site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28477 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 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.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Is there a specific name and definition for the culture war tactic of accusation mirroring i.e. when you appropriate one of the usual accusations your main political rivals are throwing at you (or some different near-group) all the time and throw it back at them, or at someone in your outgroup in general, even though you've never believed in the validity of the accusation at all? I'm thinking of something similar to the DR3 ('Democrats are the real racists') narrative, or when Republicans are accused of milking the government for subsidies etc. I'm asking because I'm seeing a current example, namely in the context of the ongoing Hungarian presidential pardon scandal, where liberal leftist influencers have pretty much reinvented the Pizzagate conspiracy theory - which is something they otherwise write off and ridicule as right-wing tinfoil hat nonsense, as they are themselves acculturated in US liberal online circles - and are hurling it at the government, pushing the narrative that a pedophile ring is ruling the entire country from the shadows with an iron fist.

Alinksy's Rules for Radicals,

"Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."

"Never go outside the expertise of your people."

"Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy."

"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."

"A good tactic is one your people enjoy."

"A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."

"Keep the pressure on."

"The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."

"The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."

"If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative."

"The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

You can see many of these rules at work today, but the one I bolded is the one I remember the most.

namely in the context of the ongoing Hungarian presidential pardon scandal, where liberal leftist influencers have pretty much reinvented the Pizzagate conspiracy theory

Why can't we all just shake hands on the idea that we are all, left or right, being ruled by lizardmen pedophile elites, and act accordingly?

I think a more probable theory is that children are just too damn^W^W^W^W^Wthere are lot more pedophiles than is commonly believed or accepted, especially "circumstantial rather than obligate" ones, but there is some combination of elites being more likely to be caught, it being more widely publicised when elites indulge in it, and elites being more likely to indulge in it in such a brazen and well-networked fashion simply because elites are more likely to have brass (more hobos than religious leaders may be pederasts, but nobody will put the former in charge of lots of children) and a network of underlings and supporters that could be mobilised to enable it.

If by "pedophile" you mean "a person who frequently experiences sexual attraction to people below the local age of consent" (which, as far as I can see, the people promoting the idea that there are pedophiles everywhere do) then almost every adult male is a pedophile - the age at which young adults reach sufficient physiological maturity to look bangable is lower than the age that young adults in our infantilized society can be trusted with the freedom the sexual revolution is supposed to have delivered. This is unhelpfully conflated with actual pedophiles - i.e. people with a paraphilic attraction to pre-pubescent children - who are very few in number and have had no politically influential defenders since NAMBLA was kicked out of the queer alphabet soup movement in the 1980's. "A shadowy cabal of degenerate elites is sexually abusing pre-pubsescent children on an industrial scale" is Qanon nonsense. "Multiple shadowy cabals of degenerate elites are sexually abusing teens on an industrial scale" is simply true.

For reasons that are too long to fit into this post, post-sexual revolution society has been very, very bad at preventing sexual abuse of young adults (whether below or above the local age of consent). Essentially every institution which gives grown men sexual access to teenagers has had an abuse scandal. Right now, this is burning the populist right more than the left - some of this is media bias, and some of it is that the populist right has made "we have no standards of personal ethics whatsoever for movement leaders" a tribal principle, whereas the left has kind-of sort-of done the opposite post MeToo.

On the specific scandals the OP is talking about, there is no equivalence whatsoever. The factual claims of Pizzagate are straightforwardly false (the scandal involves children being sexually abused in the basement of a pizza parlour that does not, in fact, have a basement) whereas the core factual claims in the Hungarian scandal (that Janos V molested the boys, that Endre K helped with the cover up, and that President Novak pardoned Endre K) are essentially uncontested - the controversy is about which figures in Orban's inner circle were involved.

I expect that they're not true pedophiles in the sense of not being aroused by adults, and rather just get off on the taboo and power dynamics involved, but otherwise I can largely agree.

Wasn't expecting to have to litigate whether they're true pedophiles, rather than lizardmen, but I'll take it. Go round them up, I'll bring out the woodchipper.

Not an actual reply, but noting something funny- you made a joke, I built on the joke in the same spirit and same premise, pretty similar ideas.

Your post is at +14, mine is at -4.

This is a useful metric to me - if I post basically the same thing as someone else, I can expect a delta of -18 after one day independent of content.

Good to know.

I have always and forever been in favor of just dropping the voting system. Once, because I also find the kind of behavior you're describing lame, I even proposed an auto-banning system for voting the wrong way.

even though you've never believed in the validity of the accusation at all?

This is an incredibly rare scenario that almost never sees play anywhere, especially in the examples you give. Nobody in mainstream politics or culture thinks that being a racist or a pedophile is okay and therefore an invalid accusation that can simply be ignored. Dismissals are always founded on assumptions that the accusation is so obviously false that they don't even require rebuttals, that opponents are wolf-criers with no credibility, not that the accusations are true but ignorable because the they aren't bad.

Therefore, it is entirely consistent and not at all hypocritical to believe that opponents are unreliable wolf-criers who shouldn't be taken seriously when they make accusations, but then if you find actual evidence of them misbehaving to accuse them of the same crime, if you have actual evidence. Which of course, each side believes about themselves and not their opponents.

It might fall under the umbrella of Tu quoque, although I think the connotation you're going for is slightly different.

It's not exactly the same, but I think it shares components with the "DARVO" tactic. Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

I've seen "reverse Uno" used for this tactic.

I'm not exactly sure if that's the best example available, since "pedophile rings rule this entire country" has been a staple of theorizing from both the left and the right in different countries way before Pizzagate already. See eg. South Africa, Belgium, UK, US, just to list some examples immediately coming to mind.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats