that treats everybody with wrong genes below animals (there's an active animal rights community in Israel too) is an utter bullshit. The level of blood libel bullshit. You obviously know absolutely nothing about Israeli society and what the dominating opinions there are. Yes, Israel population supports war with Hamas. No, nobody in Israel talks in the terms you are implying.
Everything. Armenians did not attack Turks and did not gruesomely rape and murder thousands of them, Hamas did. Turks did put as their goal destroying Armenian population, Israel does not. Pretty much every aspect of what is happening in Gaza, bar none, is different.
Oh, you are one of those people....Basically, everything you ascribe to the evil Jews, you'd see in a mirror - it's you who are obsessed with racist genetics and view everything through the lens of the ethnic conflict. And of course, you are possessed with irrational, but flaming hate of Jews. I am sorry I just noticed it now. I am done spending time on you.
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