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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This argument has been deployed in the past to justify chattel slavery and segregation, also with a large element of truth. I am sympathetic to this argument, by the way, but the problem is we were supposed to have "learned our lessons" and reformed society to reject these arguments that justified structures of alleged racial oppression. The United States emancipated the slaves, racially integrated public spaces and has essentially outlawed segregation even in private spaces, and granted equal rights to racial minorities all in a rejection of this argument you have presented. Immigration has been liberalized so much that demographic change is inevitable, and opposing demographic change makes you an evil Nazi. Accepting masses of refugees and illegal immigrants with open arms is supposed to be downstream of these lessons we have learned, lessons which were brought to us from the 20th century mythos- a mythos in which Jews played a central role.
Hoffmeister recently suggested that the Zionists tossing aside 20th century moralizing to solve this problem may awaken something in Europeans. But Carl Schmitt wrote "Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception", and Zionism has declared a state of exception to these 20th century moral lessons that the rest of us are forced to live under, and are forced to accept all the radical consequences thereof. I don't really support Palestine, but I reject Zionism declaring the state of exception because I reject its sovereignty, not because I think your argument is wrong. I'm not going to give Zionism a pass because experience has proven beyond doubt that White people supporting Zionism earns -zero- reciprocity, supporting their declaration of the state of exception is not going grant one iota of benefit in my opposition to this moral paradigm. It's not even going to undermine the moral paradigm, as the sovereign declaring a state of exception solidifies the status of the sovereign and the underlying paradigm.
If Israel were to follow the post-war moral paradigm which has been forced upon Europe and the Western World, it would have long ago advocated a single-state solution with full equal political rights afforded to the Palestinians, right of return, outlawed ethnic segregation, pushed Affirmative Action for Palestinians in University and Government, accepted large-scale immigration from its Arab neighbors, and socially and legally repressed every Jewish Israeli who had anything bad to say about their emancipated Arab compatriots.
Israel was pretty famously one of the last countries in the world backing and arming the white minority governments of South Africa and Rhodesia, and the current government has always preferred and advocated for conservative, anti-immigration parties in the US.
More options
Context Copy link
There are plenty of Jews who support or supported that kind of thing, or who (like George Soros) supported NGOs that worked to undermine Israeli policy on African mass immigration, the treatment of Arabs, etc. But most have been radicalized by reality.
One thing you forget is that no European terror attack has been as visceral or even 1/10th as large (as a percentage of the total population) as this in terms of casualty count. Islamist attacks in Europe are still rare, there has still not been, 20 years later, an attack even close to the size of 9/11 against a Westen country, and while one is probably inevitable it hasn’t yet materialized. Additional secondary consequences of mass immigration like Rotherham primarily involved underclass victims and unfolded over a long period of time with limited public photographic or video evidence for obvious reasons, and higher crime rates are both hard to quantify and in most of Europe rates are still down on the 90s or early 00s peak.
If what had happened to Israel in the weekend had happened in Germany (with the victims German civilians) I think your insinuation that policy toward Islamism and mass immigration wouldn’t change is wrong. It really doesn’t take much to radicalize Europeans, and ironically the far right often buys into the “culture is totally supreme over biology” leftist blank statism when it comes to the supposed effect of 20th century progressive ideas on Western publics far more than it ought to.
Why do you reject its sovereignty?
The Madrid bombings were. Spain responded by capitulating.
(never mind, I though the 1/10th as large referred to 9/11, which you mentioned later. 9/11 was 9 deaths per million, Madrid was 4)
The Madrid bombings were an order of magnitude less destructive than the Hamas raid on Israel, in a country an order of magnitude larger. They also didn't involve sexual humiliation of Spanish women.
It probably doesn't matter, but any attempt to unite the country was blown by the Aznar government telling the ridiculously obvious lie that the bombings had been carried out by ETA.
More options
Context Copy link
Spain has 50 million people and 200 died. I don’t know that that’s comparable. But yeah, that whole episode is often forgotten in the whole ‘terrorism doesn’t work’ discourse.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah that's unclear, I mean the sovereignty of International Zionism writ large, its sovereignty over me. The sovereignty of Zionist Jews to tell me I'm the most evil person in the world and have no right to have any sort of ethnic identity or advocate for my ethnic interests, and then they turn around and say they are the exception to the 20th century moral lessons and can basically do anything necessary to secure their ethno-state. They haven't recently been "radicalized", they've always been radicalized, their hostility towards White ethnic identity and interests combined with their hyper-ethno nationalism has always been radical, it's just that they can no longer even pretend to care about following the same rules they enforce on the rest of us.
The fact they are able to basically toss out the rule book with the support of the Western world is proof of their undue sovereignty over the international community. Europeans are thrown in jail for saying mean things about immigrants, while Israel just lives in an entirely different moral universe. It's proof of their centrality to the moral paradigm we live under, that they are above and beyond it and can declare a state of exception in their own conquests. But this isn't going to weaken or fracture the underlying moral paradigm, it's literally just "you have to follow the rules and we don't, we decide when and where the rules apply and we decide the rules don't apply to us here, there's nothing you can do about it", it's an exercise in sovereignty.
So what’s your view on Israelis in Israel and what they ought, in your moral framework, to do?
My view is that Zionism exerts undue and harmful influence over my own civilization. They have exerted influence in all areas of economic and cultural life to browbeat white gentiles with "moral lessons" that have disarmed them from essential and necessary ethnic self-regard, with irreversible consequences (Rep. Israel is now talking about the "least heinous option" when defending Israel by the way). They view white identity and ethnocentrism as intrinsically hostile to their self-interest, a belief which you share, so they work to suppress it while extracting financial, military, and political benefit from the Western world toward their own ethno-nationalist project.
You are correct that the anti-Zionism from the DR isn't going to change demographics or even the short-term migrant trends in the United States and Europe. But pointing out that the Zionists are poised to engage in an ethnic cleansing with the support of the US State Department goes a long way in discrediting the notion of Jews as the moral light unto the world. It is very strong evidence for the DR argument that Jewish moralizing towards white gentiles is their mode of engaging in conflict with perceived ethnic rivals and is motivated by ethnic self-interest rather than universal morality.
My moral framework relies on dispelling the pathologizing of white identity. Supporting the Zionists does nothing for that, except it reinforces their status as being above and beyond the standards that are imposed on us.
As far as what they should do, of course ethnic cleansing is the most practical solution here, but my moral framework would suggest I hold Zionists accountable to the moral framework that has been imposed on the West. I gain nothing by supporting their own ethnonationalism while knowing for a fact they will continue to work against white ethnonationalism.
So in effect you admit that, were you a Jew, you’d do exactly what they’re doing?
If I were a Jewish Zionist in all likelihood I would support what they are planning to do, but that doesn't undermine any of my reasons for opposing it as a non-Jew. I certainly wouldn't want the standards that Rep. Israel is advocating for whites to be applied to myself, either (and neither does Rep. Israel!).
But yeah, if I were a Jewish Zionist I would be unlikely to have a problem with the "rules for thee but not for me" state of affairs. I would like to think I have more intellectual honesty than that but empirically the chances of that being true don't look great.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you meant "imposed" here.
Thanks.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link