site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28390 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 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.

7
Bottom New Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I "have" to feel that the great sin of Germany was what it did to the Jews, Cripples and Gypsies. I do feel that the greatest sin of Germany back then was what it did to Germany and the Germans.

As for those WWI vets, you can validly suggest that they weren't all unhinged gangsters, but I will insist that more than enough of them in positions of great power were, and this includes big names like Himmler, Göring, the non-veteran Göbbles and Hitler himself, and a thousand lesser party barons who managed to escape post-war condemnation only because they lorded it over the Germans instead of bullying foreigners or minorities. Some more unhinged, some more gangster, some perhaps neither but alas the the party was top-heavy with unhinged gangsters and the top had the last word on acceptable behavior.

I'm fine with denouncing the common depiction of the Nazis as fundamentally evil, fine with admitting that they did some good, fine with any claim of there being worse things in the world than Nazis, fine with theories that posit that Fascism may have good points, but not fine with attempts to whitewash those particular Nazis as saviors of the Germany they destroyed in their mania and incompetence.

Look at their mismanagement, the purges, the wealth accumulated by party functionaries, and the ground-level stories of German peasants and tradespeople being bossed around and told to shut up and get with the program or else, and look at the total and utter catastrophe that was WW2. It takes a lot of revisionism to clear them of the blame for that. You can, if you like, completely ignore the horror stories of concentration camps and death squads or any principled objection to authoritarianism - there's still more than enough left to condemn the Nazis in general both for what they attempted and for what they ended up achieving.

And I honestly don't know enough about JFK to answer your question.

Churchill was the one who declared war. It was his choice.

Edit: This wasn't meant to seem curt - sometime though brevity is the soul of wit. Yes, perhaps if the Junkers or some other more traditional conservative faction had risen to power rather than such a reactionary party, Germany may have done X, Y, and Z. But it seems crass to me, almost prideful, to look at the 'unhinged gangsters' who 'volunteered' to beat the Spanish communists and then got the band back together in the Rhineland, Osterreich, the Sudetenland, Danzig, etc to give the Bolsheviks a genuinely good go and say 'if only!'

Yes, they lost, but they fought! By Jesu they fought. And it's just as easy to say 'it would've been better if they hadn't' as 'it would've been worse.' Maybe the Bolsheviks would've won in Spain and then later pushed through all of Europe to the Atlantic.

It's not unlike when Barbarossa drowned on the way to the Third Crusade. Yes, it's a bit pathetic, and we can poke fun at him for drowning (because he is our ancestral hero). But he chose to go! He chose to fight! That he happened to drown when someone else might've not and (swamped the saracens) instead doesn't make him an 'unhinged gangster'

Churchill was the one who declared war. It was his choice.

It would be pretty hard for Churchill to declare war in 1939. You might not know as much about WWII as you think.

Hitler declared war on Poland, in the face of explicit threats by Britain and France to join such a war on Poland's side. He could have just, y'know, not done that, and if he had he'd be remembered as the second Bismarck for the Anschluss and Munich.

Calls to mind the old joke about how if your aunt had balls she'd be your uncle. Today we're used to the idea of a tiny shriveled ball sack-in-cold-weather Germany without a Baltic presence, but at the time, saying "just forget about the Germans in Poland" (which had just reappeared as a political presence for the first time in like 400 years) was a non-starter

was a non-starter

That doesn't stop it from being Hitler's choice. "I want to do X" is difference from "I was forced to do X."

"I want the communists to win the War in Russia and China" is difference from " I was forced xyz"

I am not being cute or trolling and don't know how to say otherwise. Our entire discourse is poisoned but please try to consider that sincerely. Or don't. Trying too hard to care is more cringe than it's ever been so not appearing to try too hard is a sign of legitimacy

I am not being cute or trolling and don't know how to say otherwise.

Stop engaging in rhetoric and deflection, as opposed to defending your substantive claims or acknowledging your mistakes. This will remove the appearance of trying to be a cute troll.

