site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 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.

Describing the approach the communist leaders adopted towards their enemies as "identity politics". As I and many others use the term, "identity politics" refers to politics based on immutable identity characteristics (race, sex, caste, ethnicity etc.). It appears that (with the possible exception of the aristocracy, depending on how hereditary privileges worked at the time), none of the groups targeted by the communist regime meet this description: kulaks can sell their land and immediately become non-kulaks, industrialists can sell their factories.

I would too hesitate in calling it "identity politics" (feels intuitively wrong), but I would not say the rest. In the Soviet system the circumstances of your birth were not so easily washed away. One might become a "reformed" ex-noble or ex-bourgeois who is a true believer in the promise of Communism, yet somehow these people always tended to be the first ones swept up in any new or recurring wave of paranoia. There were also in practice discriminatory measures applied against people who had "class traitor" backgrounds, even multiple generations past.

Also the Soviet state effected very real ethnic discrimination, either purposefully or via other less deliberate means. Ethnic minorities were perpetual sources of paranoia and distrust; in the lead-up to WWII and during for example there were a number of purges, forced displacements, mass imprisonments, killings, etc. that might not qualify as genocide but come very very close (and morally deserve little distinction). The Holodomor is the most famous but there are probably some you've never even heard of like the Polish Operation or the deportation of Tatars. These are just some of the more notable ones, there was a whole history of "population transfers" which sounds like a sort of benign planning thing but in reality was often a very brutal form of ethnic violence.

And this is without getting into the more passive bigotry within the Soviet system of preferences towards certain groups over others with respect to everything from university spots to food allocation. Systemic racism is kind of a big deal when the system is a totalitarian one that controls almost every aspect of your life.