site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Unironic Chomsky-stanning should be an immediate warning sign of bad-faith intransigence. Manufacturing Consent is the first and definitely not the best book about mass media manipulation attempts within a fragmented yet saturated information ecosystem. He is celebrated for being among the first, thats it. That anti-west types latch onto this book is an appeal to (intellectual) authority that is wholly unearned.

A single pedantic disagreement with your otherwise wholly defendible read of Chomsky is the statement that Chomsky has

no particular moral creed to peg consistency to otherwise

My disagreement is that Chomsky consistent moral creed is to ascribe every ill action in the world to the USAs omnipresent tentacles and to define every ill action as either fulfilment of US actions or someone stumbling in their own attempts to be a champion against the US. Chomsky should be mocked eternally for supporting the Khmer Rouge and Serbia, and his denial of both genocides is just the cherry on top of the incompetence shit cake he keeps insisting on eating. Khmer Rouge was perfectly capable of shitting itself after it antagonized the Viets and Thais and celebrating them as a bastion of socialism in his book 'After the cataclysm' is laughable since it supports the genocidal socialist failure instead of the victorious socialist success of Vietnam. Similarly Chomsky chained himself to the sinking ship of Serb ultranationalism simply because it was not liked by Nato, writing an entire book to whine about how evil NATO only acted because Serbia was continuing the dream of socialism. Even after his pets have been proven to be evil genocidal incompetents Chomsky still deigns to lecture survivors of socialism on why they had no agency, famously getting the entire nation of Czechoslovakia angry at him for claiming that they had things better under communism.

tldr Chomskys worldview is USA bad socialist failures good. anyone citing chomsky as a positive betrays an intransigent bias that is unlikely to be dissuaded.