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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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I disagree that his revisionism posts suck. Whether you are sympathetic to his conclusions or not, they are more high-effort, more rigorous, arguably more original, and generate more high-quality*, spirited engagement than the majority of top-level posts. And I would hardly say that he single-handedly manages to "clog up the feed" with revisionist posts, the way other unpopular posters like Julius Bronson or Vintologi really did hijack almost every culture war thread while active. When was the last top-level post he wrote on Holocaust revisionism? It's been a while, and I'm sure several HBD and anti-trans threads have cropped up in the meantime.

So I think it's fair to say that, despite the mods' protests that no topic is outright banned and so they can't be accused of selective censorship, the reality is they (like other commenters) have less tolerance for some subjects than others, they allow that to affect their enforcement decisions, and it's probably due at least as much to what they consider to be objectionable as it is to how irrelevant or tendentious SS's posts "objectively" are. Which is perhaps best practice for managing a forum in general -- we don't want to drive good posters out of here by failing to cater to their interests (and prejudices) -- but a bit disappointing to see on themotte.

*And low-quality, to be fair -- but mostly from the chorus of drive-by detractors who add nothing to the conversation beyond signaling a distaste for the topic and for SS personally.

The issue is not that he posts a lot about it or only about it or anything like that, it's that there's a distinct feeling of a missionary attempting to convert the ignorant heathens. Same talking points over and over again in a somewhat different garb, strict keeping to apologetics considered favorable to one's cause and handwaving or ignoring of those who don't fit the narrative (such as there is), eventual fading away and restarting of the same cycle some time later. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The HBD and trans stuff pops up regularly because it regularly is of direct, current relevance to a variety of political issues. Moreover, there is new evidence coming out on those questions.

Debating whether Eisenhower ever mentioned the holocaust doesn’t have the same relevance.

If we had a flat earther or moon landing skeptic in here who also made good posts they would still be pretty annoying when they posted about obvious nonsense to rehash tired debates.

I agree with everything you say here. Whether Holocaust revisionism belongs in the same general category as moon landing skepticism, though, is an object-level question to which the mods (collectively) have reached a different answer than myself and some other posters here.

(I suppose it has about as much contemporary relevance as moon landing skepticism would if its claims turned out to be true. But that on its own isn't disqualifying; I doubt that someone who submitted a thoughtful post every few months about why the Parliamentarians were the bad guys in the English Civil War would get nearly as much pushback, despite that having much less contemporary relevance than the Holocaust.)