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 -
Texas Governor Abbott signs law attempting to ban free speech at universities whenever the speech criticizes Israel in certain ways (described below).
The Executive Order requires all universities to —
Review and update free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the institution.
Ensure that these policies are being enforced on campuses and that groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine are disciplined for violating these policies.
Include the definition of antisemitism, adopted by the State of Texas in Section 448.001 of the Texas Government Code, in university free speech policies to guide university personnel and students on what constitutes antisemitic speech.
Section 448.001 reads
And this definition includes (among other things) —
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis
Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
These examples are intentionally ambiguous and can be weaponized by politicians or the judiciary against critics. The first example simply bans anyone from criticizing Israel in the same way that Israel routinely criticize others, by comparing them to Nazis. This cuts off a whole spectrum of political comparisons from ever applying to Israel. The second example could imply that you are antisemitic if you criticize Israel for things without also criticizing other nations in the same breath, however culturally and politically distant the nation. The third implies that an ethnostate cannot be considered racist if it is Jewish. The fourth implies that no one — not a single politician who is Jewish — can be accused of being more loyal to his self-defined homeland than America.
IMO this is a clear affront to freedom of speech. I find it embarrassing that any conservative in America would sign a law like this. The ambiguity is dangerous because it could be used by biased politicians or judges in its broadest application. While I don’t think it’s good public rhetoric to compare Israel to Nazis, that should be legal because (1) Nazis are everyone’s go-to villains, (2) Israel was recently the subject of an ICJ inquiry regarding genocide, (3) ethnonations should be extra scrutinized for genocide, (4) ethnonations with a history of genocide (Kitos War) and who fondly remember their nation previously committing genocide in their Holy Text should be super extra scrutinized for potential genocidal acts. The holocaust, like it or not, has no actual relevance to the current conduct of the Israeli regime. In real life, multigenerational ethnic groups do not swear off the same violence that their grandparents were victims of. So comparisons are fair game, if usually in bad taste.
Increasingly I think the key to good politics is, in internet parlance, to make the enemy sperg out. You need them to get really mad, to feel the combination of humiliation, shame and rage that leads to acting out. Only then can you really destroy them by pointing out how ridiculous they are. (On a related note, Zionists doing this is why support for Israel is currently falling in the West.) It’s why a few swastika tattooed prison gang room temp IQ ‘grand dragon’ KKK-LARPers can be pushed to discredit large swathes of the far right with the public, but it’s also why leftists projecting “Glory to the Martyrs of Al-Aqsa” or whatever onto university buildings in American cities can make a bunch of centrist swing voters go ‘man these guys are kinda crazy though’.
Since almost every single leftist in America is strongly anti-Israel, while the vast majority of conservatives, even if they don’t care about or like Jews (as @hydroacetylene says) either support Israel for eschatological reasons or don’t give a shit, this is an effective way of singling out leftists. What every critical race theorist, marxist philosopher and academic ‘decolonize science’ poaster in America has in common right now is a 🇵🇸 flag in their Instagram bio. Even most Jewish leftist (rather than merely lib) academics are strongly anti-zionist, as seen by the various Jews sanctioned by their own universities for statements since 10/7.
Not all of them.
Some of them use the 🍉 emoji.
More options
Context Copy link
What do you mean by this, are Zionists the ones sperging out or is it that Zionists are getting the Palestine supporters to sperg? And who is doing the good politics?
I took it the way 2rafa says she intended, but I kind of want to post that "How about both? Both is good" gif here. (Although the "good politics" kind of cancel out, at best.)
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah Zionists are the ones sperging out about relatively milquetoast Palestinian activism.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It would be more like the if 'grand dragon' KKK-LARPers that have been used by ADL as a representation of "right-wing extremism" actually ran college campuses and elite institutions.
One of the very first red-pills for me was seeing ADL tout "higher extremism on the Right than the Left" but if you read the white paper, they would actually report things like "this guy murdered a prison guard during an escape, and he has a Swastika tattoo on his mug shot so this counts as right-wing violence." So the strategy was to misrepresent the opposition. But Zionists implementing these speech regulations banning criticisms of themselves and banning Holocaust revisionism are not misrepresenting Zionists, they are actually representing Zionists. It's not a matter of bad apples, it's a matter of them finally gaining ground in banning speech in the US where they have already achieved the same thing throughout Europe.
On a related note, Sweden is slated this month to outlaw Holocaust denial, joining the growing number of European nations. This sort of lawmaking is mostly recent across Europe.
Now if I were a student in Texas I would be liable to be expelled for my conclusions regarding the historicity of the alleged gas chambers, due to the use the "International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance" definition of antisemitism. Meaning Holocaust Revisionism is outlawed on Texas campuses, only formalizing an informal policy. I remember years ago making a post about the IHRA definition of antisemitism and people were skeptical it would be used as a vector for censorship in the United States, for Jews to try to achieve levels of censorship they have in Europe, but here we are.
People tend to overestimate the blowback caused by real censorship. What tends to happen is the outrage dies down, and then the act of censorship really does have a cooling effect that can be hard to measure or understand, and then it becomes "the new normal." It works, the "Streissand effect" is fake.
I think that’s @2rafa’s point- Greg Abbott is going after the campus left in such a way as to make them defend that hypothetical KKK grand dragon to try to defend themselves. It’s a clever strategem, although I expect it winds up with a bunch of friction dragging it down from working as intended.
And de facto you were already well advised to keep your views on the Holocaust to yourself at any university anywhere outside the Islamic world.
Of course, but the idea of this being legally sanctioned by the government would have been far-fetched not too long ago due to First Amendment protections. No longer so.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
But what counts as "ridiculous" in the first place is itself politically determined. I personally think the left acts out in a lot of ways that I would classify as ridiculous, but it plainly hasn't discredited them on a national scale so far. The extent of your pre-established narrative dominance determines whether your particular mode of acting out will be seen as legitimate (BLM riots) or illegitimate (January 6th). So before you goad your opponent into acting out, you have to be in charge of defining what counts as "acting out". I think that's a more fundamental goal.
I'm uncertain if it's even possible for the left to push the pro-Palestine stuff "too far" at this point. I don't know how many centrist swing voters are left in America. Probably still enough to influence the results of national elections, but not enough to uproot the entrenched zeitgeist or really impact the way things are heading overall.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link