site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 15, 2024

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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This is...intensely silly. You assume, without justifying the assumption in any way, that one can accurately describe citizens and residents of a different ethnicity/religion as "house guests" of a polity. I reject your ethnonationalist distinction. I'm amazed to see the Zionist-Nazi collaboration revived, we've closed the loop here.

Neither German Citizens who some bureaucrat judges as "unassimilated" nor German Jews circa 1940 were "house guests." If the nation is a family, these are their brothers. They live there. This is, at best, three brothers voting to throw out the fourth brother onto the street.

Palestinian families have been in Israel, their genetic roots go deeper, than the Israelis who are "throwing them out of the house." Ditto, you know, most of the fucking Jews you so blithely label houseguests in the 1940s, they lived in countries Hitler conquered.

Both the Israelis and the Nazis didn't throw houseguests out of their homes, they broke into another home, and murdered part of the family.

In what sense is the nation a family? Particularly given that we're letting people swap citizenship on a whim.

It's her pathos based metaphor not mine.