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 -
Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.
Anyway sorry for the rant. It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety) has just won the Italian elections and will very likely going to provide the prime minister to a cabinet that will include a 85 year old Berlusconi among others. Italy is the 3rd most populous and wealthy country in the EU. It also acts as a perennial threat to the stability of the Brussels-led order and the euro, since an Italian default or currency exit would almost definitely trigger the collapse of the euro with who knows what consequences. The EU looks determined to fight. Meloni herself does not sound like the type of politician who will accept to be crushed as easily as her predecessors. Here is a French interview with a 19 years old activist Meloni. She still sounds like a true believer to me. To get the gist of just how radical (from the EU-norm) she is willing to be with regard to cultural issues, I recommend this speech from 3 years ago (with English subs).
What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown? How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe? Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions? Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard? When the ECB will have to start increasing interest rates substantially and Italy has to choose between bankruptcy or euro-exit, how will this go under this government?
P.S. Italy was one of the most anal countries with regard to vaccine oppression and corona measures in Europe. Does anyone know what the position of the Fratelli was back then? And how they talk about these things now?
So.......the normal center-right that always gets called "far right, semi-to-full-fascist"?
Call me when the ovens kick on. Until then, the boy called "Nazis" one or two trillion times too many.
I expect that they will govern exactly as competently and moderately as every other Italian government of the last five hundred years.
Is this fundamentally any different from the mainstream glorification of someone like Marx or Guevara in the American Left? It seems pretty universal for groups to harken back to the icons of yesterday, regardless of affiliation; I'm not sure there's too much of interest there beyond a vague nostalgic appeal and a memory of older, more vigorous times.
If there is still any energy left for this sort of discussions I might even write one day about the weird situation with Atatürk and Turkey, as it is the only country in Europe which had a single party dictatorship in the 1930s and somehow managed to never leave behind its figurehead as well as ideology. But that would require an open-mindedness and maturity about the word "fascism" which is unfortunately lacking here so far. Just because lefties use a word as a catch-all slur, it doesn't mean we can just sneer at its use and feel superior.
Ataturk and Turkey sounds like interesting reading---and far enough from my usual American culture-war bubble that it might be possible to think about productively.
As a prequel, I'd love a clear explanation of what meaningful definitions of terms like "fascist" (or "national socialist", or "marxist", or for that matter even the neo-(liberal/conservative)s) might be. Every attempt I've come across in the past has been more oriented towards drawing connections between undesirables. I'd be interested to hear, from a less agenda-driven source, how these terms can be used in a useful manner.
Perhaps there's recommended reading that I've just missed?
For starters, what sort of thing is fascism? A table is a physical object. A family is a set of people. What's fascism? Is it a tribal label? Is it a coherent ideology? A (pseudo-)intellectual heritage, with a set of mandatory heroes and demons? A form of government? An economic system?
And then, is there a relatively mechanistic procedure by which one might decide if an individual, or speech, or policy, or symbol, is "fascist"? (Ditto for all those other terms.) The sense I've always gotten is that this is labeling is driven, in practice, by who the speaker/policymaker considers their heroes, rather than any concrete aspect of the speech or policy. What's the Motte?
I'd say it's a cluster in political-ideology space.
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