site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 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.

I've noticed the alt-right (specifically the Richard Spencer wing) is blaming Christianity for cucking Whites and making them accept non-whites in their country. To me this isn't even close to being true and can be dismissed outright as nonsense.

We know from genetics that modern Europeans separated from sub saharan African 30 to 40 thousand years ago. We also know that Western Europeans didn't have any meaningful contact with Blacks until the 15th century when Portugal "discovered" West Africa during the Age of Exploration. By accepting this, we can see that Western Europe has had over 500 years of contact with Blacks.

I've specifically been looking into England, but the same is true for other nations. The highest count of non-whites I can find on Google Scholar recently is 2.6% in 1951. Interestingly, 2.2% of those 2.6% were first generation immigrants. This is by far the highest I've seen with other estimates putting it close to 99%.

So at this point, we have pretty clear data that when Europe was Christian (and America), there was almost 0 non-white immigration to Europe. We also know places like France put in racist laws like Code Noir that explicitly put Whites at the top of the social hierarchy.

When we look at when this changed, it was really the 1960's. But at this point, Christianity was starting to decline due to science and especially Darwin (and in my opinion became obviously not true). The increased immigration and anti-racist views correlates with Christianity's decline, so the idea that Christianity having everyone's soul being equal can be equally dismissed. In fact, I would argue the pro non-white immigration came from the secular left or if you want to argue it's the right neoliberalism. I see zero evidence of this that Richard Spencer and his allies argue to be true. In fact, the evidence shows the complete opposite.

Doesn't Pope Francis routinely attack racism and call for more tolerance for refugees? 4/9 American refugee settlement NGOs are Christian, albeit heavily govt-supported: https://cis.org/Rush/Private-Refugee-Resettlement-Agencies-Mostly-Funded-Government#uscri

Most Christian leaders describe racism as sinful. In the past things were different, yet it looks like Christianity as a whole is committed to antiracism and multiculturalism in the present-day.

I'm more interested in who actually follows or cares about what Richard 'riding with Biden' Spencer says? In 2024?

I also think there needs to be a more nuanced understanding of what people mean when they talk about historic Christian racism. For example, not only were almost all abolitionists devout Christians (and indeed believed that Christianity required an end to slavery) but even many slavers, for example, acknowledged that the practice seemed un-Christian and struggled with it; Washington owned slaves his whole life, but considered it “wicked, cruel and unnatural”.

Of course many founding fathers believed that slavery was wrong but that there was still a clear intellectual hierarchy of races, including Washington, but even in the 18th century it was not unheard of to believe in the actual equality of man along modern blank slate lines; particularly in England as slave narratives became popular literature, many abolitionists did believe in the 1820s and 1830s that black and white were equally capable, some hoped to settle free black people from Africa (as citizens!) in the Caribbean colonies where they would own land and farm etc. There was a strong and widespread belief that Africans could be taught to fully adopt English civilization that persisted through the 19th century, although it increasingly conflicted with Darwinian racialism that emerged later in the Victorian era.

So there were in fact devout Christians who considered that the implication of Christianity was the equality of races even centuries ago, it was just that temporal political interests were stronger.

It’s true that Christianity is hostile to slavery and racially egalitarian in a way that Islam and judaism and Hinduism and the like mostly aren’t. But it’s also true that Christianity has sometimes been a motivator for race laws, as in Spain’s ‘old Christian’ laws, or ideas about the curse of Cham.

Christian marriage laws(women have to consent, can’t be too young, a marriage is a marriage even over parental opposition, and you can’t marry your cousin) tend to break down clans over a long enough timescale, but I’m not sure how much connection clans have to racism. Certainly Christianity tends to believe it has a civilizing mission as a missionary religion, but so does Islam.