site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If Fuentes was smart, he would say he opposes the secular Jew but loves the Orthodox Jew. It renders the claim of anti semitism hollow while allowing him to say he appreciates the ethnic enclaves created by the ultra orthodox and wants something like that for white people.

With that said, for the first time in a long time Jewish support is up for grabs. The republicans would be silly to not dismiss Fuentes quickly. The one thing they should say though is “welcome to be hated — just like whites have been for awhile.”

The far right has little knowledge of how ultra orthodox communities operate, which is a shame because it’s the perfect discursive weapon: either you must defend the orthodox practices (and then approve of similar white aspirations), or you must criticize them (and then ask, “how did they steal one billion dollars in public funds and not be prosecuted”)? It is a win-win discursive tool.

I don’t see why that would be. I find a lot to admire about heredi Jews, the Amish, Mennonites, and other similar groups. I think as a model for forming stronger communities these groups while different share common features that could be easily adapted to creating enclaves of traditional culture for those who wants that. The secret sauce seems to be a strict set of community rules, dress and sometimes language that differs from the mainstream, and a focal point in religious beliefs and practices.

Right, but — if you are a critic of Fuentes(?) — you now have to argue that his doing that is bad, while asserting it is okay for Hasidim to do it in the middle of Manhattan; and you have to argue the latter while Fuentes cites stories about billion-dollar tax evasion, discrimination, whatever. Or, if Fuentes doing it is bad and Hasidim doing it is bad, Fuentes can press on why you and other ostensible progressive organizations do not seem to care about their enclave or crime. I’m just saying that it’s surprising the far right hasn’t latched onto this discussion point.

Is fuentes encouraging people to move to the country and form a community? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him saying something like that. I wouldn’t have a problem with people advocating that they and people like them form close knit communities in the country and adopt whatever they consider to be the ideal lifestyle. I’d only really object to people imposing that lifestyle on other people.

I’m not even convinced language revivals in such isolated communities is as hard as you think. The issue is getting enough fluency that the next generation is raised speaking that language, rather than speaking the language of the broader culture.

The Irish and Welsh have aggressively tried language revival for decades to little avail. Billions spent on little-watched TV and other media in those languages, extremely regular classes for all grades in schools starting from a young age, all official documentation, forms, street signs etc in Welsh/Irish.

All it does is create a small middle class of true believer left-nationalists (common in Europe see Scotland or Catalonia) who subsist of taxpayer funding and are paid to act as a kind of living museum.

It only worked in Israel because at that time even most educated Arab and Shtetl Jews did not speak English as a common language, so they could pick their (re)invented language. If most early migrants to Israel had spoken English or Yiddish, one of them would have become the language. Actually, if the later wave of 70s to 90s Soviet migrants had moved to Israel in 48 the de facto official language would have been Yiddish.