You: "I want to do X" is difference from "I was forced to do X."

Me: "I want the communists to win the War in Russia and China" is difference from " I was forced xyz"

Also me: Please consider this as it is rather than making me regret not dressing up the claim with rhetoric and deflection

Bruh

It's not unlike when Barbarossa drowned on the way to the Third Crusade. Yes, it's a bit pathetic, and we can poke fun at him for drowning (because he is our ancestral hero).

Are you even a German? You talk like an American with some far off German ancestors, who has no real connection to the country or it's culture. You also idealize Germany, and attack the Anglo world, like someone who knows the faults of the Anglo world first hand, but has no real understanding of what Germany was like then.

/u/johnfabian /u/netstack I may be a few generations removed from the old country but I sure as shit aint Chinese

Also Heil Hitler, we must have a bratwurst and save the Fatherland

it's some dude in the midwest who every time he has a bratwurst thinks "Heil Hitler, we must save the Fatherland"

Eh, whether or not the OP has any credibility, I’d like to avoid this brand of mockery.

Germany could have not invaded Poland.

Because I live up on a hill in a big house with a nice moat of acreage in a very safe place, this is both true and hilariously similar to the conditions of Putin and Eastern Ukraine in contemporary times.

Had the Polish not been feeling their oats from their victories over the Soviets and actively persecuting Germans in their recently acquired territories shrug

this is both true and hilariously similar to the conditions of Putin and Eastern Ukraine in contemporary times

And Putin's invasion of Ukraine was also a strategic mistake.

I think that this is not obvious, at least not yet. If there's a Taiwan blowup ending in nukes, and Putin stays out of it, he takes Ukraine. Yes, he could have done that with less casualties by waiting longer, but on the other hand a lot of those casualties work in his personal favour due to selectively conscripting the least-loyal elements of the Russian populace (and also to some degree the Ukraine mess has made a Taiwan blowup more likely).

selectively conscripting the least-loyal elements of the Russian populace

why do you think that? Right now, Moscow and St Petersburg are way less conscripted and they are also less loayal to Putin

Prisoners, fringe regions of Russia of dubious ethnic (as opposed to ideological) loyalty. I can't say for sure about the latter, but I've heard of protests in Bashkortostan regarding the conscription.

This would suggest that Hitler and Co's priority was not combating Bolshevism but expansionist German nationalism. Glorifying Hitler for fighting against the Bolsheviks ignores the series of anti-Boshevik states that he destroyed on the way to Russia. Poland, as you note, had just come off fighting a war against the Soviets.

Hitler was never really very anti-Bolshevik, never moreso than he was anti-Slav. Had Hitler aligned with Poland and the Czechs against Russia, things might have gone differently, n'est pas?

Of course there is no readily available source, because of course there isn't, and I apologize but I'm just not gonna fight upstream to find the link, but there was a proposed German-Polish non-aggression pact renewal

I'm fairly certain from Rise and Fall of the Third Reich which I listened through recently that there were current treaties obligating Germany to respect and protect Poland's borders, and certainly there were treaties promising to hold to current Czech borders at the time that Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia. Hitler was rather known for failing to respect treaties.

What would be more interesting, though still less dispositive than his actual real actions, would be if you could find a movement within Naziism (meaning Hitler) to rally an anti Bolshevik coalition in eastern Europe that predated Nazi plans to invade Poland. I don't think you can because Poland and Czechoslovakia and the Baltics were more or less part of the plan from Mein Kampf onward as I understand it.

I don't know how to say this without sounding like an asshole so please don't think I'm trying to be, but there's a lot of 'Rally Europe against Bolshevism' stuff in Mein Kampf

There's also a lot of "take over Poland and enslave/eliminate the inferior Slavs" stuff.

