site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   38807 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 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.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

No response to my previous comment, plus this—yeah, definitely a troll.

But one of the responses got me thinking about national identity in a way I never had before.

I guess this troll is farming us for racist screen shots. But why bother? Just send people links to SecureSignal's user profile and skip the "innocently just found out that white nationalism exists, what do you guys think?"

Didn’t we just reclassify illegal immigrants into legal immigrants. Asylum seekers are technically “legal” though hugely abusing the system.

My post about my family's immigration situation didn't go down well. In retrospect, that makes sense given how scatterbrained it was. But one of the responses got me thinking about national identity in a way I never had before. In turn, it got me reading a lot of posts on this website and I came across a back and forth about white nationalism, which then led to the cited

No. You've been doing this schtick for years. Roll an alt, adopt a naïve persona, oh hey, check out all these white nationalist articles I've just happened to stumble across in a crazy random happenstance!

No one is fooled, you are immediately and obviously recognizable the instant the link spam starts.

Banned for egregious obnoxiousness.

Thank you for your service.

Is this that poster who makes ambiguous posts related to white nationalism and we can’t tell what his motivation is, and then they delete their account? Why don’t you just plainly state your motivation. Then people will reply at length and in good faith. No, you didn’t go from making a teary-eyed post about your parents to reading an Amren article. I genuinely can’t tell in which direction you are trying to persuade people. If you’re trying to shill people into reading Amren there are better ways; if you are trying to argue against white nationalism, why don’t you do that without the subterfuge and fibbing? If you are some activist or whatever who hates where nationalism you can just post that and be honest, that would be an acceptable post and then there could be a debate.

Your sources do not say what you think they say. What you call “path to citizenship” actually says “path for some illegal immigrants”. (Well yeah, did he graduate from MIT or something?). Your anti-immigration point mixes up legal and illegal migration, and the increase is anti-legal migration is complex and multifaceted. Being sympathetic to illegal immigrants is totally irrelevant to any policy, you can be sympathetic to those who must be punished because justice demands it. Then you ignore compounded demographic change when you mention the “low” level of illegal migration.

In practice, I just don't think most Americans want to separate from their neighbors and friends to create a white ethnostate

The more serious question is whether a reasonable white American who is fully informed on the matter would agree with such a proposal. If you show a reasonable white American (1) global demographic trends, (2) the views of their ancestors, (3) crime data, (4) genetic differences, what would they say then? The unique problem today is that if trends continue, white people will simply die out as a population with any global influence. If you tell a white person that only white people are going to be replaced in the countries they founded, whereas Africa remains African and Asia remains Asian, what would the say? They have a strong evolutionary instinct as a mammal to not want their unique genetic group to be replaced by foreigners. That’s a primitively persuasive political argument, we can literally imagine Hunter Gatherers being motivated by the same concern. At an evolutionary level, knowing that your group is going to be replaced saps motivation to do anything. There is no longer a reason to live or build anything permanent or useful, knowing that it will be handed over to other groups and your own progeny will be replaced.

In any case, illegal immigrants are just small portion of the total immigrant population.

This might have been true 4 years ago but things have changed

Anyway, looking him up, I found a recent article he wrote entitled It All Comes Down to Race. I read it carefully, twice, and I'd like to engage this community because I don't know any other place where this can be critically discussed.

You aren't aware of anywhere else on the internet that allows criticism of white nationalism? Seems fishy...

To be very fair, critical discussion of a position is different from criticizing the position and often the latter looks nothing like the former.

True, but this guy is/was just presenting a bunch of taboo links, and then criticizing them. Never really defended taboo. Surely there is some Kos / SRS / sneerclub dedicated to this important work. These attempts are in a bind between actually advocating for taboo versus hiding effectively.

Elsewhere it'd just be called racist and booed, and at best picked apart in bad faith. Here, it'll be picked apart in neutral-ish faith.

I genuinely don't think there are all that many places that allow both white nationalism and criticism of white nationalism, especially within a liberal conversational framework. DSL maybe, as another rat fork.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats