domain:cspicenter.com
Goodguy
58m ago
I don't know if you would get arrested as opposed to just fined, but there are countries with laws against denying certain Soviet atrocities.
Generally speaking, I don't know how likely one would actually be to face legal penalties, but I think that there are many places in the former Warsaw Pact where claiming in public that Soviet atrocities were exaggerated could lead to physical violence coming from ordinary citizens.
NullHypothesis
25m ago
I don't know if there are any metrics but from what I can tell most conversations and activities happen on the weekend (The number of comments seems to routinely double after Friday from my casual observation). Probably because people have jobs and family and stuff. What a surprise, people with interesting and intelligent takes have real world responsibilities... the Motte isn't a place you can make a living off so, of course, you're not going to have people here full-time to discuss all topics that could be discussed. If you aren't going to engage in the comments you could just wait for the monthly quality posts and save yourself the time and just read those instead. You're going to have more lively conversations on X because of the simple fact of X having a much much larger userbase, to the point where people can make a living just talking about political stuff. It also has a lot of low-take, crap opinions on there.
Personally, I do think there is some merit to having some low-level fruit for discussion, which is why I made a post about the recent viral man versus bear question. In the grand scheme of things this viral question has almost no real-world consequences compared to say half the items on your list but why did that post generate a good amount of discussion and a lot of these you just posted about hasn't (yet)? Because I made a post about the topic. I also took some effort to put a spin to it, did a little bit of research, gave my opinion, posed a question, and gave multiple angles of possible discussion points, and it got a decent amount of conversations going. The more information you give on the topic, the more chance there is something in it that someone might be interested in to respond to.
In general, the posts I've seen get the most responses have one of these things going for them:
- There is an opinion/fact that someone disagrees with so they post to argue against it - essentially a controversial opinion. These are the ones that routinely get the deepest conversations because it's an argument/debate. It's also the most difficult to engage in with long term.
- There is something in the post that triggers a related topic with a similar line of thinking or a different way to analyze that particular topic
- There is a new perspective that is so profound to a reader that they feel obliged to respond to it.
- There is a question for people to respond to.
Also there are some guidelines about culture war posts:
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.
I don't think it takes that much work - just post a link to the article with the topic you want to discuss, quote a few relevant lines, then give your opinion and ask a question. If you want a particular type of discussion/insight put in more effort so there is something for people to respond to. What particular about these topics do you want to hear people's take on? High-level discussion requires some effort, otherwise, how would the responses be any different than the average comment on the news site, Reddit, YouTube, X, or any other discussion platform with low-level reactionary comments?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
32m ago
None of what you've written here makes a particularly insightful point except to suggest "Here are things I believe are crazy, how about it?" And the not-veiled implication that only idiots would disagree with you--which hardly invites discussion. There are a great number of older threads worth reading on this site without shit-stirring for the sake of it.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
46m ago
Sir, You Are Being Hunted might float your boat.
Jiro
27m ago
With regard to the so-called ethnic campaigns I think it's necessary to point out that the ethnic minorities who were targeted (in a loose sense) in the purges all had ethnic homelands of their own which bordered the USSR and were either hostile states, former wartime adversaries like Poland or Finland, or colonized by a hostile state, such as Korea under Japanese rule.
It's very hard, without large scale immigration (either of you versus the equivalent of the native Americans, or of the minorities), to be in a situation where your country's ethnic minorities are not one of those.
Also, by this standard, the internment of Japanese-Americans in the US wouldn't count as anti-ethnic because the US was at war with Japan.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
31m ago
It is unthinkable to me that any adult with full cognitive faculties could think these people were the good guys chosen by God.
Why? God is ineffable. If he picks some nation as his chosen and lets them get away with treating their neighbors as waste, who are you to say that you are right and God is wrong. He reportedly fucked with the Egyptians, alternating between sending additional plagues and hardening the heart of their pharaoh so that he wouldn't just give up and let the Jews go. Now he's hardening the resolve of the Palestinians, so they don't stop dreaming about their state from the sea to the river, and the Israeli Jews can have an excuse to grind them into dust.
Jiro
33m ago
A. Woke implies an agenda of defending the oppressed, mass murdering tyrant also implies an agenda of defending the oppressed. In this case, there is very little to link wokes to tyrants -- if we observe that Nazis frequently wear uniforms, and postmen frequently wear uniforms that tells us very little if there is any unexpected overlap between Nazis and postmen
To be fair, "defending the oppressed" inspires and excuses actions. Uniforms do not.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
52m ago
How about King Charles's mildly satanic painting?
I don't know why you'd make yourself look like you're bathed in blood or wreathed in unholy flame. Rand Al Thor can pull it off but he is the Dragon Reborn, greatest hero of two ages. When King Charles takes a cursed sa'angreal sword from an ancient fortress and faces down the forces of darkness, then he can appropriate fantasy hero aesthetics for official portraits.
I've argued in the past that there is a certain malign or subversive element in some elite art, consider people like Cleon Peterson or the Pope's rather unusual looking sculpture. Apparently that has all this special Christian symbolism - I would've thought that a cross would be more appropriate but what do I know?
There's also this (somewhat nsfw?) painting of a child getting throatfucked which somebody vandalized, much to the displeasure of Macron: https://x.com/Censor__This/status/1658938149844791300/photo/1
I could add in the CIA plot to spread abstract and modern art, though it's only relevant in the broader sense that art is political and related to politics. I don't have much of a thesis aside from 'a lot of modern art is quite disturbing and indicative of cultural trends towards shock value and dubious tolerance'. There's a time and a place for everything and sometimes that place is sites like bestgore, liveleaks or the artistic equivalent of AO3 rather than art galleries, in my mind.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
57m ago
It's not like there isn't room to criticize past societies, but I don't get the whole equality angle. Even feminists don't want equality.
Holodomor was recognized as a genocide by the European Parliament with 507 votes for (and 12 votes against). Even a plurality of the far-left group GUE/NGL voted for it.
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