More comments
  1. Rightful German Clay, had to protect the German minorities.
  2. They attacked us first! Remember the radio station!
  3. Had to be done to push the starting positions of the inevitable anti-bolshevik war further East.
  4. Lebensraum. We needed space to live.
  5. It was just an anglo puppet and we had to call them on their bluff.

Alright, alright, I'm just fooling around here.

Yes they fought, but their having fought no matter how much and how well doesn't save the Germany of today. We can trace our unmaking right back to them. Barbarossa, for all of his ineffectual campaigns and fruitless labors, left the Germanies roughly in the state he found them in. The Nazis took a struggling Germany and, for all the little glories they won, burned it right down to the ground and left the withered remains to the mercy of the victors. Certainly perfidious Albion had its schemes and probably quite a laugh at our fate, perhaps on can believe that Hitler himself would have preferred peace with them, but in the end they played Realpolitik and they did a hell of a lot better a job of not bringing their own countries to bloody ruin.

Unless you subscribe to some school of thought that completely denies the significance of consequence, I find no way to absolve the people who had complete authority over the country from complete responsibility for its destruction. Whatever our enemies might have done, however justified any given aspect of German military campaigning was, given that kind of authority those kinds of results speak for themselves.

And so as to not neglect the Unhinged Gangsters bit - I stand by that. Something like the Night of the Long Knives is decidedly ungerman.

but in the end they played Realpolitik and they did a hell of a lot better a job of not bringing their own countries to bloody ruin.

No! That's the point! England is a rotten mess of God only knows what and they're the one's who won!

That's true enough, but it wasn't so in 1945.

Thank you God for granting us the wisdom of our ancestors and the gift of distance from their mistake to properly evaluate them

Churchill was not prime minister when England and France declared war on Germany.

It doesn't take a Churchillian titanic view of history to understand the trends and forces of the war were beyond the scope of who happened to hold office at the time. Churchill and his ultra-conservative faction had feared the rise of German naval power for half a century - unabated after the Great War - before their promise to Poland gave them the necessary excuse to smack Germany back down. And what happened to Poland after the war?

Maybe the Bolsheviks would've won in Spain and then later pushed through all of Europe to the Atlantic.

You think if the Republicans had won in Spain this would somehow have led to the Red Army conquering all of Europe Command and Conquer style?

No, but I love the throwback, you or anyone else want to fire that back up sometime for nostalgias sake?

I think the Bolsheviks very openly and actively wanted to unite the workers of the world which would have certainly included going to the Atlantic if someone hadn't stopped them

In real life, the Soviets only reached even as far as Berlin because of copious American and British assistance. Without that, they might have at best fought the Germans back to Barbarossa start-lines. On their own, they barely beat Finland. The Red Army marching all the way to the Atlantic is ridiculous. "If it wasn't for us, the communists would have taken over!" was a useful bugbear for everybody from Hitler to Mussolini to Franco but Bolshevik conquest of Europe was always a fantasy.

Okay I'm open to it - let's say you're right - doesn't that make US the bad guys?

doesn't that make US the bad guys?

Wrong question. Ask: Were US good or bad players of the great game?

Look at the game board. At the beginning of session, there were seven players. At the end, only two were left.

The Red player who held one sixth of the board at the start, succesfully defended himself and was able to snatch few more squares.

While the Blue player beat and outmaneuevered all others and owned or controlled everything else.

Some people who are never satisfied might bitch that Blue victory should be even more lopsided, that if Blue optimized his play to perfection he might prevent the Red from taking the few squares he gained.

More comments

No, because Stalin, bad as he was, was not as bad as Hitler. If Germany had not attacked the USSR, chances of the Red Army taking even half of Europe (let alone all of it) are basically zero. He did attack Soviet Russia, which in a roundabout way, led to Soviet domination over half of the continent, which they never would have achieved otherwise, and yet was still a preferable outcome to Nazi domination over the entire continent. Hitler did far more damage to Poland in four years than the Soviets did in forty.

More comments

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